It Is For A Variety Of Reasons That October Is So Totally Awesome

Hooray! It’s October, which really is a terrific month. It seems to get better and better every year, October. (Or maybe it’s just that all the others get worse and worse, and maybe October does, too. But a bit less dramatically so.) A smarter, more contemplative person might note that as we get older we’re more inclined to appreciate stuff like falling leaves, and the slowing of nature’s life cycles. One might make a date to go walk in the woods somewhere, to take full advantage of this fleeting blip of pleasant weather we get before the gloom and bitter cold of too-short winter days afflict us all with seasonal affective disorder. Again.

A wiser person might breathe in the clean, brisk air, and cherish the simple joys of a warm sweater and a whiskey drink (maybe something cinnamony? or with cloves?) And the warming embrace of a loved one.

A wiser person would understand that such joys are all that we ever have, and that in closing up her shop, and unfurling the palette of fiery color that accompanies this annual turn toward death, nature is reminding us to savor these kind of joys while we can.

But for me, because I am easily amused in the way that Kurt Cobain wished he was (and, I guess, considering all the evidence: Him having killed himself, me never having done so, I suppose I actually should be thankful for this. But, you know, it’s not great.) Because I am this way, because I was born in America, in the state of New Jersey, perhaps more pertinently, and at a certain time in history, because I have a weakness for big, silly, three-chord metal songs and starting-readers-level wordplay, I have to admit that, for as much as any of these other reasons, I love October because of the trite, lug-headed, all-too-easy pun that comes with its name. And the attendant celebration of all things brainless and describable by one of the more broad-faced and overused terms in our increasingly insipid modern lexicon. Welcome, fellow mouth-breathers, to Rocktober!