Okay, neighbor, I already have been told that I must hate my country because I’m politically liberal :rolleyes:, but your real-time recreation of the shelling of Fort McHenry should have ended a LONG time before it did. Yeah, I’m the guy who called the cops at 11:45PM. And I’m the guy who should have called them when you started back at it after they left. After midnight is too damned late to be ending the explosions when most of us DON’T have today off. Not that I expect you to be any more considerate this year than you were in previous years.
See dropzone, you dropped the ball here. By calling the cops, they had to stop for 15 minutes. Maybe if you just let them keep lighting firecrackers, they would have gotten more drunk and over-confident, and blown off one of their hands.
Gotcha beat, dz. Beleive it or not, some “patriot” in our neigbhborhood decided that the best time to begin a half-hour long fireworks display was at 3 in the goddamn morning. That’s right, the most godforsaken hour on the clock dial, and they’re shooting off fireworks. And they were big and they were loud. Not bottlerockets and screamers–professional-grade shit. They lit up the countryside for miles, and the explosions were so loud that it could have been mistaken for a severe thunderstorm, except that it wasn’t raining, and the noise and light came at very regular intervals. I feel sorry for any parents in the area who have kids who are scared by that kind of noise, since we don’t have the opportunity to opt out of the celebration. I closed the drapes, but there’s no way to block out the noise.
I’m not a religious woman, but I found myself hoping that the latest rumbling thunderclap represented, not a delightful display of pyrotechnics, but the divine wrath of an angry god . . . or at least a stray spark finding its way into the stockpile on the ground.
However, we live in the country, and this is one of those rare occasions when it bites us in the ass. No noise ordinances . . . and based on my estimates of distance and direction (it was on the other side of the house, and I did not bother to get out of bed to pinpoint the location) it might have been the volunteer fire department anyway.
Yes, you do. Sheesh, that’s a nasty story! And the last people you want to piss off by complaining are the firemen!
[MPSIMSish hijack]
It’s some non-holiday in 1958. Just moved to town so we didn’t really know what’s going on in town. Dad’s gone on business. Explosions light the sky. Mom’s convinced it’s the Russkies, so we’re sent to the basement. Nope, just the town centennial celebration.
[/MPSIMSish hijack]
Allow me to curse out the fucking punk motherfuckers who caused my wife and I to run outside at 11pm to fetch the garden hose and put out a goddamn fire in the alley behind our house.
These are the punks who were shooting flaming missiles into the yards of dozens of our neighbors for about six straight hours last night. The houses are, at most, eight feet apart on this street, and their idiotic celebrating a mere 100 feet from my back porch must have endangered dozens of people’s property, to say nothing of the litter they were spewing all over the fucking neighborhood.
One of their projectiles apparently took a fiery nosedive into our trash can. We happened to be on the back porch when we noticed a rather pleasant orange glow from next to our garage.
So there we were, hosing down the melting plastic trash can while these fucking dipshits stood fifty feet away, fucking oblivious to anything else around them, staring mindlessly at the pretty lights and loud bangs which they had been creating non-stop for hours.
I was hoping so badly for one of their fucking rockets to shoot directly into one of their goddamn eyes, but apparently the rest of the long night progressed without serious injury.
Are fireworks illegal (except when used with a permit, such as municipal displays on the Fourth) across the U.S.? I know that in New Jersey, they sure are. Of course, people set them off anyway, but most of the ones I heard back in the day were more like the occasional bottle rocket or jumping jack, not an elaborate display like you guys witnessed.
Only is states with FUCKING STUPID COMMIE LAWS, like Ohio. A few dumbasses blow thier hands off so the lawmaking bastards ruin it for everyone. You can buy anything you want, but you have to lie and say you live out of state, in writing.
Anyway, I live next to train tracks so I am immune to any kind of noise. MUAHAHAHAHA.
Well, for all I know, they had a licensed pyrotechnics professional at our little display. It seemed pretty damned organised. As I said, they rockets very well-timed, they were big mo-fos, and they started on the dot at 3 a.m. (picture Podkayne waking form a sounds sleep and leaping five feet straight up in the air, wondering if the natural gas tank had just exploded, then blearily checking the alarm clock) and finished with a finale at precisely 3:30. I imagine that there’s a big demand for pyro’s on the 4th, and that it’d be easier to book one outside the hours of peak demand? Or maybe it was a bunch of jerkwads who got their fireworks across state lines and was settin’ them off in the back yard.
Well, I only had a few bottle rockets and screamers to deal with . . . But I did have to cope with an all-day White Trash Family Picnic in the back yard. My neighborhood is a ncie mix of lower- to upper-middle class families, but I am lucky enough to have the Kallikacks living out back. An unmaried welfare Mom, her married, parolee, foulmouthed boyfriend, their toddler daughter (L’il Welfare Check) and their two unchained attack dogs.
Yesterday, every trailer park for miles around emptied into our back yard. The hootin’ and a-hollerin’, the greasy barbecue smoke, the beer a-flowin’, Cletus yellin’ at his ma . . . I shut all the windows and put on the a/c, LOUD.
Well, I feel lucky. This was just a regular 4th in my neighborhood. Some bottle rockets, a few jumping jacks, some cherry bombs, and the grand finale… a full magazine from what sounded like an M-16.
That particular neighbor can be depended upon to liven up any occasion; 4th, basketball championships, New Year, etc., with a burst of automatic gunfire. It’s quite charming, actually. Sometimes, when they’re feeling generous, we get two magazines.
A large crowd of people are gathering to watch the city’s fireworks display. Among this crowd are a group of teenage boys with bottle rockets.
And they’re lighting them and tossing them around!! Some of them flew horizontally – straight into groups of people. How stupid can you be?? I didn’t see anyone get hurt, but I certainly did watch out for myself and my friends. The little pricks.
<mountain drawl ON>
Son, if’n you live in the Ol’ Dominion and you can’t get fireworks that go over six feet then you’re livin’ in the wrong part of the right state.
Seriously, I could have set of a LAWS rocket Wednesday and no one would have bugged me about it. As it was, I just lit off some sparklers for Lil Baby Kate and moved on. She’s too young for the full show.
<mountain drawl OFF>
For the most part, it’s up to state and local authorities, but if I’m mot mistaken, federal law prohibits some kinds of fireworks such as cherry bombs and M-80s.
Hey, make sure you plan a visit to China say right around Chinese New Year. Be really good if you have jet lag and am just dropping off to sleep at midnight. FIREWORKS, you want FIREWORKS, I’ll give ya FIREWORKS. Man, this whole country explodes.
Phuuuuft, bottle rockets. I’ll show yew some bottle rockets. Yep the kind that explode about 2 hunnrd feet off the ground with a big ol KABLOWIE and sends shrapnel all over the frickin’ place.
Yep, you luv fireworks so much, certainly plan on a visit.
Seems one company put together a barge for Atlantic City, NJ and another town up in Massachusetts, and both display barges had a slight accident within minutes of each other.
