Happy Forth of July!
(http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p133/BobQuantumFaith/animatedfireworks.gif)
Now-- the REAL question:
For those of you who still must slave-err-work for a living, HOW MANY of you had the forethought to request 2 days of vacation for Thursday and Friday?
As for the non-US-ians, I hope you'll excuse us in our celebratory fervor-- what ELSE would we do, to celebrate our Nation's Birth, but Blow Stuff Up?
Rather in character, yes? ::)
.... and what MALE [and many females] can't resist honkin' huge EXPLOSIONS?
Fun!
<heh>
(http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p133/BobQuantumFaith/blackbombexplodes.gif)
And, for your amusement, here are 3 fire-works that I, personally took, using my digital camera. Back on July 3, 2002.
(http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p133/BobQuantumFaith/IMG_0005.jpg)
(http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p133/BobQuantumFaith/IMG_1002.jpg)
(http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p133/BobQuantumFaith/IMG_1004.jpg)
Ooooooooohhh.... Ahhhhhhh......
We would have requested connected days off, but everyone else beat us to it, so back we go on Thursday.
It's funny you mentioned the 'splosions. Quite a number of years back, in the eighties, back when me and the mister were shacking up in Washington D.C., we were back from an all-day party and were rather too exhausted (partied out, actually) to struggle our way down to the big fireworks show on the national mall. Instead, we turned on the tube and watched a show about old U.S. veterans returning to Iwo Jima and crying with their Japanese counterparts about how awful it was. We started crying, too. (It had been a really good party, mind you.) And as the cracker sounds from downtown echoed through the streets, we decided that celebrating liberty with bomblike explosions was too gross to bear and that we wouldn't do it. And we didn't, for a few years.
Until another party, several years later. Boy, that was another great party. Pow! Bang! 'SPLODE! Ooooh....
Enjoying a good time with friends sometimes trumps self-righteousness.
I'll be spending the 4th like I have every year since I adopted Spencer...holding him and telling him that the thunderboomers won't get the Big Brave Doggie. (Preston always looked at him as if he'd lost his mind.)
He hates thunderstorms and fireworks. Dad may reassure him, Mom protects him.
nothing to celebrate about the 4th of July. If we had just fought a little harder then you would all be happily British and the world would be a safer, greener place.
Went to listen to Al Gore last night. I think he agrees with me as he spent about 15 minutes heaping praise on the Royal family and Prince Charles.
Lovely pics, but the way.
I think I'll be at a local celebration. We wanted to go to DC, but didn't want to fight the crowds.
Eventually one matures and no longer needs to celebrate. We don't make a song and dance about the Magna Carta these days. ;)
I like 'We sent all the misfits back to England Day' better! :mrgreen:
Quote from: goat starer on July 04, 2007, 12:47:34 AM
nothing to celebrate about the 4th of July. If we had just fought a little harder then you would all be happily British and the world would be a safer, greener place.
Your imperialism is showing again Goat :) .
Quote
Went to listen to Al Gore last night. I think he agrees with me as he spent about 15 minutes heaping praise on the Royal family and Prince Charles.
Are you sure you're a Marxist? ;)
Quote from: MentalBlock996
I like 'We sent all the misfits back to England Day' better!
After the defeat a quarter of the population left for what became Canada ( a mixture of loyalty and disbelief a country could be run without a king). If only they'd known the legal powers presidents would have ;)
Happy 4th.
The misfits actually stayed here. I am one of them. :mrgreen:
Quote from: beagle on July 04, 2007, 07:25:30 AM
Quote from: MentalBlock996
I like 'We sent all the misfits back to England Day' better!
After the defeat a quarter of the population left for what became Canada ( a mixture of loyalty and disbelief a country could be run without a king). If only they'd known the legal powers presidents would have ;)
Or... in the case of one branch of my family tree (being Quakers, and pacifists), it was more a refusal to fight for anything at all, including American independence, that led to them being "coaxed" to Canada... but that's all in the past.
