HUMOR

Even the Pumpkins Are Getting Weird

A dispatch from the front lines of the Gourd Wars.

From Nextdoor. Of course.

I’m not decorating for Halloween this year. I’m just not. I quit.

And it’s not just because I question the fiscal responsibility of placing rotting vegetables and dead plants in pleasing configurations around my home.

It’s because I could feel myself being sucked inexorably into pumpkin one-upmanship. The Gourd Wars, if you will.

Normal ol’ pumpkins have sufficed to meet our gourd-oriented decorating needs for the last several millennia.

But that’s not enough anymore. Oh no. In the age of Instagram and Snapchat and TikTok and Bric-A-Brac and whatever the fuck else is out there, the pumpkins have to be bigger, stronger, faster.

Weirder.

How ya feeling, buddy?

There’s an orchard near my house that sells things like… this. Big, intimidating piles of vegetable matter that manage to look both enticing and disease-ridden at the same time.