{"id":3860,"date":"2009-07-05T18:23:51","date_gmt":"2009-07-05T22:23:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=3860"},"modified":"2009-07-05T20:38:22","modified_gmt":"2009-07-06T00:38:22","slug":"3860","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=3860","title":{"rendered":"Fizzle for Freedom!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fireworks (by which I mean real, honest, red-blooded, all-American, blow-off-your-fingers fireworks) are illegal in my home state of Pennsylvania. So we celebrate our throwing off of an oppressive regime by obeying the clucking of a pedantic and infantile bureaucracy. We do this by holding sparklers a safe distance from our eyes and being careful not to inhale any smoke from those little black snake things. If irony were flammable, we could celebrate the 4th of July with a mushroom cloud big enough to be seen all the way over in Philadelphia. <\/p>\n

Actually, most people in my area drive over the border and buy their real fireworks from those dangerous arms dealers in Ohio, where they are still allowed to recklessly sell you the forbidden secrets of fire<\/em>. <\/p>\n

James Lileks takes a look at some common fireworks packaging<\/a>: <\/p>\n

<\/embed> <\/center><\/p>\n

It hurts because it’s true. And also because I have third degree sparkler burns. <\/p>\n

Happy 4th of July to my fellow Americans. To our Canadian friends: Sorry about missing Canada day. Hope you had a great one as well.<\/p>\n

To everyone else: What is the big nation-specific holiday you celebrate in your country, and is blowing things up part of the tradition?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fireworks (by which I mean real, honest, red-blooded, all-American, blow-off-your-fingers fireworks) are illegal in my home state of Pennsylvania. So we celebrate our throwing off of an oppressive regime by obeying the clucking of a pedantic and infantile bureaucracy. We do this by holding sparklers a safe distance from our eyes and being careful not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dream-cast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3860\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}