Happy Fourth of July, Yankees and Non-Yankee US-ians!
(BTW: if there are "yankees", who is it that's the "yanker"?) ;D
I should really be going to see Michael Franti / Spearhead tonight to celebrate.... alas, tickets ain't cheap and probably sold out.
Ah well, not as disappointing as the year I had a buddy ditch on July 4 plans to burn the Yanker (you-know-who.... in fact, I think it's spelled with a 'W' ;)) in effigy. :P
What a great idea. I wonder what an effigy would look like with a lit "Screaming Eagle" placed where the sun don't shine!
Quote from: Sibling Lambicus the Toluous on July 04, 2007, 04:20:25 PM
Or... in the case of one branch of my family tree (being Quakers, and pacifists), it was more a refusal to fight for anything at all, including American independence, that led to them being "coaxed" to Canada... but that's all in the past.
A large part of my family are quaker pacificists who decided to just stay in the states and be weirdos. Someone's got to spoil all the nice patriotism.
I'm at work right now :'(
but earlier I had a I "performed" a lovely wedding for a sweet young couple :)
Goat you crack me up- happier and greener (maybe soylent greener)-- just kidd-ing around.
Without Merry Old England I would have practically nothing in my netflix que(I wouldn't even have a que!) -- currently working back through Dr.Who and Are You Being Served.
And the "accent" is pretty hot too.
Were there once songs and dances about the Magna Carta-- I'd pay to see this.
I'm a weirdo also--- I'm glad I'm in such good company.
Happy 4th----Y'all
Quote from: beagle on July 04, 2007, 07:25:30 AM
Your imperialism is showing again Goat :) .
the workers struggle is international. that is not the same as imperial. As the UK is (was until that terrible Grantham cow) near the front of the inevitable march from feudal state to proletarian utopia (currently resting in enlightened bourgeois decadence) any global scenario that sees British conditions prevailing is simply a further step in the inevitable march of history. The fact that wealthy landowners managed to throw the US back into a feudal state of pre bourgeois 'democracy' in no way alters the clear empirical path of progression.
Quote
Are you sure you're a Marxist? ;)
well he probably doesn't agree with the bit where i have a lampost waiting for Chaz ;D
My dear Goat, I haven't heard "bourgeois decadence" and "a feudal state of pre bourgeois 'democracy'" in a while! (the problem is that I'm not sure if you would like to be associated with those from whom I heard those words back home*).
:mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
* some are idealists but many are tools of darker entities. My country is full of words and devoid of ethics so... and you wouldn't want to be associated with the ones with the opposite discourse either...
Quote from: Goat Starer
As the UK is (was until that terrible Grantham cow) near the front of the inevitable march from feudal state to proletarian utopia...
Ah, this is where our recollections differ slightly. Even leaving aside flares and platform heels, 70s Britain didn't strike me as obviously Utopia-bound. Unless we use Churchill's "Equal bearing of miseries" definition. Mind you, decline and decadence can be fun too :)
Nice to know historical inevitability is alive and well though, even if it does take a breather every decade or so.
Quote from: Sibling Zono (anon1mat0) on July 05, 2007, 01:02:55 AM(the problem is that I'm not sure if you would like to be associated with those from whom I heard those words back home*).
probably reactionary police spies discrediting and delaying the inevitable rise of the proletarian communistic internartional consensus! ;)
Quote from: beagleAh, this is where our recollections differ slightly. Even leaving aside flares and platform heels, 70s Britain didn't strike me as obviously Utopia-bound. Unless we use Churchill's "Equal bearing of miseries" definition. Mind you, decline and decadence can be fun too
over such short timescales the death throes of the capitalist hegemony may appear to produce periods of degeneration in the inevitable historic progress towards the common good. As every scientific historian is no doubt aware the move to a communist stage will only occur through revolution. Any temporary alliance between bourgeois and proletarian to overthrow previous modes of production (ie. Britain post 1945) only hastens the degeneration of the borgeois imperialist state (Britain 1979-2007) precipitating the revolutionary explosion that will sweep aside and render redundant all previous modes of production (ie. Britain 2008).
