A thousand apologies (Mom) for not blogging yesterday. Sometimes, the mood simply doesn't strike me. I'm not a dancing puppet here, people, I have feelings. I did have a funny thought last night as mortar fire sounded around our home about 9 p.m. Why, every year around this time, do I feel like Bernard Shaw in the Baghdad hotel during the first Gulf War? It even awoke my daughter who contended "the fumies are yucky." Eloquent, simple, death to all fumies. Police and fire departments stress each year that any fireworks that leave the ground are illegal yet my neighborhood is like the Chinese New Year. And any assertions by police that they are going to crack down is purely an idle threat. Not because they don't want to but because our prisons are too crowded with murderers and e-mail spammers to throw in hardened bottle rocket criminals.
So I must heed the words of George Bernard Shaw (the former CNN correspondent's father)"You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race."
