It's Fireworks Time!

Heard on the radio today that there is actually a beginning movement in the legislature to scale back the bans and allow fireworks stores. The wedge in the door is taxes; if they do it they can put a surtax on fireworks sales and have more money available for graft and patronage. Plus if it takes special permits or licenses, they can extort more money from the potential store owners, or hand them out like candy to their connected friends and family. Either way it will likely take a few years, if it ever happens.

Crook county would probably exclude itself anyway while trying to leach off ‘its fair share’ of the surtax from everywhere else in the state.

@duodec We used to make the metal sparklers go boom in a big way. If you take the top two tiers of your plan (a single going into one bundle) and physically constrain the bundle, it’s very very loud.

@duodec with government, its never about safety, its about money. they were probably banned in the first place because an attempt to tax them failed. they knew if they took them away entirely, people would be more willing to pay the taxes to get them back. and they call it freedom.

@jihiggs I can see the bans in drought-prone states out west; I’d be curious to compare injuries and property damage rates from states that allow big fireworks and those that don’t, though.

@mfladd I think he clenched too hard.

@mfladd
/giphy oh god why

@mfladd

@thismyusername lol… All damn day today.

@thismyusername Happy Somehow-it’s-acceptable-to-dump-burning-garbage-in-your-neighbor’s-yard day.

@PurplePawprints Sympathies. We had a dog who really really didn’t like fireworks (or thunderstorms, or vacuum cleaners, or the sound the double-sided laser printer made when printing double sided). Same reaction to each sound.

But its once a year, darn it, the 4th of July, Independence Day for those living in places that have not forgotten the meaning. Sometimes that means putting up with the neighbors if they go a little overboard. We just sucked it up, calmed the dog, watched outside when people nearby set off nice ones, and wished we could do the same. Here you can get arrested for a sparkler.

@PurplePawprints My Mom’s dog is scared of them too. Sad thing is the cops won’t stop the use of the illegal fireworks (which just happens to be the ones that are the loudest). It happens this way every year. -sigh-

@PurplePawprints have you tried the Thunder Shirt? It helped one of my mom’s dogs. She wasn’t perfect, but definitely a lot calmer. Other people I know get prescriptions from the vet for holidays.

I am very lucky that none of my animals are bothered by it.

@duodec If it were only “once” a year, I wouldn’t mind as much, but they’ve been doing it every night for days now. Today, they started around 8:30 and we’re still hearing it after 11:00 now. We’re likely in for another couple nights worth, too. The vets with ptsd who are retraumatized every year are the ones I feel the worst for, especially when assholes feel like they need to “celebrate” for a week so they never know when it’s coming.

@Barney I’m sorry your mom’s pup is scared of them, too. Everything is legal here, so we’d have no recourse even if we wanted to go that route.

@RiotDemon He’s only four months old, so we didn’t really know he’d be affected this way until late last week when the neighbors unexpectedly started while we were outside. My other pets are pretty chill about it, but it freaked out our dog who passed earlier this year, too. If he’s still fearful as an adult, we’ll try to find one that fits him, but he’s an Irish Wolf Hound mix, so not sure how big they make them.

So this isn’t just me bitching, here’s pics of my pup from tonight. He’ll be four months tomorrow.

@PurplePawprints Wow, he’s really grown since we last saw him. He’s still such a cutie.

@Barney Thanks, I think he’s pretty cute, too. He’s close to forty pounds already!

@PurplePawprints my dogs and chickens…the poor chickens are stuck outside with nowhere to go

@PurplePawprints I don’t think there’s anything particularly special about the Thunder shirts. Just get any t-shirt that will fit the dog snugly.

@PurplePawprints Sympathies. Same here. I give leeway when Independence Day is on a weekend because I used to be that kid trying to have a little fun with an evil bitch of a 2-doors-down neighbor who used to call the police on everyone in the neighborhood for everything. Legal fireworks, noisemakers, playing soccer in the yards a little loud, bicycling past her house and talking to each other a little loud (NOT shouting, and sometimes not even talking) or bicycling too fast; the three days we had a hole in the muffler until it could be replaced (so it was loud) she called the police twice on my parents because they had to drive by her house to get to the main street… I am not going to be that person. Actual damage? Persistent annoyances? Those will get called in.

Tomorrow I get to set off some Illinois approved party poppers. I will get disapproving glares from the HOA people because of the paper confetti and laughter about the anemic little pops they make. Hopefully nobody calls the cops.

@wootcat yeah, the only real difference is that it has a separate piece that tightens around the belly. You could probably take a t-shirt and make the same thing with some Velcro.