I really can't see what is so hard to understand ??? ;)
Duz 'at mean Oi'll 'ave more or less ter plunder?
Oi'ze nat yer edumacated type, see. Oi can tell won end o' boat from anudder, most o' the tyme (One's pointy, see, an' one ain't), but there ain't much Marxist litterature out at sea. Only gets used fer one thing, litterature, an' you bein' a man o' letters an' such, wouldn't be best askin, if ye gets me drift....
I have the same problem. I'm waiting for someone to publish "The Tory Duffer's Guide to Marxism".
When it comes to communist theory I never really got beyond us being British and them being excitable foreigners wearing fur hats.
Wasn't it one for all and all for one ? Or was that something else?
no... its the one that goes.....
Manifesto
of the Communist Party
1848
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A spectre is haunting Europe -- the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.
Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?
Two things result from this fact:
I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power.
II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of communism with a manifesto of the party itself.
To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I -- BOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS [1]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The history of all hitherto existing society [2] is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master [3] and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.
Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other -- bourgeoisie and proletariat.
From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.
The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.
The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolized by closed guilds, now no longer suffices for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed aside by the manufacturing middle class; division of labor between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labor in each single workshop.
Meantime, the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturers no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionized industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, MODERN INDUSTRY; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.
Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.........
etc.......
although in the proper translation the 'spectre' is something more like 'hobgoblin'
d'Artagnan's version was shorter. ;)
Dear God,
all that AND published in Flemish?
No wonder they lost...
Yep. Wrong language and a misunderstanding of what we proles want.
Here's my own modest reworking in txt msg speak.
"wrkrz of d wrld revolt. washn machines n leathA sofas 2B 1."
Leather is bourgeoisie, and you should be perfectly happy hand washing your clothes in the communal tub. The Party says so. Any dissent with The Glorious Leader, and you will be sent to the Hebrides.
I could definitely live with that, but a Goat gulag is more likely to involve a distillery-less rainy moor, flat caps and whippets.
The People's Republic of Yorkshire?
Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics of The Dales?
The shipley autonomous oblast
Beagle you are not a prole and what you are describing is exacly what Marx describes. The proletariat are convinced that what they need is leather sofas by the borgeois state (and Bourgeois rectionaries masquerading as proles). Inevitably they realise the depth of the con in the end......
REVOLUTION!
:goatflag: :goatflag: :goatflag: :goatflag: :goatflag: :goatflag: :goatflag:
Let me know if happens while I'm out won't you? If it means an end to those irritating DFS and Ariston adverts then it may not be too bad.
If you use the old definition of the proletariat (those with callouses on their hands through manual labour) then each prole is going to get a lot more callouses stringing up all the service sector workers.
Is this the 4th July thread?
That's Miss :irony: for you.
:mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
Quote from: Griffin
Is this the 4th July thread?
It drifted.
The good news is Goat has elevated me to the Bourgeoisie. I'm just hoping it's a salaried position, so I can lurk round the estate persecuting peasants instead of having to go to work tomorrow.
Not the peasants, beagle, the kulaks go first.
Then the peasants get starved.
you only get to subjugate peasants if you are in the aristocracy. The bourgeois only get middle class guilt at being neither the people who do the work nor the people who make the decisions.
And just how, dear boy, do you know I'm not a member of the aristocracy?
Seems to me the old classifications need a bit of updating. These days the aristos are the ones begging everyone else to come on day trips in their motory cars so they can afford to fix the rotten roof on the east wing.
What are the legitimate proletarian jobs in modern Britain then Goat? How many are going to escape the lampostfest?
