Saturday, November 04, 2006

Guy Fawkes Night

I know, it has been weeks since I last posted something. I've been lazy and leaving it to Angela; well this is part 1 of 2 for my posts of the week

As you all know November 5th is Guy Fawkes Night (or Bonfire Night as some of you may know it) and, like Britain and South Africa, is celebrated in New Zealand through the use of firework displays and by burning an effigy of Guy Fawkes on a bonfire. For more information on Guy Fawkes Night check it out on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes_Night). Basically this is the annual holiday where people can purchase fireworks and set them off at all hours of the night (sweet as). Yes, just like the 4th of July in the US – technically however the Continental Congress voted to “dissolve the connection” with Britain on July 2nd, 1776 and the document we now know as the official Declaration of Independence is actually the rewrite of what was adopted on July 2nd. Anyway, I digress.

So fireworks currently go on sale 10 days prior to Guy Fawkes. Kiwis don’t spend time setting up separate firework stands; they just sell them in the grocery stores and the dairy’s (NZ name for convenience store). So with my milk and bread, I can also purchase a package full of rockets, cakes, fountains, cones, wheels, skyrockets, missiles, and even the dreaded sparklers that can be used for sheer and utter destruction ($100 buys you a suitcase size full). Example ad: 2 for $70 - Firestorm box, pack contains: Strategic Command, Night Rocket, Bunker Buster, Sonic Boom x 2, Radiation X, Boomer, Sky Light, Blaze, Galaxy 2.

Suffice to say the top news story since the day the fireworks went on sale is about the increase in # of fires started or the youths using them irresponsibly (i.e. shooting them at each other). In one case a firework bomb had been left at an elementary school and the bomb squad had to be called in to defuse it. The current debate is whether or not to ban firework sales completely and just have government sponsored firework shows (sounds great to me). Another option is to change the sale of fireworks to 7 days prior instead of 10 (who came up with this idiotic idea I don’t know but I’m sure that it will help tremendously – yes, the sarcasm is oozing from that last statement). The news continues to run the video of Christchurch youth shooting fireworks at passing cars and each other on the first night of the sale (nice, love those youth here).

Interesting side note on all this. Only a few minutes after Angela and I had researched what this Guy Fawkes Night was about did we watch the movie V for Vendetta (not bad). Turns out the main character is based on Guy Fawkes and he wears a Guy Fawkes mask all the time. Huh, go figure. In sum the movie is about this anarchist who looks to destroy the fascist government (I will say there are a lot of similarities between the government depicted in this movie and the current US administration – let’s hope November 7th is the first step in getting the country back on the right track. I think I’ll call it Patriot Day – I’m sure we probably already have one of these but what the heck).

I think I’ll start going by D...for Destruction.

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