Eternal Flame

Hiya, kids! It's almost July 4th. And as Americans, it's our civic duty to take the day off, eat grilled meat, drink and blow stuff up! Remember, if you skip any of those, the terrorists win.

I will confess to working one summer in a fireworks distribution center. That means I loaded semi's. And got a lot of illegal fireworks when we had stuff left over at the end of the season. Why are all the best fireworks available the very next state over? Lucky stiffs.

But if you're worried about fireworks safety, don't. Because all the fireworks are made in China. And we know what sticklers they are for public safety. So when you read the extremely detailed safety instructions on your illegal fireworks, just follow them carefully.

• Light fuse
• Place on ground
• Get away

That's right. Get away. Nothing can possibly go wrong with that.

But these guys said it best. It's Paul and Storm and it's 4 minutes in. Enjoy!

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.

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.