Quote from: Pachyderm
And just how, dear boy, do you know I'm not a member of the aristocracy?
Because only theatre critics and P.G Wodehouse peers speak like that?
:mrgreen:
Damn, you saw through my disguise.
The middle class is always the enemy. If you recall, in 1984 only the outer party (what would be the middle class) is forced to have the telescreens in their houses always on. The proles didn't have them and the inner party could turn it off.
The demonisation of the middle class as bourgeoisie is just a form of Neo-Feudalism in which you are supposed to be either elite or peasant.
Is it even possible to have a system without elites? ???
4 legs good, 2 legs bad works for me (and pachyderm)
edit..... and BEAGLE! we will have to exclude him for smoking though.
Right with you, Comrade Goat.
Tell you what, you butt 'em over, I'll trample them.
Up with the People's Four Legged Republic!
Quote from: Sibling Zono (anon1mat0) on July 08, 2007, 11:57:27 PMIs it even possible to have a system without elites? ???
Wouldn't have thought so. Goat's lamppost system favours the strong rope owners (verrily bell ringers shall inherit the Earth), and the most democratic of other systems tend to favour the intelligent and articulate.
I'm not sure where Goat and Pachyderm are heading, but it's already getting hard to spot the difference between Goat and Elephant (rhino?), and they haven't got the cards out yet.
Looks to me as if they may be disappearing back up the evolutionary path where head butting rather than intelligence and language sorts the meek from the strong.
i thought that path was the one human beings have been tramping for the past 6 millenia.
it is a ploy by the reactionary creationist right wing to dicredit evolution by behaving in an an unevolved fashion.
6 Millenia Goat?
Something about the possible provenance of that figure worries me. ;)
Quote from: beagle on July 09, 2007, 07:54:59 AM
Quote from: Sibling Zono (anon1mat0) on July 08, 2007, 11:57:27 PMIs it even possible to have a system without elites? ???
Wouldn't have thought so. Goat's lamppost system favours the strong rope owners (verrily bell ringers shall inherit the Earth), and the most democratic of other systems tend to favour the intelligent and articulate.
I'm not sure where Goat and Pachyderm are heading, but it's already getting hard to spot the difference between Goat and Elephant (rhino?), and they haven't got the cards out yet.
It also favours those who know where the best lampposts are, and can loot the hardware stores for the rope.
Elephant. :mrgreen:
and those who have been stockpiling rope (and copies of theTimes rich list) since 1974 ;)
Careful Goat. You're getting dangerously close to qualifying under Labour's new "Shop a Weirdo" proposals.
Quote from: beagle on July 08, 2007, 03:52:51 PM
Quote from: Griffin
Is this the 4th July thread?
It drifted.
To Labour Day, apparently. ;)
Labour? pinkoes the lot of em! not one real red amongst em.
Cheer up Goat. According to the SWP Postal Workers Are Fighting for us All (http://www.swp.org.uk/).
thats why the post office have red vans
Quote from: goat starer on July 10, 2007, 05:03:52 PM
thats why the post office have red vans
Around here, the post office vans are all sorts of colours, since local postal delivery services have been contracted out to private firms.
But our waterworks are still publicly owned.
Here we still have the dignity of each being in charge of our own "waterworks" :mrgreen:
here too. I am delighted to say that, despite my belief in nationalisation, nobody has tried to put my 'waterworks' into public ownership. Frankly I am not sure what benefit such a measure would have in a marxist society which may be why Marx omitted to include any mention of 'ownership of the means of urination' in Das Kapital.
Volume 1 of Marx covered the means of production. Volume 2 covered the means of elimination. I happen to have a copy on my shelf, next to "Love's Labours Won" and Dicken's "Tale of two suburbs". The last I had adapted for TV as "Desperate Housewives", but I'm saving the others for the Christmas market, so hands off the waterworks.
Well, I had to use the SEARCH function, but I found this thread what I started in 2007.
