The best kind of fall

November 22, 2012 8:16 AM

Go jump in a pile of leaves.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (42 comments total)

Sure, it sounds like a great idea. But then one time I jumped into a pile of leaves and found a dead snake! So go jump in a pile of leaves. But watch out for dead snakes.
posted by to sir with millipedes at 8:20 AM on November 22, 2012 [1 favorite]

Also: there's slugs.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 8:26 AM on November 22, 2012 [2 favorites]

Yes, this is why you have to paint yourself with an egg wash first and then roll in some kosher salt.
posted by elizardbits at 8:36 AM on November 22, 2012 [4 favorites]

One time I jumped into a pile of leaves and found Mitt Romney.
posted by roger ackroyd at 8:36 AM on November 22, 2012 [2 favorites]

This just reminds me of the pitchfork/hay scene in The Other.
posted by mecran01 at 8:36 AM on November 22, 2012 [1 favorite]

"Go jump in a pile of leaves" sounds like the most counter productive insult in the world.
posted by nathancaswell at 8:38 AM on November 22, 2012 [1 favorite]

Oh, come on - that looks like so much fun! And none of them seemed to come out covered in dead snakes. Now I want to jump into their pile of leaves, too.
posted by harujion at 8:39 AM on November 22, 2012

I want to jump into their pile of leaves

I can't decide if this makes a great sexual innuendo or a terrible one.
posted by nathancaswell at 8:40 AM on November 22, 2012 [2 favorites]

The days are just packed.
posted by brokkr at 8:41 AM on November 22, 2012 [7 favorites]

This has been fun, but I have to leave now.
posted by HuronBob at 8:44 AM on November 22, 2012

Pah. Real men jump onto pine cones.
posted by MuffinMan at 9:01 AM on November 22, 2012 [2 favorites]

Go Pro has the best ad agency on the planet. Amazing.
posted by MarvinTheCat at 9:04 AM on November 22, 2012 [5 favorites]

love that there is a rear window in that truck, did it come with a windshield mounter mirror as well?

As to the leaves.. looks like a lot of fun, but a lot of money and work as well.
posted by edgeways at 9:11 AM on November 22, 2012

"looks like a lot of fun, but a lot of money and work as well."

Those three do very often go together.
posted by oddman at 9:31 AM on November 22, 2012

needs more doggies. :(
posted by sexyrobot at 9:34 AM on November 22, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yes, this is why you have to paint yourself with an egg wash first and then roll in some kosher salt.

You can do this even if there isn't a leaf pile.
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 10:38 AM on November 22, 2012 [1 favorite]

I kept watching them jump off the roof and worrying that they'd miss slightly and hit the ground instead.It does look pretty fun though
posted by matildatakesovertheworld at 11:07 AM on November 22, 2012

sexyrobot: "needs more doggies. :("

We just got a puppy on Halloween and our pin oak dropped its leaves early this year (usually it drops in the spring, or at least after the first snow). I've been raking piles back and forth in the yard, and Frankie plows through them at full speed. It's pure joy to watch.

So yeah, needs more puppies.
posted by notsnot at 11:13 AM on November 22, 2012 [1 favorite]

>needs more doggies.

I'd like to see at least one umbrella as well.
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 11:51 AM on November 22, 2012

DID SOMEONE SAY PUPPIES

also
posted by elizardbits at 11:56 AM on November 22, 2012 [2 favorites]

I must be getting old because all this does is make me imagine a news report containing the words "turned tragic" and "cervical fracture".
posted by davebush at 1:23 PM on November 22, 2012 [2 favorites]

Oh yeah, fun!! We used to do that with snow, ay?
posted by Twang at 2:31 PM on November 22, 2012

When I was young, my dad would rake all of the leaves in the yard into a big pile, and I'd come running along and jump into them.

Then my dad would pick me up, brush off the flames, and tell me not to do that again.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 3:15 PM on November 22, 2012 [1 favorite]

I'd jump into that pile from a great height. The other thing that always makes a fall seem okay is snow. Snow makes crazy things seem more possible.
posted by Skygazer at 3:20 PM on November 22, 2012

69,105 of them. Huh.
posted by Wolfdog at 5:14 PM on November 22, 2012

Never jump into a pile of leaves with a wet sucker.
posted by cottoncandybeard at 5:48 PM on November 22, 2012

In case anyone from the future is watching this and you are wondering if this is the reason you are underwater, yes, this video is the result of 21st century Americans using leaf blowers to collect leaves into small piles, stuffing those into plastic bags, hauling them around in a petroleum-powered truck, and emptying them back onto the ground in another place. Probably followed by re-packing them into more plastic bags and hauling them to a different place in another petroleum-powered vehicle.

(Leaves are sort of like small scraps of plastic sheeting but grow on plants, in case you don't have trees any more.)

I'm all for fun and jumping in piles of leaves but the whole stuffing them in plastic bags thing and then hauling them long distances has always seemed bizarre to me. Since leaf-blower usage is pretty widespread now on top of that the entire exercise looks like a giant middle finger of almost-completely-pointless fossil fuel consumption to everyone who is going to have to suffer the consequences of climate change.
posted by XMLicious at 6:02 PM on November 22, 2012 [2 favorites]

Well, that's certainly an interesting observation.

Hello, people from the future! Today is Thanksgiving Day! It's a day when we eat a bird called a Turkey! Yes, really!! There actually were turkeys at one point. They were like gigantic chickens. Not Dinosaur gigantic, though, just bigger than chickens. What's that? You don't know what a chicken is?!? Well...a chicken is also a bird that tastes like frog legs...
posted by Skygazer at 6:57 PM on November 22, 2012

Chickens are what everything else tastes like.
posted by XMLicious at 7:13 PM on November 22, 2012

100 million cubic feet of natural gas are flared (burned off without any energy extraction) every single day in North Dakota. But don't worry about that! It's those pesky kids who, once, had the nerve to drive a truck filled with leaves and jump on them. Blame them for the global warming! For shame!

