A Rant Cometh Before the Fall

Rant Note: The Rant offers for your seasonal pleasure our fall rant that we have always run in October provided we have the energy to rant. You can ignore the picturesque opening as today the temperature has hit 90 here at Worldwide Headquarters. At the end of October. All the trees are in group counseling, bemoaning their inability to change.¹ The Rant often wonders why people that grow hysterical about “Protecting the children!” refuse to exert even the smallest effort to ensure a planet exists for them to be protected on. I suppose our grandchildren can ponder all this while enjoying the ocean breezes in Beatrice, Nebraska, home of America’s new coastline. At least they won’t be able to view any dangerous TikTok videos on the island of Vermont. Because we believe the children are our future.

The Rant also notes that it has become impossible to parody the pumpkin spice contagion. You win pumpkin spice. Slow clap from The Rant. We’re going to go drown our sorrows with a pumpkin spice tuna sandwich.

We also never saw the rise of Spirit Halloween coming, proving once again our capitalist overlords can wring every last penny from our aching hands. We assume that in some communities if you smudge some shoe black on your kid’s face and send them out as a hobo, the authorities arrest you for child neglect and make you wear a $500 batman costume (with working utility belt. There’s some solace in that) for thirty days. Just in time to drop a couple grand on Christmas. Per offspring. Because we believe the children are our future. 

The Rant enjoys a brisk stroll in the fall, a carpet of leaves beneath our feet, the smell of a chimenea burning contentedly on someone’s back porch.

So The Rant would be thanking you to stop ruining autumn for us. To begin, the only suitable pun for October is Rocktober. Not Chalktober for your street art fair; not Lowtober for your insane sale prices for a new Chevy; not Mocktober for your heee-larious improv comedy festival, which is not going to be funny but just sad when Marlene breaks down backstage because she mistakenly believed a little, “Yes, and . . .” in her life would help her work through her disastrous marriage to Rich, who had the nerve to bring his twenty-something girlfriend/hot yoga instructor to the show.

No, the proper nomenclature is Rocktober for when 104.5 The Lazr brings a drug-addled metal band to the Shriner’s Auditorium so they can stumble through their hits for dudes with mullets and trucker hats and women wearing three-quarter-sleeve concert T-shirts from the original tour in ’78. That’s it. Now move along and figure out how to make a travesty out of November for your clever wordplay.²

The Rant also declares a moratorium on pumpkin spice, which sounds like a euphemism for a Jack-O-Lantern with a phlegm problem: “Excuse me one second while I go hack up some pumpkin spice, if you know what I mean.” Pumpkin spice does not occur in nature. Rather, it is a Frankenscent devised by an unholy alliance between Starbucks, Yankee Candle, and a guy named Joey that briefly worked in a meth lab. Stop trying to put it in my coffee, my charcoal briquettes, my beer, my air freshner, my oatmeal, and my cheesecake.

And can we leave Halloween to the kids? Every office The Rant visits beginning October 1 looks like a set from a Tim Burton movie. I just want my prescription refilled, not a community theater production of Friday the 13th. If you need to work out some erotic fantasy costume issues, go try a little cosplay at the comic-con and leave The Rant out of it. We have enough stress at the dentist without our hygienist wandering in dressed like Harley Quinn.

So The Rant says make some hot cocoa with tiny marshmallows sans pumpkin spice, curl up by a local wildfire in your area and just relax. We thank you for your autumnal consideration.

1. That is world-class arboreal humor right there. You think your cutesy celebrity podcast can deliver that kind sophistication? Think again Jason Bateman.
2. Yes we see you over there Movember. And while we appreciate the effort to raise awareness about men’s health issues, you do realize men control health care and the millions it generates for our poor, suffering, “nonprofit” hospitals and clinics? You know, the ones that break ground on new multi-million dollar facilities daily for the industrial-health complex? And do we really need to encourage white bros to grow more porn ‘staches? Have you seen what comes trotting out of any given bullpen these days during the baseball playoffs?