Plead the 4th

There's New Year's, which has turned into a night of drinking and partying to start off the year. There's Halloween, which has turned into a night of sweet-tooth indulging. There's Thanksgiving, which has turned into a fiesta for the fat. There's Christmas, which has turned into a yearly fix for America's spending addiction. However, of all the self-serving holidays a country can have, I think the 4th of July is the worst, not only in terms of how we've twisted the day (we tend to do that) but, more perversely, what birthdays are in general. And I'm not saying this because I didn't get invited to any parties today.

Now, most of you who know me well understand that I have a general distaste for birthdays. I don't mean that I like bashing on birthday bashes or being a killjoy or anything like that. If anything, I love celebrating friends' birthdays as an appreciation of having them as a friend. I do not subscribe to the idea, however, that birthdays are someone's "special day" so that they can get whatever they want, that they are somehow "entitled" to special privileges not normally given to them on any other day.

No, birthdays are a day to celebrate your presence on Earth, not your command of it. It's self-serving even to assume that somehow your birthday is any better than any other day, because everyday is someone's birthday. I don't mind giving you a gift, but I hate people who say shit like, "But it's my birthday," or "C'mon, not even on my birthday?" because it just shows their immaturity and their obsession with themselves.

A wise comedian once said, "There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age 11."

And thus, that leads me to the the 4th of July, which is the birthday of our obviously fine, fine country.

Don't get me wrong, I love birthdays as fine reminders of our lives and the beauty if life in general, and I definitely love our country, the wealthiest and arguably most driven in the world (both in terms of motivation and number of cars per capita). But I think all this celebrating, these parties, fireworks, sales, advertising and all this crap is just so excessive. We don't need to waste literally millions and millions of dollars on a day about ourselves. That's just self-serving and interestingly, very stereotypically American.

And I don't think a country this great should be about that. I don't have any alternative ideas for celebrating, but using our birthday as a ticket to the shitshow, as an excuse to get drunk and vomit all over our birthday selves is just pure narcissism and vainglory.

In addition, I hate fireworks. They are literally exploding goddamn lights in the goddamn sky. I have glow-in-the-dark stickers on my ceiling, and they light up at night. Is there anything fucking special about that?

AND THEY'RE THE SAME THING EVERY GODDAMN YEAR! It's just lights of different colors and shapes in the sky! WTF?! Is it so novel, so amazing that you have to clog up highways and crowd random areas to watch it? We spend more time looking and finding places to sit than actually seeing the damn show itself.

It's just frustrating to see so much fuss made over something so trivial on a day where we are supposed to be celebrating our country's birth. Instead we strategically place lines in our speeches thanking "for our freedoms" and "for the men and women fighting overseas." Do you know what the American troops are doing today? They're freaking marching in Afghanistan in the fucking desert while we get drunk and throw our pool parties.

The 4th of July is easily the worst of the holidays, in my opinion. Not that the other ones are much better in their perversity. "There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age 11." We should have stopped with the celebrating in 17goddamn87.