Ah yes, fall. The season when it gets cold and everything dies. Why essentially everyone loves this miserable season is beyond me. The top 18 reasons fall is the absolute worst, in no particular order, are:
1. Summer Has Abandoned Us
First and foremost, fall means that summer is over, which means it’s the end of everything good in life. Basking in the sunshine, days spent at the beach, lazing in the park, flip-flops and tank tops, kayaking, ice cream trucks, runs through the playground sprinkler, outdoor drinking, outdoor concerts, outdoor movies, outdoor exercise. These magical things are gone for nine months, which means that everything in the whole world is now terrible.
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2. Autumn Leaves Are Just Dead Crap On The Ground
People love looking at leaves, hearing them crunch underfoot, throwing them up in the air and watching them swirl back to the cold ground. Sure they’re pretty, but that doesn’t make them any less dead. Hordes of people flock to the Berkshires, Adirondacks, and other outdoorsy autumnal spots to observe leafy specimens in their death acts. Morbid. Plus, I’ve never understood raking leaves; they’re biodegradable.
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3. Apple Orchards Are a Damn Ripoff
The average amount of time one spends waiting in a line of traffic to enter the parking lot of an apple orchard is 97 minutes (this statistic based on the average amount of time I spent waiting in a line of traffic to enter an orchard this year). Not only that, but show up any time after the first weekend of Apple Season (whenever that is) and all of your waiting has been in vain; all the good apples are gone and only the wormy, rotten ones are left for your pies and turnovers. If you want to watch adorable couples in flannel swooning all over each other, by all means head to an orchard. Otherwise, I advise hitting up your local C-Town for all your apple needs.
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4. The Annual Mocking Of The Single People
October is when summer flings evolve into fall romances. As the weather gets cold, annoyingly adorable fledgling couples cozy up to each other in a concerted rebellion against single folk. Apple orchards are full of these specimens (see #3), holding hands and frolicking through the trees. Unless you’re an active participant in one of these relationships, it probably makes you want to pick apples just to have something to chuck at their heads. Get ready for the onslaught of obnoxious couples’ costumes that will emerge on Halloween, the his and hers M&Ms, the Batmen and Catwomen, the matching hippies. It’s been balmly for half of October and I’ve still seen too many couples in matching sweaters.
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5. Halloween Decorations More Grisly Than Frightening
A little holiday flair is nice, but so many over-zealous revelers go overboard that last week a dead body hanging from a fence was mistaken for a Halloween display. In 2013, a house on Bergen Street’s dismembered baby dolls covered in fake blood, hanging from trees and stabbed with butcher knives made children cry. Whatever happened to a cartoon skeleton gracing the front door or a quaint jack-o-lantern garland?
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6. Saying “Punkin” Unironically
One of the worst bastardizations of the English language. Just don’t. Please and thank you.
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7. Ear-Bleeding Halloween “Music”
It’s not real music. Thriller gets a free pass, but even that gets tiresome by October 4th. Monster Mash, Purple People Eater… sure, they’re fun, but Halloween is not a holiday that requires caroling, especially particularly disgraceful tripe like The Little Old Lady from Transylvania. Furthermore, a collection of creepy sounds like creaking doors and cackling witches does not a Halloween soundtrack make. If it’s a soundtrack you want, stick to Rocky Horror, please.
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8. Pumpkin Carving Tragedies
You will inevitably slice yourself with the carving knife at least once. And the finished product never looks like the masterpiece you envisioned.
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9. Pumpkin-spiced Madness
It seems like every year we got more crap trying to jump on the the pumpkin spice craze. Take Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Pie Spice Cookie Butter, for example, or Pumpkin Spice Candy Kale. Stop the madness! Might as well go ahead and pick up some snake oil while you’re out.
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10. Baseball Enters The Bottom Of The Ninth
Everyone is excited now, while the World Series is in full swing and the Mets are in it, but a week from now it will all end. Even if the Mets win, devastation will surround us as we realize there will be no more baseball until 2016 and we’ll be stuck watching that shitshow known as football until spring training.
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11. You’ll Never Escape That Corn Maze
Some corn mazes are fairly simple, others encompass over 50 acres of corn stalks. In these larger mazes, individuals have been known to call 911 because they are lost and terrified of wandering the endless stalks until death mercifully takes them under her comforting wing. Death by corn maze is undoubtedly the second worst corn-related death (see 1985 film Witness for the first worst way to suffer death-by-corn).
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12. Shorter Days And Sadder Nights
Everyone has at least a little Seasonal Affective Disorder when the days get shorter, and it’s no coincidence that the acronym for that affliction is SAD. It’s tough to deal when it’s dark as you go to work and dark when you leave work. Vitamin D levels plummet, and if your office lacks windows, it’s easy to forget what sunlight is. Sunlamps are astronomically expensive, so the fact that I cannot afford one depresses me even more. Dark days, both figuratively and literally, indeed.