Once again, the annual try-to-blow-the-fingers-and-eardrums-off holiday has come around for all you Yew-Ess-Ians.
It's the 4th of July, in which North Americans living north of the Rio Grande and south of Lake of the Woods, Canada (mostly) will attempt to "celebrate" by blowing sh!t up.
Including, but not limited to: their barbeque, their backyards, their neighbor's backyards, their own selves, their neighbors, their cars, their back porches, their front porches, their pickup trucks, their swimming pools. Yes, I've seen or read about accidents involving each of these and more. The only common thing was the date, and the use of explosives.
Other traditional activities include becoming roaring drunk, insulting your friends, neighbors, relatives and anyone who gets within earshot. Often unintentionally.
Some of the more thoughtful folk have learned that amateur anything is not nearly as impressive as professional of the same thing, and have a tradition of going to a local park to watch millions of dollars going up in smoke....literally. ;D Many will make a huge honkin' pick'a'nick of it, starting out early in the afternoon, and staying well past 10'oclock until the last firework has been lit. Pulling, dragging and otherwise ferrying a motley assortment of coolers, folding chairs, blankets/quilts, umbrellas, hats, sunscreen, anti-bug spray, toys-for-the-kids, diaper-bags and other assorted baggage. Kids are almost always in tow or running circles around the adults on the way in, but carried like one more piece of excess baggage on the way out. The car is traditionally one or two miles from the site, of course. One wonders where all the cars come from that are between your own watching-spot and where you parked your car.... maybe the gates of hell open up, just for the occasion, and all those cars are not driven by people... ::)
Happy 4th of July everyone!
And, hopefully you Brits will not think too much less of your younger siblings, for celebrating the Nest-Leaving in such an odd fashion. ;)
Just remember: where there's smoke? There's fire. If there's gunpowder nearby or involved? There's gonna be a *boom*. Just wait....
...oh, and stick your fingers in your ears first. That way you know where they are (in relationship to the explosives) and they help protect your hearing.
Last night I left my birds inside (they usually remain on the balcony which they have for themselves) because of the noise and my fears over the sulphur stench of pyrotechnics. Tonight they'll go in earlier. ::)
Happy 4th of July to those who think that the whole independence deal was such a good idea (heck, perhaps the Canadians were the smart[er] ones ;) :P).
It's really annoying we don't get an independence holiday. All because some idiot forgot to write down when the last Roman left (and the Normans have never stopped bossing us about).
Anyway, Happy Birthday.
We Aussies celebrate not the gaining of our independence from the Poms, but rather Australia Day is celebrated on 26 January, the anniverary of the day two of my ancestors and several hundred of their fellows, not to mention sundry naval officers, marines and ships' crews first set foot on this fair land at Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour). They then indulged in a considerable bout of drunken debauchery, apparently. Seems a fitting way to celebrate if you ask me.
Well, the US even have a fireworks display* in their anthem ;)
*OK, a failed missile attack and flag burning
Well, mostly we just stand around on someone's patio trying to avoid eye contact with the red-white and blue cheesecake toppings and complain about the government. That's what we did, anyway.
Well, it's That Time again.
The Time where us Yanks and other You-Ess-ians go into the garage, and drag out the portable cookery, buy some fake [smells of petroleum] "cooking fuel", fix up the rickety aluminum folding chairs, dump out and bleach the old ice chest (THAT's where we left those hot dogs from last summer), buy some sex-in-a-canoe beer, try to get that beach umbrella working again this year [failed], dig out the old moth-eaten blankets still with sand from last time, dust off our sun hats.
Then pile all, with the kids and assorted neighbor's hangers-on offspring, into the overstuffed auto (usually a beatup pickup, with everything piled in the back, (including 4 adults in a front seat designed for 3 at most), drive to just out of town where the old, but freshly painted wooden fireworks stands are placed, wait in line to buy overpriced, and underpowered Chinese fireworks (why do we help the Chinese economy on our own country's birthday? Ought to be Traditional to buy American-made works, on this day if none else...)... oh, don't forget the matches and lighter fluid [for the barby, silly].
