Can We Please Just Leave the Fucking Clocks Alone?

It happened again this past Monday, the first day back to work after the start of Daylight “Saving” Time. Someone just had to say the most insipid phrase that I hate more than any, including “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity!”. The phrase I hate most always comes shortly after we, almost as a nation, somehow collectively agree to change our clocks forward by one hour.

And the award for the most hated and insipid phrase goes to… “I sure am glad to have the extra hour of daylight!”

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Excuse me if you have never seen the movie “Logan’s Run” in which a room full of holograms intone over and over “THERE IS NO SANCTUARY”. But I just can’t help but repeat that scene over and over in my head this time of year. Instead, the menacing mind-projections chant “THERE IS NO EXTRA HOUR OF SUNLIGHT”. Some of these images then try to go on about how we still have the same amount of sunlight as before (okay, maybe there are about 45 seconds of extra sunlight this particular day). But it isn’t like we all did the gods for a trick and pulled an extra hour of sunlight out of our collective ass, is it?

Maybe it is. Maybe this explains the Biblical account of the battle of Jericho where some clever dick, it is written, got the sun to keep from setting long enough for the Jews to slaughter a few extra thousand bad guys. Maybe they did it by convincing the bad guys to keep setting their clocks ahead, or back, or whatever, while the Israelites went about the business of kicking their sleep-deprived asses.

THERE IS NO EXTRA HOUR OF SUNLIGHT! Of course I know that everyone who has expressed gratitude for the “extra hour” probably really understands this at some level. Just as I’m sure that the people who make value judgments on heat versus humidity realize that the fault of the current discomfort does not fully lie in the humidity. Even they know that the humidity would not really be such a concern if the heat would just let up a bit. But if rational thought were to ever prevent conversation, this whole country would probably just shut right the fuck up.

And that would be a bad thing.

I guess these topics, insipid as they might seem to the self-righteous bastards like me and Stubby (mostly Stubby), do serve some purpose and are not actually evil. But the whole bit of “gaining an extra hour of sunlight” does particularly irk me because I really hate the whole business of Daylight “Saving” Time. I could just go off on a major rant about that. Since that is what Stubby pays me for, it is about time I got started on it.

My earliest recollection of taking an interest in the whole concept of D”S”T goes back to the 6’th grade when I was a student at St. Irishguy’s School. I remember our teacher making the kids in my class write letters to our state representatives expressing our displeasure with D”S”T.

I don’t recall why the teacher thought this to be a worthy assignment. I don’t even remember who that teacher was, honestly. But I do remember trying to come up with a good and reasonable argument against D”S”T. What I came up with, and wrote to my state representative about, went along the lines that schoolchildren waiting at bus stops in the morning would be more susceptible to kidnappings because D”S”T made it darker in the morning. Kidnapping is a very primal fear to kids. I was just trying to exploit it.

It sounds pathetic now, but at least I as a child understood way back in the 6’th grade that nobody was saving or gaining anything by this. We were just robbing Peter to pay Paul. Life sucks when you are Peter. If Paul had tried this with St. Irishguy, he’d have had his ass kicked!

As I grew into manhood, I set aside such childish thoughts. I gained a true hatred for D”S”T because it always fucked up my sleep patterns. Sure the same thing happens to me whenever I travel to destinations in other time zones. But there is a reason for voluntarily allowing that to happen. I’m actually paid to do that. In both cases, I adjust and get on with life. But with D”S”T, I’m not paid anything and there is no reason for it.

Having grown up in a town named “Franklin”, I was indoctrinated early and often that this man was a genius. We were told that he invented all kinds of stuff like “electricity” and “bifocals” and the “Franklin stove”. I still believe the latter, but I’m betting he at least had some help with the other ones. One of the great truths I grew up with was that he also invented D”S”T, so I should just shut the hell up and set my clock ahead/backward when the government tells me to. I guess I should just be glad we don’t do this in 20 minute increments over three weeks like the godsdam “genius” once proposed.

I still believe that Ben Franklin was a genius. Hitler was a genius too but not all of his ideas were all that good either.

I have read many articles on how D”S”T is such a great thing. It saves energy. It cures cancer. It gives you more time, and time is money. It gives you more money. Can’t argue with that can you?

Well let me try, please. If D”S”T is so godsdam great, why the hell are we not doing it all year round? That way we don’t have to be fucking with the clocks and getting our sleep patterns all messed up. The chickens will always know when they are going to be fed. It is a win-win isn’t it?

It is not like I hate D”S”T in and of itself as much as I hate the whole fucking with the clocks. I guess the real enemy is “ST”. Why isn’t D”S”T “Standard” all year long if it is such a bloody wonderful thing? Please. This cannot possibly be an original complaint. Soup, help me out here. Is there a real argument why we don’t just do D”S”T all year long and leave the clocks the fuck alone?

I’m sure there is. And then I’ll have to admit to being a jackass about this whole thing. I’m used to that and you’ve come to expect it from me too. The great arguments that prove me wrong are probably out there and I just don’t know about them. There must be a reason. I just know I’m not getting paid shit for putting up with this.

The thing that makes me wonder that there might not actually be a good reason (other than the fact that I’ve never found one) is the fact that Arizona and half of the state of Indiana refuse to partake in these reindeer games. Two of the greatest deserts in the USofA (one actual, one cultural) have rejected this foolishness. Hawaii has nothing to do with it either. What do they all have in common? What do they know that the rest of the country doesn’t? I’m not setting you up for a stunning answer here. I really just don’t know. Call this “audience participation time”…

In my fantasy, dream-land, I imagine a USofA where when the sun is directly over Kansas, it is noon. For the whole country. When the sun is directly behind Kansas, it is very, very dark out. And the rest of the country can just learn to live with it. Think of the possibilities!

Californians would not have to miss church to watch football. They wouldn’t have to skip work early or even miss dinner to watch Monday Night Football either. They would no longer be considered dumber than their eastern countrymen because it took them three hours longer to get the jokes on Leno and Letterman.

Easterners, you’d think would be a harder sell. But what this idea has to offer them is that they could sleep in every day. I’d buy that. Also, they wouldn’t be able to do yard work when they came home from a hard day at the office. Save it all for the weekend! I’d buy that too. And our kids wouldn’t have to worry so much about being kidnapped at the bus stop. I would have bought that too, some time ago.

As for the energy savings and expenditures, they would all come out in the wash. And nobody even suspects that conservation is the foremost of goals of the current administration anyway. Hell, think of all the “extra” daylight we’d have to drill for oil in Alaska.

Please, somebody tell me why this is a bad idea. If you like to do yard work when you come home from the office, go west young man. If you like to sleep late in the morning, then the east is for you.

As for you Kansans, the sun would truly revolve around your flat earth like you already believe. Just don’t go getting all uppity about this. We have instructions on how to make the sun stand still while we all kick all your asses.

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