Daylight Faking Time
I freakin’ HATE Daylight so-called Saving Time. (It’s Saving, not SavingS, by the way. Yes, I know it’s in some dictionaries that way, but they’re wrong.)
What insufferable bonehead thought of this abomination in the first place? (That would be Ben Franklin, the meddlesome little swine.) Why can’t we just observe the normal natural clock the way it was laid out all those years ago? No actual daylight gets actually SAVED, you know. It just gets shifted. So now it’s dark in the morning AND dark when you come home in the evening. The real “benefit” of more daylight evening hours doesn’t kick in till the, duh, actual summer. So why is the timeframe constantly being extended into fall and early spring? Freakin’ morons.
Now, thanks to Chimpy McFlightsuit and his idiot minions, next year DST will begin the second Sunday in MARCH and end the first Sunday in NOVEMBER. Which means that for almost NINE MONTHS OF THE YEAR we’ll be on Fake Time. It doesn’t even help agriculture, the way it was ostensibly designed to do: farmers continually complain that the cows and chickens don’t accustom themselves to the new schedule for months.
You know, if you’re gonna extend it so ridiculously, why not just go the whole hog and shift us ALL an hour ALL year round? Eastern US would go on Atlantic Time, and all the timezones to the west would just bump up one.
But no, because I and the cows and the states of Arizona and Hawaii, who are apparently the only ones left who repudiate this bogus clock, would hate that even more. Still, as wrong as the stupid policy is, at least it would be consistent.
A writer in 1947 noted, "I don't really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it. At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves." (Robertson Davies, The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks, 1947, XIX, Sunday.)
My fellow warrior in crankdom! But he’s quite right.
Personally, I love the feel of the world darkening gradually into winter. It’s real. It’s natural. It connects you to the round of the seasons. It shouldn’t be tampered with. And if bureaucrats are so ill advised as to try, I say they should be condemned to daylight 24 hours a day, if they like it so freakin’ much. Make them work north of the Arctic Circle. Summer and winter. That'll teach 'em.
What insufferable bonehead thought of this abomination in the first place? (That would be Ben Franklin, the meddlesome little swine.) Why can’t we just observe the normal natural clock the way it was laid out all those years ago? No actual daylight gets actually SAVED, you know. It just gets shifted. So now it’s dark in the morning AND dark when you come home in the evening. The real “benefit” of more daylight evening hours doesn’t kick in till the, duh, actual summer. So why is the timeframe constantly being extended into fall and early spring? Freakin’ morons.
Now, thanks to Chimpy McFlightsuit and his idiot minions, next year DST will begin the second Sunday in MARCH and end the first Sunday in NOVEMBER. Which means that for almost NINE MONTHS OF THE YEAR we’ll be on Fake Time. It doesn’t even help agriculture, the way it was ostensibly designed to do: farmers continually complain that the cows and chickens don’t accustom themselves to the new schedule for months.
You know, if you’re gonna extend it so ridiculously, why not just go the whole hog and shift us ALL an hour ALL year round? Eastern US would go on Atlantic Time, and all the timezones to the west would just bump up one.
But no, because I and the cows and the states of Arizona and Hawaii, who are apparently the only ones left who repudiate this bogus clock, would hate that even more. Still, as wrong as the stupid policy is, at least it would be consistent.
A writer in 1947 noted, "I don't really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it. At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves." (Robertson Davies, The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks, 1947, XIX, Sunday.)
My fellow warrior in crankdom! But he’s quite right.
Personally, I love the feel of the world darkening gradually into winter. It’s real. It’s natural. It connects you to the round of the seasons. It shouldn’t be tampered with. And if bureaucrats are so ill advised as to try, I say they should be condemned to daylight 24 hours a day, if they like it so freakin’ much. Make them work north of the Arctic Circle. Summer and winter. That'll teach 'em.
posted by Patricia Kennealy Morrison | 1:33 PM
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