But I did take a break for about an hour around ten last night, just in time to get shot at.

It was largely accidental. A guy with a misaimed bottlerocket in a high wind. And not just one.

While I'm the only guy on the street without an American flag or two--not just at the moment, but since December--I'm also, oddly enough, the only guy who wasn't out blowing shit up and breaking various really funny laws last night.

Personally, I happen to dig July the Fourth. More accurately known as National Atheist Day, I suppose [that the christworshippers tend to think that's on April the First isn't shocking; they think the harvest is on December the Twenty-fifth, too]. What I really like is watching an approximation of colonial terrorists exploding things and upsetting England being performed by modern terrorists exploding things and upsetting America. Everyone on my street is a revolutionary terrorist, whether they happen to get that or not, exploding illegal weaponry in defiance of an oppressive government which threatens to arrest them for doing it. Gimee firecrackers or gimee death.

So, that's kinda cool. Whether or not I'm the only one who gets it.

I kinda suspect that the kids shooting bottlerockets into the air have no idea the magnitude of the methaphor. But that's not surprising: people in general aren't terribly bright animals.

The rest of the hour was used up partly by waiting for Hunter to get dressed, which might not have taken so long if she hadn't held out for finding her military BDUs and her Duhmerica shirt, apt as it was; the rest was devoted to walking around and watching the terrorists make lights and noise.

Of course, the best of them were state-approved, all but nuking the skyline downtown. Having never been in this zipcode in July before, I wouldn't have thought that we'd have been able to see that so well; but it was clear enough, especially from the undeveloped hill recently purchased by the church standing next to it. Whose adherents, incidentally, were sitting atop their SubUrbanVehicles, oohing and aahing at the celebration of their victory over a christian nation. I mentioned already that people are morons, right?

Oh. And I got yet another new name last night. I ran into one of my neighbours who had been meaning for six months to get round to meeting me. Then he did and asked who I was. As I was telling him, there was an explosion, so he got it slightly wrong. So, there are now those who have decided that my name is Gavin. For better or worse. Whee.