Yesterday was Swiss National Day here in Switzerland (duh!), and it was a weekend of random explosions throughout the day and into the night. As I said before, we heard what sounded like a stick of dynamite blowing up at 3:00 a.m. a few nights ago. That was just a precursor to hours and hours of store-bought fireworks going off this past Saturday and yesterday.
Am I just getting old? I think fireworks are dumb. The professional fireworks displays held by cities and towns all over the world are OK, but buying and blowing up store-bought firecrackers is just a plain waste of time and money. Even as a kid, I wasn't that into it. I had friends who would show off their massive hauls of fireworks that they brought back from hillbilly havens like Kentucky, I'd watch them blow off a few, and then I'd just lose interest. This morning, Dominique and I walked with Mrs. TBF to the tram to see her off to work, and the International School of Basel's playground was littered with firecracker trash, beer bottles, etc. Good combination...beer and explosives! Fortunately, I think our aging pets are getting hard of hearing because they didn't seem as bothered by the explosions as much as they were in years past. Hopefully Switzerland will follow the lead of civilized places like Illinois and ban the sale of fireworks in stores. I occasionally heard an ambulance going by with its siren blaring, and I couldn't help but find a demonic modicum of joy in the fact that some drunken knucklehead probably was going to be spending the rest of his/her life sans a finger or two.
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