July 06, 2005
Routine: I set off fireworks in my back yard after watching the professional display every Fourth of July.
Routine Failure: Due to Clone being sick all weekend, my wife and I being tired, and having to work on the Fifth; we did not set off fireworks after the show.
Now I know this seems like a harmless little break in routine. This example however makes for the incident that occurred last night. It was this break in my routine that caused my brain to override the “Good better” judgment controls. To tell this story properly I am going to start at the beginning.
Last Fourth of July I traveled by myself to Wisconsin to buy fireworks. Every year I go to the same place, I’ve gone there since I was 10 years old and I will continue to go every year, it is part of my routine. When I walked last year I was like a kid in a candy store, I went nuts buying many different items. What I hadn’t realized was the fact they where having a two for one sale. I ended up buying twice as much as I reasonably needed. (Notice I didn’t say wanted… I can never have too many fireworks). When I returned home with a Ford Ranger full of rockets and fountains, my wife told me I was no longer allowed to go firework shopping on my own again. That brings us to this year. The whole family comes with while I buy fireworks and again there is a two for one sale. Now this year I remembered it was a two for one sale and was going to curb my spending. However, my wife was with me to keep me in check. (Break in routine) I just kept buying waiting for her to say “DEAR GOD NO! YOU DO NOT NEED ANOTHER FIREWORK!” Instead she asked me to pick up a couple of fountains she liked thus encouraging my impulsive behavior. I ended up coming home with more fireworks this year then last year. (Consequence)
In 2004 when we were setting off fireworks in our back yard, Grau brought over this one called the weeping willow or something like that. It looked just like a bunch of fountains I had. Unfortunately, this was actually a bundle of mini-mortars that shot exploding balls into the air one right after the other. It was like a homing beacon for the cops to come and arrest us. The cops never came and we vowed not to do that again. So when we where buying fireworks I made sure that I only bought ones from the “Fountain” section for lighting off in the back yard. I know this is a little off topic, but keep this in mind for later, it is a VERY important detail.
Every Fourth of July we leave early to set off rockets in the field we sit in. This year we were shut down by the man. (Break in routine.) My need to set things on fire or blow them up was not satisfied. Normally this wouldnÂ’t have been that big of a deal, however mix that with my original example and we have the formula for disaster.
Yesterday, upon arriving home, I saw the stack of fireworks sitting in my office. I turn to the oldest boy and say, “We are setting those off tonight.” After I finish cleaning up from the previous day’s party, making dinner and updating the Spoon and Blade, I grabbed the fireworks and the family. We went into the back yard for big explosion fun.
I had two different types of giant fountains among all the other assorted fountains I bought. I thought I would start the show with one of the big ones. I’m anxious to get my firework fix; I didn’t get to set many off the previous day. I was hurting bad. I didn’t read the label on this “Fountain” before I lit it as I normally do. Setting down on the ground a safe distance from the house and garage, I lit it and ran. The next thing I know there is a muffled explosion quickly followed by a much louder one and a shower of sparks about 100 feet over my head. I’m having flashbacks to last year. Only this time it was worse. Last year there were maybe 12-15 mini-mortars. This bundle of joy I set off had 36. It would set one off every 5 seconds. For three minutes, this “fountain” was shooting exploding flairs into the evening sky. That was a long three minutes. After it was finished, I waited to see if there where any sirens… Nope, not a one. Back to the fun at hand.
We are lighting all the other fountains when I have a break in routing failure. I have this other large “fountain” that was on the shelf right next to the big one I had let off earlier. Ironically, it was named “Big Trouble”. The label said, “Shoots flaming balls into the air with report.” My brain not having the fun that was so badly needed in setting off skyrockets and fireworks the night before starts justifying lighting this. I swear by all that is right and good in the world that my brain convinces me “That’s just the flaming balls that come out of regular fountains that crackle really loudly. It’s okay to set this one off.” My “better” judgment center screamed “NO, FOR THE LOVE OF LIFE, DO. NOT. DO. THIS!” The mischievous part of my brain says, “C’mon it’s just a fountain. We bought it in the “Fountain” section. The last one was a fluke. What are the chances of anyone making that mistake twice? Just set it off.” The rest of my brain then says in the dopey sounding rube voice, “Oh… all right, you’ve never gotten me into trouble before!”
