Thursday, July 05, 2012

I fucking hate fireworks

The best time i ever had watching fireworks was up at the cottage on the may 24 weekend... long time ago.  It was at my parents first cottage @ 15 Balsam road, Woodland beach Ontario.  We were all heading to the corner store, Whitfield's pharmacy, for ice cream when we stopped to see a pathetic display of fireworks on some lawn, and some yahoo in a really lame voice kept saying a long protracted "WOW" after each poping display.  My sister and I, being hyper critical people, had a big laugh over how "gay" (that was the word used at the time and it meant, in this instance... weak, feeble and lame) this dude sounded with respect to this event.  I feel weird using that word now, but that's the way it was... hey we were raised in Scarborough and right or wrong that's the way things rolled.

Anyway it was the most fun i ever had with fireworks... making fun of some feeble chump's celebration.  Actually come to think of it there was other fun with fireworks...  Going down to the park where the kids made out in cars with roman candles on the end of hockey sticks and firebombing steamy parked automobiles.  As each flare hit the windshield a shocked couple scrambled and perhaps if you were lucky you could see a girls naked breasts.  It was the closest i could ever get to seeing naked breasts, and being a fan of surprise chaos... it hit the spot.

Then there was the firebombing of a good friends house that begat this song. And than i guess there was the time there was that scavenger  hunt in high school where i somehow accidentally let off a bakers dozen roman candle in Vern's parents car.  It was a rather innocent event to start with... you see we were going down the 401 and i needed to try to get the rival car away from the exit they needed to take to win the scavenger hunt so i thought a little firebombing might prune them back a bit... but old butterfingers me dropped the silly thing and next thing you know hot embers were flying all over the place.

I don't know if they were good memories, but they were strong ones for sure and if i could touch a button and erase fireworks from the conscience of humanity i would hit it in a second... even if it cost me a song.

Loud, annoying, polluting, stupid, non participatory, expensive and bone head drawing.  Apparently it drives dogs insane... if it does the same for squirrels i guess i can call that a positive, but it's can't be good for birds at night in their state of torpor.

Swimming in English bay in Vancouver after a million dollar fireworks celebration one is swamped with discarded firework garbage, and living in a human society where we are always crying poor when it comes to having money for the right things, it just seems insane to blow up all this money on some momentary culturally created celebration of noise and light. I guess i could say it brings people together, like religion, to a common focus, but really is it that exciting? Give me some good music and a buffet, and perhaps a water cannon and see the smiles on the faces of the people.

In a country where we can't even afford to send our children, the future of out nation, to full day kindergarden, we find the money to explode things all night long, a great cost, shipped from a communist nation overseas, to celebrate independence?


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