The shellack lies
December 3, 2015 5:56 PM Subscribe
The pumpkins on my porch seem fine. Maybe a couple more weeks. Right? Wait what's that smell?
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:01 PM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:01 PM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
He's not going to notice the smell after his mother washes his filthy mouth out with some heavy duty soap... the season he'll be smelling will be Irish Spring...
posted by HuronBob at 6:17 PM on December 3, 2015 [7 favorites]
posted by HuronBob at 6:17 PM on December 3, 2015 [7 favorites]
It's ubiquitous glitter and tinsel season, motherfuckers. I can't walk into a grocery store or a gas station without seeing some Nordic fucking wonderland with "JOY" or "HO HO HO" in some whimsical elf-ass font. I'm just trying to get some Flamin' Hot Cheetos, ya dig?
It's bad enough that they've moved all the useful shit at the hardware store to who knows where, but doing it to make room for clip-on car window antlers is just adding fucking insult to injury. These things come with a plush reindeer nose hood ornament? Get the fuck out.
Pretty soon the sidewalk outside my house is going to look like a stripper went full Kool-Aid Man through a wall of wrapping paper and ribbons, and somebody's going to anonymously leave some kind of seasonal gift basket on my desk. You know the kind with bullshit like shot glasses shaped like Santa's face. And cordial motherfucking cherries. If there ever was a bigger confectionery abortion than a liquid sugar grenade, I've never seen one. Those things are diabeetus and a ruined shirt all in one bite.
Everybody's got these blinking outdoor lights and inflatable lawn figures now and it looks like I dropped acid and watched the Blade Runner director's cut when all I want to do is take my goddamn dog for a walk. She thinks the fucking twelve-foot snowman is going to go all Ghostbusters on her and she's barking and I'm trying to calm her down and step in her poop. HO HO HO YOU ABSOLUTE EGG.
Speaking of the jingling manure spreaders, aka horse-drawn holiday carriages— who wants to get dressed up in a foul blasphemy of a Fair Isle sweater and go sit on a moving bench behind a horse's ass for half an hour? Not me, no way.
BRB, going to go tune my tv to an endless stream of logs on fire and pour a nice whisky. Wake me when it's January.
posted by a halcyon day at 6:21 PM on December 3, 2015 [28 favorites]
It's bad enough that they've moved all the useful shit at the hardware store to who knows where, but doing it to make room for clip-on car window antlers is just adding fucking insult to injury. These things come with a plush reindeer nose hood ornament? Get the fuck out.
Pretty soon the sidewalk outside my house is going to look like a stripper went full Kool-Aid Man through a wall of wrapping paper and ribbons, and somebody's going to anonymously leave some kind of seasonal gift basket on my desk. You know the kind with bullshit like shot glasses shaped like Santa's face. And cordial motherfucking cherries. If there ever was a bigger confectionery abortion than a liquid sugar grenade, I've never seen one. Those things are diabeetus and a ruined shirt all in one bite.
Everybody's got these blinking outdoor lights and inflatable lawn figures now and it looks like I dropped acid and watched the Blade Runner director's cut when all I want to do is take my goddamn dog for a walk. She thinks the fucking twelve-foot snowman is going to go all Ghostbusters on her and she's barking and I'm trying to calm her down and step in her poop. HO HO HO YOU ABSOLUTE EGG.
Speaking of the jingling manure spreaders, aka horse-drawn holiday carriages— who wants to get dressed up in a foul blasphemy of a Fair Isle sweater and go sit on a moving bench behind a horse's ass for half an hour? Not me, no way.
BRB, going to go tune my tv to an endless stream of logs on fire and pour a nice whisky. Wake me when it's January.
posted by a halcyon day at 6:21 PM on December 3, 2015 [28 favorites]
Meanwhile in Australia 'tis the season for spray-on snow. Yes, it's a thing. WITNESS ME
posted by um at 6:52 PM on December 3, 2015 [9 favorites]
posted by um at 6:52 PM on December 3, 2015 [9 favorites]
Next in the series: IT'S DAMP & MILDEWY FOLKSY BALE OF HAY ON YOUR FRONT PORCH SEASON, MOFOS.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:03 PM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:03 PM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
I actually liked this more than the original.
posted by smoke at 7:05 PM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by smoke at 7:05 PM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
Man, I can't wait for McSweeney's to greenlight the last essay in this trilogy.
posted by deludingmyself at 7:06 PM on December 3, 2015
posted by deludingmyself at 7:06 PM on December 3, 2015
I am at peak decorative gourd.
posted by Oyéah at 7:06 PM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Oyéah at 7:06 PM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
From the linked article: I’m about to throw on some kitchen gloves right now and toss these soupy fuckers into a double trash bag so their putrid squash juice doesn’t trickle all over my floor on their way out.
