Where my nose begins.
To a certain guy who griped at me last night:
Look, I'm on your side about you getting to express your joy at the freedoms we enjoy, on Independence Day. I want you to get to go out and do it. But when you moved into a neighborhood that is cheek-and-jowl enough to actually have a Home Owner's Association, you knew what you were getting into.
Don't be surprised when the same cop who gave you a warning about firing off aerial fireworks in your neighborhood last year decides to write you a ticket for conducting random probability arson experiments this year.
The county is afire with mysterious fires and no one to stand up and take responsibility for them. Fine. But in the moderately-heavily populated area you're in, your finely-crafted Chinese or Mexican firework that arcs over the fence to fizzle on someone's roof rather than pop with celebration 100 feet over your yard can mean that your neighbor has to run the risk of losing everything he has. I'm sure YOU're the one who will stand up and say "Oh, my bad. Lemme pick up that insurance deductible for you."
My favorite comment was "The government gives us the tools to celebrate, but won't let us use them."
Huh? I know that my government is redistributing the wealth at mighty high speed, but where, exactly, does one get in on this fireworks distribution program? And how does that work, exactly? Are there race-based initiatives? If so, where do whistling chasers and Black Cats fall in this program?
I'll confess to being dumbfounded by this twisted logic, and I withdrew before I had trouble finding my way to my car from that rabbit hole.
Labels: bread and circuses, day at the office, government
posted by Matt G @ 9:17 AM
10 Comments:
To top it all off, said Homeowner's Collective probably mandates cedar shake roofs instead of composite.
From the Cedar Shingle Trade Association literature: "Now even safer than kerosene soaked cotton!"
If the guy wants to enjoy freedom, voluntarily signing up for an antfarm... er... homeowner's association is not the way to go about it.
Thank you for posting that. Here in Southern California, fireworks are understandably restricted, given the drought conditions and extreme fire danger in the summertime/early fall. Added to this is that I have an adult quadriplegic living in the house whose unassisted evacuation (read: need a damned ambulance) would be quite difficult in the event of your crappy bottle rocket misfires and sets the field behind our houses on fire.
Hey, I like to play with fireworks, too. But when I feel the need, there’s a really, really big desert next door, OK? Get off your butt and go there. - Andrea
Last week, radio guy was saying, John Adams said the 4th should be celebrated with fireworks, so by God, we ought to be allowed to set off fireworks. We haven't had noticeable rain in two months, everything is dry as a bone, and morons who I'm guessing don't own anything want to set off fireworks. I purely hate stupid people.
We have the problem here. Been a month with damn little rain, fire hazard is very high, and the houses are kinda close, yet everyone and their brother has to light off sky rockets in town.
I grew up blowing off fireworks, and I love doing it, but I grew up on 11 acres 10 miles from anywhere, and if the summer was dry, we had fire extinguishers of varying sort on hand.
Gotta wonder about some of the "celebrants"... Is there anything between the ears? Doesn't sound like it in this case!
Word!
Aggravated Ignorance is defined as that level of stupidity where you are a danger to yourself or others. Thankfully, it isn't against the law.
There are places where slate shingles are mandated in the building codes. Ya can't set fire to those.
Our "weekend" neighbors set their own property on fire last year with fireworks. Apparently wherever they are from, fireworks are legal. However, in Georgia, they are not.
I'm just thankful the wind was blowing east. If it had been blowing west, I'm not sure we would be here now.
I'm overly fearful of fire, thanks to having two houses struck by lightning. I can't imagine the guilt I'd carry if I was the jerk setting off fireworks in such dry conditions that I caused a grass fire, let alone burned down someone's home.
So because some guy launched a bottle rocket onto his neighbor's cedar roof, some other guy can't go out in a three acre parking lot and set off some black cats?
How very in the spirit of '76. (1976, that is. Mrs. Z's class. Where if one of us did something bad, the whole collecti... er, class got punished.)
In OUR little town, so long as it was before 11PM (midnight, to tell the truth), non-aerial fireworks were ignored. It was the Zzzzip-pop ones (which have a habit of going Zzzzzzzzip...... fzzzzzzzzzzt.) that we we were shutting down.
And the real fun was this guy's thread of "logic," which was fuzzy at best.
The problem is that when a person in an urban setting is irresponsible with a firework and sets their neighbors house on fire, it is very difficult to locate the responsible party(s) and hold them accountable. A skyrocket can travel a few blocks away before landing on a roof or in a yard and causing a fire. What are people to do? You can't effectively hold the irresponsible ones accountable, so you have no choice but to ban the fireworks themselves.
Communities could carve out location specific exceptions (like a 3 acre parking lot), but that will just cause confusion and resentment.
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