You know it's gonna be a good New Year when you wake up reeking of gunpowder. As faithful readers of this Livejournal know, last year I threw a small indoor (more or less) fireworks party. Electrical initiation of fireworks, if done right, is fairly reliable in all weather and easily done from the comfort of a cozy apartment. Amsterdam's winter weather is wildly unpredictable, and this year was no different. Friday night's (30th) blizzard was a memory by Saturday, which was warmer with scattered showers (but amazingly it cleared up by Saturday night). My place is two stories up and my guests are too lazy to go outside to shoot fireworks.

It starts off quietly enough. The gentleman on the right plays his own songs, and they're quite good. He also gives free massages.



Two blasting machines this year. The smaller one is easier to pass around (see further down). Note the champagne. Low explosives go better with champagne cocktails than with whisky (see last year).



Fire in the hole! Zrandom gets first blast, while Ratagosk and S. look on. Check it out--one firecracker was embedded through the cardboard like in that photo of a palm tree speared by a 2x4 by a hurricane.

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From a supermarket in Chinatown, Chinese lanterns suitable for stuffing with firecrackers. The one on the left almost comes apart, but the one on the right holds 500 crackers and is perfect for the countdown to 2006. I so wanted to use a piñata that I'd found on the street in Houston, but I couldn't get it back here.


WRONG........................................................RIGHT


S. has the honor of doing the New Year's Blast as L. (my housemate) and Zarathoestra raise a toast. 10...9...8...u.s.w.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

My friend E. moved to the Hague a few years ago, and now looks disturbingly like Johannes de Wit, who was killed there by a royalist mob in the Disaster Year 1672. He works in IT.



S. and I are about to set off a Daisycutter (1000 firecrackers):



Group photo. Stripey Girl (J.) likes blowing up ugly buildings and gas-guzzling cars (like yellow Hummer H2s):




Zrandom just likes to blow up everything, and gets an extra shot for enthusiasm. Also, some other pictures didn't come out. This year, in addition to hanging a rope from the hook on the roof, I attached a little platform to the window ledge. Note bottle that was taped to it for rockets.




Unidentified guest, from Baden-Wurttemberg:




The aftermath...




Got-DAMN that was FUN!! Everything blowed up real good!


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BORING STUFF

Lessons learned:

Construction. That shelf on the windowsill took about 10 minutes to install, and it saved my ass. I didn't have time to wire up the the fuzes (flashbulbs) in advance like last year, and I found that under stress conditions (room full of guests, booze, dim lighting) wiring the fireworks and tying them to a dangling rope while leaning out a window was damn near impossible. A deck with a plastic bottle taped to it greatly expands one's options. Even so, I had to be careful to avoid bombarding the big mosque across and half a block up the street. Shocking bad form.

Wiring. Alligator clips. Smaller ones gripped the flashbulb wires better, but bigger ones were more likely to survive multiple firings. Actually, the wires on the smaller clips failed. I'd made two cables--one of telephone wires and one of speaker wires--and only the latter survived. Small flashbulbs lit fuses more reliably than the big ones did. Fireworks with smaller fuses ignited more reliably than those with big ones.

Choice of fireworks. Two years in, firecracker strings, medium-sized rockets and fountains win over the others. Simplest is always best. You can stuff a string of fireworks or a fountain inside a piñata, Chinese lantern (QED) or other photogenically explodable object, in place of elaborate and expensive fireworks (some with bigger fuses) that don't fire very rapidly.

Choice of drink. For the most part, I emphasized white wine and champagne cocktails over hard liquor (that includes myself). It was more expensive, but safer. I had a few myself, just to calm down a bit.

Thanks to these factors, both my production and success rates improved from last year, from 3 infernal devices out of 5 in 4 hours, to at least a dozen (out of maybe 15) in that time. Most of the misfires were because I worked in the dark.

How (or whether) this model is applicable to your city, state, city-state, breakaway republic, people's republic, neutral zone, temporary autonomous zone or autonomous oblast is up to you. Most readers will opt for the countryside, absent brushfire conditions (Texas, Oklahoma, California, Australia). If so, mind the caveat about drinks, let alone hard or soft drugs. See Poisonous Junk, Stuff That Blows Up, and Large, Dangerous Things That Go Fast, a classic essay by P. J. O'Rourke, from National Lampoon's Technology issue (March 1977). (Damn, P.J. was funny once; alas, like Dennis Miller later, he went over to the dark side.)

And, of course, all disclaimers apply. I take no responsibility for you readers, and seldom take responsibility for myself.

Dedicated to the late Hunter S. Thompson and P.J. O'Rourke (before he became a Republican Party Reptile.)