Skyrockets in Flight

First it was rice. Now it's fireworks.

EVERYBODY PANIC!!!

If you think the global consortium that controls our minds by allowing us to consume in excess isn't monkeying with us now, you're just in denial.

You're going to have to get your ooohs and aaaahs on the sly this July 4th. Or on the web. Maybe you can get a best buy on lame sparklers or snakes. Is there any crummier firework than the snake? Oooh, ash. Wow.

For one summer I actually worked in a fireworks factory loading semi-trucks. If that doesn't encourage you to finish school, nothing will. That was also the Summer that two fireworks factories blew up. Hey, the union says we get smoke breaks, so we're taking our smoke breaks. Shut it, safety boy. That Summer my parents had one of the best fireworks displays our neighborhood ever had from all the leftover stuff I leveraged from my employer. And I only set one shrubbery on fire.

Utah has two, count them, two big fireworks displays. First is July 4th. Second is Pioneer Day on July 24th. It's when the State was founded after Brigham Young said, "Screw it, we're stopping here. I don't care if there isn't a Stuckey's, my dogs are barking." So that's technically another reason to love Utah even if it is just a tangent. Someone mark that down. And it gives us double the chance that someone will do something crazy with them. Bonus carnage, yes!

You'd just better appreciate those sparklers when they're $4 a gallon, young man. Maybe if you'd have earned those sparklers instead of just having them handed to you, you'd have taken better care of them. Back in my day we used to get sparklers for free. By the gross.

Does anyone else have "state line" fireworks? It always seemed like the best fireworks weren't in your state but you had to drive to the state line and then smuggle them back into your home state. And by smuggling, I mean putting them in the trunk. And these were often fireworks places that were more than just those crummy shacks they put up mid-June. These were real buildings that operated year round. Yeah, I've got the think the holiday season is a little slow for fireworks in the Midwest, but they were open.

For Michigan, Indiana was the sweet siren's call of illicit explosives. I don't know what kind of anarchy goes on in Indiana the rest of the year, but they've gone laissez faire in their approach to fireworks regulation. And if you're within 2 hours of their border, you're sneaking in to buy M80's, bottle rockets and other high profile projectiles.

Now I gotta get to the Nevada border and see what kind of explosives I can smuggle back into God's country.