It's fitting that we be treated to the description of a tremendous explosion on July 4th, when Americans everywhere are setting off explosions. It would have been even more fitting had the explosion actually been featured in today's strip, but we're not going to skip ahead in the storyline just to align the BLAM with a particular DATE.

(This raises an interesting question: what does the conversion of half a stellar mass sound like? After all, some sort of matter must be present for the wave-propagation effect that we think of as "sound" to occur. It's possible that the obliterated shell of stellar matter propelled outward by the blast would transmit kinetic energy in a way that could be percieved as noise, but after doing the math we suspect that it would hurt your ears. In fact, it would do so much damage to your hearing that we are inclined to misspell 'deafness' with the substitution of a second 'd' for that wholly unnecessary 'f.')

Hopefully this year's Independence Day celebrations will NOT feature even a SINGLE total-conversion bomb. Happy Birthday, America! Stand back when you light those fuses.