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13. The Icy Tears of Jesus (aka, Cold Rain)
With the cold comes the even worse and more feared cold rain. These rains are not your adorable spring showers, they are not cause to pull on the ole wellies and hop amid the puddles. These rains are cold and brutal and umbrellas do no good as the wind whips freezing pellets into your numb face. Then it turns to sleet, because it’s not quite cold enough yet for a beautiful, peaceful snowfall.
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14. Layers Of Bullshit, or What Do I Wear?
How to dress for these vast differences in temperature? It’s 45 degrees when I leave my house in the morning, 55 degrees when I step out for lunch, and 65 by the time I leave for the day. There is a fine art to successful layering, and I’ve been trying for over 30 years to master it. It’s impossible to dress for a 20+ degree temperature hike throughout the day unless you leave the house in a snowsuit and pack a tee shirt and cut-offs in your tote.
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15. Blessed Time With Family
Holidays are times for families to gather and give thanks for their loved ones, like Aunt Cheek Pincher and Uncle Kinda Creepy. Unlike the rest of the year when you are able to surround yourself with only the relatives you like, holiday reunions include everyone, from the third cousin who’s out on parole, to the guy who shows up every year, even though no one really knows how he’s related. The current political climate will make this year’s familial festivities extra fun, especially when your conservative uncle refuses to eat dinner without his AR-15 strapped to his back, because “there’s nothing wrong with exercising your constitutional rights.” Get ready to explain to 17 different people why you’re still single! How to convince these cherished family members that your invitation must have gotten lost in the mail again?
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16. Eating Until You Feel Like John Hurt a la Alien
‘Tis the season for overeating! Halloween candy and Thanksgiving dinner. Delicious, yet lethal. Not to mention the over-abundance of delicious treats like apple cider doughnuts, pumpkin pie, caramel apples… Get ready to put on 15 pounds in preparation for the inevitable New Year’s resolution to eat healthier and finally get in shape.
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17. It’s (Static) Electric
It’s now that time of the year when I can’t pet my cat without static electricity attacking and totally freaking him out. Every doorknob, every lightswitch is a potential enemy, a spark waiting to fly. This uncomfortable phenomenon strikes millions of times a season and never becomes less, ahem, shocking.
18. Turducken
The chicken inside a duck inside a turkey is a staple of some Thanksgiving meals. I love meat, but that’s an atrocity.
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In the proud tradition of meaningless listicles, here is my meaningless contrary comment:
1. Summer Has Abandoned Us
The end of flop sweat, garbage stink, and the fake enthusiasm of “oh my god, it’s summer, selfies, guys!”
2. Autumn Leaves Are Just Dead Crap On The Ground
Foliage and the resulting scraps are the most beautiful and ubiquitous evidence of life’s finite nature.
3. Apple Orchards Are a Damn Ripoff
Don’t go during peak times, or try to go to an orchard farther from the city. Also, those CTown apples were picked off the branch green in August.
4. The Annual Mocking Of The Single People
This seems like a year-round thing, not sure why fall is the worst offender.
5. Halloween Decorations More Grisly Than Frightening
Do you even Halloween? You get 51 weeks to avoid mortality and fear, a few decorations are fine.
6. Saying “Punkin” Unironically
Well, that seems like the fault of our flawed educational system, and not the season itself.
7. Ear-Bleeding Halloween “Music”
Ok, that’s fair. But where are you hanging out that you hear novelty Halloween music this much?
8. Pumpkin Carving Tragedies
No one has ever died carving a pumpkin.
9. Pumpkin-spiced Madness
This one is fair.
10. Baseball Enters The Bottom Of The Ninth
One the reasons I love fall; only baseball games that matter are held, and they are quickly over.
11. You’ll Never Escape That Corn Maze
Anyone who gets lost in a corn maze deserves it.
12. Shorter Days And Sadder Nights
Sunlamps are actually not expensive anymore (many models are below $60), and you can even get full-spectrum CFL bulbs. Also, take the time to get sunlight during the day, c’mon.
13. The Icy Tears of Jesus (aka, Cold Rain)
This is some serious selective memory. Most spring rain is cold as hell, and dramatically worse.
14. Layers Of Bullshit, or What Do I Wear?
If it’s taken you 30 years to master layering, you were never going to get it anyway.
15. Blessed Time With Family
Again, fall is not responsible for your gene pool or your years of poor relationships. And the fact that you only see them in fall is also on you.
16. Eating Until You Feel Like John Hurt a la Alien
Fall is not force-feeding anyone. Cold is actually proven to increase your metabolic rates, if you get outside.
17. It’s (Static) Electric
http://www.wikihow.com/Remove-Static-Electricity
18. Turducken
To be fair, all industrial meat is an atrocity. And your beloved summer is meat season.
Have a great fall!
This is the best comment ever on Brokelyn. Thank you, Marcin.
This filled my heart with a deep and powerful rage.