I really wanted to write a Mardi Gras post this year, detailing all my various adventures, but what is there to say, really? I went wild for about 2 1/2 weeks, with all the crazy things that you can imagine go along with that.

But now, we are almost done with Lent, the payment for all of our debauchery. Austerity, as a reparation for revelry. Even though I feel it unfair that Lent is so much longer than Mardi Gras.

As a sort of consolation Mardi Gras prize, both for you and myself, here is a blurry photo I took. It is of a Friday the 13th float from the Crewe of Columbus parade this year, who rolled on Friday, the 13th of February, with the appropriate theme of “Run, Run, Run”. If you follow me on instagram, you’ve already seen it. My bad.

So there it is. Mardi Gras 2015 at Bayou Babylon Dot Com. Summed up with a terrible photo.

Moving on, it is now hot as balls down here on the Gulf Coast, and I hate it. HATE IT. And it will be this way for another 6 months, at least.

I know that already complaining about Summer is lost on most people, especially everyone that just got some snow last week and have been buried in that devilish white powder (snow, not the other one) for months. It is true that Winter here is extremely mild, which makes it easy for me to say that Winter is my second favorite season. I honestly think it only got below freezing here maybeeeee twice.  Well, probably more than that, but I know I could count them on my hands.

Like most people in the Winter, I spend the Summer hunkered down indoors as much as possible, and just try to survive it, hoping I don’t die before Fall and Halloween.

Not that Spring gets any love, either. Allergies, and just the threatening way the temperature creeps up daily, make Spring my 2nd most-hated season of the year. Screw you too, Spring, but at least you have crawfish season as a saving grace.

My full-on hatred is reserved, of course, for Summer. I spend every day thinking along the lines of this video. My favorite parts? “The Lord is outta control,” and “I’m gon’ slit somebody’s throat over this heat”.

Shit, shit, shiiiiiiit.

With that, here are the top ten reasons that Summer can go back to the Hell it came from:

10. Sun
I know it’s kind of a given that the Sun sucks and we all hate it, right? That’s why it’s so far down the list. I am using “the Sun” as a catch-all for all the varying sun-related maladies, both mild and severe. Sunburn, skin cancer, blinding you on the way home from work, etc. Plus, generally speaking, it is the cause of every other reason that Summer sucks on this list.

09. Yardwork
The only reason this isn’t higher on the list is because I am more lazy than frugal. Meaning I pay someone to do my yardwork for me. Still, yardwork is the worst. I guess, more accurately, it’s the 9th worst.  Trimming bushes, edging, pruning limbs, cutting grass. These are things that man is not meant to do, but are required by various evil organizations all over the world (HOAs), and busybody neighbors.
Don’t get me wrong, I see the irony in paying someone to do my yardwork and hating it so much, but then sweating my butt off in a gym or walking around the neighborhood. Like I used to always say on fitfordragoncon: driving somewhere and paying to walk/run when you have a sidewalk in front of your house is ludicrous, but we do it anyway.

08. Humidity
I know that most people do not really understand humidity where they live, even in the Summer. Here, it means you are sticky 24/7. It means you walk outside and are immediately wet. It means your lungs must learn to breathe water at a very young age.
“It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity!” Right? I’ve been all over these great United States, and I promise that 100° in Texas and Arizona feels a million times better than 80° with 100% humidity. It is oppressive. It weighs you down and makes you feel miserable and gross.
Humidity is what makes you seriously consider putting a ziploc bag full of ice in your boxer briefs.

07. the Beer
For the most part, Summer seasonal beers are awful, sweet, fruit-laden, sodas with a tiny bit of alcohol in there. It’s like every beer brewer decides that making wine coolers is really what people want in the Summer. It’s why I have some pumpkin beers stowed away, just waiting for the peak of miserableness this Summer. (Also, I plan on having a patented VeggieMacabre “October Sunday” at some point this year).

