DST, boo

The more I think about it, Daylight Saving Time (DST) is nonsense with little data to support its benefits. Many myths about it persist. (No, it was NOT instituted for the farmers; they vigorously opposed it.) And extending DST, as happened with legislation in 2005, brings no provable benefits that I can see. This is a topic that surely and easily should unite liberals, conservatives, rationalists, naysayers, soothsayers, and others.

snow

I sheepishly declare I already miss those blankets of albino secrets, the snowy terrain of silvery silence, muffling the ruffling of earthly murmurings. Snow what? I miss you.

I miss you like that vacant hour we were forced to surrender at 2 a.m., like it or not, with some vague promise of getting it back this fall. I miss that hour. I hardly knew ye, EST. And now DSY comes barging in here, al naked and primal, all quasi-equinox and all, all artificial-like. Poseur.

DST

can you believe Daylight Saving Time already -- tonight?

crazy

I just don't buy that it saves one electron of energy

if 10 days vanished with the implementation of the Gregorian calendar in 1582 (in some places; much later in others), what vanishes within one artificially imposed leap forward of an hour?

what is in that Book of Hours?

Out of Time, Out of Steps

"Does anybody really know what time it is?" is the refrain, I believe, of an old song by the group Chicago. Maybe it should be the temporary national anthem of the United States. I mean, really. This Daylight Saving Time thing is putting us through a national jet lag, and for what? Allegedly to save energy. Right. I'm with the critics who say it smacks of both paternalism and Puritanism. And where do they put all this saved daylight anyway, into the Federal Light Reserve Bank? Can people with seasonal affective disorder (SAD) draw from it during dark times? Is it all because someone wanted to give up time for Lent?

As I speak, so to speak, my kid is awake, goggle-eyed (whereas, I'm more Google-eyed), not tired enough to go to sleep because her body is telling her it is one hour earlier in yesterday's time. And I, night owl, am not nearly tired enough either.

But, oh, we'll be paying for it tomorrow. Oh yeah.

And that's just what the Puritans want, the "dawnists" who feel more virtuous than us the benighted, by virtue of their being early risers. (Disclaimer: I do not detect such condescension at all in the Secretary of Dawns.)

And it just dawned on me that the association of nonmorning people with night, darkness, subterfuge, shadows, and let's come out and just say it, evil, is some vast conspiracy, some huge public relations campaign against us owls, the burners of the midnight oil.

We are unproductive laggards, slackers, to the rolled-up-sleeves, go-get-'em elan of the Babbitt-Midwest-virtuous Aurora addicts.

My bet is most bloggers are night's-talkers, not ante meridiem mavens.

Ah, the good ol' twelve-hour clock.

What is it about twelve anyway? Twelve hours before noon, twelve hours after noon, twelve months, twelve apostles, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve imams, twelve days of Christmas, and, um, Twelve Steps, needed for "nocturnaholics."

They only meet if they can't sleep.

At night.

In bed. After all, nocturnaholics are viewed as naughty, if viewed at all, in the dark.


The coinages dawnist(s) and nocturnaholic(s) are copyright 2007 by The Laughorist, a.k.a. Pawlie Kokonuts. These neologisms are to be emulated by all his serial-comma-loving minions.