“Greg, are you serious?”

“The weather is so great!”

“Are you trolling us right now?”

“The foliage is so beautiful!”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Pumpkin flavored beer! Football! The leaves!”

“You say you’re from Boston…”

I’ve heard enough.  I’ve been called crazy, tasteless, stupid, depressed, and I’ve been questioned on my authenticity as a New Englander.  I get it, I have few allies on this one.  But though I am an island, I know it is the promised land.  You’re all wrong on this.

I hate Fall, and you all should too.

It’s time to stop sugarcoating this annual tragedy.  Fall represents the death of everything good, following this with the ushering in of a reign of misery.  It’s the worst season for almost every living thing on Earth.  It’s a scourge of God sent only to remind us that the other three seasons aren’t all that bad.

Let’s get one thing straight.  Fall weather is not “great.” It’s not “better than summer,” “just right,” or “so much more comfortable” than fucking anything.

Let’s look at some examples in places where most of my readers live.  The average Fall temperature in Boston is in the low 50s, in Kyoto, the mid fifties, and in Maryland the upper fifties with a wind chill of below everything.  These temperatures are also known as too cold to do anything fun outside for more than an hour, and too warm to sit inside without the nagging guilt of wasting “good” weather.  It’s juuuuuust terrible.

The Fall climate as most people know it is good for one month, tops.  I’m pretty sure Gillette Stadium had to be cleared of snow before Halloween at least once, so Tom Brady could reenact, with opposing NFL teams playing the parts of the victims, the utter massacre of hopes and dreams that seems to happen every fall.

The important thing to remember is perception is relative.  Like I said, Fall only exists to show us how great Spring and Summer are.  So why is Fall weather so much worse than that of Winter, which is almost permanently below freezing in much of the northern hemisphere?

Because every day of Fall is colder than the last.

It’s like Peter Gibbons’ life from Office Space, the Initech of weather, where every day is the worst day of the year.  Remember that time you made plans and they didn’t work out, so you parsed them up and delayed certain activities?  Yeah, you can’t do that in Fall.

Missed that hiking opportunity?  Suck it up, because you’re going to be waiting six more miserable months.  Just bought a wiffle ball bat to teach your students Dizzy Bat?  Better hope anyone’s still interested in April.  Oh wait, I’ll have a new job by then.  And every day – and by that I mean warmth and light – is shorter.  “We had a fun night drinking by the river guys!  Shame it got so chilly toward the end.  I can’t feel my toes…  Maybe next week it’ll be bett – oh wait.  It’ll be worse.”  Guaranteed.

Sure, bright colors are nice.  They were nice in the summer too, as was green, my favorite one!  Butterflies have colors too.  Fish have colors.  My cat’s fur has colors.  You know what has no color?  The soul of a person who enjoys literally watching all life die and fall to the ground.

But not even necromantic love of decomposing plant life is enough, so now Fall is flooded with nonsense to help you cope, like football and pumpkin marketing.  But for Autumn this is the worst defense of all; the New York Jets of Fall’s army of apologists.

We have greenhouses.  Pumpkins can be grown anywhere.  Most of the pumpkin flavoring we enjoy is probably either fake or incredibly easy to preserve for any other time of year.  And football is controlled by humans.  Colored leaves are only cool because for some reason in the First World we make all our buildings the same color, leaving us with bland, boring civilizations.

We could move all of these appealing Fall attractions if we want, but we keep them here in these months because everything else sucks and we need to be comforted and distracted from the misery of the entire environment.  None of these comforts ever line up anyway.  If they do, it lasts a week.

Fall is a ruse.  Pretty colors distract us while our fun happy summer and sweet August weather is swapped for cold, misery, and a holiday season whose noble roots of family, love, and giving have been replaced by a capitalist nightmare of stampeding heathen hordes.  Fall’s redeeming leadup to Christmas and the holiday season has long since been ruined.  In our youth we resented Fall’s return to school, now as adults the miserably more strenuous season continues to ruin the relationships the season was originally spent celebrating.  As winter approaches, even our coping mechanisms are rotten, evil, and dead as Autumn itself.

It’s toxic smoke and mirrors, with a whole lot of pumpkin bullshit, to distract you while EVERYTHING THAT WAS GOOD BECOMES BAD.

Pumpkin bullshit is a good line to finish on. Because if a bull ate an entire pumpkin, then shat it out, that stuff that comes out is, wholly, the essence of Autumn.

My name is Greg, I’m from New England, I live in Kyoto, and I hate Fall.

Thanks for reading!

Follow on Twitter or Instagram: @gregnasif