Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Come on, man.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

People are complicated. Love is not.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

No one could have predicted…

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

A Senator Walker would be an insult to the state and the nation.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

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New Psych tonight, so that is good news.

Was driving home today, and the trees have really started to change colors. It’s so very pretty, but also depressing. I love the cool temperatures of fall, and I adore the cold in the winter (I love wearing wool socks and having a blanket on my lap while I read/watch tv with the house a crisp 60), but what really does get to me is lack of sun and the permanent grey. So even though the foliage is beautiful this time of year, it is still kind of melancholy, because I know that after nature’s fireworks grand finale with the leaves, then we are in for 4-5 months of gray skies, barren trees, and dirty slushy snow. Guess it is about that time to start taking Vitamin D and using my light machine.

But I digress. NEW PSYCH! HAPPY DANCE!

Reader Interactions

69Comments

  9. 9.

    Ash Can

    So even though the foliage is beautiful this time of year, it is still kind of melancholy…

    Exactly the way I feel. So I keep telling myself:

    — Four teams are still playing baseball

    — When they’re all done, it’ll be only a short time till the holidays

    — At the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, pitchers and catchers report next month!

    When you think of it that way, you’re never really that far from summer. :)

  10. 10.

    gbear

    @beltane: I saw that article too and figured that it would be more about what David Brooks and Gail Collins think that ‘we’ should sacrifice. I skipped it too.

  11. 11.

    cathyx

    Fall is the worst season for me. It always reminds me of things finishing and dying. Also of school starting. After all these years, I still get a squeamish stomach when fall comes around because of all those years of being nervous about school starting. I’ll be an old lady and still get that nervous feeling every fall, I bet.
    Spring is the best season though. Everything comes alive, the days are getting longer, the weather gets warmer. My birthday is in spring. Just perfect.

  20. 20.

    lamh34

    Saw Real Steel with Hugh Jackman. It was way better than I expected. Hugh Jackman was as HAWT as ever. The kid was cute. I’m not into boxing, but the robot fight scenes were way better than the “rock’em sock’em robots” I expected. All in all, one shirtess Hugh Jackman scene (yay, but not enough…lol!), a number of excuses to see Hugh Jackman’s dreamy smile (what! I like Hugh Jackman…ya wanna fight about it?), for a couple of mindless hours, I’d give it a low A-, and a high B+.

  21. 21.

    Stooleo

    Ah, the impending melancholy of winter. Perhaps the promise of life’s continuation, symbolized by these less than a week old Icelandic Sheepdog puppies, will see you through till spring. I got my name on one of these fellers!

  22. 22.

    cathyx

    @Omnes Omnibus: Autumn and winter represent sleeping, dying, and death. You need to move beyond black, gray, and brown. How about yellow, red, and orange? And if you are a man, how about blue, green, and maroon?

  23. 23.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @cathyx: I tend toward blue, green, and maroon – bits of gray and black thrown in for good measure. Not much brown, outside of shoes and belts.

    ETA: Autumn and Winter also represent Packer season, Christmas, and the coming of skiing. These are good things.

  28. 28.

    eemom

    @cathyx:

    I’ll be an old lady and still get that nervous feeling every fall, I bet.

    I took my last exam 24 years ago and I STILL have the same old textbook anxiety nightmare about showing up for finals without having ever gone to the class or done the homework.

    Iz fucked up, I guess. : (

  29. 29.

    Cassidy

    Took my Air Marshal interview today. That was fun. My knee is punishing me for taking the PT test, though.

  31. 31.

    Cain

    I think John would pretty much hate the northwest. We don’t get much sun, and this year was particularly bad. It really causes depression in some people.

    It doesn’t really bother me much… I kinda like it. But hey, I have a pocketful of sunshine. :-)

  32. 32.

    cleek

    for the first time in my life, the later-and-later sunrise has started to affect me. my alarm goes off and my mind and body refuses to accept that it’s 6:30. it’s dark out! the sun isn’t up! even the cats are still sleeping.

    i had to look up the symptoms for S.A.D. . and i matched them all.

    sigh.

  33. 33.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @eemom: One of the things I always liked about fall is the start of school. Fall always seems like the beginning of the year to me. Iz moar fucked up.

  37. 37.

    Raven (formerly stuckinred)

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yea, Zappa worried a lot about how he looked in court!

    A world of secret hungers
    Perverting the men who make your laws
    Every desire is hidden away
    In a drawer in a desk by a Naugahyde chair

  46. 46.

    RSA

    …lack of sun and the permanent grey… melancholy, because I know that after nature’s fireworks grand finale with the leaves, then we are in for 4-5 months of gray skies, barren trees, and dirty slushy snow.

    Who knew that JC was a closet poet?

  49. 49.

    YellowJournalism

    Love Fall. Love the colours, the sweater-but-not-parka-weather temperatures, love that special scent in the air. I also happen to like the bit of nastolgia over school starting.

    But I’m with those who hate that nervous feeling the begining of Fall always brings. And I also hate that I still have nightmares about not graduating because I missed a test or didn’t study. I tend to have ones about being a credit or course short of graduating from college. I will wake up in a sweat and heart racing over those.

  50. 50.

    suzanne

    Autumn is coming, which means that the temperature can dip below a hundred any time now. No, really. I mean it. FUCK. It’s so hot. I fucking hate it.

