Deuces Wild!

I'm screwed up. Why, you ask? Well, it's 10:55 pm right now, but my happy little body is telling me that it's 9:55. It's all because of this damned "daylight savings time". I blame the difficulty to adjust on spending 26 years in Indiana (though for four of them, I lived in Rensselaer, which did follow daylight savings). If nothing else, I'm not only slow to pick up on concepts, but I'm slow to adjust to these sudden shifts in time that come twice a year.

And here's another thing. We're on daylight time now, or (for North Carolina), Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). We are on EDT from the first full weekend in March to the last full weekend in October, which is 8 months. That means we're on Eastern "Standard" Time (EST), for four months a year. How is this standard?

Another problem, I want to curse Benjamin Franklin for inventing this accursed way of conserving our candles. Despite what I was taught as a lad, this is not true. Franklin didn't invent it. Instead, he suggested that Frenchmen are lazy, offering "Early to bed, early to rise, blah blah blah" and then suggested firing cannons early in the day to roust the Frenchies from leurs lits earlier in le matin to get leurs culs paresseux up and working (lot of /l/s in this langue bete). This was met with much resistance (clearly, if Franklin fired cannon, then the Parisians would have risen from bed with arms fully raised over their heads)--and while the French thought the funny little bumpkin from Philadelphia was adorable with his bald head, sentient gout and pudgy paunch, they continued the practice of sleeping late. Then one day they woke up and everyone was speaking German.

No, the true culprit is one William Willet, an English builder. Willet was apparently a morning person, and took it upon himself, once he realized that people like sleeping, to ruin this habit because so many Londoners were missing the best part of the day (in his humble and self-righteous opinion). Here's the other problem with this asshat: he loved golf. In fact, he loved golf so much, that he was often upset when an afternoon session ran long and he had to cut back on the golfing because of darkness. Apparently, Willet had never heard of getting piss drunk at the clubhouse. Apparently, Willet also never heard of going to a burlesque house. Apparently, Willet was just an all around prick.


Have I not convinced you of the errors and evils of daylight savings time yet? Well, how about this last fact: the first people to use DST? The Germans, in 1916, during a little thing we like to call World War I. They also forced that shit on all their occupied territories and they shoved it down their allies' throats. Apparently, England and France decided to get up early (and you thought I was joking about everyone speaking German) to avoid waking up to the heady aromas of chlorine and mustard gas. Ah, trench warfare, your elegance is so misunderstood and understated.

And while you're springing forward, think on this: gasoline consumption in Indiana jumped by three percent (from 1% to 4% during the "saved" hours) after it adopted DST a couple of years ago. Wait. I thought all this nonsense bullshit was to help us alleviate our need of foreign oil. Seems as though someone forgot to carry the 1 while doing those complex calculations.

The only good thing I can see is that traffic fatalities are reduced when there is more light for the evening commute. This is a good thing. However(!), now I have to deal--once more!--with that accursed huge, red orb that sits exactly on top of the road as it rises slowly over the eastern horizon while I'm driving my daughter to school in the mornings. Its blazing light is enough to sear the very orbs from my sockets, bleaching the world in a bath of yellow and white light, sucking all other colors away as it crests above the eastern edge of the world. I can't see a thing beyond about three inches past my windshield. Yes, that's safe.

This might be my hot button issue for the election year: whoever says they'll abolish this fascist, vile, contemptible, golf-laden practice gets my vote. Unless it's Hillary.

P.S. This is my 222nd post. Hence the deucey goodness in the title.