Yay. They actually had fireworks here for it!
I haven't heard fireworks on Guy Fawkes day for YEARS!

Listening to the BBC, they call it “fireworks day” now“…? WTF? I mean, seriously WTF?

It's a shame that many people only know of the 5th of Nov from that V for Vendetta movie and so have a completely incorrect understanding of the meaning of the day and and the chant ”Remember, remember the 5th of November".
-> It's not anti government, it's 100% PRO-government and the state. The 5th is a celebration of the foiling of a Catholic plot to blow up parliament and restore the Catholic monarch to power. Fawkes was killed, along with his co-conspirators and that has been celebrated ever since.

I wish we still burned effigies here, that'd be great. ^_^

-Not that I support or approve of the dark history behind the day, but it is extremely important never to forget it, and the rituals of the day are cool and worth celebrating.

Looks like Occupy Oakland has taken up that theme ;)

Many Americans are celebrating today by withdrawing all their money from majior banks, flipping off the the big chains, and switch to smaller banks and credit unions. I prefer the fireworks and now that I live waaaaay out in the country I could set off some really big, probably illegal ones. Thanks for the idea, Oz. :)

Well, at least the movie made a tiny attempt to explain to people who Guy Hawkes was.

I first heard about Guy Fawkes while I was living in London; the hotel I first worked at had a tiny plaque that was dedicated to him and this day. At first I was weirded out a little by the concept of celebrating a man who almost destroyed their government but eventually realized that it was originally the idea of the king to celebrate this day as a “Gee, I sure am glad that the my mighty King is well and all” day.

V for vendetta takes the idea of the holiday and spins it around. Now that the people were living under a fascistic dictatorship the idea of re-attempting the gunpowder plot becomes very favorable. The original plot was didn't have a loftier goal than that to kill protestant rulers so that Catholicism could take over again. When you look at it like that, they're no better than present day Talibans, willing to kill for their faith. If the conspirators were to take down the second Hitler, all of a sudden the exact same act seems like a good idea.

So yes, V for vendetta has twisted the meaning of this day among the general public. The focus is now on Guy himself and the idea of rebelling against your leaders, rather than the perseverance of the government. It makes allot of sense that this were to happen, though, given the current social settings that we're in. There's allot of people today who's been hurt by the failing economy and and allot of people are unhappy with how their government are handling it.
But of course, you all know this already.

We had to be careful about the tree in our back yard and try not to set it on fire. One already shot up into it and scared the hell out of the magpies living there.
In the end we tried too hard to direct them away and one fell over. It nearly hit my dad as he was coming out of the shed after looking for nails for the catherine wheel. If he'd been one step faster he would've got a glowing green fireball to the leg.
We still have the catherine wheel sitting in the kitchen.