OT - Blow Stuff Up!
So, who spent a lot of money they ordinarily would put towards something useful on stuff they're going to blow up this weekend?
I did! I did! Phantom Fireworks in Oregon, OH. Lotsa good stuff.
Some of my friends are bringing the fireworks, I'm bringing 2 handles of Jim Beam.
A winning combination.
Originally, I was going to be bringing powerful psychadelics, but let them talk me out of it for once in my life.
Don't forget your video camera.
This has "The Smoking Gun Presents: Worlds Dumbest Partiers" written all over it.
I'm pretty sure "getting really drunk and blowing stuff up" is how this country won its independance, thank you very much.
MGoBlogging on the road.
How else do you think Washington and his generals were able to convince an army of part-time soldiers, farmers-by-profession to stand 100 yards away from the most powerful army on Earth and trade musket fire with them. Let me tell you, none of you would be doing that sober.
The key is to drink enough that you start seeing multiples of everything; then you get to see three times as many fireworks as undrunk people do.
Undrunk - its the new sober!
This thread is full of great one liners.
I hope you have your hands on July 5th.
It's all fun and games until you learn that the trunk of a 74 Buick Apollo (first car-college) can actually get warm enough to ignite the $600 Missouri fireworks purchase as you cross the state line and the Illinois State Police can not stop laughing at your impromptu pyrotechnics display.
Your picture scares me. What is that?
I don't know why, but I've been laughing about his picture for the past like minute just because it's so weird.
After this post, now I'm laughing about that picture and people at work are looking at me.
Me too - it's like a monkey cat.
Cat Monkey, obviously.
Wrong, this is cat monkey:
Our CatMonkeys have wings:
Looks to me like the Cat-Monkey's parents in that picture.
"Celebrate the independence of your nation by blowing up a small part of it."
- Apu clone, Season 7 episode, "Summer of 4 ft 2"
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But, I think we need the Mathlete to delve a little deeper into this issue and look at the data separated into categories like age and sobriety level.
Surprised that roman candles aren't higher on that graph. Prime firework war weapon on the front lines.
That's because graph isn't entirely clear in its representation of data...
Sure, it says 22% of fireworks-related injuries were due to sparklers, but it doesn't say how many sparklers didn't injure people. A glance at the graph says "whoa, sparklers and publicly displayed fireworks are more dangerous than homemade fireworks!" but I'm willing to bet that it'd be a better representation if data were normalized.
edit: oh god, I am such a (math/stats/comp science) dork
Wow. You took the basic firework graph from 2007 to a whole new level.
Don't feel bad, I'm sitting in my lab 30 feet below the diag, literally in tears over the lack of context for that graph :(
Maybe you missed the question above but what is your picture?
to the grave.
plus a second critique of the chart: No context on severity of injury. I'm guessing most of the sparkler injuries were of the "burn" variety, and far more of the home-made fireworks were of the "now-I'm-learning-to-write-with-my-left-hand" variety.
In my neighborhood we preferred a dozen bottle rockets at a time, fired from a shipping tube. Inevitably, only ten or eleven of a given volley would light, and the slow kid would look into the tube to see what went wrong.
Good times, and thankfully no permanent physical damage. I've heard that the slow kid still has trouble looking in the mailbox, though.
I don't think you can get them anymore, but you used to be able to get "Moon Rockets" bottle rockets, that came in a cardboard holder instead of just a bag. There were a dozen, side by side, and each in its own little track. each one had a progressively longer fuse, and then they were all twisted together at one side, so you could light them all at once. The entire pack would fire one right after the other, "Fwoosh-fwoosh-fwoosh-fwoosh-fwoosh-fwoosh-fwoosh-fwoosh-fwoosh-fwoosh-fwoosh-fwoosh-BLAM!-BLAM!-BLAM!-BLAM!-BLAM!-BLAM!-BLAM!-BLAM!-BLAM!-BLAM!-BLAM!-BLAM!"
Good times.
Fireworks are illegal in NYC, HOWEVA, we'll always have Chinatown.
This is the first time in my life I can remember NOT having anything of questionable Michigan legality to use (Except for some bottle rockets, but those don't count).
*sigh*
I guess its a public display for me this year...
Fireworks aren't the same after you have played with C-4, dynamite, and cratering charges...
When my dad was a kid, some crazy guy that lived near him on the lake thought it was an awesome idea to get drunk and light off quarter sticks of dynamite. That got boring, I guess, so he went with a half stick to end it. As it turns out, sea walls and dynamite don't mix very well. He was not happy when he woke up.
Didn't you say in another thread that you are a teacher? That's some crazy chemistry/physics experiment you've got going there!
IIRC, he's a military guy too.
We actually blew up Twilight in my English class because it sucks so much.
(Seriously though, I just finished an enlistment as a combat engineer)
I figured Twilight would be kinda like cockroaches -- it'll survive after all of civilization is gone. And just imagine the alien life form that comes along afterward and discovers what's left of the Earth. "Wow, dude, check out this lethal toxin that wiped out this species! This place is clearly inhabitable -- let's go home."
Well C-4 is more of a cutting charge, so it will get through every page, and it can be molded like play doe to wrap around the form of the entire book, encasing every shitty square inch.
anybody here have a class B license? i need to find somebody new since my old guy moved away
It didn't work last year, I'd give it up.