Fourth.

[icebluenothing]

(Yeah, okay, so this post is a little late. *shrug*)

Was supposed to meet up with a bunch of folk at Gasworks Park on the 4th of July for fireworks and whatnot.

After a late start, due to me passing out for a few hours in the afternoon and due to feeling uncertain about the weather (thunder and lightning!), windbourne and I did make it down there. I even found parking, not horribly far away, after only about five-ten minutes of looking, which completely amazed me. (I nearly had to ram head-on into some asshole who thought he'd try to beat me into the space I was clearly maneuvering into, but I stood my ground and stared him down.)

So, yeah, we got there, and --

• The entire park was fenced off and bottle-necked down to one entrance, so they could check people's bags for illicit booze, fireworks, guns, and nuclear weapons. We were greatly bemused -- no, pissed off, really. This is a public park -- how dare WaMu treat it like a private entertainment venue? Was this kind of security really needed? Thanks, The Man, for keeping us safe from the terrorists! Way to help put me in the mood for Independence Day!
  
  
• My cellphone was Acting Weird, and while Ahna's seemed fine, she still couldn't get hold of any of our friends. I'm guessing this is what happens when you have too many cellphones crammed together in one small space. Anyway, upshot is, since we couldn't reach anyone, finding where our friends were was impossible. (If you were one of the people hoping to see us, now you know why you didn't. Sorry! We tried!
  
  
• There were so ungodly many people on the hill that even if we could find them, we weren't sure we wanted to.
  
  
• Not to mention, we weren't sure we wanted to be anywhere near the hideously tacky, huge, inflatable Statue of Liberty head on the hill. ("You maniacs! You blew it all up! Damn you! Damn you all to hell!")
  
  
• There were food vendors (deep breath: Piecora's New York Pizza, Sugee's Strawberry Shortcake, The Frankfurter, The Corn Roasters, Athena's Gyros, Zoka Coffee, Elephant Ears, and Pioneer Popcorn) everywhere. And 96.5 Jack FM with a huge set-up blaring music. And banners hanging everywhere proclaiming the glories of our Corporate Masters. I had to sit on my hands to keep from tearing them down. It all had such an air of cheap, large-scale hucksterism, I just wanted to cry.
  
  I don't mind a little hucksterism -- the people in the neighborhood who'd been selling lemonade and sodas and parking spaces had charmed and warmed me, because it was honest and human and real. This was nothing of the kind; this was antithetical to it, anathema. This was the huge spinning gears of the engine at the heart of the world.
  
  
• Personally, I could have done without the military helicopter flyby. Increasingly, this decade, the line between Love of Country and Love of the Military has become blurred, nearly erased. I wish I could publically celebrate one without the other. But the fact that I can't is practically a given, at this point.
  
  
• Finally, when it was all over -- they didn't think to drop the fence. All of those -- hundreds? Thousands? -- of people, now all wanted to get back out through that same choke-point at once. What, did they want to check our bags on the way out?

So. Yeah. Fireworks sure were pretty. We'll be watching them from somewhere else next year.

______

(Afterward, though, we went to the Mercury for dancing and barbecue, and had such a lovely time we went home happy.)