Greetings, conversationalists. Welcome across the fruited plane. It's Eric Erikson here this Friday after the 4th of July.

All my fingers, all my toes still intact. And we shot lots of fireworks. My apologies to those of you who get the vapors over fireworks because your poor dog.

We celebrated the 4th of July as John Adams said we should with illuminations.

You know, by the way, had somebody the other day when I was talking about this say,

illuminations, those were sparklers.

Those were spark.

They didn't make noise back then.

Oh, yes, the hell they did.

We have documentary evidence.

We have history.

We have writings from the time.

Fireworks have been around explosive fireworks for a very long time.

And the founders of this country, when the war was over, shot off a lot of them.

Wasn't just bullets flying through the air as an aside.

So Philip tells me, he went to the local sporting goods store the morning of July 4th. And a young man from a part of our fair city

showed up with base booming in his car, wreaking of marijuana,

got out of the car with eyes so red, everybody could see how bloodshot they were from the weed,

went inside to the local sporting goods store and bought a thousand rounds of ammunition.

And the girls behind the counter said it would be happening all day like that,

instead of fireworks, in that part of the town, they would be firing bullets into the air.

You know, the bullets do come down eventually.

I wonder how many people died or got bullets embedded in their roofs last night in

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