AAAHHH flashbacks to two years ago, discovering the answer to "Why the fuck is my house full of fungus gnats?"
I'd accidentally grown a pumpkin patch in my backyard. (The stupid tag on the bedding plant said "cucumbers." A friend who works at a nursery has since told me that she's often seen kids switch tags from plant to plant.) When the fruits grew to foot-long oblongs with green squashy patterning, I picked one and cooked it up. It was nondescriptly squashy, not tasty enough to inspire me to pick more. So I let the rest be until about September when they'd gotten biggish and spherical and started turning orange, and then I realized it was a sign from The Great Pumpkin to sit vigil for the Its Coming on Hallowe'en.
Well, that fucker The Great Pumpkin never showed up. Possibly It was insulted that there was only one of its avatars left in the patch. I'd picked all the rest to give to friends and neighbours and decorate my front yard. Hallowe'en came and went and I still had four intact pumpkins left. I cut one up for seed roasting. Too exhausted to stick another knife into another pumpkin, I stored the rest in my storage room, on top of various boxes of old tax returns, etc, figuring hey, that room is cold, they'll be fine until I get to them in a few weeks. Then I didn't exactly forget about them, but in my visual field whenever I went in there, they turned into pumpkin-looking furniture. Two were at knee level, those kept on looking fine, and the third was on top of a stack of boxes, and I assumed it must be fine too.
Then, fungus gnat explosion. I went room to room, hunting for the source. Storage room, haven't been in here for months, two pumpkins, guess I shoulda composted those in December...or January...or February... or...well a while ago anyway, but there aren't any fungus gnats on them, so where...? Hold on, what about that stack of boxes, why is there a brownish liquid drippy stain down the far corners of the top two boxes and why are those corners of those boxes collapsing wetly into each other? Oh, shit. Heat rises. That's probably why the knee-high pumpkins are wrinkly but still solid, and this one, oh good God. The side visible from the doorway looked solid. The other side had collapsed into itself in a great, goopy, white-fuzzy, leaky, fungus gnatty paradise. For some reason it didn't start smelling horrible until after I started trying to move it, and then I decided instantly that those two boxes were unsalvageable, don't think there's anything important in them anyway but don't care even if there is. I very carefully placed the top box with its putrescent load into double-bagged garbage bags. Same with the second box. Out to the garbage bin, good riddance. I will never again fool myself into hanging on to squash because "I'll cut it up later."
posted by cybercoitus interruptus at 7:13 PM on December 3, 2015 [11 favorites]
AAAHHH flashbacks to two years ago, discovering the answer to "Why the fuck is my house full of fungus gnats?"
I'd accidentally grown a pumpkin patch in my backyard. (The stupid tag on the bedding plant said "cucumbers." A friend who works at a nursery has since told me that she's often seen kids switch tags from plant to plant.) When the fruits grew to foot-long oblongs with green squashy patterning, I picked one and cooked it up. It was nondescriptly squashy, not tasty enough to inspire me to pick more. So I let the rest be until about September when they'd gotten biggish and spherical and started turning orange, and then I realized it was a sign from The Great Pumpkin to sit vigil for the Its Coming on Hallowe'en.
Well, that fucker The Great Pumpkin never showed up. Possibly It was insulted that there was only one of its avatars left in the patch. I'd picked all the rest to give to friends and neighbours and decorate my front yard. Hallowe'en came and went and I still had four intact pumpkins left. I cut one up for seed roasting. Too exhausted to stick another knife into another pumpkin, I stored the rest in my storage room, on top of various boxes of old tax returns, etc, figuring hey, that room is cold, they'll be fine until I get to them in a few weeks. Then I didn't exactly forget about them, but in my visual field whenever I went in there, they turned into pumpkin-looking furniture. Two were at knee level, those kept on looking fine, and the third was on top of a stack of boxes, and I assumed it must be fine too.
