Illinois Bans Fun. Because It’s Bullshit.
Well, at least it’s not me ruining THIS summer. Other summers, well, that was all me.
When I was a kid, it was all, “DON’T TOUCH THIS, OR IT’LL BLOW YOUR HAND OFF” followed by a brief burst of light, a huge bang, and a ton of smoke. THOSE were the good old days, even if they lasted mere seconds and scared me into pissing my pants.
But now, I can’t find a sparkler to save my own skin. I can’t yell at my children to “STEP AWAY OR YOU’LL DIE” because there’s nothing with which they can lose even a single leg. Some call this progress. I call it bullshit.
It is my God Given Right as an American to shoot my own fucking eye out.
Sure, you wouldn’t know that fireworks were actually banned by the amount going off in my neighborhood for the past week or two, but that only further enrages me. How could I have been so stupid as to NOT drive over to a neighboring state for some dangerous fun? I’m sure Missouri isn’t quite as big an asshole as Illinois.
(Dear Missouri, Let’s make out. Love, AB)
Considering our new state motto, “We Impeach Our Corrupt Governors,” one might THINK that Illinois had Fun on speed dial, but without fireworks, it’s simply untrue.
Sure, I can still buy those stupid things you can throw at the ground that make a big SNAP! noise, but those are kinda piddly bullshit, you know? What kid is all “LOOKIT THIS, I CAN MAKE A BANG?” How can I create ACTUAL MEMORIES of acrid gunsmoke and brief flashes of awesome?
Simply put, I cannot.
Until, I suppose, I buy a semi-automatic weapon and use THAT motherfucker instead of fireworks.
That’ll learn you, Illinois, for being such an assmunch.
P.S. Despite my pleas, The Target won’t stock the lethal form of Jarts. I call bullshit.
Oh, this. Yes, this. I’m in Illinois, too, and I’ve been complaining about the stupid ban since it happened. Not like people can’t get around it. The guys out here setting off 20 m80’s a night are proof of that. Damn things make me jump every. single. time.
I am in NY and any type of fireworks including sparklers have been banned for as long as I can remember here. Everyone just drives to PA to get them and bring them home so there is no shortage of people trying to blow off their fingers anyway. Though NY is considering passing a law that will legalize sparklers & fireworks that don’t get shot into the air.
WHUCK? And I thought that we had it bad in Michigan (we pirate our happy asses down to good ole Indiana to “State Line Fireworks” for our purchases typically,for the really big booms) but at least we can still blow shit up with our little ground-works!
Illinois is determined to put ya’ll in a bubble, huh?!
Oh, Aunt Becky! You simply must come party with us right across the border in Indiana! Our motto? “Welcome to Indiana! Let’s blow some shit up!”
Last night was crazy. From our porch we could see three different large displays (two towns, one uppity gated community), and about 15 very large home displays. Ours being one—and yay! My husband didn’t blow off any important bits!
This is our second 4th here and it fills me with so much awe. Much better than Illinois or Iowa. (Iowa’s motto being, “Welcome to Iowa! What’s that smell?” Nothing against Iowa, it was lovely to live there. Just every last foot of it seems to smell like pigs.)
Of course, with last night being merely the 3rd, my husband is looking at me with big puppy dog eyes in hopes of a second trip to the nearest fireworks shop. He might just get it. Isn’t it our patriotic duty to blow pretty shit up for those who are being oppressed?
2 words: exploding jarts!
Come on down to Indianapolis…though fireworks are against our apartment rules the neighbors have been launching bottle rockets and other airborne bullshit for a month already…
Illinois is a giant pain in my ass.
In fact, Illinois aggravates me so much, I once wrote a Haiku about it.
http://bitly.com/jwBt0Y
I remember having “bottle rocket wars” growing up. 🙂 Also, Jarts look awesome.
Y’all should move to Kansas. We’ve been blowing shit up all week.
New Jersey (where I was born-n-raised) and New York also both ban fireworks, sparklers, etc. That never stopped my dad from driving across the border to PA to acquire some good, old-fashioned, explosive fun every summer. My dad was all about the pyrotechnics. One summer he accidentally set the neighboring farm’s cornfield a tiny bit afire, but no one got hurt. (Thinking back on all Dad’s fireworks-exploding, I’m amazed he still has all ten fingers and toes and both eyes, too….)
