"Never thought I'd say it, but suddenly Independence Day seems a richly nuanced movie." - Mike, MST3K

 

Pugsley enjoys watching fireworks light up the night sky gravel.

This weekend we put in a long car trip across a quarter of the U.S.A., in search of a place with more liberal fireworks laws than our community here in Texas. It’s somewhat ironic that Texas, with some of the more liberal gun laws in the U.S.A. does not require you to drive with several sticks of dynamite, just in case you’d like to have a good “whump” sound.

Alas, no. Our city prominently advertises that fireworks are immoral and possibly fattening, and thus only a communist (or communist-sympathizer) would use them on Independence Day.

The Mrs. and I enjoyed a trip across Texas whilst The Boy and Pugsley fought like rabid badgers in the backseat of the car.

The fights were about the usual things:
“He’s bothering me,”
“He was trying to sleep so I pulled his hair, which doesn’t technically violate the Geneva Convention,” and,
“He won’t give me (that thing that is mine, or that thing that is his).”

The Mrs. and I talked as we drove. Recently, this luxury of talking to each other had been supplanted by my utter inability to be available. Oh, sure, we could talk to each other, as long as we didn’t mind the other not being able to hear.

As we drove, we talked about the cities where we’d lived as if they’d been previous relationships, rather than places where we lived. I think this is called anthropomorphism, from the Latin root anthro, meaning “insecticide,” and pomorphism, meaning “having a mental disorder that makes you pretend you’re a little Pomeranian on the lap of a rich socialite.” Here are our results to date:

The City We Lived Seven Years In: “Oh, sure, she was okay. It’s not that she had any horrible habits that would make you kick her to the curb, but overall you just knew you could do better, if it you needed to. She flossed regularly.”

Fairbanks: “She was a hot, sweaty, torrid and beautiful, but you knew your relationship was doomed from the minute that you touched her – it just wouldn’t, couldn’t last.”

Houston: “Oh, I love you, Houston. It has nothing to do with the steaming piles of money, I promise.”

We finally got to our destination, the hometown of The Mrs., where fireworks laws are among the more lax in the nation – most of the firecrackers we bought were the legal maximum allowed by the federal government, and we were encouraged to carry some in our car, so that we could make a nice, satisfying “whump” whenever we felt the need to.