On Independence Days, rockets, bizarre tales

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I hope every one of you readers had a safe and enjoyable July 4 celebration. It’s obvious that in Aurora, we love to celebrate Independence Day because the M80s start blasting in the evenings in early February and continue into late January.

Some time back I’d written how, as young and stupid kids, we used to enjoy chasing each other all over the block with roman candles and bottle rockets, having wars and pretending we were Audie Murphy blowing away Nazis and discovering which kids would burst into flame, or have their hair catch fire first. As the basic Law of Nature proclaims, it was “Survival of the fittest.”

We did it in spite of the fact that Thomas Paine’s pamphlet “Common Sense” published in 1776, among other revolutionary sentiments, warned against adolescents shooting roman candles and bottle rockets at their friends. If the government hadn’t intervened with its oppressive, intrusive, rules, many of us would still be doing it today. I put the blame squarely on Paine. Becoming old enough to drink beer had something to do with it. But the government did stick its big red-white-and-blue nose in to let us know that we’d have to wait a few years to get drafted into the Army and blow away only the people deemed worthy of destruction by Uncle Sam.

If nothing else, it’s still fun to watch fireworks and sing patriotic Fourth of July songs such as, “America the Beautiful,” “This Land is Your Land,” “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “Eve of Destruction,” and “A Bottle Rocket Up My Nose.”

Fifty years after the July 4, 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson each celebrated the 1826 Fourth of July in their own way by dying. Not to be upstaged, five years later, James Monroe did the same thing. Coincidence? The ultimate publicity stunt that could only be performed once? Too much high fructose corn syrup? I don’t think so.

If you’ve been following the incontrovertible facts presented by U.S. representative. Jim Jordan to the Department of Justice then unceremoniously tossed out as doo-doo by the same, their deaths were most likely caused by Italian space lasers. Jim Jordan is living proof of what can happen when, as a youth, you wrestle without protective headgear. His lasagna lasers should not be confused with the Jewish space lasers discovered by U.S. representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Not only were her matzo lasers responsible for the wildfires of the recent past, but for Chevy Corvairs mysteriously fishtailing off the roads in the 1960s. Sorry, Ralph Nader.

Speaking of fireworks, cherry bombs are starting to go off in the Trump organization and they’re not the fireworks used for celebrating an election victory in the alternate reality in which he lives. The karma fuse has been lighted at the bottom of the Trump Corporation, intent on engulfing Donald Trump family members in karma fireworks. As the fuse burns shorter on its journey upward, it’s igniting sparklers, sky rockets and increasingly deadly incendiary devices such as mortars along the way to the top, where the twice-impeached, disgraced, habitually-lying, hypocritical, unscrupulous, immoral adulterer, and accused-molester-of-twenty-seven-women-former-president sits on top his Florida throne, endlessly whining about an election stolen from him (only in what’s left of his own mind) nearly nine months ago. But have faith all of you worshippers burning incense at the altar of the Mar-A-Lago Miscreant; August is fast approaching. Forget that previously predicted resurrection date of March 4 that never happened. This one’s for real.

On one of those 31 days in that month, your Fearless Leader is scheduled to return to his proper place as the grand poobah of our country and right all the horrible wrongs, such as more jobs, improving economy, rising stock market, declining COVID infection numbers, respect from our world allies, with which we Americans have been burdened since Joe Biden was sworn in as president. In an ironic coincidence, August is the month noted in my calendar when monkeys fly out of my butt.

Let’s see which happens first.

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