The quarterly WHTM Pledge Drive is almost over! If you appreciate this blog, and can afford it, please click the “donate” button below. Thanks!
Happy Fourth of July!
And if you’re not in the US, or simply don’t celebrate the Fourth, well — Happy Day in July!
If you’re a skittish dog or cat living in the US, I would like to extend my deepest apologies for the horrible boom-boom noises in the sky. I know this is not your favorite day. But it will soon be over.
Happy 4th of July David! Enjoy your day. 🙂
To celebrate here are a pair of Vox articles about whether or not the american revolution was a good thing or a bad thing
http://www.vox.com/2015/7/2/8884885/american-revolution-mistake
http://www.vox.com/2016/7/3/12062334/american-revolution-liberals
Make of them what you will.
Thunderstorms have rained out our travel plans. So we are going to chill and play with sparklers on the porch between showers.
Anybody have special plans today?
I have to work in the morning and so does pretty much everyone else I know. So nothing exciting tonight. My friends and I just going to go see the Independence Day sequel. It’ll probably be bad, but I don’t care. We love the first one (not even ironically) and most of the cast returned, so that’s good enough for me.
Despite the many, many shortcomings of the first movie (the “raped by aliens” jokes being at the very bottom of the barrel), I also love the first movie with no irony.
My wife is feeling very meh about being American this year. We’re just staying home, having leftovers for dinner.
Enjoy your long weekend, American friends 🙂
I’ve been thinking about this. Is this really a holiday to celebrate? We’re celebrating the wealthy, white, male land owners declaring their independence from England because of lack of representation while declaring that they should be allowed life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness all the while holding back slaves and to a lesser extent women and children from having those same rights (nor have they been equally represented in this country, ever). And let’s not forget that they were tired of being overly taxed, so now today we have hardly any taxation on the wealthy, white men while the poor (a good amount of whom are people of color) have to carry the burden of taxation. And had we remained under English rule, we would probably have socialized health care and actually regulate guns like our Northern neighbors.
@kupo, sounds about right about the burden of taxation, yes! And looking at the crop of politicians who currently look most likely to make hay while the fallout from the Brexit explosion shines, we will probably be right behind you wrt slashing taxation on corporations and the rich, raising taxation on the poor, privatising the NHS and massively cutting welfare.
From the UK-soon-to-be-renamed Poundland*
(* there’s a chain of ultra-cut-price shops here that actually are called Poundland, selling fairly random remaindered or very low-quality or close-to-sell-by-date stuff.)
One irony about the whole anti-tax thing is that the reason that the British Government had raised taxes was to pay off the war debts they’d incurred defending the Colonies from the French in the F&I War a decade before.
I have a dog, cat, and rabbit. My rabbit doesn’t get scared; he just kinda looks at me with indignation whenever a firework goes off. My dog juat sleeps through it. I dunno about my cat though, haven’t had her that long.
I’m doing nothing this year. As has become the usual since I moved to Arizona three years ago. Just packing for a trip I’m going on on Thursday.
I am still annoyed by the brexit thing, and specifically how the leaders of the brexiter prefer to let someone else deal with the troubles they have caused.
How cowardly can Farage and Johnson be ?
@Aubrey
My rabbits used to stomp the ground with their stomper feet whenever there were fireworks. I researched and found out it’s an über-cute way to warn the (hypothetical) other rabbits of potential danger. :p
We had fireworks over the Oakland Coliseum Saturday night. I could see them clearly, while standing on my porch. Since fireworks and convenience are both things I enjoy, it was a great experience.
I told my husband that I probably enjoy fireworks more than most people do; he remarked that I probably enjoy them more than most people enjoy *anything*.
Imaginary Petal – that is a delightful image. “Something big is happening – better alert the others!”
I just got back from the 4th of July parade here. Because it’s a fairly small town, it mostly consists of fire trucks and ambulances, old cars and tractors, and horses. There was one guy with a Trump sign, but he didn’t get much reaction from the crowd so I took that as a slightly positive sign.