It's good to put things in perspective and complain appropriately.
posted by eye of newt at 8:25 PM on November 22, 2012 [3 favorites]

I'd jump into that pile from a great height. The other thing that always makes a fall seem okay is snow. Snow makes crazy things seem more possible.

Yeah, we had a guy who jumped from the 3rd floor of my dorm in college into a pile of snow.

It ... wasn't deep enough for him not to regret the experience.
posted by dhartung at 11:29 PM on November 22, 2012 [1 favorite]

eye of newt: "100 million cubic feet of natural gas are flared (burned off without any energy extraction) every single day in North Dakota. But don't worry about that! It's those pesky kids who, once, had the nerve to drive a truck filled with leaves and jump on them. Blame them for the global warming! For shame! "

Flaring natural gas doesn't make leaf blowers make any more sense. Rakes, people.
posted by brokkr at 1:13 AM on November 23, 2012 [2 favorites]

ugh watching that video made my allergies hurt something terrible.
posted by item at 3:49 AM on November 23, 2012

Flaring it off is at least better than releasing the methane straight into the atmosphere.
posted by pharm at 4:04 AM on November 23, 2012

But don't worry about that! It's those pesky kids who, once, had the nerve to drive a truck filled with leaves and jump on them.

Not them in particular really, far more the entire national past time of leaf-blowing, bagging leaves up and hauling them around.

Though despite the fact that Nero's fiddling didn't actually directly cause Rome to burn, it still doesn't come across as quite the carefree cheerful exercise in fun it would under other circumstances.

I can't imagine that it would be much comfort to someone in a Pacific island nation soon to be submerged to say "Don't mind the fact that Americans expend more energy and produce more pollution and plastic waste repositioning fallen leaves than your entire country consumes for all purposes because they also burn away many times that for no benefit whatsoever in North Dakota!" Even if stuff like this is merely the punctuation mark in a big "Fuck you!" to everyone else it still seems rather macabre to me.
posted by XMLicious at 4:49 AM on November 23, 2012

Hate to see if someone told them to go eat a bag of dicks.
posted by stormpooper at 7:23 AM on November 23, 2012

So thankful for people who can just chill and enjoy experiences.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:11 AM on November 23, 2012 [2 favorites]

The people driving around in SUVs are just chilling and enjoying the experience too. I'm thankful for their childlike wonder and innocence and all that but I'm even more thankful when people can recognize that there's virtue, half-a-century-plus after we became aware of climate change, in eventually getting around to figuring out how to enjoy driving around or offroading in a less gas-guzzling fashion.

By the same token I have no problem recognizing that these guys could have just gone to a park and raked all the leaves into a humungous pile to jump on instead of trucking them in from all over the place in plastic bags and then re-bagging them and trucking them somewhere else. Pointing that out doesn't spoil the fun of everyone who ever jumped in a pile of leaves anywhere. If SUV-drivers and people who water their lawns in the middle of a drought can bear criticism there's no reason to exempt this sort of thing because jumping in piles of leaves is what the more enlightened or more pure-of-heart do for fun.

I just went and helped a relative do some yardwork a couple of weeks ago and had fun jumping in the leaves and burrowing under them and swimming through them. That doesn't make the process of removing every single leaf from my relative's wooded property a less dumb or less Sisyphean waste of carbon, energy, and money. Especially when next spring they're going to go buy bags and bags of fertilizer that were probably trucked in from somewhere else in the country for their garden and landscaping when they could've just composted the leaves.
posted by XMLicious at 9:36 AM on November 23, 2012

I wouldn't be half so worried about cervical fractures, snakes, slugs, or global warming as I would be about dog poop.
posted by HotToddy at 11:57 AM on November 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

"Look over there at those kids swinging on those swings!"
"Um, yeah?"
"Disgusting!"
"What?"
"I bet their parents drove them here in gas guzzling SUVs! After paying their gardener to spew out noxious fumes with a noisy gas wasting leaf blower. Don't those kids care about global warming? Some day this playground will be under water!"
"Actually, we don't know.." "And just look at that old man walking his dog! Can you believe that??"
"I'm afraid to ask."
"Do you know how much starvation there is in the world? Americans spend 16 billion dollars a year on pet food! And look at those kids jumping in a big pile of leaves!"
"That looks pretty cool."
"Cool??!! I'm going to VOMIT!"
"Hey, look at that old guy who just joined them. I think it's Anote Tong! Looks like he's having a blast."
"He shouldn't be having fun! He should be trying to stop the coming global environmental disaster."
"Actually I think he does. Remind me again why I hang out with you? I'm getting depressed. "
"You should be. If you are having fun, something is wrong."
posted by eye of newt at 3:25 PM on November 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

Sure, anyone who would be concerned about that stuff must be the enemy of all fun and must be lying about enjoying a good jump on a leaf pile and must hate puppies. But I'm consoled by looking at your posting history and seeing that you secretly hate puppies along with me when the right facet of the topic is being discussed.
posted by XMLicious at 5:01 PM on November 23, 2012

I wouldn't be half so worried about cervical fractures, snakes, slugs, or global warming as I would be about dog poop.

This posted for truth.

And even if your leaves are clean, you can expect the worst when you add poopies puppies.
posted by BlueHorse at 2:47 PM on November 24, 2012