Showing posts with label autumn week. Show all posts
Showing posts with label autumn week. Show all posts

Jumping into a Pile of Leaves Should be Against the Law!

By Jake 

While One Year in Texas's world-famous autumn themed week may be over, there are still many great topics that have yet to be discussed and the season itself is far from over. For instance, nobody wrote an article about the hot new fall TV line-up, which is nearly tragic in my opinion. Yet, I am not here to talk about which shows I give cheers or jeers to. I am going to write about something much more serious: jumping into piles of leaves.

The question I am here to answer is simple: should jumping into a pile of leaves (which you did not yourself rake) be a federal crime? After scouring through endless amounts of academic literature, I believe I am finally able to give a definite answer: yes, it should be punishable with a minimum of three days in jail. Not a harsh punishment by today's standards, but tough enough to get the message across.

The scenario is as old as leaves and rakes themselves. Leaves are raked into a pile, you turn your back to get a bag to properly dispose of them and when you turn around there is a child in mid-air about to cannonball into your neat pile of foliage. Then with a mighty crinkling, the leaves are once again scattered about your lawn. All of that work and what do you have to show for it? Nothing but crippling back pain and a stress-induced heart attack. This is the reason this oft overlooked crime needs to be met with a more severe punishment than chasing the neighborhood children around while waving a broom. What are you going to do with the broom anyway? It is not a weapon.

I have already told you my proposal for a punishment, but perhaps I should elaborate in order to pad this article a little. Who writes an article with only three paragraphs anyway? Not me, that's for sure. While spending three days in jail seems harsh to an adult who has been enjoying the mouth-wateringly fruity taste of freedom for decades, a young hooligan (and let's call a spade a spade, these children are nothing but common street thugs) has barely experienced even a grocery market free sample sized taste of freedom. They will probably meet the punishment with a snippy remark like "I can do three days in jail standing on my head, grandpa." Being only 27 years old, this is a very offensive name to be called and may send you into a rage induced frenzy. You can use this extra energy to clean the garage like your wife has been nagging you about for the past several months. This is called positive redirection and a street urchin like our leaf jumping antagonist knows nothing about it. They are pure scum.

Sure, there are some precautionary measures one can take to insure that their pile of leaves remain piled and not jumped upon or scattered about. But why should we, the taxpaying Christian citizens of America, have to lower ourselves to hiring an armed guard to stand watch or installing an electrified fence around our leaf piles. We already have to lock our doors to prevent bears or rapists from coming into our houses and eating our cereal or raping us, respectively. Do we really need all of this hassle? I am sick and tired of having to lock my door and I'm exhausted from raking my leaves for hours on end, then re-raking them when some snot-nosed little dickhead needs to have a playdate with my perfectly constucted heap of leaves. Please call your senator and tell them to pass this law immediately or you will be sending them your leaves and they can deal with this

Debate: What is the Better Name of This Season: Fall or Autumn?

By Jake & Glenn 

In this controversial debate, Glenn and Jake try to figure out which name for the currently occuring season is more fitting: fall or autumn. If it turns out to be fall then Jake has promised to eat a pile of dead bees (stingers removed). If autumn turns out to be the winner, then Glenn has vowed to streak at the most inappropriate place: a Ray Stevens concert while he is singing his hit song “The Streak.”

Jake: This is an exceedingly intriguing topic to me. On one hand you have ‘fall,’ the classic and shorter name for this season. If you are in a hurry, then you are probably a fall person. Yet, ‘autumn’ wreaks of pure class. When ‘autumn’ leaves my lips or enters my earholes, I imagine those awful Grey Poupon commercials from the 90s. I would bet $50,000 that they took place in autumn. Those commercials are the classiest thing I can think of, and I doubt our readers can name anything classier. When I hear ‘fall’ I immediately think of the TV show Lassie, because every episode was about Timmy falling down a well. Fall is just a dangerous name. It is frightening. I would not ever say it around children or easily-startled adults. Fall is something a high school drop out would say while they are shooting heroin into the vein under their tongue. Fall is something you would hear in an Adam Sandler movie. Autumn is what Jane Austen, Robert Frost and Judy Tenuta call it. If it is good enough for Tenuta then it is good enough for me.

Glenn: This is not a very intriguing topic to me. I see my opponent putting on some big time pretenses, not unlike a high minded “coffee party.” Yes, “autumn” is very distinguished and yes “fall” is a word so low brow and crass it belongs at a tea party rally. But there are other ways to refine the English language beyond what we learned in our Masters English programs. Call me a simpleton, but I like using Fall because it’s so simple. Leaves fall and so we name a season as such. It’s the same reason we use the term Spring (when we “spring forward” with daylight savings time). Or the same reason I say “back pain” after a long shift at the textiles plant. Just think about that. We named a part of the body the “back” because it’s on your back side. If that’s okay, then calling this season fall surely is.

