Fourth of July rant
Fourth of July, Independence Day in the US, is a week away and already there's an asshole in our neighborhood lighting off explosions at various times of the night, from about ten in the evening to about two in the morning. Suddenly a bunch of small pops like a string of firecrackers, followed a minute or two later by a huge, window-rattling boom that feels like it's right over the house, with a following shower of incandescent stuff that sounds like loud radio static for a few seconds. I can visualize the raining sparks. I wish there were a way I could find the asshole and punch him several times after telling him to fcking stop the juvenile bullsh!t.
Every year. Fourth of July and New Years. It'll go on like this until well past the fourth. There are at least two other places, I think judging by the direction, residences within earshot, that light off similar barrages, but without the one big one that sounds like it's coming through the roof. Every time one of those happens, it jerks me out of my night-time revery, and the dogs and cats act like it's the end of the world. What I feel like doing, besides giving the asshole some wall-to-wall counseling, is to go outside right after and yell ASSHOLE as loud as I can. Punctuate his unlawful activity with that one word judgement. Let him and all his neighbors know my irritation. It's frustrating because of course I can't do that. And even if I were to do that and somehow get past my Wife, it prolly wouldn't stop the jerk.
It's bad enough that we live within earshot of a minor league baseball park, home of the River Cats, a farm team for the Oakland A's, that has a regular fireworks show after games. It's not so close but I can definitely tell it's the ballpark, and it goes on non-stop for at least twenty minutes.
Besides disturbing my peace and upsetting the pets, the illegal ones are a real fire danger, and in this time of extreme drought and record high temperatures, anywhere, even residential neighborhoods with canopies of green trees, are tinder ready to become instant wildfire. The kinds of fireworks that shoot up in the sky land somewhere, and if it happens to be my roof, or a neigbor's, at two in the a.m. we could very well wake up in the dark to a burning house. We have been having the hot dry winds here, as well, and it doesn't have to be in the forest or the woods or a rural area for a fire to quickly escape and turn devastatingly large.
I remember reading about a phone app that some municipalities use, you can download, to use to report the explosions to the local cops, who can then use the reports to triangulate and locate the source, but when I searched, there doesn't seem to be one for my area. I feel like the local cops are probably unlikely to investigate, let alone do anything, and I even have the unfounded suspicion that the assbite doing it actually is a cop.
Another thing that would be fun, but is strictly a revenge fantasy, would be to find out who it is and then go to his house at a time when he's likely to be involved in something other than making explosions, like having family time, watching the big game, or sleeping, and do a couple on his front porch or next to his bedroom window.
If this stuff had started happening a week ago when my Wife was out of town I'd've been inclined to go out and wait in the dark to follow the sounds to the source. But She'd come unglued and lecture me no end if I did. When I was a kid, my Old Man used to refer to Mom as 'the federal cops,' or just 'the feds.' Now I understand why.
Give me a break. She came home from Her junket last week with covid, and now I'm positive, too. They don't tell you one of the symptoms is an enlarged tendancy to impatience and irritation. It's a good thing, I guess, that my doc has me on a med to help with that.
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