4th of July is here. What will everyone be getting up to tonight?
Tonight? Beer, BBQ, Baseball and blowing shit up. But I celebrate Independence Day as a week long thing with various activities to celebrate what being an American means to me. This is copied and pasted from a blog of mine a few years back that’s become my regular tradition.
I thought about what it means to be an American and what exactly is it that I celebrate when I celebrate the Fourth of July so I’ve compiled a small list of things an American can do to celebrate being lucky enough to be American.
1.) Celebrate freedom of religion by going to church, ideally with my family and/or simply praying and thanking God for the freedoms and liberties I enjoy as an American.
2.) Celebrate having a free press by reading a damn newspaper either local or one of the big ones like the NY Times or such, and writing a letter to the editor on whatever issue of the day strikes me as being important and worth ranting about.
3.) Celebrate my right to redress grievances to my government by writing letters to politicians and representatives and bitching them out over shit that pisses me off.
4.) Shoot shit…celebrate my constitutional right to keep and bear arms by going to the firing range and blasting some poor unsuspecting watermelon all to hell.
5.) Celebrate Capitalism and the American Dream by making a serious effort to shop at small locally owned independent stores and to buy products made by American companies employing American workers whenever possible.
6.) Celebrate Democracy by registering to vote…ideally for a third party, to help give a voice to those who the Dems and Reps don’t truly represent…personally I register Libertarian but anyone other than the big two monopoly is good.
7.) Celebrate and protect my rights of free speech by going out and buying a porno and giving a few bucks to the “Free Speech Coalition” or the “Comic Book Legal Defense Fund” or some other like minded free speech group.
8.) Celebrate some classic Americana culture by getting your closest loved ones together. Play some baseball with friends and family, BBQ…REAL BBQ, thick dripping juicy steaks, greasy burgers and hot dogs made from only God knows what parts of the cow, do it now before the damn hippies outlaw red meat. Of course potato salad and apple pie are musts. Have a stereo blasting some good American rock, Bruce Springsteen, CCR, Van Halen, Aerosmith, Kiss, The Eagles are good choices.
9.) Actually READ the “Declaration of Independence”
10.) Celebrate the 21st amendment by partaking in copious amounts of beer and bourbon…if you can home brew your own beer like me, so much the better, I recommend that next year you start brewing a batch of special brew just for the fourth about three weeks in advance.
11.) Thank the appropriate people by making a donation to “Operation Gratitude” which sends care packages to our men in what I loving refer to as the sandy litterbox of the world. Other veterans charities are just as good, especially those dealing with POW/MIA’s…let’s show them and the world that we don’t forget our own.
Also in line with thanking the appropriate people…find an Englishman and kick the shit out of him for old times sake.
12.) Fireworks…yeah sad how number 12 on MY list is usually the only thing anyone else ever thinks of when they think about the fourth. But hey, I’ll never turn down a chance to make shit go boom.
13.) If you have a wife or girlfriend…have the nastiest, kinkiest most perverted sex you can possibly imagine with her, and if you’re real lucky…a friend of hers as well Because dammit I’m an American and if I want to have nasty whips and chains sex with a woman or two in a tub full of pork and beans while watching midget and donkey porn, then we should be allowed to celebrate my right to privacy in a way that suits us. Hell to really drive shit home I may dress up like Captain America and have a chick dressed up as Wonder Woman and fuck her senseless while she’s tied up in her lasso of truth.