I figured I’d try another monthly mini rants thread and do better than last month on the title.
I used to like the 4th of July holiday. Now it’s about lighting fireworks at night from the beginning of June and my dog howls all night. The kicker is that fireworks that make noise are illegal here. (It’s illegal if it “goes up or blows up”.)
Legality doesn’t stop my idiot neighbors. Neither does the fact we’re in a serious drought in California.
@BippityBoppityBoo, here we ranters are now. 
I like it!
I’m not a fan of fireworks either. We have four dogs, so it’s chaos already. We just got a Thundershirt for the big one. The jury is still out on whether it’s actually helping, so I guess this will be another test.
Fireworks + Thunderstorms + Guns = Two unhappy dogs out of our four. 
Thank you~Good job!
………Legality doesn’t stop my idiot neighbors………mine either. M-80s seem to be the bonehead choice this season. Nothing about them is legal, which I suppose makes them irresistible.
Hey, Starbucks, it’s great that you want to be greener, but a biodegradable straw should be BIOdegradable, not in-use degradable. 
Your paper straws stay solid enough to drink through if one gets something other than a Frappuccino, but they get too mushy too fast to move around a thick drink. And while the sipping lid for cold drinks is a great green innovation because a straw isn’t needed for drinks other than Frappuccinos, your paper straw is a bit bigger than the sipping hole.
I used to love fireworks. I haven’t celebrated properly in years. I loved those ash worms you could make on the sidewalk. I like to go to the big shows. My uncle has a permanently disfigured hand covered in burn scarring from lighting a bottle rocket when he was young and drunk. They are illegal in our state.
@DemonTree how’s your baby doing?
I thought she was better, then she was sick twice yesterday evening, wasn’t sick all night (but she had a fever again and slept really badly), then was sick in the morning right after I fed her. 
She’s obviously still under the weather; right now she’s asleep in my lap. Poor baby.
It’s so hard because they have no idea what’s happening and no clue that it won’t last forever. Makes me think of how difficult it would be to have a child with a chronic or life-threatening illness.
Yeah. They can’t understand why they feel bad and you can’t explain it to them. I guess at least they don’t really remember it once they feel better again.
There is a place in Eloy (Arizona) that was going to be the home of the Family Fun World but ended up being bunch of stuff the owner had gotten from other theme parks before he went broke. One of the things he did was buy some of the cars from an overhead cable ride and put them on poles.
Today we were going to Tucson to get George and passed the site. I totally could not remember the name of the park that never was, so used my smart phone to look up human-sized cages in Arizona.
Not my best idea because even though I backed right out of that search, I still got home to find new and different spam in my inbox. If anyone wants to know where to buy ball gags or handcuffs, I can send you a link!
George is just as cute as a kitten can be and he has two speeds. Warp speed and full stop. I can’t get pics of warp speed kitten and full stop kitten looks like a fuzzy softball. A very cute fuzzy softball, but still.
Hubs says that he’s now immune to COVID forevermore. I say that if/when he catches the Delta variant, George will get a little brother.
Might as well call and put down the deposit on that little Maine Coon sibling~gotta get the drop on the wait list.
Great picture, hope there are lots more coming!
How cute! Those big ears make him look like a little wolf.
Currently in hospital with BabyTree. They are sending us to another town 1 hour away because there is no paediatrics dept here.
Good neighbors are worth their weight in gold. Bad neighbors aren’t worth shit.
Bad neighbors: Besides being Crazy-AssedVangelists (must be a sect that thought that feces were tacked to the church door) who have home-schooled Children of The Corn Monsters and trained them in the family tradition of grifting while not paying taxes, COVID seems to bring out the best of them.
When one of the teen-ferals was infected with COVID, he’d post publicly about how he’d walk in a local park actively trying to infect people. They are a LOVELY family who always seem to have too many cars (and love blocking my driveway with them. I’ve the cell number of the local community relations cop and when they do this, I snap a pic, send it to her, and then call the station to have it towed. Around the fourth in the past they’ve enjoyed setting off loud fireworks displays while making sure they turn their backs when I come out of my house. So, this year? Different verse, same as the first.
“Why officer, we never set off fireworks…!”
“Would you like to explain this picture then…?”
Compounding matters, they hate me because I’m an Atheist, hate TFG, and hate Repugs who think installing a flag pole is the first improvement a new homeowner should make, and because I support Democracy and President Biden.
My last interaction was when the husband ( a college professor at an Alt-Right University ) came up to me, way too close for social distancing, and asked when we would retire and move. I told him never.
They seem to have added some other neighbors into their “game” too. They know I like backyard quiet time at night, so nearby houses have set up Stalag-17 type lamps that point into my backyard at several thousand candle power each that turn on when I sit on my deck. Also, the new game is to… whenever anyone sees me leave my house… to chirp one of their car alarms. Also, they try to make the tree in front of my house the neighborhood dog-drop spot. That and when the lovely Haus-Frau push their entitled spawn strollers in front of my house, they drop the wrappers of their litter’s toddler snacks right in the street.
Sadly, there’s only so much I can do legally…
When a friend complained about a neighbor doing this, another friend brought over his CO2 pellet gun and easily popped the offending bulb.
Well, yeah, there’s that…
There is a spray that they sell a computer stores for cleaning keyboards. If sprayed in long bursts it’s super cold. I’ve long wondered what would happen if sprayed on a hot bulb… but I guess I’ll never know.
“He shot it out…!”
“I’m sorry, but I see no evidence of that. The glass is not splintered as if by a BB or a rock. Now, stop accusing your neighbors!”
Unfortunately if you can take photos so can they.
As any actor can tell you, the trick is to know where the cameras are.
Or so they say.