Mcsweeneys

Y'all, get some gourds...it's FALL!

I love Fall, always have. And it's one of the BEST times to be in NYC. It's also a great time to think about our decor and how to reflect the change in seasons inside. Here's an inspiring article on how to get really creative with gourds. Enjoy, y'all... Pic of a cornucopia basket dressed with gourds on table

IT’S DECORATIVE GOURD SEASON, MOTHERF&$KERS.

BY COLIN NISSAN - - - - I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get my hands on some f&$king gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That sh*t is going to look so seasonal. I’m about to head up to the attic right now to find that wicker f&$ker, dust it off, and jam it with an insanely ornate assortment of shellacked vegetables. When my guests come over it’s gonna be like, BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, a@@holes. Guess what season it is—f&$king fall. There’s a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant f&$king squash.

I may even throw some multi-colored leaves into the mix, all haphazard like a crisp October breeze just blew through and f&$ked that sh*t up. Then I’m going to get to work on making a beautiful f&$king gourd necklace for myself. People are going to be like, “Aren’t those gourds straining your neck?” And I’m just going to thread another gourd onto my necklace without breaking their gaze and quietly reply, “It’s fall, f&$kfaces. You’re either ready to reap this freaky-a@@ed harvest or you’re not.”

Carving orange pumpkins sounds like a pretty fitting way to ring in the season. You know what else does? Performing an all-gourd reenactment of an episode of Diff’rent Strokes—specifically the one when Arnold and Dudley experience a disturbing brush with sexual molestation. Well, this sh*t just got real, didn’t it? Felonies and gourds have one very important commonality: they’re both extremely f&$king real. Sorry if that’s upsetting, but I’m not doing you any favors by shielding you from this anymore.

The next thing I’m going to do is carve one of the longer gourds into a perfect replica of the Mayflower as a shout-out to our Pilgrim forefathers. Then I’m going to do lines of blow off its hull with a hooker. Why? Because it’s not summer, it’s not winter, and it’s not spring. Grab a calendar and pull your f&$king heads out of your a@@es; it’s fall, f&$kers.

Have you ever been in an Italian deli with salamis hanging from their ceiling? Well then you’re going to f&$king love my house. Just look where you’re walking or you’ll get KO’d by the gauntlet of misshapen, zucchini-descendant bastards swinging from above. And when you do, you’re going to hear a very loud, very stereotypical Italian laugh coming from me. Consider yourself warned.

For now, all I plan to do is to throw on a flannel shirt, some tattered overalls, and a floppy f&$king hat and stand in the middle of a cornfield for a few days. The first crow that tries to land on me is going to get his avian a@@ biotch-slapped all the way back to summer.

Welcome to autumn, f&$kheads!

(Click here for the story as it appears in McSweeney's and here to go to Colin's website for more tangy writing! Pic above from The 2 Seasons blog story on how-to make a gourd centerpiece.)