It’s Sunday night, and it’s July 9th. For crissakes, stop setting off firecrackers at night, freaking out my dog, and generally disrupting the neighborhood. Little punk ass brats.
I’m so tempted to shove one of those lit firecrackers up your hairy little asshole! Then see how you like it!
When you’re a kid with firecrackers, EVERY day is the 4th.
I agree, it’s annoying. There’s some kids in my neighborhood who seem to have an endless supply. Unless it’s gunfire I’m hearing…
Year before last, the Little Bastard who lives next door lobbed firecrackers over our fence at my dog. Apparently, he found her terrified hysteria to be hilarious. I’d always rush out when I heard them, but Little Bastard had, of course, managed to make it into his house before they went off, probably laughing his demonic little ass off behind the curtains. He did this for a good two weeks after the 4th. I kept hoping Little Bastard would run out of them, but I swear to Christ, the kid must have bought out the store.
I was at a loss as to what to do. If I confronted him, he would just deny it, and possibly escalate his efforts at terrorism. His mother has no clue how to discipline her children, so she would be no help.
The situation resolved itself neatly. One of Hubby’s co-workers knows Little Bastard and his father. This co-worker also has a weird sense of humor. As a “joke” he went up to Little Bastard at a ballgame and told him that he had heard that Little Bastard was giving us a hard time. He threatened that if he heard anything else, he was going to have a talk with the kid’s dad. (Mr. Bastard is apparently a strict disciplinarian, unlike his idiotic ex-wife, and the kid was visably shaken by the threat.)
Co-worker said he thought it was odd how scared and guilty Little Bastard looked, odd enough that he mentioned it to Hubby the next time he saw him. When he learned about the campaign of terror Little Bastard was putting our dog through, he laughed and said he didn’t think that we’d have any more problems.
We didn’t.
On the 4th, some idiots on the ground floor here set off fireworks on their patio and near a parked car. We reported 'em to the fire dept.; they might be the same ones who set off some firecrackers or something in the parking lot, near our van. We’re suppoed to have on-site security but he wasn’t around that night.
Shit, Lissa, I seem to remember you telling us about that kid before, but I didn’t remember that he was tormenting your dog-which one, Bean or Polaris?
Bean. She’s always been afraid of loud noises, but she’s gotten worse as she gets older. Whenever one of those fircrackers would go off near her, she would run to the door and bash against it, howling in fear and shaking violently.
Luckily, he’s got his license now and he’s away a good deal of the time, likely tormenting people in the suburbs.
We had a quiet Fourth, firecracker-wise, and quiet before and after – until Friday night. At 12:45 a.m. After I’d been slaving all day on a huge rush job that I then had to get up the next morning bright and early and get back to work on. Some bastard started shooting off one or two big firecrackers…wait five minutes…do it again. He did this for nearly a fucking HOUR. If I could have figured out where he was, I would have called the cops on him. :wally
My favorite memory of leftover firecrackers was a few years ago when I managed an apartment complex for the mentally ill that was located on top of a hill down from which was a huge Section-8/HUD housing project that had some “interesting” types of its own. The pity was the projects were actually attractively built and housed some really good people who were down on their luck, but the other half were just totally welfare frauding/dysfunctional/barely-worth-the-price-and-trouble-of-shelling-the-place-but-I’d-subsidize the-powder-required-anyway Mos Eisley Meets Gomorrah oxygen thieves who stole anything that was left outside at our complex (including things like flower pots or battered hibachis that weren’t worth a dollar), vandalized cars, shot out car windows with BB guns, sold/bought crack in open daylight, etc., and the cops would do nothing about them most of time and the apartment managers down there would NEVER do anything about the troublemakers (probably because they were afraid).
One night a bunch of the Springer-trash broke into the HUD apartment’s pool and started having a huge party. It was drunken, there were people jumping from the roof of the clubhouse into the pool (and you absolutely know that if one of them had fallen off the roof and hurt themselves they’d have sued and probably won) and drinking and blasting music and this was well after 2 a.m… Several of my resident crazinoes had called the cops- they never showed up (though in their defense the city’s main police station was almost a mile away and there was no Krispy Kreme between us and them). We were royally pissed but we’d heard too many gunshots and the like over the months/years to try and address the problem ourselves, yet none of us could sleep so a few of us sat outside in a gazebo smoking and bitching.
One of the residents was a wildly bipolar Sigourney Weaver clone I’ll call ‘Ripley’. She was a former model and from a well-to-do family and tried to lord it over the others but was also one of the sickest when off her meds, which was constantly (she thought she could manage) and a total… well, anyway- while the rest of us were bitching Ripley, wearing a kimono and obviously pissed, calmly walked down from her 2nd floor apartment to our complex mailbox, never saying a word or addressing anybody. We saw her flick her lighter, no idea what she was doing, then she closed the mailbox and walked back upstairs just as the BANG BANG BANG BANG!!! action started. The firecrackers she’d found from 4th of July a few weeks before reverberated unbelievably in the mailbox, bits of paper from them were in there for months, and- totally true story- the Springer-trash denizens of the HUD complex started running, a couple swearing “Shit! I felt a bullet go right past my motherfuckin’ head!”, and the party broke up for mortal fear of the fool on the hill shooting at them.