Happy Independence Day nonetheless from this New Yorker (“Hey, we can’t blow stuff up but at least we finally legalized same-sex marriage”)!
I like Heather, live in NJ. They have been banned FOREVER. We can go to CT to a reservation, or PA. The problem is the dastardly neighbors who call the COPS to tell them who is exactly blowing shit up. Last year they busted a bunch of kids for sparklers.
Ah the days when I was a bad teenager and we pointed the roman candles at the cop cars then ran like hell after they ran out and the cops were able to get out of their car.
Utah finally wised up and are selling the ones that will got about 30 feet in the air. Mostly because too many people were going over to wyoming to get them. We shot off some last night, and it was AWESOME. Reminded me of when I was little.
In Idaho, fun is not illegal, but it is spoon-fed to us by corporate sponsorship. This town’s fireworks and parade (and baseball team, and…) are all sponsored by one company. Fireworks booths are few and far between, because Melaleuca wants you watching THEIR fireworks, not your own… Happy Melaleuca Freedom Day
Why can’t the 4th just be about BBQ, fun, and blowing shit up? If anything, this is the LAST day for politics and overbearing messages. Let us have our freedom.
This is why I love you and you’re one of my BFFs.
“It is my God Given Right as an American to shoot my own fucking eye out.”
AB, I am just letting you know…don’t let anyone kid you. You ARE the woman that all us menfolk here in America want!
Arizona’s all fucked up. In Tucson, it is legal to BUY fireworks, but illegal to blow them up. There are mini-circus tents in every parking lot in the city selling them. I believe this is some sort of perverse torture, but I sure will miss the excitement of being able to almost set off some explosives!
Yeah, Aunt Becky, you need to visit Indiana. My neighbors have been firing fucking mortar shells since late June and won’t run through their annual stockpile until nearly the first snowfall. You can buy up enough fireworks at the 3-for-1 July 5th sale to get you through the apocalypse.
Indiana, where our new state motto is “Sparklers are for pussies!”
[…] And we, as patriotic citizens, throw big ass parties each year to celebrate her, complete with parades, beer and fruity drinks, burgers, mosquitoes and even mind-blowing and limb-losing fireworks. […]
Missouri is certainly just as big an asshole as Illinois. But they do have fireworks.
I know your pain. In NC if you want fireworks. . .real fireworks you have to drive to SC to get them. I used to stock up on cherry bombs, M-80’s and the like. The kind that would blow a sign off the sign post. Sparklers suck. I use them for toothpicks. . .while lit, just for the smell.
At this rate we’re never going to reduce the surplus middle management.
Missouri allows you to buy fireworks, but many of the cities ban them (for example you can not buy or set them off TECHNICALLY in Kansas City, but in the surrounding suburbs tents are everywhere)… there are permanent firework buildings right along the missouri/iowa state line since Iowa doesn’t allow them… that always cracks me up
Up here in Canada we call them lawn darts. They were banned years ago, but , you still hear the old folk reminiscing about drunkin bbq’s where someone always tossed a dart and nearly killed someone, or better yet took out an eye.
Good times, good times….
Up here in Canada we call them lawn darts. They were banned years ago, but , you still hear the old folk reminiscing about drunkin bbq’s where someone always tossed a dart and nearly killed someone, or better yet took out an eye.
Good times, good times….
Here in socialist communist fag-loving pinko Canada, we not only control the sale of gun, we control the sale of fireworks. Not beer, though, we sell it on every damn corner, and it has way more booze thatn yours does. Ha!
Oh and speaking for my country, we LOVE you, in a non-sexual gay gay gay kind of way…
damn forgot to spell check. Whoops…
If I were you I wouldnt be apologizing for the typo. I would be apologizing for being a homophobe and apparently proud of it.
Melissa, if I’m not mistaken, Brahm is gay. I think he’s being ironic.
Next time I visit my sister in South Carolina, you want me to hit the anything goes fireworks vendors that decorate the border?
