Thursday, July 03, 2008

Skyrockets In Flight


It's almost here. July 4th! Woo hoo. Time for every American to engage in their civic duty to blow things up and buy mattresses! It's Independence Day and although we actually signed the Declaration of Independence on July 2, nobody likes a snot nose who brings up history to try to rain on our no-worky parade. So, shut it, college boy.

I have a wistful view of fireworks. One Summer I worked in a fireworks factory. We unloaded the ugly, Chinese charactered, corrugated boxes and put them into fancy, schmancy colored boxes for the suckers consumers to enjoy purchasing from hastily constructed tents, trailers or shacks along the side of the road. By the end of the day, your hands would be black from all the powder that leaked out of the extremely high quality and obviously strictly safety scrutinized objects of destruction. Oh, and every now and then, if I was really lucky, I'd get to help fill a semi-truck for shipment to somewhere else. There's nothing more glorious than lifting boxes all afternoon in a tin can with poor ventilation while it's about 100 degrees outside. What? And give up show business.

Oh, that was also the summer that two fireworks factories blew up. That summer fireworks factory explosions were like shark attacks, dangerous tomatoes (a good name for a rock and roll band by the way but it's no Commando Nipples) and messy celebrity divorces.

So whenever peeps are going ooh and ahh, I'm probably thinking, "That's an x-150 with a 500 gram load and a scatter display." Because that makes for such fascination conversation, I usually keeps my piehole shut. Usually.

The best fireworks shows are those set to music. You know you're going to get Copland's Fanfare of the Common Man shoved down your throat with some big boomers. Maybe if you're lucky, they'll toss in some Whitesnake this year to keep the PBR & Nascar crowd from getting ugly.

So enjoy the 4th, kids. I'll be too lazy to post. But hepped up on barbeque sauce and coleslaw. And Leinenkugel's.

Remember alcohol and fireworks don't mix. So get your drinking out of the way before you start blowing stuff up. You don't want to spill your beverage when you're fleeing the mayhem. And if you're not causing any mayhem, you're not trying hard enough.

5 comments:

Swistle said...

And "Rock You Like a Hurricane." There's ALWAYS "Rock You Like a Hurricane."

Reigning Frog said...

You have to drink before fireworks! Where else are you going to get an empty bottle for bottle rockets? It's the law.

Skyzi said...

I always remember to wait to drink because at the end of the night, who else is going to be sober enough to get between my dad and the group of twenty Angry Latins who have almost blown up my little brother and are now circling around licking their chops at this seemingly Caucasian family who are yelling at them to "watch out for the f-n kids!". Not that this has ever happened....

Anonymous said...

We can't set off our own fireworks here, so I had to settle for a show at the park nearby. Eh. I prefer the risk factor associated with setting them off at the end of your driveway and the possibility of setting your neighbor's house afire.

The real treat as a kid happened when someone went to the Indian reservation and got all the illegal fireworks and set those off! Those injuns sure know how to have a good time.

Onknees (not_onknees at the moment) said...

With $10,000 worth of fireworks between 2 neighboring households, we had fireworks overkill and i never thought I would say that. Music provided by large lesbian carpenter in a huge truck---she can play whatever she wants as far as Im concerned.... :)