Here is How the Situation has Improved

I guess I owe the world some kind of apology, or at least a retraction. Maybe not the world, as it had very little to do with what’s happened, but you get the idea. You see, the Problem I informed you about on Wednesday has seen a kind of resolution. Thanks to the dutiful efforts of one AK, The Place is now thoroughly pumpkin’d. I plan on butchering sometime in the evening, but we all know how plans go. I know I should take occurrences like this one as evidence that the world is not a looming, terrible, monstrous place that is dead-set to ruin everything, so I will. This is called [some kind of] irony, and was all anybody wanted to write about in the nineties.

Information on my success or failure to craft a view-worthy jack o’lantern will be shared as it becomes available, though this coming weekend will be a time of little respite as zombie movies and this endeavor* devour the better part of my time. Also, like so much of the Mac-having, glasses-wearing, obesity-afflicted Internet I am excited for This in a way that poses substantial danger to my heart and capillaries.

*for more fun Information about this go Here.

What Troubles has the Season Brought?

What kind of world is it where a reasonable human being (me) is unable to get a decent (symmetrical, medium-sized, mold-free) pumpkin in the month of October? I will have you know that I am extremely upset by the situation I find myself in (what else is new, right?) and I’m at a bit of a loss. On Sunday I went into Davis Square with designs to obtain one of the season’s standard orange gourd-like objects. My co-agent on this important mission directed me to a small grocery alcove where I found for purchase a couple of sub-ideal pumpkins. I opted to forgo this purchase, my thoughts being that a better product could be obtained at a different store some distance away, I was convinced that I was absolutely right about this information - this is called (I think) hubris and was the most popular thing to write about 2400 years ago. Passing up good opportunities for perceived greater fulfillment down the line and at some unreasonable geographic expense is one of those unshakeable recurring themes, it would seem. I know I don’t have to tell you how this mission ended (disaster), but I will anyway.

We went all the way down to That Main Grocery store (the one that decided to be open 24 hours a day sometime about a year and a half ago, a decision I remain thankful for), to find large empty boxes in front of the store’s main door, boxes that at one time held pumpkins. Scattered around the entryway were pumpkins with ideal proportions and reasonable symmetry, but they all had a serious problem: they had faces painted on them. Listen, I don’t pretend to know every Halloween tradition that exists on this stupid planet, but it seems to me that buying a pumpkin that has been pre-painted (or pre-carved, had that been the case) is a lot like buying food that someone else has already chewed up. Sure, you’ll get the same physical benefits (pumpkin ownership), but you will miss out on the most important part of said benefit: the process of transforming something that is large, heavy, perishable and entirely useless into something into which fire can be placed, a process that requires at least one large knife and a number of much, much smaller ones.

So what happened? I refused to buy one of the pre-painted pumpkins, because I am a man of deep, stubborn, illogical principles. Pumpkins should not be painted, that is an opinion I hold onto pretty tightly. I should not have to buy a 16 pound piece of produce that someone has already fucked up on a cosmetic level in order to accomplish a simple goal I set for myself (the goal being in this case to carve a 5-year-old-otter into a pumpkin). I know there are those out there who would disagree with me, but I also know that where they come from the ground smokes and what few pumpkins there are that can find purchase in the scattered plots of soil between expanses of concrete grow to be withered and anemic.