Then, fungus gnat explosion. I went room to room, hunting for the source. Storage room, haven't been in here for months, two pumpkins, guess I shoulda composted those in December...or January...or February... or...well a while ago anyway, but there aren't any fungus gnats on them, so where...? Hold on, what about that stack of boxes, why is there a brownish liquid drippy stain down the far corners of the top two boxes and why are those corners of those boxes collapsing wetly into each other? Oh, shit. Heat rises. That's probably why the knee-high pumpkins are wrinkly but still solid, and this one, oh good God. The side visible from the doorway looked solid. The other side had collapsed into itself in a great, goopy, white-fuzzy, leaky, fungus gnatty paradise. For some reason it didn't start smelling horrible until after I started trying to move it, and then I decided instantly that those two boxes were unsalvageable, don't think there's anything important in them anyway but don't care even if there is. I very carefully placed the top box with its putrescent load into double-bagged garbage bags. Same with the second box. Out to the garbage bin, good riddance. I will never again fool myself into hanging on to squash because "I'll cut it up later."
posted by cybercoitus interruptus at 7:13 PM on December 3, 2015 [11 favorites]
I bought a Mexican pumpkin to bake. I washed it up and put it in the oven whole. When it was done I cut it open, and there were long white tubes in the center. On one part of the inside, all these seeds had started to root and grow pumpkin plants, inside the pumpkin, I mean about fifty seeds had sprouted, they were eight inch long plants, that loked like worms. In closing I would like to sing...
Ate it anyway
Ate it anyway,
Ate it anyway just now,
Just now I ate it anyway
Ate it anyway just now.
posted by Oyéah at 7:34 PM on December 3, 2015 [11 favorites]
Ate it anyway
Ate it anyway,
Ate it anyway just now,
Just now I ate it anyway
Ate it anyway just now.
posted by Oyéah at 7:34 PM on December 3, 2015 [11 favorites]
... you ate the metapumpkin??
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 7:57 PM on December 3, 2015 [9 favorites]
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 7:57 PM on December 3, 2015 [9 favorites]
I have been pondering an Xmas-themed sequel to that piece for like a week! I took some sleigh bells to work this morning, my backpack jingling all the way, and all I could think of was, "Decorative gourd season is over -- it's candy canes and tinsel season, MFers…."
That is my favorite thing that McSweeney's ever published.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:57 PM on December 3, 2015
That is my favorite thing that McSweeney's ever published.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:57 PM on December 3, 2015
(During college one of my roommates bought a small-ish pumpkin before Halloween. I was the first one of us to return after Christmas break, and when I nudged the pumpkin's gelid form off the shelf where it sat, quivering, it took all the paint with it. Yikes/yech.)
posted by wenestvedt at 7:59 PM on December 3, 2015
posted by wenestvedt at 7:59 PM on December 3, 2015
On one part of the inside, all these seeds had started to root and grow pumpkin plants, inside the pumpkin
I've seen this before too. Also ate the metapumpkin. Roasted the sprouting seeds too.
That said, there is some definite innate intimation of body horror in that thing. Like a thousand blind tentacle babies eating their way out of the oblate orange ovary that grew them.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 8:01 PM on December 3, 2015 [8 favorites]
I've seen this before too. Also ate the metapumpkin. Roasted the sprouting seeds too.
That said, there is some definite innate intimation of body horror in that thing. Like a thousand blind tentacle babies eating their way out of the oblate orange ovary that grew them.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 8:01 PM on December 3, 2015 [8 favorites]
The most recent round of urinal mats in the men's room at work have the exact same septum-splitting, nostril-popping bellow of "CINNAMON!" as the ones polluting the Trader Joe's foyers. Ugh.
posted by wenestvedt at 8:03 PM on December 3, 2015
posted by wenestvedt at 8:03 PM on December 3, 2015
Man, I really liked this, but it made me go re-read Texts from a Jack-O-Lantern, and now I'm sad.
posted by gladly at 8:16 PM on December 3, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by gladly at 8:16 PM on December 3, 2015 [3 favorites]
I'm all sad(ly) too, gladly :-(
posted by kitten magic at 8:53 PM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by kitten magic at 8:53 PM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
^^ without!!
posted by a humble nudibranch at 9:12 PM on December 3, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by a humble nudibranch at 9:12 PM on December 3, 2015 [2 favorites]
Somebody, I'm not sure who, grows a pumpkin plant in the small patch of yard in front of my apartment. It shows up every summer and just as mysteriously gets taken out before Halloween. It's a bit sketchy that they're using my yard to grow pumpkins but I assume it's one of the gardening or maintenance people or maybe even the landlord.
