2005-06-29 ~ 2:43 p.m.

If You Can't Take The Heat, Get Out Of My House

I heard the weirdest shit on the teevee the other day...It involves the 4th of July...and it involves Las Vegas...It involves the highly combustible Las Vegas and surrounding areas....

Ok, here's the thing, the super duper fun fireworks were outlawed a LONG time ago here...but you can drive about half an hour to an Indian Reservation and buy them there.

(Ok, first, do you see how that's funny? For the rest of you, where gambling is illegal, they put up shiny casinos to make money off of the white man. HERE, they got nothin'. So they sell us fireworks. They sell them year round too. And the little store doesn't JUST sell fireworks, it's a very well stocked liquor store as well. You'd think the twixt should never meet, but they do very well. Oh, and they have a stifling little room off to the side with a few video poker machines, out of respect to their Indian ancestors. And to be honest, I really have no idea where it is legal to set off the fireworks that they sell. I mean, in the first place, these ain't your granddad's bottle rockets. These are serious, blow some shit up, bricks of TNT. I think perhaps you can blow them off around the store (which I know sounds funny, but it's all desert around the store).. so maybe past 100 feet of the store, but not out of the Indian Reservation... so you got maybe a foot and a half where you can blow these things off.)

What the fuck was I talking about?

Oh yeah. So, a week before the 4th of July, we have these little shacks put up in 7-11 and grocery store parking lots all over the valley that sells the "safe and sane" fireworks. I'm sure you have something similar in your area. These shacks are used by charitable organizations of every kind. From kids' soccer teams to the masons to Key clubs, everything.

The news told me that the 4th of July is the busiest day for firefighters and not just because people are using illegal fireworks but they aren't being safe while using the "Safe and Sane" fireworks, which officially makes it a misnomer. If I buy something called "Safe and Sane" I expect it to be safe and sane and that I don't have to do anything to contribute to its safeness and sanity. Anyway, the news EVEN told me that some cities have even outlawed the Unsafe and Clearly Insane fireworks.

Goddamned tangents.

The point I've been trying to get to is that the news THEN told me that because of that, Las Vegas (not necessarily the whole city but those we elected to represent us) had considered to outlaw all fireworks...

BUT

...since these charities make so much money off of them, it would be unfair to shut them down.

Now, I know what you're saying. "But, Your Fuzzy "FizGig."giness, those charities make up all that is good in your community."

Yeah. Yeah, I know. But you know what else I like? Trees. We don't have a lot of them, but the ones we do have I would like to keep. And, if you happened to notice, some national news organizations have reported that the LARGEST brush fires of the summer have happened, yes, in my home city of Las Vegas.

And we're talking, not 5 miles from my home.

And, YES, I KNOW that those were caused by lightening, but I'm trying to impress upon you how fucking dry it is out here and that I don't want my neighborhood going up in smoke because some asshole didn't make sure that his Cuckoo Fountain wasn't cooled down before he chucked it in the garbage.

And, to be quite honest, those fireworks are lame assed anyway. You drive down the street on the 4th of July and you see people with small children all staring at a little fountain o' fire that kinda changes colors and goes "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF! POP! BANG! bangbangbangbang! WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" And the adults put on these fake happy faces saying, "Wow!! Wasn't that fun?" while the kids are crying because the whistles and the loud bangs scared them.

They should be outlawed just for their lame assedness, really.

Sparklers. That's it. Outlaw the rest, just keep the sparklers. We can always agree on sparklers. They have ones the burn down THEN burn back up. Freakin' ROCKS!

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