@duodec I’m not a cop-caller unless my person or property is threatened; I just grumble about it on social media and here. It rained most of the day here so the big fireworks have been postponed until tomorrow. The locals set off firecrackers all afternoon, but either my puppy was too exhausted to wake up for them, or he just resigned himself to his fate.

@PurplePawprints Didn’t mean to imply anything like that; I was just explaining my own perhaps relatively high tolerance for fireworks and other shenanigans even at my age… as long as no damage or harm occurs (or it is minimal and immediately dealt with) then I largely let it go.

Amber, aka foofydog, always recovered from her noise scares very quickly. I hope your pup is all better now and doesn’t have to deal with too much more.

@lisaviolet A few years ago, the idiot kid across the street (high schooler) decided to set off his fireworks in their garage because they were louder in there. Three fire trucks later, the fire was out.

@serpent My dogs, especially the last one, were of the opinion that your cat (and every other feline on earth) should be heavily regulated and kept far away from civilized creatures like dogs and their pet humans.

@duodec I am of the opinion, that dogs should be kept on a short leash outside and ONLY if needed for actual house protection. They should be heavily regulated and people MUST be evaluated by an international consortium of psychologists before being allowed to own a dog. Owning them as pets “for fun” is irresponsible. People should ONLY walk dogs ON THEIR OWN FENCED YARDS. And small dogs are even worse, as they’re completely pointless and stupid. As such, I don’t care what dogs think.

@serpent Meow!

@serpent and your cat serves what function, exactly?

@jbartus He’s just generally awesome. Goes with us on walks (without a leash, because cats, unlike dogs, do not harass people), catches mice, watches over the house, purrs like a tractor and acts like a leg warmer. Go cats! Hail cats. More cats to the world.

@jbartus Of course, there is the downside of him killing all bunnies in the neighbourhood and culling the bird population slightly, but it’s his nature and it’s not like dogs don’t do that.

@serpent i have two cats, and i adore them. however, i wish i had one dog instead (please don’t tell my cats, because they won’t listen)

i heard this story about pigs, related to the story in the bible about them (swine)

1. Dogs know your are their Master
2. Cats know they are your master
3. Pigs know they are your equal

@serpent I’m not seeing anything on that list that cats do and dogs don’t other than being standoffish towards anyone other than their chosen servants.

@Yoda_Daenerys I agree about humans & pigs being equal, but I could never understand why people like dogs. They are stupid and ugly. Cats are smart and beautiful.

@serpent dogs are friendly and loyal as compared to grumpy and aloof. As for the looks, they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, something must be wrong with your eye.

@jbartus Dogs are bad, they attack people and other animals for no reason, they are dirty, they crap all over the place. What is there to like about them?

@jbartus My cat is friendly and loyal. Dogs are either trained or they’re not.

@serpent reason is subjective, cats attack people for no reason either, especially if they’re as smart as you believe them to be. I’m not really seeing how dogs are any dirtier than cats (tongue cleaning is tongue cleaning) and as for crapping all over the place, I don’t really see accumulating it in a stinky box that lives inside my house as a positive alternative to crapping in the grass somewhere.

@serpent your cat would apparently be an exception to the rule.

@jbartus My cat doesn’t really like crapping inside. He knows he has a toilet place indoors, but he prefers to go outside & bury it far from where it might affect the humanity. He also goes for walks with me and chases raccoons away from the house. Not always, sometimes he becomes friends with them, but still.

@serpent cats tolerate you and want your body heat, dogs adore you and will kill anyone nearby that doesn’t, upon command

@Yoda_Daenerys exactly!

@Yoda_Daenerys That’s not true. My cat follows me around the house and sleeps outside of my office room. Then, when I go to the kitchen, he goes with me, takes a quick snack, and goes back with me to sleep outside of the room again. It’s not really about heat, but about hanging out together.

Dogs, on the other hand, are just puppets, that are conditioned to act mindlessly. Kinda like people.

@serpent it sounds to me like your cat is really a dog in a catsuit. Not enough keyboard mashing at inconvenient times and sleeping on your face. The rest of what you described is pure dog.

@lisaviolet Evolution in action?

@duodec Or a lesson learned.

I don’t know if you heard about this or remember it if you did, but a few years back some employee of a utility screwed up and blew out the grid for Southern California, into Mexico.

Hours of no electrical. I had a little wind up/solar/battery radio thing I’d gotten from Woot and we turned that on, just to see how widespread it was.

We live in a hilly area and probably around 8:30 or 9:00, someone set off fireworks. Not firecrackers, but fireworks, not too far from here. It was a pleasant evening and we sat in the swing, overlooking our pool and watched them. Yeah, I’m not big on Joe Citizen with fireworks, but that night? Let’s just say it’s one of my better memories.

@lisaviolet Glad to hear it.