I’m hoping for a safe 4th tonight. My normally mellow loaf of a cat actually growled at the sound of firecrackers going off nearby a couple of nights earlier and he’s never done that before…:-/
I’ve been hearing fireworks late into the night the last couple days, so apparently someone’s eager to celebrate.
@Ohlmann:
No matter how cowardly you think they are, they’re more cowardly than that. It’s a self-referential function. Hofstadter would approve.
My family are making jokes about it being like Game of Thrones, in that almost all the named heroes and villains are gone by now, and all that remains is the second-stringers and replacement characters who you don’t really want to get to like because they’ll be gone soon too.
This does mean that we may well get some really unlikely characters thrust into power, simply because everyone else is gone. If Sunnysombrera or Alan Robertshaw ever wanted to be prime minister, now’s their chance.
Same here, Tovius.
My cat is handling it all surprisingly well this year. Usually the sound of fireworks has her slinking around in high-alert mode and growling.
We’ll be home with our cat, who will be freaked out because there are always people who think they have to have illegal fireworks. Even when everything is extra dry and fire danger is high.
The poor cat will spend the evening hiding under the bed and when he’s not doing that, will be on the floor next to husbeast’s or my feet. He is loathe to be above floor level when anxious, so husbeast and I will spend a lot of time on the floor tonight.
Dratted sticky keyboard! Now I’m in moderation again.
@kupo
It’s a birthday of sorts. We celebrate birthdays.
I mean, Thanksgiving is about us fucking over the natives. Columbus Day, nuff said. Christians ‘culturally appropriated’ Christmas from pagan Saturnalia. Memorial Day glorifies war. Valentine’s Day is consumerist balderdash hyperinflating the importance of romantic love. New Years used to be in March. You get the idea
We start dropping holidays based on social or historical shadiness, and we’ll very quickly run out. We’ll have Veteran’s Day and Earth Day left. Not that we need to celebrate the ones we have. We should totally come up with some cool, new holidays to replace the shit ones. August 18 (19th Amendment), Suffrage Day? October 29 (ARPANET), Connectivity Day?
My week was kind of stressful so today is a day of rest.
My three Siamese types will probably find a nice place to hide, before they creep out their tails still puffy long after the booms have stopped.
My Mom’s in town, she’s been staying with me since Thursday because my dear father had a fall in the kitchen and severely broke his left leg. He’s been sick and coughing so hard he nearly passes out (coughing syncope), and so when he coughed and started to black out he grabbed the counter. Unfortunately, he didn’t just fall straight down, he twisted, which is how his leg was fractured. It was awful, I couldn’t get him up, so I rendered what aid I could (I’m an EMR – emergency medical responder) and waited for the paras.
So it’s been a flurry of hospitals, doctors, housekeeping (the house was a shambles, Mom’s been helping me get things in order so it’s just right for when he comes home)…I’m sick and also trying to pass a kidney stone, in addition to my usual medical crap (I’m disabled, I’ve got fibro and a shit load of other chronic pain conditions and illnesses. whee.). It’s a bit overwhelming, so I’m invoking my coping skills a lot. But Dad got moved over to the rehab hospital today, (the doctor there says he could be there 10 days, give or take) and Mom and I are going to relax and watch the fireworks tonight. She goes home tomorrow, but the hard stuff is done and I can now rest and get better while Dad’s in the hospital.
Sorry to dump this on you guys. I’m a very longtime lurker (I’ve been around since the eeeearly ManBoobz days)^.^ And it IS related to the holiday, kinda, so I’m not totally awful. I’m just kinda frazzled and anxious and sick and in pain and not terribly bright. I read every post and all the comments (it’s a bit of a hyperfocus thing), so I feel like I know you folks pretty well…I really mean that in a non-creepy way, I promise. Y’all are awesome folks^.^
Could we post pictures of the critters in question when we reply? That could be really fun…
@Axe
“Christians ‘culturally appropriated’ Christmas from pagan Saturnalia.”
Does that really count as cultural appropriation? I thought that was more a matter of when pagans converting to Christianity that kept some of their old traditions under different names, a cultural evolving over time not something stolen by force.