I set the fountain on top of the cooled off remnants of the previous large fountain. I light it and run back. My wife notices what I did right as the fuse ignited. She screams, “NO, DON’T DO THAT!” Too late, the fuse was lit. The fuse was quick to get into the tube, but then there was nothing. I thought I had a dud. That was when it happened. A louder muffled explosion, then a high-pitch scream as (to quote my wife) “A screaming sperm of sparks heads into the night sky”. It explodes loudly about 150 feet up in a large star. This is followed about 15 seconds later by another. Every 15 seconds it would send up another one. Did I mention they exploded loudly? I did, good because when I say loud I’m talking really damn LOUD! Its bad enough they screamed in a high pitch whistle from the time they leave the tube until they reached their peak, but the explosion was enough to rattle my molars. I have neighbors climbing out of their houses convinced my house had finally caught fire and the cans of black powder where exploding. This inch and half diameter, ¼ inch- thick tubes that held the charges come falling back to the ground. They pelted everything around them with enough force to cause a noticeable noise on impact. It took one of these tubes hitting me in the head to make my brain admit, “This was a mistake.”
After the fifth one went off, I could hear sirens. They are getting closer and closer. People are gathering around the street to watch. I’m standing there just chanting, “Please stop, please stop, please stop” If finally quits after 20 of the flaming sperms have exploded. I can see the reflection of the emergency lights off trees. I’m sure I’m going to jail or one of the falling tubes hurt someone.
The sirens are about a block away and they keep going… it was an ambulance on its way to the hospital. There were no other emergency vehicles responding to my neighborhood. My wife looks at me with her arms across her chest. I say, “I guess that was a bad idea.” She makes a tsking noise and says, “Ya think?” I sent the older boy to go around and pick up as many of the fallen tubes as possible. There where tubes five houses in every direction. After the quick clean up we finish setting off all the ground fireworks. We had some pretty impressive fountains. I’m sure that if I had been able to set off the fireworks the night before this wouldn’t have happened. I would have not been so desperate to blow something up that I almost took out my neighborhood.
Posted by: Contagion at
01:08 PM
| Comments (6)
| Add Comment
Post contains 1511 words, total size 9 kb.
July 05, 2005
Most of the people there were from Clan Chattan. Honestly after I left the group, I thought there was going to be a lot of bad blood. Fortunately, I was wrong, as everyone seems to have overcome their issues. We all sat and talked, swapped stories, reminisced about past activities and shared our hopes for the future. It was nice. I wasnÂ’t involved in any gossip or politics. It made me start to rethink leaving. Then I realized the reason I didnÂ’t catch any of that was that I was no longer a member. It still was good to see everyone together againÂ… and happy.
Both Chastity and Virtue brought their boyfriends with to the party. You would think that after being members of this group for as long as they have been, they would know better. All the guys in the group are like over protective uncles. We were relentlessly ruthless to the boys, especially Maelduin and I. It was great fun making these boys squirm.
We had a lot of good food. One of the guests brought this cheese bread recipe. It was excellent. It tasted like cheesecake, only better. I braved the rain to grill burgers and hot dogs for everyone. Cooking in the rain doesnÂ’t bother me, especially on the Fourth of July. If you donÂ’t grill on the Fourth then there is something seriously wrong with you. I donÂ’t care if itÂ’s a vegetarian Kabob or the best steak money can buy, you grill on the Fourth of July!
