There are a lot of interesting jobs within the federal government, from president to member of Congress to Supreme Court justice.
Yet one little-known job is, to me, the most fascinating: the person who gets to blow up a bunch of mannequins with fireworks. This is, as the Washington Post points out, a real job. It’s meant to produce videos that the US Consumer Product Safety Commission can then use to warn Americans about the dangers of fireworks.
Just check out the 2016 version, in which fireworks are used to blow up watermelons and several mannequins:
Yes, there is an important safety lesson here: According to federal estimates, there are an average of 230 fireworks-related injuries around Fourth of July. These injuries can all be avoided with a bit of common sense — or, better yet, by leaving fireworks to the professionals.
But some of the displays are just absurd and hilarious. (My favorite is at the 5:40 mark, in which a mannequin basically blows up his own house. Poor guy.)
The mannequin videos aren’t even the strangest on the CPSC’s YouTube channel. That goes to … whatever the hell this is, which shows some stick-figure children getting brutally maimed by sparklers:
If you want to see more, there are a lot more videos at the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s YouTube channel. And remember: Be careful out there this Fourth of July.
