NO PUMPKIN SPICE SHERLOCK!!!

'Tis the season.

I'm not sure if we blame Starbuck's for starting the pumpkin spice invasion of autumn, but I'm sure they had something to do with that flavor's initial incursion. Now that we're practically on the verge of renaming "autumn" to "pumpkin spice time," however, I think it may be time for Sherlockians to start forming their underground cells for the eventual revolution.

Why?

Not because I couldn't even finish a quarter of that package of pumpkin spice Oreos last year. That's my personal cross to bear. No, pumpkin spice is a bane for Sherlockians because . . . well, just look at how citizens of Watsonian lore referred to it in the Canon.

Here's the pumpkin: "I had sprung for the poker, and it was a fair fight between us. See here on my arm where the first blow fell. Then it was my turn, and I went through him as if he had been a rotten pumpkin." -- from "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange."

Yuck. But that's not the end of it. You won't find "spice" in the Canon, but you will find some of its individual ingredients. Take cloves for example: "They are for use of horses; but they are shaped below with a cloven foot of iron . . ." from "Priory School." Could we find a more demonically tainted use of "clove?" I think not.

And the spice of the Canon's pumpkin spice isn't even just demonic. It's racist.

Cinnamon. Where can we find our cinnamon?

"Silver Blaze" and it goes like this: "Mr. Heath Newton's The Negro (red cap, cinnamon jacket)."

Ick yuck poo.

For ginger you have to go to the big ginger moustache of Anderson the village constable from "Lion's Mane," and you know both the soul-less reputation of gingers and the unappetizing thought of moustache hairs in your latte.

Dr. Watson and friends were trying to subtly warn us about pumpkin spice. How it will ruin a man's brain, how it's demonic, racist, and just plain gross. And we, as Sherlockians, should heed him and take up the fight when the anti-pumpkin spice revolution comes!

Because, well, what less silly thing do you have to do . . . get involved with presidential politics?