06. Long Days
I apologize for this, but I’m going to reference a videogame here. The Templar in Diablo 3 says something along these lines, “The Sun is a literal, and figurative, enemy of evil and darkness.”
I’m not gonna go off about pagan customs here, even though I kinda want to, but suffice it to say, I like the night more than I like the daytime. I take the longer days full of sun as a direct offense. The sun needs to know its place and stay hidden for at least half of the day.
I’m not saying I’m a moon-worshipper, or evil, or anything silly like that. I’m just saying that I like waking up when it’s still dark and coming home from work when it’s dark. I like the idea of the darkness ruling for half the year. Maybe that is some deep down, hidden, goth inside of me talking, but I just plain like nighttime more than daytime.

05. the Clothes
Being an overweight person is a bummer. I know, I know. It’s my fault. Get over it.
But being overweight in the summer is an even bigger bummer.
While everyone is out in their revealing clothes, you’re trying to figure out a way to both “conceal” and not burst into flame in the Sun.
At the beach, your pasty, flabby, fishbelly draws unwanted attention from the worst types of people, who think they’re better than you, which is infuriating because they all probably suck harder than a vacuflo system choking on an Ed Hardy shirt.
Skinny people don’t really get it that easy, either. The fact is, summer clothes are not nearly as attractive as winter/fall clothes.
As I’ve always said, you wear more clothes, so you have more of a chance to get something right.

04. No Good Holidays
My cousin always says that I just go from one event to the next, and he’s more or less right. I like to have something fun to look forward to and all the best holidays/events are in the Fall and Winter. What does summer have? 4th of July? Great. Standing outside, grilling over a hot fire, in thousand-degree heat, getting a sunburn and sweating your ass off. I do like fireworks, but they’re not enough to make me enjoy this holiday. Neither is my latent patriotism. 4th of July sucks, face it. It’s just a little taste of a holiday. Enough to keep us going until the real holidays.

03. Kids
The Kids are out of school, and I hate kids. We don’t have kids for a reason. It’s because kids are stupid and annoying. And during the summer, they are fuggin’ everywhere. I count the days until school gets back in and I can go to the grocery store without having the Little Rascals scurrying underfoot, getting in everyone’s way, while their parent tries to figure out which honeydew melon is the best. I hate parents too.

02. Power Bills
In the summer, we go from having money to do stuff to having no money whatsoever, because our power bill goes completely apeshit. If you have Central Air down here, and let it rip, it will never turn off. NEVER. You are blowing dollar bills out of your air conditioning vents. That’s not a problem, if you’re rich, but for normal people like us, the Summer presents a time of forced austerity.
I know our power company offers a program that averages out your power bills, so you have the same bills all year, but I honestly prefer to have a break in the Fall and Winter months because that’s when everything happens (see #4). I need low bills for Christmas and Halloween and Mardi Gras. For 4th of July, I can buy enough Black Cat bottlerockets to blow up our neighborhood with very little funds.

01. Critters
There are a lot of critters in the Summer. I once told a friend of mine in Connecticut to “Come back down here, where it’s still wild!”
I meant that in numerous ways, but one of those ways was how the critters around here go absolutely bananas in the Summer. They all come out, and they’re all irritated because it’s just so damn miserably hot. Snakes being the worst, but also possums, raccoons, termites, carpenter bees, fire ants, jellyfish, etc.
In the Summer, the absolute worst animals come out to play. It’s like a who’s-who of the members of the Wild Kingdom that you don’t want to meet.
For instance, we have a lot of wood around our mostly-brick home. In the Spring and Summer, carpenter bees come out and drill holes and tunnels into all of our wood. They do this so they can lay their eggs in there and provide a seemingly safe environment for their larvae. The problem is that woodpeckers are smart and know that those tasty bee larvae are in there… so they tear up your wood to get at them for supper.
Man has been struggling against such pests for centuries, and it will never end. Nature must be conquered and subdued for us to live in a civilized utopia, with only those critters who won’t bite us and send us, hallucinating, to the emergency room.

So that’s it. The top 10 reasons that summer can toke on my wiener. I know some people love summer. Hell, my wife loves it. But it’s just not for me. Like I’ve said, during the Summer I consider myself to be “an accomplished indoorsman”.

Can’t we just fast-forward to September? Until then, maybe we can all go for a dip in the ocean together, while wearing thick black tshirts and broad-brimmed straw hats. Or lay in the dirt on the beach like a bunch of idiots.

I guess I have my October Sunday to look forward to. Let’s all raise a fruity summer beer to made-up holidays!!!

HATE IT.