4th of July pic from Wikipedia

4th of July / Independence day… a day where 234 years ago we told the Brits to suck it. It doesn’t seem to mean that much as a holiday these days.  Most holidays don’t seem to mean that much. This one is an excuse to play with fireworks – or break the law in certain areas to get the fireworks – over eat BBQ food, get drunk, and occasionally catch an orchestra.

This year I’m in the middle of a health kick, so I don’t care about the BBQ food.  In La Jolla, it was cold today, so I didn’t feel like taking people up on their beach BBQ offers.  For some reason I was really tired, so slept a lot during the day (my neck still hurts, and my head’s a bit foggy.  Glad it’s my day off P90x).  I did walk outside to watch the fireworks for a few minutes, then yawned and walked back in.

Why? Because in 2007 I ate shrooms at Burning Man, and watched a (literally) 1,000 foot fireball come out of an oil derrik, followed by probably about 40 minutes of the most amazing fireworks I’ve ever seen!  Since then, nothing compares.  These were not the skimpy one firework at a time stream that you see in most fireworks show… these were hundreds of them at a time…. the sky was filled with them!  Like most things at Burning Man, these were done by artists who put everything into it… and probably didn’t have nearly as many fire-safety ordinances as most cities.

This year’s fireworks sounded about the same to me as a bag of popcorn getting ready in the microwave.  I went inside to hang with Webber, whom I was informed ahead of time hates fireworks.

I just don’t feel this holiday anymore. This year, to celeebrate independence, the United States has decided to pass a new law that suspends the 1st ammendment.  Yup, media is not allowed to get near anything having to do with the oil spill.  The United States of BP will now arrest you if you try to show the world how they’re killing the planet.

That pisses me off, and not just because I’m a photographer, but because this proves some more that the United States has gone from claiming independence from Brittain to becoming the world’s biggest bully.  I’m not going to blog about the middle east bullying for oil.  Seems a lot of it has to do with oil, eh?

This site has a good article on the new rule.  As far as where things are going, 1984 (a reference to the book by Orwell, not the year before I came to the USA)…. Big Brother Is Watching…. the government in Orwell’s book figured that if you control men’s minds, you control the truth.

You can listen to 1984 for free at this site: http://www.archive.org/details/George-Orwell-1984-Audio-book

There was a bill just passed by the Senate Committee… the thing we call the “Internet Kill Switch” (Google it)- which lets the government decide when and how to turn off the internet… but now passes the power from the president’s hands, to a committee’s hands as well.

Photographers and journalists (and anyone else) are not allowed anywhere near the BP “cleanup”…. that’s a semi media blackout… but that bill as far as I’m concerned will probably pass, and let the government shut down blogs that feature footage that wasn’t supposed to get out.

What I’m wondering is why people aren’t using the equipment that was used to make Discovery Channel’s Planet Earth – This is one of the clips that talks about it.  Sure… it’s expensive, and the coast guard may try to arrest you or crash your chopper into the water, where no one will know the wiser, and the oil that leaks from your wrecked chopper is nominal compared to the non-stop mileage of oil that BP’s unleashed… but… if you do succeed– which you can certainly do at a larger distance than 65 feet (can you believe they originally wanted 300 feet?) — you’ll capture amazing footage of all the oil-soaked birds, etc….

I can (and often do) write for hours… so, I’m actuallly going to stop now, and go work on my book instead.

My points though for tonight’s post:

1. If you have something that’s too good and rare, it will destroy normal moments for you (i.e.  fireworks are now lame after the fireworks at Burning Man)
2. BBQ tends to be bad for your health… I still love it though, so the best way to stay healthy is to not to put yourself in situations where you’re surrounded by what causes your problems (i.e. if you’re a drug addict, don’t go to a rave, or your dealer’s house)
3. Independence day seems like a joke these days, because we are heading towards a complete lack of freedom…. but enjoy your 3-day holiday weekend!

Small add-on:  Since I offered a link to 1984 for free (yes, I post on Facebook / Twitter WHILE I write blog posts), someone gave me this fun piece of conspiracy theory, The Obama Deception.  It’s been a little while since I watched a good conspiracy film, and how can you not believe everything they say with those awesome narrators they have, and that awesome background footage…. and perhaps also that much if not all of it makes sense.