    I am sorely tempted to sell everything, quit my job, and move to somewhere cold and gray and shitty. I LOVE cold and gray and shitty. I’m the only person I know who gets SAD in the summer.

  51. 51.

    suzanne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    These seasons suit my wardrobe.

    Hell yes. I love winter fashion. Hats, scarves, boots, stockings. I always look so charming in the winter. In the summer, I’m too hot to give a fuck what I look like.

    I do share a surname with a certain senator from Maine, however. That must be why I love winter so much.

  52. 52.

    dww44

    I’m with Bailey White, the on and off story teller from these parts who’s often on NPR. She recently had a piece during the Spring about her hatred for our very hot and interminably long summers, doubly bad for the last few years with 90 plus degree days for days and months on end and very little rain. The big old Pines and the big old Oaks are dying in great numbers.

    So, for us, Fall does have a melancholy aspect, but that’s completely overriden by our joy of experiencing moderating temps and less humidity. And, our fall promises that winter is coming which is frequently chock full of beautifully mild and sunny days. Winter is mostly good in the Deep South.

  55. 55.

    MikeJ

    @Cacti: So torn. I’m almost always for the smaller market team, but when I was in college there was this really, really cute girl named Mary. Every time she smiled her eyes crinkled up and disappeared. She was a Cards fan (from the St Louis burbs.)

    Once we were in a bar together having a chat. She was wearing a anklet with bells on. Frat boy approaches our table and tells her that in some cultures women wear bells around their ankles to scare away evil spirits. She doesn’t say a word. Looks him up and down. Sticks out her leg and shakes.

    I once kissed her underneath a column on the quad. Or she me. I don’t remember. But it was pretty good. So despite my small market preference, I’ll applaud the Cards.

    What were we talking about again?

    (+3)

  58. 58.

    handsmile

    @suzanne: (#49)

    It’s good to know there’s someone else “who gets SAD in the summer.”

    For years I’ve referred to June-July-August as the “92 days of hell.” As those sweltering days cccrrraaawwwlll by, to soothe my drooping spirit I will calculate how many are left to endure until September 1. It kinda helps.

    I simply can’t imagine living in a place in which “cold and gray and shitty” weather is not part of the seasonal cycle.

  59. 59.

    suzanne

    @handsmile: I hear you, except where do you live that it’s not still fucking batshit hot in September? Lord. It’s expected to break a hundred tomorrow. I don’t think summer got the memo that it’s SO passe.

  60. 60.

    Yutsano

    @YellowJournalism:

    And I also hate that I still have nightmares about not graduating because I missed a test or didn’t study.

    At least you can tell your kids when you were in school you walked to school uphill both ways in two feet of snow. And it will be true. I honestly miss Pullman sometimes.

  61. 61.

    Larb, another Ikea product

    @Cassidy:

    Took my Air Marshal interview today.

    Bro, don’t Glaser Safety Slug me!

    Seriously, I’m glad to know you’ll soon be flying as Air Marshall with us air travelers. I’ve been reading your comments for a while now, and IIRC you seem experienced, passionate but level-headed when the SHTF kind of person, smart, not easy to bait, yet knows how to be a mutherfuckin’ SOB who knows how to rip open the bad guys and sew up the good guys.

    Don’t know you for reals, but yeah, that kind of person I’d want to be flying “shotgun” on my flight at 30,000 feet in an aluminum can packed full o’ people.

  63. 63.

    Matt Mangels

    The June-July-August “92 days of shit” are a big reason I hate the summers here in San Francisco, and they’ve been especially shittier than normal the past two summers.

  64. 64.

    Rihilism

    @beltane: Rather than a tanning light, consider a light therapy lamp. I purchased a therapy lamp from this company about 10-15 years ago and am still using it (have no idea if their products are still good but there are other producers of such lamps). BTW, although I suffer from SAD disorder, I use my lamp year round….

  65. 65.

    donnah

    I love Psych, too. Dule Hill is adorable.

    I was excited to finally be able to buy a new range and refrigerator, but now it’s gotten so complicated with all of the options. It has to be a gas range and I don’t need a lot of bells and whistles. The fridge is in a restricted size area, so no French doors or side by side, but I want a bottom mount freezer anyway.

    White or stainless finish? I hear dissatisfied owners complaining about the fingerprints or scratches on stainless. But white is so stark…see why I’m now hating the whole shopping process?

    I have to decide before Thanksgiving because I cook the entire meal for fifteen people. Right now my oven is dead.

  67. 67.

    chopper

    fall is great, but it means winter, which has always sucked. every place i’ve lived has been snowy and cold as balls in winter. here in NYC its worse, cause at least elsewhere the snow is pretty and white. in new york it turns a horrid sludgy grey, reminding you of exactly what it is you’re breathing in on a daily basis. plus nobody shovels anything so you’re liable to break a hip walking to the drugstore.

    give me grey, overcast skies, but goddamnit i’m sick of black snow and cold.

  68. 68.

    chopper

    @YellowJournalism:

    i still have those dreams too, even though i pretty much skated through college.

    its just weird. now tho, i’m glad fall comes because the kid goes back to school and i can have my time back.

  69. 69.

    ellie

    I love the fall, it is my favorite season. But I like hot weather, too. Winter is my least favorite season because I hate the bitter cold.

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