Tag: summer

5 Reasons Why I Love Autumn

autumnI’ve already said I hate summer, so chances are good I’m on Satan’s shortlist of souls he’d like to meet and greet — permanently.  Hating summer is like seeing an ugly baby and then actually saying it : everybody kinda agrees with you, but nobody’s on your side.  However, as the man said, “If you’re going to Hell anyway, you might as well just keep driving.”  So summer might not actually suck — all the time — but here are 5 reasons why I prefer autumn.

Autumn is active — When summer is over, you can actually do things again — like walking down the street or standing waiting for a bus — without feeling like a tributary of the Amazon is flowing down the back of your shirt and into your underwear.

Autumn is cozy — There is nothing better than a fuzzy sweater on a chilly evening.  And is there anybody in this world who doesn’t like fat, warm socks?  These are two of life’s priceless little pleasures that release tons of endorphins.  Unfortunately, they’re not available to us when the temperature is 36 degrees in the shade — and there ain’t no shade.  It is my considered opinion that the lack of fuzzy sweaters and fat socks is why people in desert countries are so grouchy all the time.

Autumn moves — Summer doesn’t move.  It just lies on you like a Hot Fudge Quilt.  Autumn, on the other hand, lives on the breeze.  You can taste it in the early morning, fresh as that first cup of coffee.  It plays in the trees like Peter Pan having a giggle.  It swirls and twirls tiny tornados of leaves at your feet, teases your hair like a casual lover and sends you to bed with an extra blanket tucked up to your chin.

Autumn is made of soup — There is only so much cremated cow a man can stand.  Autumn is the time for great cauldrons of things that sound and bubble and fill up the house with steam and smell and plenty; served in great bowls with bread or in a thick mug, balanced just right between you and your book.

And finally:

Autumn is serious — When the temperature starts to drop in the Northern Hemisphere, we all have this weird cultural memory that “Winter is Coming” and it’s going to try to kill us.  We don’t lay in stocks of food and firewood anymore, but we do subconsciously put away the toys of summer and assemble our tools.  That’s why God made “Back to School” sales.

It might still be three weeks until Autumn is “officially” here, but Mother Nature and I always start early — right after Labour Day.  And I can see it from here.

5 Reasons I Hate Summer

summer heatI woke up this morning and, for the first time, I could see autumn from here.  What a relief!  It’s not that I hate summer; it’s just that summer is so-o-o-o-o long and sweaty and inconvenient and bug-infested and sticky and annoying and … I think I’ve made my point.

Here are five reasons I’m happy to finally see autumn coming.

Summer is noisy — Everybody and his sister thinks they have a moral obligation to share their taste in music with the universe.  From the middle of May to Labour Day, Earth’s atmosphere is wall-to-wall stereos, blasting away like the Seven Trumpets of the Apocalypse.  It’s a wonder other planets don’t get pissed off and call the cops.

Summers are underdressed — It’s as if the entire world went to the beach and never came home.  I’m no prude, but men, shirts (even t-shirts) should have sleeves, not gaping holes; dirty feet are not fetish material, especially in a bank or a restaurant; and ladies, boobs and bum cheeks should go on the inside of whatever you’re wearing — that’s why you’re wearing it.

It’s hot — Mother Nature goes nuts every the summer — that’s her job — but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

The food sucks — I like BBQ as well as the next man, but I don’t believe 30,000 years of human development should be thrown away every time the sun shines.  We’re not Neanderthals, and contemporary life should feature better cuisine than a glob of potato salad, a lukewarm beer and a slab of overcooked meat snatched from a backyard crematorium by somebody wearing a “Kiss the Cook” apron.

And finally:

Nobody’s around — Every time you want to do something important, the person you need to sign the form, stamp the approval or initial the receipt is always on vacation.  There is nothing more frustrating than standing there, up to your elbows in some bureaucrat’s idea of paperwork Nirvana, while the one person you simply have to have to complete the process is at the beach, dancing half-naked around the fire while her drunken secretary is busy flipping the burgers — all to the tune of “In The Summertime” by Mungo Jerry.

 

Summer Solstice 2016

stonehengeYesterday was the Summer Solstice. Normally, it falls on June 21st, but such are the vagaries of astronomical science. For those in the know, the only place to be was the party at Stonehenge, on the Salisbury plain, in England.  Stonehenge is one of those fascinating places on our planet where ancient architecture meets contemporary dumbass so seamlessly that it produces some of the smoothest con jobs since the Canarsee Indians of Brooklyn “sold” Peter Minuit Manhattan for $24.00.*  There are a number of variations on this spiritual sleight-of -hand, but they’re all basically the same.  Here’s the Twitter version:

Our ancient ancestors were spiritually connected to the physical world — the rhythms of the seasons, etc.
We are not.
Since we have no spiritual connection to anything, we have become assholes — to ourselves, to others and to our planet.
If we’d just take a minute, quit listening to our cell phones and start listening to each other and our planet, we wouldn’t be assholes anymore and perhaps both the planet and the people on it would be better off.
What better place to start the process than at Stonehenge et al where our ancient ancestors figured it out the first time?

Sounds legit — so far — but then we have the kicker:

Buy this book, film, seminar, television program etc., etc., etc. and I’ll show you how it’s done.

Here’s the deal, folks: we have no real proof that our illiterate ancestors were any more in tune with the planet than we are.  In fact, we have some serious evidence that says they weren’t.  They may have recognized day and night and winter and summer, but after that it was pretty much hit and miss.  Remember, these people were still 3 millennia away from “Hey! Don’t poop in the river; it’ll make you sick!”  The truth is we’ve given prehistoric humans these spiritual attributes. Whether they ever had them in the first place is still up for debate.

Plus, volumes have been written on what we DON’T know about Stonehenge.  It might have been a calendar; it might have been a church; it might have been a burial ground; it might have been a navigation centre for aliens.  Actually, given the utter lack of any hard evidence, it might just as easily have been a Neolithic Comedy Club — a sort of Bronze Age X Factor.  We have no way of knowing what went on at Stonehenge circa 2000 BCE.  For all we know, they could have been eating each other, or deflowering virgins or both.  Tying your spiritual wellbeing to that kind of chimera is dodgy, at best.

I don’t mind anybody having a party once a year — especially on my birthday.  If you want to have a howl and a dance and welcome the summer sun, knock yourself out.  But call it what it is, and BTW, suggesting people can buy their way to spirituality is nothing more than a scam.