Stop at the local [not-at-all] convenient store to purchase the last-minute stuff we either forgot at home, or forgot to buy yesterday (real grocery stores closed, now), including the special diet-no-caffeine-no-artificial-no-flavor-what's-the-point-anyhow brand of soda for the pick-picky in the party.
Oh, and those floppy, cheap paper plates that dump your food for the dog. And some last-forever-plastic cups-- [which makes one think, humanity has invented last-for-millenia-throw-away drinking cups, but cannot create an automobile that gets 60mpg.... what's up with that? ]
Finally, all arrive at the Favorite Fourth Of July Shootin' Spot-- just outside of town, to avoid the stiff fines for fireworks in town, but not so far as to be hours-long drive. [We know it's our spot--- see the drinking cups 1/2 buried in the sand, from previous years? With a bit of washing, they would still be sorta usable....]
Everyone piles out, gathering around the old beat-up concrete picnic table-- the one with one corner broken off, and that is so old, the surface is akin to a 60grit grinding wheel [again, this year we forgot to bring the sitting pads we promised last year we'd remember to bring-- we even set them out-- somewhere in the house].
All the ertaz food is set out on top of the old food-stained sheets we always use for a tablecloth-- see? There's the stain from last year, where the Fanta Strawberry soda bottle dumped it's entire 2 liters, and here is the stain from 3 years ago, where the soccer ball landed smack in the middle of the not-yet-eaten, but cooling raspberry pie grandma sent, and there's the stains from the watermelon eating contest from way back when... it's a bit of family history in indelible food stains.
Did we remember to bring everything? No? We forgot the mayonnaise this year? Too bad-- have to go with either plain, ketchup or mustard on the mystery-meat "hot" dogs. [why do they call them 'hot' dogs anyhow? By the time you get them off the grill, into your bun, fix add on all the still-cool toppings, get your scoop of baked beans (to later either drip through your too-thin paper plates, or spill over the side), and a dollop of either potato salad or cole slaw or perhaps both, a spear of dill pickle and top up your drink--- the "hot" dog is room temperature..... ].
But, carefully sitting down on the rickety aluminum folding chair (so as not to cause it's premature folding), balancing your paper disc (if it's made of cardboard, it does not qualify for the word "plate") across your knees [yep, either the baked beans or the cole slaw has seeped through already] you sit back (not too far-- chair would break), take a sip of your sex-in-a-canoe, and look about and sigh:
The kids are having a blast, with their sparklers and some firework-snakes. Some of the older ones are already shooting off bottle rockets out over the lake. Everyone is talking like they are best of friends, and familial differences momentarily put aside, to enjoy just being here in a melu of social interaction-- like the good little monkeys we are underneath the thin veneer of civilization.
THIS is why we come, every year. The fireworks, when it finally gets dark, are only a short punctuation mark for the real reasons we pause and celebrate: we are social creatures-- we do best when we are being social.
Much, much later, when the little kids are snoozing on the shoulders of tired parents, being carried back to the vehicles, and your ears are still ringing from those super-giant but only slightly illegal "ultimate rocket-bombs" that uncle Phil brought [where he got them, you don't ask and really don't want to know], all the trash you could see was gathered up and stuffed into the overly full 55 gallon trash barrels [including the last-for-a-1000-years-but-disposable cups], all the leftover food scraped out for the wildlife (you can still hear the gulls arguing over some of it), all the folding chairs folded for another year, dragging the cooler [this year, you promise to clean it out as soon as you get home]... and you look back and wonder.
Why can't we be like this all year around?
*sigh*
I suppose, if we did, this special day would no longer be.... special.
Happy You-Ess Birthday, everyone.