We never had fireworks when I was a kid, I’m deprived like that.
Penny Arcade agrees with you: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/7/4/
I lived in Illinois but had to move just because of the fireworks situation. I mean, if I want to blow a hole in my face I don’t think the state should be allowed to stop me. Anyhow, I’m now in Charlotte, NC. Just a stone’s throw from SOUTH Carolina where I can buy an arsenal of fireworks, a keg of beer, a puppy (just because who doesn’t want a puppy) AND a couple of handguns at my local Target. God Bless America.
ha ha. I live in Canada on the border of 2 provinces. In Ontario fireworks are banned but not in Quebec (where I live). So when Canada day (July 1st) and the 4th of July come aroud there is this flood of Ontario residents crossing the bridge do smuggle fireworks back to Ontario……so much for that ban.
There’s a shop on the PA side of the PA/NJ border that sells fireworks. Because what they’re selling would, technically, be illegal in PA, they won’t sell to anyone claiming to live in PA (I’ve never actually bought from here, but apparently they’ll actually check your license). Now, the fireworks that they sell would be illegal in NJ, and in most states, but it’s out of the sellers’ hands as to where you’re taking them.
I grew up in Illinois, and I used to HATE that you couldn’t get any real fireworks. My dad had a huge garbage bag full of them, like, his hoard, and every 4th we were allowed to take out about five or six of them.
I still remember cherry bombs, which I think are banned everywhere in the U.S. now. No. Not the cherry bombs they sell, I’m talking about the ones people used to flush down toilets and then actually break the toilet with them.
That shit you throw on the ground to make snap really sucks. Sorry about Illinois sucking in the fireworks department.
Where I live now you can probably tie the shit to your car and ram yourself into the building across the way.
They banned fireworks here in St. Lucie county, FL because of a severe drought. Hasn’t stopped anybody because people have been showering the tinder-box neighborhoods with pretty sparks and hot ash for days. I used to be a strong believer in the right to blow shit up willy-nilly, but I have never been a big fan of Darwinian scale ignorance. Just sayin’.
Doesn’t help any that my new primary canine unit, der Beanerschnitzel, is terrified of firecracker pops. It would be okay if folks would confine their celebratory fuse lighting to a couple of hours per night over the holiday weekend, but noooooo. Instead we get a constant barrage for a week, starting just after breakfast and running into the wee hours. It sounds like fucking Beirut at the height of their troubles outside, and I’m probably going to have to take Bean to the vet to get his poor ass uncorked.
You know they’ve outlawed the game Red Rover too. These are crimes against childhood I tell you!
Oh that makes me stabby.
Until recently, you could only buy fireworks in SD 2 days a year if you lived here. If you could prove to be from anywhere except SD… game on. You could buy them whenever a fireworks stand was open (about a month total). We were only interested in increasing burn, death, dismemberment, rates for out-of-staters.
Soon we will be extending the amt of days to sell fireworks here to include New Years because if you’re going to blow some shit up and maybe take out your eye or another person’s eye… what better time to do it than when it’s fcking frigid and the eye can be preserved in a snow bank until the party is over. No one wants to leave a good party.
I’m also from NJ. The first time I saw a fireworks stand I was completely freaked out. I didn’t get that there were places they were actually legal.
My kids take those little Pop It! snappy things apart and roll 3 or 4 of them together in tissue paper. Like a Pop It! blunt.
*ahem
Or so I imagine.
Dear Aunt Becky,
Hahaha! Here in Connecticut they sell fireworks in the GROCERY STORE!! And I have a stash of sparklers I could send you. Hit me up with your address. You have my email.
Love ya! P
[…] recall how deeply offended I was when Illinois banned sparklers, thereby banning fun, which I wrote about angrily a couple of summers ago. Because banning sparklers is […]
Man Illinois are being little bitches dont even let us have fun got stopped by cops twice this is some BULLSHIT !!!!!!
In the town where I lived all fireworks are banned while the town next to mine is sounded like a fucking warzone!!! I hate my stupid retarded asshole town and thier stupid retarded asshole fireworks ban and I hate that stupid town who are taunting us by saying “We have fireworks and you don’t! Neener neener neener!!!”