It's Just a Jump to the Left...

Last weekend my VCR and computer agreed on what time it was, but my alarm clock and phone did not. Who should I believe? Can’t they all just agree to disagree and move on? I guess not. I wasn’t the only one who had to deal with normally honest, hard-working electronics that were suddenly lying to me. Apparently this happened all over the place and as usual, we can blame the Government

The United States Congress has once again declared themselves masters of time and space. This mythical construct called Daylight Saving Time has been pushed back from the last weekend in Oct. to the first weekend in Nov. Thus confusing my self-updating electronics.

This is clearly a case where, once again, our politicians are in the pocket of Big Candy. The large candy conglomerates have lobbied hard for this change claiming that by pushing this arbitrary shift in space-time past Halloween, it will boost lagging candy sales. Arguing that more daylight for trick-or-treating will increase the consumption of candy corn.

This makes sense because we all know that what the average American child needs is more fucking candy. Childhood obesity be damned! Candy Corn for all! That bullshit about saving energy is just that. It’s all about the special interest Big Candy lobbying money corrupting the political process which, as we all know, is the true master of what time it is. The Sun’s position in the sky or the Earth’s orbit around it are false constructs foisted upon our society by scientific zealots out to prove that God is dead.

I have heard the arguments for and against Daylight Saving Time. I find them all equally irrelevant. The time is what the time is. Don’t fuck with it. People have been using Sun dials for thousands of years to reckon the time and I think maybe, just maybe, use of the physical universe around us as a method to determine the time might seem reasonable. But no, good ol’ Ben Franklin had a dream. This dream was to fuck with the various electronic devices of future generations such that no one really knew what time was.

There was a point in our society when we had to standardize the time because, you know, trains needed to arrive at the station when they said they would. Apparently not any more. Various States have different laws. My parents live in AZ. They don’t adhere to the arbitrary time changes. Good for them. But my State does, meaning that sometimes I am an hour ahead of them, and sometimes I am two hours ahead for them… or maybe it's the same time there that it is here. I can’t even tell any more. In other words, I have absolutely no fucking idea what time it is in Phoenix right now. Even our beloved Twin Cities was separated, not by the mighty Mississippi river, but by time itself:

“In 1965, St. Paul decided to begin its Daylight Saving Time period early to conform to most of the nation, while Minneapolis felt it should follow Minnesota's state law, which stipulated a later start date. After intense inter-city negotiations and quarreling, the cities could not agree, and so the one-hour time difference went into effect, bringing a period of great time turmoil to the cities and surrounding areas”.

Unintended consequences--you see fucking with universal constants such as the speed of light or time always has unintended consequences. If you don’t believe me just watch an episode of Star Trek. When the English Parliament was debating this issue one clever chap by the name of Lord Balfour came forward with a unique concern:

"Supposing some unfortunate lady was confined with twins and one child was born 10 minutes before 1 o'clock. ... the time of birth of the two children would be reversed. ... Such an alteration might conceivably affect the property and titles in that House."

The impact of this increasingly annoying predilection we have with changing the time around to suit our needs can have even more disastrous implications. What happens at bar close at 2:00AM when suddenly it becomes 1:00AM again? Do we get to drink for another hour. Some say yes, some say no. But what about the converse. Suddenly your late night out is cut short because some asshole in Congress has decided that regardless of what the Earth’s relative tilt and position in the solar system may be, we’re just going to arbitrarily change time… confusion over such an important issue can end in tradgedy:

“Patrons of bars that stay open past 2:00 a.m. lose one hour of drinking time on the day when Daylight Saving Time springs forward one hour. This has led to annual problems in numerous locations, and sometimes even to riots. For example, at a "time disturbance" in Athens, Ohio, site of Ohio University, over 1,000 students and other late night partiers chanted "Freedom," as they threw liquor bottles at the police attempting to control the riot.”

I propose to set the time based on you know, the time. If you really feel compelled to fuck with it, why not on the Solstice or Equinox? I’ll tell you why. Because this is a conspiracy to socially engineer the population:

"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.)

Couldn’t have said it better myself.