:D ;D
Poetry, Bob. :beer:
*We* just roasted "all beef" hot dogs on purloined-from-the-garden bamboo sticks (could not find toasting forks in any moving box) on a small hibachi in the back yard. Marshmallows afterwards.
I'll submit my Canada Day report elsewhere, as this seems to be for y'all down in the southlands, what with the bombs bursting in air, bad beer and all.... ;)
You mean there's good beer? ;D
Yes, even in the US... but they don't advertise it. ;)
Sshhh. Don't tell, them, they'll all want it..
Much of our good beer is brewed by micro-breweries that don't have enough money to do much advertising.
We backed out of a party on the 4th and just stayed home, BBQed (veggie burger for me, and French wine- oops!). At dusk the neighborhood kids lit fire fountains. That was quite enough excitement for me.
You might want to be careful about advertising the French wine. Homeland Security may well decide that drinking it is Un-American behaviour. Ah, the heady days of Macarthyism, what fun we had....
According to the new Texas history texts McCarthyism has been vindicated...
At least Chatty didn't have to see that. >:(
Well, another year has passed our Hallowed Halls.
And another Godless Constitution day has rolled around the calendar.
Soon, wooden-shingle roofs will be at risk all around the country, as children light off Chinese fireworks in celebration.
It's Traditional to use Chinese fireworks, after all. Besides, you can't get anything else....
... and much American Beer* will be drunk, and many will be the backyard with odoriferous corners come morning.... you cannot consume that much liquid, without voiding it, and the bathrooms are so very, very far away....
... especially if one is... well, drunk.
... and there are many a Truly Dedicated fireman standing by, skipping his or her holiday, so's they can rescue the stupid from being stupid again.... along with the faithful emergency room doctors, nurses and staff at the local Buildings of Mercy.
.... *sigh*...
But for the majority, it will be loud pops, patriotic songs, local bands, kids playing, being >>outside<< for a change, and buckets of pretty lights in the sky for a half-hour or so. And booms. Cannot forget the chest-pounding pressure-wave and the **boom** that follows.
A thrill a minute, for several minutes there.
But as I pause to write this, and ponder?
I'm reminded of this:
The USA is founded on a Godless Document, and deliberately so.
And that brings me a smile, to be reminded of that, if only for one day.
So.
Happy Godless Constitution Day, everyone!
________
* canoe water
Hear!! Hear!!
Here's to the godless document! :toast:
:fireworks_fire: :fireworks_spread: :fireworks_toss: :fireworks_spread: :fireworks_fire:
and that it remains so!!
That's really what it was about, too. But we don't dare say it around certain company.
We stayed here and BBQed with our next door neighbors. I never thought I'd be the type to be content with neighborhood BBQ and legal firecrackers out on the street in front of our house, but I've reached that mellow point in my life.
Our neighbs are very active in their Methodist church, even run the Bible camp there. I cringed a little as they told me their plans to holler Bible phrases at the kids though a large cardboard tube, but hey- it's their church and if that's what they do, well ...erm ...okee... what they do behind their church doors is not business of mine. They are very nice people though, and th'Opsalette has a good time with their kids and having friends in the neighborhood is definitely on the blessing side of life.
The kids decorated their bikes with streamers and we took a post-supper walk around our tiny town to walk off the burgers (mine were veggie) and cabbage salad. The town was pretty lifeless, except for the Latino families, who seemed to be having the best parties. I was asked to carry a home-made American flag, which I waved as the rear guard of the six-person parade.
Later, having donned glo-bracelets, we lit grocery-store bought fireworks in the middle of our street, and caught glimpses of a distant fireworks display over the trees. Someone in town shot off some illegal bottle rockets and we cheered for them. Clouds of sulfuric smoke made the street look like a blitzkrieg situation. A light rain fell. No hands were blown off. We cheerily shouted good night around 10pm. All in all, a pretty good time.
Sounds like a good party.