Normally, I'd be able to say FIREWORKS! However, around here no fireworks are legal anymore. What the heck happened? Apparently, it's another instance of a few morons screwing everything up for everyone else. The Fourth is normally my favorite holiday. I love fireworks. Half of it is not even the love of setting off and viewing the fireworks. It's the planning. When I was kid, we'd get this catalog from Big Don's Fireworks and pore over it for hours. Can we get those bottle rockets? Those firecrackers? Those rockets? Those Roman Candles? Those fountains? Then one day I discovered mortars. Holy cow on a pogo stick. I eventually evolved into walking around large tents filled with all sorts of fireworks, savoring the experience that would follow when they were set off. Back in 1997 my buddy Flanders and I set off a ton of fireworks, many of which took a wrong turn and shot into a grove of very dry hickory and oak trees. But, we ran off after every one of them to make sure nothing happened, and no one got hurt. Trust me, that sort of surprises me, too, given the level of our enebriation... But apparently most of California has decided that the government needs to save us from ourselves. I could understand the concern of fire, but most of what I've read about this has been an attempt to keep people from hurting themselves.

Dang it, if we hurt ourselves isn't that our business? I'm sure people can fight me on this, but I will always fall back on one tenent: Fireworks are a blast, and the Fourth is the greatest for having the opportunity to celebrate with fireworks. God bless the Chinese for inventing fireworks... Too bad that western Europe took their technology and turned it into cannons...





Thinking of breaking the law...