We left the house around 7:30PM to go watch the Fireworks in Neighboring Cherry Valley. They have a nice display and itÂ’s much easier to get in and out of with all the traffic. I have a spot that IÂ’ve gone to for many years now. There is usually not a lot of other people there so we can play around. ItÂ’s on the backside of the display, therefore we donÂ’t get to see any of the ground fireworks, but who wants those anyway? The other attraction of this spot is we would light off our own fireworks waiting for the show. There are usually some kinds of rockets of various sizes. This year I had a couple gross of bottle rockets and four packets of larger rockets.
We had just finished setting out the blankets and spraying the kids down when I drove the pipes into the ground. I tested them with some bottle rockets. As I did, one of the people that owns the property adjacent to where we were warned us that the cops where there. Not wanting to have our fun ruined, I quickly hid the big rockets under the blanket and left a bunch of the bottle rockets out in plain site. Why? Because if he knows we were lighting off fireworks and comes down they will only confiscate what they see, they wonÂ’t search. If you hide everything, they will do a quick probable cause search. The cop ended up driving off and after about 10 minutes, I started firing them off. Being in the Fourth of July spirit, I started tossing packets of bottle rockets to my friends so they could have some fun. We were all having a great time playing with bottle rockets, which apparently are the most dangerous of all fireworks. How are they dangerous? Just read on.
After setting them off for about a total of 15 minutes I turned around to grab another packet of bottle rockets and I see a cop walking down to us. He tells us that he is shutting us down and confiscating the fireworks. He goes on to explain that the property we are on is owned by ComEd, the power company, and they didn’t want people shooting off fireworks by their power lines. Then he states, “They want us to make an arrest, who shall it be.” Everyone was quiet, I was thinking I should take the blame since it was my party and my fireworks, but then the cop points to LittleJoe and says, “I saw you shooting them off, I need to see your ID and information.”
LittleJoe in a rage that “The Man” has shut down our fun says, “Fuck you copper! Why aren’t you out taking guns from little kids or confiscating fireworks that are a bit more dangerous then bottle rockets?” The cop responded by pulling out his asp and saying “Don’t get my face boy I’ll beat you like an unwanted step child. Besides there are no fireworks more deadly then the whistling bottle rocket! Per shot fired, more people are injured with the `Harmless’ bottle rocket. Anyway no one else is shooting them off” He says this as sub-professional grade mortars and large skyrockets are going off around us.
LittleJoe is in such a rage that his pants have turned purple; he moves to take the cop. In his blinding rage, he forgets that we are on a hillside filled with holes. He steps in one, loosing his balance and falls to the ground hitting his head. The cop jumps on his back and handcuffs him before he can come to. Putting away his asp, he pulls his side arm to make sure the rest of us donÂ’t decide to assist our friend. Using his radio, he attempts to call for back up. The power lines and towers prevent a signal from being transponded.
The rest of us just sit back and watch. Since children were present we didn’t want them to get hurt incase Barney Fife gets scared. After about 5 minutes of trying to raise backup he finally gets through to a dispatcher. She advises the cop that there is no back up. All the other Cherry Valley Units are out setting off bottle Rockets they had confiscated from the public. Realizing that he was missing the fun, he gently wakes LittleJoe up and says, “If you promise not to fight I’ll just take your information and the bottle rockets and be on my way.” LittleJoe told the cop he wouldn’t fight. He gave him his name and information. I gave the cop all the bottle rockets that where left in plain sight. He asked me, “Is this all of them?” I responded with, “Of course officer.” He takes a quick look over the area spies some fountains that where sitting out. He walks over toward them.
GrauÂ’s eldest spawn is freaking out that the cop is going to take his fireworks. Grau assures the cop that those are legal fireworks bought here in Illinois. They where just smoke bombs and fountains. The cop looks them over and decides he doesnÂ’t want to light those off and leaves them as he departs the area. After the cop leaves, we are all joking about the entire incident and I pointed out to my friends that laughed at me about not hiding all the fireworks that it worked. He took about $5.00 worth of bottle rockets and left the $70.00 worth of skyrockets, and he still did a quick search.
