i HATE 4th of JULY

Personal fireworks are legal here, so people can set off M80s and bottle rockets outside my windows to their heart's content. There is a curfew of midnight on the 4th, and 11pm on the days preceding, but no one pays attention to it, and the police can't possibly enforce it with the fines because they need the patrols for all the other violent crime crap that goes on around here. So last night, we were bombed until well after 2am, at which time I took a sleep aid. AKA somehow slept through it all, but was up promptly at 5:45am. So obviously, I got very little sleep. And there's at least one more night of this hell, because it takes days for people to settle down and run out of firecrackers. Tonight the shelling will be the worst, which is hard to imagine since last night's was already shaking the walls. An activity that supposedly celebrates freedom, that results in people like me being tortured with days of noise pollution and sleep deprivation, SHOULD BE BANNED, like it is in most other civilized states.