Wooooeeee, Are The Aliens Here?
It's that time of year again, when the smell of burnt nitrates fills the air and it gets much more difficult to answer that timeless question of 'was that a gunshot or firework?' I'm starting to suspect that climate change is affecting the 4th of July, it keeps starting earlier and earlier every year.
As a kid I loved fireworks. As an adult I still do but they won't let me play with the fun stuff. If there's no secondaries, does it even count as fun? Fortunately the hold my beer crowd is usually more than happy to make up for that.
Hell, sometimes things go sideways even when you're not drunk. One year my old employer had bought some illegal fireworks and put me in charge of lighting them. First thing I lit was a 16 tube block of mortar shells. First shell went off fine, the second not so much. Lift charge went off just fine but the shell never left the tube, so I bolted. I thought that'd have been a clear signal that everybody should probably skedaddle but when I looked back nobody had moved.
To make a short story kind of short, the second shell went off in the tube and the block disintegrated, with the other 14 shells firing in every direction but up. Wouldn't have been too bad if we were in an open field or something but we were in a driveway, so you had shells bouncing off houses, cars, and garages. Once they started exploding it was the stars, the sparkly burny bits, turn to bounce off everything. Side note: Those things hurt, think I still have scars. As I was finally starting to be able to hear the ringing in my ears, I heard a voice call out through the smoke "Wooooeeee, are the aliens here?"
Watch out for them aliens, y'all. They done run off with my original blog post and now I'm having to improvise. Speaking of improvising, growing up we discovered that metal conduit makes a great improvised launcher for bottle rocket wars. For some reason we could never get our stepbrothers to follow us into the woods after that.
The aircraft in the first photo is responsible for dropping the biggest firework of all. It's a B-29 Superfortress, modified versions of which dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The second aircraft is an AC-130 gunship, which is its own special spooky sort of fireworks.
On a final reflective note, if you're going to play with fireworks, try not to meet the aliens y'all.
Woah, I know this is a funny story but it sounds ghastly. Especially when you mentioned the scars. Must have hurt so bad. And the ringing... terrible thing.
"Are the aliens here?" Sounds like such a silly thing to say. I may have started laughing.
Yeah, it's one of those stories that's a lot funnier looking back than it was while it was happening. I got lucky and only got hit by a couple of the stars, couple people got hit by the shells. Fortunately everyone walked away with nothing worse than bruises and hearing damage.
It was enough noise and light and chaos to almost overwhelm the senses, following that up with "Are the aliens here" was so ridiculous I was dying laughing.
That cover image is special Jethro and not like me, like special. What's a setup like that cost?
I've only seen that monument from that same viewpoint once. Must've been around '05. That same day I busted out my camera phone from the back of a cab when the freeway said Langley, next exit and all the freeway signs said you're being filmed. He was totally cool I did that as we passed the Pentagon and Hoover bldg but you wanna see a cabby flip tf out at a high speed on a DC freeway?
Point a camera toward Langley.
That's FIFI! Considering it's one of only two still flying I'd say it'd cost you a pretty penny.
Challenge accepted. '05 was a fun time to be in DC, if you just looked at something the wrong way people got excited. I toured the Pentagon and the Hoover building back before 9/11 (about two months before) but for some reason I doubt I'll ever get to wander around Langley...
Really, link me to a plane? I meant the thing that snapped the photo of it.
You were talking about special, I reckoned the plane was a lot more special than the thing that snapped the photo. If you're asking about the camera, it cost about as much used as a Kalashnikov. Deciding which to buy was probably the hardest decision of my life but I think I've gotten better use out of my D610 than I would have the AK.
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It may be very funny that I don't like fireworks snd the reason is because it has to do with fire
I'm always very scared of fire
I can understand that completely, fire is a force to be reckoned with. I was always fascinated by fire and fireworks, grew up playing with them so I'm a bit more comfortable with them, but they are something to be respected. It doesn't take much with either one for things to take a turn and go badly in a hurry.
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