All fireworks pretty much suck, actually

When I started to read this Slate article, I thought Troy Patterson was a kindred spirit.

Even if you manage to avoid actually looking at their meaningless nonsense—which is essentially the same nonsense, show after show, year after year—their noise will disturb what should have been a pleasant lack of consciousness. Do we not have an unalienable right to be left alone?

But then, I learn Troy is only bothered when people are disturbed by professional fireworks.

Let me be clear: I have no truck with firecrackers or bottle rockets or Roman candles or anything else that one might set off in one's cousins' backyard. Those are pretty fun, especially if you happen to be in any of the magnificent 50 states where that particular type is banned by law at that particular moment. Doing dangerous stuff in your cousin's backyard is an important element of American folk culture. Those firecrackers are handsomely humble.

Troy wants to show himself to be a true man of the people, I guess. But I would rather be bothered once a year by boring professional fireworks than every weekend by people who see rural areas as their own private noise dump.