This all happened by 8:50. They didnÂ’t start the main display until almost 9:45. For the first time in many years, I wasnÂ’t too impressed with the display. They seemed to do all of the same style of fireworks together instead of spreading them out. I thought it would look better if they broke them up more. Clone really enjoyed the fireworks. This is his first year that he actually cared to pay attention to them. IÂ’m glad he enjoyed it, because he had spent most of the weekend being sick. He had been puking Saturday, Sunday and Monday. (No, it had nothing to do with this incident! He didnÂ’t drink any alcohol! People please!) He finally snapped out of his funk around 6:00 and was really into playing and having fun by the time we left for the show.
*Some of the details regarding the cop have been exaggerated and may not be 100% accurate.
Posted by: Contagion at
12:59 PM
| Comments (1)
| Add Comment
Post contains 1438 words, total size 8 kb.
June 17, 2005
Upon discovery of the invaders, the normal peace-loving, quiet and friendly version of Contagion was replaced with General Contagion of the Supreme Armies of the House. General Contagion, with his scorched earth policies, unequaled temper and open hostility, raised a giant middle finger to the Geneva Convention. He obtained through the local black market (AKA Local Hardware Store) various chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction (AKA many cans of Raid and Black Flag Hornet and Wasp killer) along with various incendiary weapons (AKA gasoline soaked rags shoved in the end of a metal pipe). Wearing his body armor and biohazard suit (AKA shorts, sleeveless T-shirt with skulls on it, eyeglasses and Green Bay Packer hat) he armed himself to do battle.
During the evening hours, General Contagion launched an exploratory skirmish against the foe. After his recon was able to get the general location of the base, he took up position to try to observe and count the enemy. The base was heavily fortified. They had built it in a dead space in the roof of the front porch. Cursing the fates for this bit of bad luck, General Contagion grabbed his side arm (AKA Flyswatter) and a smoking rag in a pipe and tried to draw the enemy forth. This had the desired effect he was looking for, an estimated count of enemy forces. It was determined that this base was not fully operational and lightly manned. General Contagion pulled his forces back to regroup and ready for the main attack.
An Artillery barrage of Chemical weapons of mass destruction was unleashed upon the enemyÂ’s fortification. The RAID was not as successful as planned. It seemed that the toxins used were at best 50% effective on the populous. The chemical seemed to have a better effect on the civilian population in the area then on the hostiles. The collateral damage amongst fireflies was catastrophic. We stopped counting after 20. General Contagion, sticking to his Scorched Earth policy, felt that the civilian population was more of a hindrance to his plans then an asset and the loss of them was crucial to the success of his campaign.
Finally it was time for operation BLACK FLAG. General Contagion, upon observance of the enemy attempting to recover from the first two attacks, ordered another round of artillery. The chemical weapon in this round had a much more devastating effect. A thick foam of bio-toxins and what can only be best described as an acid versus chitinous creatures. The weapon worked with a deadly and whirlwind speed. Most of the enemy troops fell with in the first 30 seconds of the attack. As soon as this sticky foam attached to them, their wings would shrivel, their little bodies would start to convulse and pulse on the ground until movement finally stopped w/in a minute of contact. Unlike the chemical agent from the RAID which seemed to dissipate and lose potency after a couple of minutes. Operation BLACK FLAG’s weapon stuck to the structure for in excess of 20 minutes with out loosing any potency. Soldier after soldier would stumble into the foam and fall to the ground in a sure death. After 30 minutes, a general victory was declared. Collateral damage included many more fireflies, some spiders, and about 50 box elder bugs. There is a rumor circulating that General Contagion in his boredom between attacks specifically ordered the attack on the box elder bugs. We have been unable to confirm the rumors. Upon questioning General Contagion, the only response we received was a boot to the arse and a “No Comment”
General Contagion observed the now ruined base for any signs of life. Upon confirmation of three hours that there has been no new activity, General Contagion held a press conference to announce his victory. With a cigar in his mouth and whisky tumbler of Jack Daniels General Contagion addressed the assembled press, “My fellow Householdians, it is my honor to announce the utter destruction of an enemy base on our soil. At approximately 5:30 PM CST, I launched an attack against a lightly manned, yet heavily fortified enemy base. By 6:30 PM, we had received confirmation that the base was in ruins and all soldiers dead. I know that not everyone agrees with the tactics used and the loss of life. I say that they were not innocent, they could have chosen a side and they did not. They wanted others to fight their battle for them. If they did not like the way the battle was fought, then they should have stepped up and done it themselves, not waited until we had to step in and take control. I will NOT muzzle my army, I will NOT be more worried about the “innocents” hiding and aiding the enemy. The neighboring households that are worried about the effects of my biochemical warfare on the environment can gum nudge my left testicle. It was not their homes or families under attack; it was ours! And we were victorious.”
