I'm a super patriot.
Fourth of July is the best holiday ever, for the following reasons:
1. You are encouraged to blow things up. (Rem and Tucker, you guys know what I'm talkin' about.)
2. It's virtually impossible not to be invited to a barbeque, unless you're hosting one yourself. (Of course, I'm sure I could find a way. Not this year, thankfully.)
3. Barbeques are awesome.
4. It's in the summer, it marks the true beginning of the month of July, which is the best month of all time.
5. You get to just kick back and relax. It's not stressful like other holidays and there isn't the looming memory of all those religious purposes (resurrection of Christ, etc.) that we try to forget.
6. It's mega-patriotic. No matter how badly embroiled we become in foreign wars that were doomed from the start, and no matter how many despotic madmen and spineless puppets hold our public offices, no one can convince me not to love America. Warts and all. It's already given me more opportunities and comforts than many people can expect from a lifetime, and for that I must be give thanks (in the form of lounging on my friend's deck drinking a beer and waiting for the steaks to be done, in other words, exercising the freedoms my ancestors wrested for me from the hands of native peoples).
7. The bitter, almost poetic irony of buying awesomely powerful and thrillingly unreliable fireworks from an Indian reservation, from the very people whose death warrant was signed, in effect, on July 4th 1776.
8. Aside from food and fireworks, it's not bogged down with the consumerist hysteria of Christmas (and Easter, and Halloween, and to a certain extent Thanksgiving, which promotes purchasing canned jellified cranberry matter, which slides from the can onto a plate and is served still wobbling in can form.)
9. Barbeques are awesome.
10. The feeling of a black cat from the rez (powerful and unreliable) exploding between your fingers milliseconds after being lit.
11. It serves (or should serve, anyway) as an eternal reminder of the potential effectiveness of an insurgency - undermanned an underequipped, but well-led and determined. Ring a bell?
12. With a couple steaks in your belly and a few beers to wash it all down, with the joyous concussions of everything from snap-pops to World War One era artillery nullifying your senses, you can forget all those nagging little problems with Iraq and America's bloody, oft-unsavory history and just have fun. You can't feel guilty forever.
So I'm going down to Portland (or P-Tizzle, as it's known) for a little Friday-Tuesday hijinks, then dragging myself back up to Olympia for class on Tuesday. Should be a good time. Hope the summer-like weather holds.
Adios.
1. You are encouraged to blow things up. (Rem and Tucker, you guys know what I'm talkin' about.)
2. It's virtually impossible not to be invited to a barbeque, unless you're hosting one yourself. (Of course, I'm sure I could find a way. Not this year, thankfully.)
3. Barbeques are awesome.
4. It's in the summer, it marks the true beginning of the month of July, which is the best month of all time.
5. You get to just kick back and relax. It's not stressful like other holidays and there isn't the looming memory of all those religious purposes (resurrection of Christ, etc.) that we try to forget.
6. It's mega-patriotic. No matter how badly embroiled we become in foreign wars that were doomed from the start, and no matter how many despotic madmen and spineless puppets hold our public offices, no one can convince me not to love America. Warts and all. It's already given me more opportunities and comforts than many people can expect from a lifetime, and for that I must be give thanks (in the form of lounging on my friend's deck drinking a beer and waiting for the steaks to be done, in other words, exercising the freedoms my ancestors wrested for me from the hands of native peoples).
7. The bitter, almost poetic irony of buying awesomely powerful and thrillingly unreliable fireworks from an Indian reservation, from the very people whose death warrant was signed, in effect, on July 4th 1776.
8. Aside from food and fireworks, it's not bogged down with the consumerist hysteria of Christmas (and Easter, and Halloween, and to a certain extent Thanksgiving, which promotes purchasing canned jellified cranberry matter, which slides from the can onto a plate and is served still wobbling in can form.)
9. Barbeques are awesome.
10. The feeling of a black cat from the rez (powerful and unreliable) exploding between your fingers milliseconds after being lit.
11. It serves (or should serve, anyway) as an eternal reminder of the potential effectiveness of an insurgency - undermanned an underequipped, but well-led and determined. Ring a bell?
12. With a couple steaks in your belly and a few beers to wash it all down, with the joyous concussions of everything from snap-pops to World War One era artillery nullifying your senses, you can forget all those nagging little problems with Iraq and America's bloody, oft-unsavory history and just have fun. You can't feel guilty forever.
So I'm going down to Portland (or P-Tizzle, as it's known) for a little Friday-Tuesday hijinks, then dragging myself back up to Olympia for class on Tuesday. Should be a good time. Hope the summer-like weather holds.
Adios.