One Hot Summer Vacation

My blog posts are backlogging; I meant to write last week, but got distracted. Between work, guests, and me simply being lazy, I didn't find the time to find anything interesting to say. But here I am again with a picture that's worth a thousand words.

That was a lot of firework, up in the sky last Tuesday evening. But as I was asked, what makes the sound of the fireworks? Not the loud *BANG*, as that's a bit too late to enjoy the fullness of the explosion of festivities and colors (not colours, further breaking from British ancestry), but rather that screeching whine that you can hear as the fireworks make themselves become airborne.

Obviously there are two kinds of screeching whines fireworks make. Those that are made by the stationary 'fireworks' as a bunch of bored pyromaniacs sit around waiting for the real show to begin, and those made by actual honest fireworks as they're screaming their way across the sky to their final, spectacular destination. I could also comment on the actual *BANG* itself, but since everyone knows that that's the sound of a firework hitting the color-changing (blue to black) ceiling several hundred feet high, forcing it to end its forward momentum and change into a burst of light, I'll instead focus on the former.

Of these two types of screaming, the first is the easiest to explain. Generally these fireworks for the less pyro-licensed sit and spin, causing wind to blow past a whistling mechanism, creating a loud, annoying scream. Boring, I know.

The other scream, on the real fireworks, is much more interesting and fun, as it's the last sound you hear of the firework's pilot elf before he jumps from the doomed craft. Someone's got to pilot those things so they don't crash into the onlooking crowds, and the pay's pretty good.

It's got to be, though, to convince Santa's workforce to take a few days of break so as to get out and /live/. Well, mostly live, anyway.

In other news, there're several openings for tiny woodworkers stationed in the arctic.