#329 Krud-up

So while I’m on the subject of Fourth of July waste let me just ring the bells of freedom and say distributing debris all over my yard is not my idea of a patriotic thing to do. While it may be true the single most signifying thing about American culture is our conspicuous production of waste, I still don’t think it’s a good idea to celebrate by creating more. Ring the bells of freedom and that’s what I mean. Let’s all get reusable bells and noisemakers and whoopee cushions. If you have to make a little noise to celebrate, get one of those disco noise things. To what purpose is it to blow off a bunch of explosives? Just because my neighbor is a pyromaniac, it doesn’t seem right that he gets one day a year to put all the rest of us in fear of a conflagration. Is that what they call it when you burn a flag, by the way, a conflagration? Say I was into flooding things to get my jollies. Does that mean that every Noah reenactment day I get to flood my cul-de-sac, putting my neighbors at risk of severe mildew? I don’t think so. Not to mention all my Vietnam vet buddies, who crawl under the table with shell shock every time one of my explodo-maniac patriotic stay-at-home peers decides to blow off a chain of bottle rockets. Question: The other day I was giving out balloons to kids at an event and one of them slipped from my hand. It promptly rose up to the stratosphere. So my question is, if it goes up, is it still litter? Cause bottle rockets certainly qualify. And those exploding mortar thingies definitely spray around a lot of particulate air pollution. Really, is a bunch of exploding gunpowder and paper good for the environment? I mean, they make teriyaki places have scrubs on their smokestacks to filter out noxious vaporized chicken flesh and soy sauce. I would think nitrates and saltpeter would be in the non-healthy-to-breathe category. They make smokers stand twenty-five feet from anybody. Maybe a patrio-pyro should have to blow stuff off an additional twenty-five feet from the presumed extent of his explosion. Or, I have a better idea. Make July fifth a holiday. We could call it “Sleep in for America day” or “Independence from going back to work tired day.” Yeah, that’s it. That solves all our problems, except the burning yard and trash, of course. But at least cranky spoilsports like me will be less cranky because we’ve had a good nights sleep. Better yet, let’s make July fourth always come on a Friday. Of course we’d have to drop the whole fourth thing but hey, “Independence Day” is well established, let’s just disconnect it from the fourth. We don’t celebrate Washington’s or King’s birthday on their actual birthday any more. We could make it the first Friday in July. And we could celebrate our freedom all night long. And the Saturday afternoon after could be Annual Neighborhood Cleanup Day. Then we could have the picnic.
America, ya gotta love it.