Exreality.NET

Let me enchant you with a little tale of the fourth of July that almost landed me in Hell early. Now I pride myself on being somewhat of a fair man, and I try my best to ignore those around me who are incompetent and intellectually handicapped when they do something so far past the realm of stupidity that it just seems logical to them. Tradition has taught us that on the Fourth of July we must spend vast amounts of money to buy Chinese or Indian (better known as illegal) fireworks to reenact our rebellion against King George III of England because we were cheap and we didn’t want to pay taxes. As a country founded on the basis that all men are created equal (just not enforced until about say the 1960s… it only took 200 years, come on, look at other cultures that have been around for millennia before ours… on land we stole from the natives…), we boast our freedom in the only way known to man since the being of our existence: competition.

Yes competition, the only thing that really proves our manliness. If man can light things on fire and make them explode, then his neighbor must stop at nothing to make a better version (i.e. the space race that also occurred during the 1960s… apparently America decided we had to progress rapidly after 200 years of mediocre development). On the night of July 4th 2006, as I crashed onto my new queen size bed, loading my Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories game, I decided to open my window and let the outside air cool down my overheating Play Station 2 unit. That was a mistake I will pay for in the future when I die of lung cancer caused by second-hand smoke inhalation. For after five minutes, the stars began to appear in the sky, and a sudden flash of light blazed past my window and made a grand popping sound a mere ten feet away. Apparently my next-door neighbors were lighting off fireworks where their dry grass meets their wooden playset. I figured that they only had a few fireworks that they bought from Wal-Mart (an exposé on why the Wal-Mart is evil to come soon) and would stop soon. (Goddamnit am I an idiot.) Instead, I find that each firework coming closer and closer to my window, and a nice southerly wind is bringing all their smoke into my room essentially choking me to death. Under normal circumstances, my neighbors are just fine, their little girl is moderately annoying, but that doesn’t matter because I can drown her out with loud music like any other generic teenager. On this night, the husband had approximately 15 beers and a glass of champagne before he and his drinking buddy ambled across their yard with a cache of fireworks bought at an Indian reservation for what must have been thousands of dollars to light them off five feet away from my extraordinarily large propane tank and another five feet away from my window.

With those two idiots stumbling around lighting off fireworks like frat boys trying to see boobies, I feared for my life. The only thing that gave me some comfort is that if their firework accidentally fell over and hit my propane tank, they’d die in the fiery inferno a mere millisecond or two before I would (and yes that’s satisfying when you’re trying to play some GTA and watch an actual fireworks show off in the distance). To add to this minor annoyance that could potentially lead to my early death, their daughter, a sweet little five year old, was screaming at every firework she saw (though in hind sight, this may because she was being molested by her drunk parents and their friends…). When her piercing cries lasted a good hour or so, I finally went to the window and yelled out, “Can you shut your damned daughter up?” unfortunately, I was drowned out by her screaming and the firework they had just shot off. So I added, “Why don’t you go blow up your own fucking house?” because they couldn’t hear me anyways. Then from nowhere, a loud boom of thunder rang across the valley. I can’t be sure, but what I believe passed through every dumbass with matches’ mind at that very moment was “Nature can’t fucking beat me!!! I’m going to make more noise than nature!!!” Thus, the biggest and loudest fireworks launched into the air and attempted to sound louder than nature…

Drunken Idiots never fail to amaze me. In the end, I decided if you can’t beat them: play loud music, flip them off aggressively, and then kill them in their sleep. I followed two of those three ideas and I’ll give you hint on which two they were: one was playing “Where is My Mind” by the Pixies and maxing out my stereo speakers. More rants to come, and sorry for being tardy with a second one.
–shadow