The enemy fell victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is “Never get involved in a land war in Asia”, but only slightly less well known is this: “Never go against General Contagion when his family’s safety is on the line.” Thank you, now go away while I finish this victory drink!
Posted by: Contagion at
04:28 PM
| Comments (7)
| Add Comment
Post contains 996 words, total size 6 kb.
June 13, 2005
First, as spawn of the GrauHarveBou I am the unwanted stump in the blogenetics that makes up the Bad Example Family. Which, in all honesty, the genetics there where kind of suspect to begin with before I ever came along. IÂ’ve come to take my blogenetics as a point of pride, just for the fact that the mental image it gives people usually makes them shudder in horror. You will see the Bad Example family logo and blogroll in my sidebar. Miasmatic Review is included in the blogroll. I am proud. I also have the Frizzen Family on the sidebar; Grau does not have a blogroll for his blogspawn. Therefore, I manually entered that code and I did not link to myself, that was my choice.
Second is the Gathering of the Blogs. I stumbled across Absinthe and Cookies. While there, I saw, she had a post regarding “Gathering of the Blogs”. As I am of Scottish decent and portray a Scot as a re-enactor, I felt the desire to heed her call and participate in the festivities. You will see in my sidebar the logo and blogroll for Gathering of the Blogs. Miasmatic Review is listed on the blogroll.
Third is the Alliance. I joined the Alliance for many different reasons. IÂ’m still trying to figure out how I fit into it as IÂ’m having a hard time getting into the filthy lies that go along with membership. Yet I want to support my fellow bloggers that were members before me and ones that join after me. I proudly display the logo in my sidebar and the extremely long blogroll down at the bottom. If you look, you will see Miasmatic Review listed on that blogroll.
Finally is being part of the Munuvian Empire. As being part of the Bad Example Family, I was nominated to get a site on .mu.nu. I was happy. No, ecstatic. Nay! I was exalted at the prospect of getting away from blogger and into something that is a lot more flexible and reliable. I have yet to find a logo for the Munuvian Empire so I donÂ’t have one, however I have their blogroll in the drop down menu in my sidebar. If you look, you will see that Miasmatic Review is excluded from that list. I have been accepted, yet rejected. Is it because I am a blogentic-unwanted stump? Is it because my writing is often scattered with grammatical and spelling errors and itÂ’s an embarrassment to the powers that be? Maybe itÂ’s due to an oversight and the fact that the powers that be are really busy. Any way, it has excluded me from the blogroll. If I had any feelings, I think I might be hurt. However, since I donÂ’t IÂ’m just going to make fun of the situation.
Am I mad about this? No. Am I using this as an excuse to rant? Sorta. Am I having a problem with creativity and using this as something to post... YES I AM!
Posted by: Contagion at
12:53 PM
| Comments (7)
| Add Comment
Post contains 642 words, total size 4 kb.
64 queries taking 0.0865 seconds, 169 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