Sorry for the hijack. I agree with the OP though- I’m still hearing the damned things myself. Last year some kids through some in the apartment dumpster and set it on fire, and their she-yuppie mom of course reacted with a “what can you do? I’m just a single mom” attitude when the management tried to read her the riot act for having to call out the fire department and for residents parked close to said dumpster having to move their cars so they wouldn’t blow up, and I don’t live in a slummy apartment complex.
Wow. When I was walking the dog tonight, and heard some firecrackers going off, I thought about posting something word for word identical to Guin’s.
No one on my block sets off anything. We have an elementary school across the street, and I go over and chase anyone there away. Not just because of my dog, but because the grass is dry and we don’t need a fire.
What really pisses me off are the local cops. They’ve decided that they don’t need to get involved, and that the fire department can handle it. Last year they bragged about how few calls they did - when the place sounded like Baghdad, but not so peaceful. The next town over allows the sale of “safe and sane” firecrackers, then has big signs saying they’ll crack down on any real ones. I’m sure they drive around with detectors which tell which bangs are legal and which aren’t.
:: Looks Around ::
:: Lights Fuse ::
:: Runs ::
BANG-BANG BANG! BANG-BANG-BANG BANG-BANG BANG! BANG!
BANG!
We don’t have 4th of July celebrations here, of course … but we do have Guy Fawkes.
I feel your pain, folks. About four months of it.
For some reason this was a huge year for fireworks, don’t know why. I don’t usually mind them, although the ones that scream make my dog bark, but last night there was one single one that sounded exactly like a gunshot (or, well, one gunshot that sounded like it could have been fireworks) which woke me up with a “whatwasthat?!” No blood this morning, so I guess it’s okay.
The night of the 4th I went over to my boyfriend’s place to see his friends act like morons with fireworks, and as I was leaving I saw the crack house on my corner had vomited up its denizens, who were having all kinds of fun with fireworks in the street. I came back to find a bunch of spent firework tubes in my yard and a beat up rusty old bike overturned by where I park my car. I had the best time coming up with scenarios in my head that might have resulted in that particular set of leavings - the bike was still there in the morning but gone in the afternoon when I came home from work. Guess they got out of the hospital. 
For some reason this was a huge year for fireworks, don’t know why. I don’t usually mind them, although the ones that scream make my dog bark, but last night there was one single one that sounded exactly like a gunshot (or, well, one gunshot that sounded like it could have been fireworks) which woke me up with a “whatwasthat?!” No blood this morning, so I guess it’s okay.
The night of the 4th I went over to my boyfriend’s place to see his friends act like morons with fireworks, and as I was leaving I saw the crack house on my corner had vomited up its denizens, who were having all kinds of fun with fireworks in the street. I came back to find a bunch of spent firework tubes in my yard and a beat up rusty old bike overturned by where I park my car. I had the best time coming up with scenarios in my head that might have resulted in that particular set of leavings - the bike was still there in the morning but gone in the afternoon when I came home from work. Guess they got out of the hospital.
Huh. How’d you do that? I almost double posted in this thread, but the software stopped me and told me it would be a double post. I figured that was on e of the new features we keep hearing about.
I guess I’m different; I enjoy the local fireworks. After the citites show, I wandered around, not far from home and watched the neighbors shoot off.
I hear very few fireworks right now, usually in the daytime, but they don’t bother me.
I’m not talking about fireworks shows, or even private citizens in isolated areas having their own displays (as my cousin used to do). I’m talking about kids with firecrackers setting them off at all hours of the night, just to make noise. Most of these are small, so you only see them in the immediate area.
Mm, yes, firecrackers in a parking lot on the 4th of July. Unless it was way late at night, you need to remove the stick from your ass.
I just reckon that all the dogs in the last twenty years have turned into pussies!
When I was a kid (and fireworks were not just legal but cheap) the local dogs never put up any protest about the noise.
They just need to get used to the odd penny-bunger and tom-thumb to acclimatise them to them the cacophany…
Wuss dogs nowadays wot. 
Not necessarily. Where are you getting “parking lot”? I saw “patio”, which is completely different.
I called the cops on the 4th because the guy next door was setting off firecrackers in his driveway. Our houses are fifteen feet apart. This guy isn’t someone I’d trust to walk my dog, let alone handle explosives within 8 feet of my house. Also? Fireworks are illegal here.
I’m just ten thousand times more special than you, I guess.