Like any yellow-blooded* Wisconsinite who despises and excels at producing buckets of sweat, I love-love-love it when summer ends. Every year, I gush about autumn like a dorky 13-year-old boy confessing his dorky love for Angie Schultz in front of the whole dorky class, embarrassing everyone within a 100-dork radius.

So be it. I’m obsessed with fall. Most of you probably like it, too. So it’s high time we mix it up a little. Let’s get nuts, man. Let’s turn this season on its friggin’ ear and find something to complain about. Autumn’s gotten enough good press over the past few thousand years, agreed? Good.

I will now break down the hate into bitter, bite-sized chunks. Here’s what’s not to like:

The Friggin’ Sun

How about a little astrology lesson? Once a year, the earth’s rotation and position in relation to the sun is dramatically altered by invisible space giants, accidentally unleashed eons ago by ancient sorcerers. Their sole purpose is to annoy the living crap out of people every autumn by positioning the earth at the perfect angle to make the sun shine right into our friggin’ eyes as we’re trying to drive a car somewhere.

If you’re like me (and why wouldn’t you be?), your neglected car windshield has spent the summer collecting an appalling amount of insect splatter. So as this menacing sunlight blasts upon the glass, your view magically changes from “tolerably transparent” to “kinda milky,” all but ensuring a huge vehicular collision.

Thanks, invisible space giants. Thanks, fall. You guys suck.

The Friggin’ Leaves

Yes, yes, the leaves are spectacular and gorgeous. And yes, yes, leaping gaily into a giant heap of crispy, fallen foliage is almost worth the effort of raking it all up into said giant heap. But those leaf piles are silent killers. Half the time, you end up jumping onto a lump of dog crap, a rock, a sharp stick, or a dead racoon. And a few minutes of frolicking converts all those dead leaves into little pieces of dead leaves which head straight for your underwear. No thanks.

The Friggin’ Storm Windows

My house has old-timey storm windows, and figuring out exactly when to put them up is agonizing. As soon as the frost comes, I wake up to sheets of ice on the inside of the glass. So I put up the storm windows, and as soon as the last latch is latched, ancient invisible hot air giants cause the temperature to leap into the 90s, turning my house into an oven, and it’s not like I can crack a friggin’ window, because I just put up THE STORM WINDOWS. And there wasn’t even a storm. Ironic. And annoying. Thanks a lot, old-timey storm windows. I friggin’ hate you.

The Friggin’ Bait-n-Switch

OK, this is the worst bad thing about fall. At first, it’s all cool and soothing, dissolving the fever of a hot, humid summer. Once you get all pleasantly chilly, it dresses you up in fashionable outfits involving earth-toned shackets and scarves and stocking caps. Fall hides your body’s flaws with awesome sweaters and relaxed fit … everything. A crisp breeze whispers sweetly in your ear, urging you to relax. Take a stroll. Eat an apple cider donut. Buy some weird gourds for your coffee table. And then, as soon as you get into it, as soon as you start enjoying yourself, and as soon as you plan a day-long country drive to look at trees and eat more donuts WHAM. Winter shows up and punches you right in the stomach with its fists of ice. And then it dumps three feet of snow onto the leaves you haven’t raked up.

But golly. All that said, I just can’t stay mad at autumn. I’ll keep coming back. And I’ll love every second of its beautiful torture.

*Ope, on account of all the cheese curds, dontcha-know-there-bud.