They left me one tiny pumpkin this year, which I placed to the side of my doorstep. I just went to check it for goopiness but it looks like the mysterious caretaker has already disposed of it.
posted by Standard Orange at 10:29 PM on December 3, 2015 [3 favorites]
They left me one tiny pumpkin this year, which I placed to the side of my doorstep. I just went to check it for goopiness but it looks like the mysterious caretaker has already disposed of it.
posted by Standard Orange at 10:29 PM on December 3, 2015 [3 favorites]
You rubes. You wouldn't have to deal with motherfucking rotting gourds if you lived in a fine, northerly state such as my own. Consider a change! Who needs more than 6 hours of daylight a day, anyway? It's worth it to have the moose solve the gourd situation, I am certain.
posted by charmedimsure at 11:04 PM on December 3, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by charmedimsure at 11:04 PM on December 3, 2015 [2 favorites]
What everybody needs in order to dispose of their pumpkins in the most delightful way is a porcupine
posted by Transl3y at 12:29 AM on December 4, 2015
posted by Transl3y at 12:29 AM on December 4, 2015
You wouldn't have to deal with motherfucking rotting gourds if you lived in a fine, northerly state such as my own.
I live in what is literally called "the North country" (granted to some people here the north country is anything north of Yonkers) and it's been so warm this year that rotting decorative gourd season began in earnest, with most pumpkins already collapsing in on themselves before Halloween. El Niño is fucking with everything this year.
posted by dis_integration at 4:17 AM on December 4, 2015
I live in what is literally called "the North country" (granted to some people here the north country is anything north of Yonkers) and it's been so warm this year that rotting decorative gourd season began in earnest, with most pumpkins already collapsing in on themselves before Halloween. El Niño is fucking with everything this year.
posted by dis_integration at 4:17 AM on December 4, 2015
There's a cute farm near my house in Rhode Island where we buy pumpkins and look at cows and go through a small corn maze in the fall. To the delight of the kids the owners throw pumpkins to the cows -- who then, horrifyingly, smash and gobble the entire thing in a few noisy bites. The crowds usually melt away then, a couple of dads remaining at the fence the longest.
posted by wenestvedt at 5:36 AM on December 4, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by wenestvedt at 5:36 AM on December 4, 2015 [6 favorites]
Pigs will also devour pumpkins, stalks included. My brother raises pigs as sort of a hobby (long story, ends with bacon). We save food scraps to feed the pigs. Our new tradition of "taking the pumpkins to the pigs" is almost more fun than Halloween. This year a bunch of neighbors donated their mf'ing ornamental squashes to the efforts and the pigs feasted.
posted by areaperson at 5:55 AM on December 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by areaperson at 5:55 AM on December 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
Standard Orange, "The Mysterious Caretaker" was always my favorite Nancy Drew book...
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 8:12 AM on December 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 8:12 AM on December 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
I live in what is literally called "the North country" (granted to some people here the north country is anything north of Yonkers)
I'm from BTV and I'd say it's fair to call where you are the southern end of "the North country", Yonkers or no.
posted by maryr at 9:15 AM on December 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
I'm from BTV and I'd say it's fair to call where you are the southern end of "the North country", Yonkers or no.
posted by maryr at 9:15 AM on December 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
Speaking of finger deep... *
You know what you don't decorate Easter eggs with? Electrical tape. I decided to color eggs and use snips of electrical tape to make them look a bit punk one year. They were in a bowl in the living room for a while, but not a long while. One day I decided to pick one up and POP. Rotten hard boiled egg juice everywhere. It seems that the adhesive on the tape reacted with the egg, dissolved the shell, and caused the interior to turn to soup. One of the most evil stenches ever. I very nearly added copious vomit to the mess. Never again.
*Got your attention, didn't I?
posted by Splunge at 10:56 AM on December 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
You know what you don't decorate Easter eggs with? Electrical tape. I decided to color eggs and use snips of electrical tape to make them look a bit punk one year. They were in a bowl in the living room for a while, but not a long while. One day I decided to pick one up and POP. Rotten hard boiled egg juice everywhere. It seems that the adhesive on the tape reacted with the egg, dissolved the shell, and caused the interior to turn to soup. One of the most evil stenches ever. I very nearly added copious vomit to the mess. Never again.
*Got your attention, didn't I?
posted by Splunge at 10:56 AM on December 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
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