Jake: I do not think that it is incorrect to call the season ‘fall,’ I just find it to be uncouth. I am into the finer things in life: caviar, pine scent, fois gras, Volvos and the complete series of Frasier on DVD. If I wanted to seem like a common man, I would go around saying ‘fall’ and ‘ain’t’ like Joe Sixpack. I do not want to come off like a peon, but Glenn does. Glenn watched too many Jerry “The King” Lawler interviews growing up and began to believe Lawler’s declaration of the audience as his peons to be more than just a way to get cheap heat. I never bought into the hype. Jerry Lawler is not even a king, he’s just a human like the rest of us, and like all humans, he must choose whether to call this season autumn of fall. Autumn is an amazing season where leaves change color and the weather cools. Fall is a horrible season where everything is dying and slowly decomposing before it begins to snow and we all freeze to death. I want to jump into a pile of leaves in ‘autumn,’ but I do not want to fall into the open grave that is the season ‘fall.’

Glenn: How dare you compare me to Jerry Lawler. I haven’t been this offended since you compared me to Larry King. When I think of fall, I think of leaves falling and how can leaves turn into a pile WITHOUT falling? They can’t. Also, “Autumn” is the name of a 2009 movie about a virus that kills millions and the post-apocalyptic landscape that remains. That’s not my idea of a nice October day. I hate to bring baseball into this, but the World Series is called the “Fall Classic.” There is no autumn classic and if there was, it would be something held deep within the secret society of our nation’s ivy league schools. I’m talking about places like Skull & Bones, where they rape first year students as an initiation rite. That’s not my idea of a nice October day.

Jake: Nothing is your idea of a nice October day. You seem to be down on October days and I, for one, cannot stand to hear any more autumn bashing from the likes of you. I have had plenty of nice days in October and until you started dragging its name through the mud, this was one of them. Fuck baseball. Autumn is a time when pals carve faces into pumpkins and display them until they are rotting and smell worse than Roseanne’s body odor. Fall is a time where your chums get into a collision with a drunk driver and die clawing at the window as the car is engulfed in flames. The only calming thought about that is that they died of suffocation and not from being burned alive. If that is your idea of a nice fall day, then you disgust me. Fall is a time when horrible new reality shows take over the television airwaves. In autumn, you walk hand-in-hand with your best girl, wearing sweaters, and sit under a tree and neck. In fall your girlfriend is murdered at an interstate rest stop.

Glenn: I hate to bring up obscure websites I find while looking up speculum videos, but just take a look at this. Called “An Autumn Day” this represents everything I hate about Autumn. The embedded midi background, the Tripod hosting, and the tacit defense of the Armenian Genocide (silence is acceptance). That is what Autumn has always felt like to me: an obnoxious, poorly designed Tripod website. It’s not as if Fall is so fancy - though the alliteration makes it appropriate - but rather that Fall gives you what you need and nothing more. When I think of Fall I think of Fall Brawl: Wargames, the famous WCW pay-per-view. I also think of The Fall, my favorite post-punk group from Manchester besides Oasis. These are great memories of my childhood, growing up in small town Illinois, listening to the Fall on my headphones on my way to rent Fall Brawl from the video store on a brisk Autumn day. Don’t take that away from me.

My Autumn Article

By Jake 

When I first heard that One Year in Texas was going to do an Autumn-themed week I spit coffee all over the place. I usually do not drink coffee and I thought it was rootbeer, and the bitter taste made me expell the hot liquid. I was actually solidly behind the theme week idea. My first thought was to write a letter to fall. That will really rile up the turkeys and squares, I thought. Seeing as turkeys and squares make up a large percentage of our audience I thought better of it.

So, here I am still at a loss. I'm supposed to write about autumn, but my seasonal depression is making it hard for me to completely concentrate. I'm too busy trying to learn how to tie a noose and remember which way you slit your wrist is it up or across? Okay, all suicide jokes aside, I am just having a hard time getting ahold of a solid autumn idea. Don't you think doing a week based on a season is a bit broad?

I guess I could write an article about what the season means to me, but it does not really hold any special meaning in my heart. I like it, I suppose, but it is far from my favorite. It is pretty cold after all. Although, it is aesthetically beautiful with the leaves changing colors and everything slowly decomposing in front of our bloodshot eyes. It is also sort of depressing since everything is dying and it reminds you that you too are going to die (as if everything doesn't remind you of that!).

Perhaps I could tell you a story about something that happened in the fall. I know Glenn really wanted me to write a story about when I was attending Southern Illinois University and my meathead roommate paid me $50 to write an English 101 paper for him and I misspelled his name and he got an 'F' and a few weeks later dropped out. I just feel like there isn't that much to tell. I basically did just tell the story. Plus, that really doesn't make me think of autumn, it makes me think of college, roommates, papers and money. I guess I need to hang onto it for a theme week about one of those four topics.

In theory, I could write an article about a holiday that takes place in this season. Yet, who wants to read an article about a holiday that is not currently being experienced? I probably wouldn't read it. Although, when Stephen suggested that this theme week should be Christmas week, I was completely on board with the idea. Thankfully, it was shot down. Could you imagine anybody reading articles about Christmas in September? Sure, the articles would have been funny (if you think this is funny, but I doubt you do).

So here comes the hard part: ending an article. How do you end an article that is forcefully meta/post-modern like this one? I guess I could just put "The End." and call it a day, but it just doesn't seem right. I only do that when I think it might get a laugh. I also do not think the last paragraph was enough to go out on since I mention Christmas. This is fall, I should have mentioned Halloween, Columbus Day or National Grandparents Day--should have but didn't. I guess I will just have to learn to live with it. How about: "Have a great autumn/fall!"? Seems pretty insincere to me since I don't care whether you live or die.