In the space of less than a week “It’s September, for God’s sake” — a line used by Grantland‘s Mark Harris in a 9.12 piece about too-early Oscar projections — has become something bigger than itself. It’s now a meme of sorts, a metaphor for the increasingly hurried pace and the manic, distracted quality of 21st Century urban life. Five words that protest the relentless onrush of fate, time, biology. Anything that seems to be happening much too quickly and without sufficient warning. An allusion to unwanted haste and impermanence and tumbling tides, and perhaps even to the shocking approach of death — “I’m in the autumn of my years, not the winter…Jesus.” From now on instead of saying “already?” or “do we have to leave right this minute?,” I’m going to say “It’s September, for God’s sake!”