BOOM! POP! CRASH, SPUTTER!

Ok, ok ok. It is well after midnight and you can stop now. The Darwinism in action holiday is now officially over and my annoyance has graciously allowed a half hour grace period to use up all those M-80s you got from the Unsafe and Insane brightly colored boomstick vendor on the local native amercian reservation. Any left now you best save for the next fishing trip or New Year's Eve.

Seriously! It can stop now, the dog thinks we're being carpet bombed by some strange prismatic whistling coyote god and I don't know where the cats are. Probably in the basement with foamies in their ears, sleeping peacefully, I always said cats were smarter.

Hoo well, the sirens indicate it's time to lick yer wounds and call it a night. It's an odd liminal world here on the edge of the city line. We don't hear many of the actual in town legal exuberances so much as the non-sanctioned out of city limits variety. As you might have guessed they last way into the night.

I'm also wondering if I am the only one who finds it oh so sadly ironic that on this, of all holidays, most everything we wave or explode or beam at proudly was made in China. I mean Easter is also pretty bad but I don't recall the option to buy chocolate Jesi made in heaven to stuff the creche that's been plastic grass lined with. But surely, someone must make American flags in America to be waved on the fourth of July by Americans? And as captivating as home fireworks are and as much fun as those Roman Candle Wars can be the fact is, most folks just aren't smart enough to deal with the gift of prometheus combined with various metals and empowered by explosive substances. And if most folks weren't smart enough that would be one thing we all might live with, but when those same people have to find any one to blame but themselves it gets a tad annoying.

I'll admit I took part in a fireworks war in a rock pit at a younger and much more emboldened age. We made some snazzy magazines that allowed the firing of ten plus bottle rockets at time, we each picked a side hundreds of yards away from each other and just fired randomly into the dark. It was a lot like the invasion of Iraq, except in our case the only casualty was a bottle rocket grazing. It was then we realized no one brought any first aid... we were stupid monkeys playing with fire for our own amusement. But we knew that at the time and would have blamed no one but ourselves had the consequences ended less happily.

It's quiet now and aside from a few random pops and sputters. A flash of purple or green on the horizon then sweet silence.

Good night America may those dreams of glory not fade away to a white patch of paper in the window of some SUV like a cheap imported sticker made in China.