Monday, March 11, 2019
Sproing Forward, Fall Back
Oh sure, there's plenty of interesting and meaningful news worth talking about today, but we can't really do it. And why? It's because we're bleary-eyed, disoriented, and sick to our stomach, owing to the governmental curse called Daylight Saving Time.
And while we're not normally conspiratorially minded, we can't help but connect a few dots. Today, we could be writing about AOC accusing the United States of being "garbage" in statements made at the South By Southwest gathering in Austin, TX, or writing about the Democrats killing a bill to limit voting to actual citizens. We could be writing about House Democrats' tacit endorsement of anti-semitism, or the increasing panic among the Left-leaning that the Mueller report - if the damn thing ever comes out - will have absolutely nothing of substance about Trump's alleged Russian collusion.
But nooOOooo. Because the government is spreading sleeping sickness far more efficiently than any tsetse fly could ever dream of (see what we did there?), we're limited to tapping randomly on our keyboard while blinking with heavy-lidded eyes and thinking wistfully of death by ritual Seppuku just to end our zombie-like torpor.
And sure, people say that the nightmare of DST works itself out over the course of a year, but at our age we don't really consider that a guarantee. Instead, we look at the situation more like our friend Johnny Optimism does...
We'd say more, but at the time of this writing on Sunday night, the clock says it's 7 o'clock, yesterday at this time it was 6 o'clock, and our body - deprived of an hour of sleep this morning - says that it's 10 o'clock. Yeah, the math doesn't add up, but that's our whole freaking point.
Hopefully, but not likely, most of our malaise will have passed by Wednesday. If you need us in the interim, we'll be in bed wearing a tear-stained sleep mask.
BONUS: MORE OF THE SAME!
Something worth listening to here guys--
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h5iv6sECGU&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3SDRXn17Nil3Qhnci0O6-sSiWtv0mYOCaFlPkuXv9dvQRydCseucbrIQU
I've traveled quite a bit by air and worked shift work in an oil refinery. Jet lag is still my life. Even after retirement, my sleep cycles are screwed up. I feel your pain.
ReplyDeleteI also where nequitta krushchev was spewing HER garbage in austin. A good place for it.
Stilt,
ReplyDeleteIn the matter of national hysteria and basic hypnotism; Everybody seems to have missed the fact that every leader of every nation is supposed to collude with the leader of every other nation. That's what they do to maintain world peace and preserve commerce.
Leaders become good friends because they have no other people to friend-up with. The things they share with each other are generally considered secret because the friendships can often become very personal.
Imagine the conversation; "Hey, Donnie. My guys wanna bomb Colombia. You up for that?"
"Gee, Vladdie. You seem kind of honked today. Everything OK at home?"
"Nyet. Guess I've been under a bit of pressure. MY horse and my wife have come down with the same STD and my hair is all frazzled."
See, Stilt? Now doesn't that make you feel better about the world situation and help you perceive how the Oval Office obliviates?
One of the joys of living in Arizona is not having to put up with the insanity of Daylight Savings Time (unless you live on the Navajo Nation that is - the poor Indians get the shaft again).
ReplyDeleteThe thing I hate most about Daylight Savings time is that my five o'clock shadow appears an hour earlier every day that it is in effect. :-)
ReplyDeleteOddly, though I loathe DST and the biannual spinning of the minute hand one way or t'other, the "spring forward" seems to comport with my circadian rhythms better than the "fall back" does. Or, at least, the time I have to get up to pee on the morning is now more near the time I have to get up. Anyway...
ReplyDelete@mamafrog: saw that yesterday. Wouldn't surprise me, but it does stretch ones incredulity a bit.
The revolution has begun! Both Florida and California wish to simply keep DST year round, and most New England states want to secede from Eastern Standard Time and join up with Atlantic Time.
ReplyDeleteYou whiny little Snowflakes could change this Daylight Savings bullsh*t if you wanted to. VOTE IT GONE! Tell the Pols on both sides that you've had your fill of this foolishness and you're tired of trying to figure when your favorite shows will be on TV.
ReplyDeleteAnd don't think you can just move to Arizona to get past it! We have enough problems with the sludge moving in from Cali; we don't need your baggage, too.
OK now, here's the deal; the liberal, commie, democrap, assholes say that it's OK for anybody on the planet (and perhaps for other planets too) of any age, living or dead, to vote in elections. Well, let's just all get along and go along. So we, the conservative, patriotic, Americans can do the same thing. After I vote in my little conservative town where you MUST show identification to prove that you're not dead or from Mars I plan on travelling to the nearest liberal city and spend the rest of the day voting a straight Republican ticket. How's that for tit for tat? I figure that if I plan it right I should be able to vote 8,731 times. In fact, if I start now I should be able to absentee and mail-in vote another 12,922 times. WOW, I'm starting to feel like a dung beetle.
ReplyDelete@ Fred: Genius! But I wonder if it only work until YOU get caught and selective enforcement of some unknown and unenforced law kicks in. Yes: We need that law.
ReplyDeleteJet lag is bad enough, but to have it foisted on us by the Gubmint...
ReplyDeleteI say, Enough is enough!! DOWN WITH DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME!!!
Enjoy:
https://youtu.be/w45QkL9blG4
(Shamelessly stolen from the Bluebird of Bitterness' site)
I'm old, so my brain stays on DST all year because it keeps getting longer (7 months or something). This means I wake up an hour earlier in the Winter months which I hate.
ReplyDeleteI thought I had it tough resetting our half dozen clocks!
ReplyDeleteCan you imagine what it takes to reset the stones at Stonehenge?
Coffee enema? Gandhi would approve!
ReplyDelete@Mamafrog. Thanks for that link. Clearly there is somebody behind AOC, she isn't dreaming up all this stuff in her kitchen while baking hash brownies or whatever.
ReplyDelete@Murpny(AZ): Darnit, Murph. My wife and I are now packing and packing and packing to move to Prescott ("Press-kitt" to you new immigrants"), from Santa Rosa, CA, and even though YOU don't need our baggage, WE need it! You would not believe the number of boxes of books my wife is packing. I've done her one better, however, with even more boxes of reloading gear. We now have so much junk packed (and we're packed only about one-third of the way) that I think we will have enough inventory to open a Thrift Shop on Gurley Street and still have enough left over to run the house.
ReplyDeleteAfter lifting about a ton of full boxes yesterday, my lower back feels like a hundred kindergarteners have been jumping on it....all at once. Now...if I can just find out if coffee enemas are available to California ex-pats. I'd even eat the rear end out of a Gila monster if it promised relief. I'll stop whining; after all, that's what I get for being a "senior citizen."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TBc_YB600c
As one who had to be up at 3:45am this morning to get Mrs. Econ to the airport, I'm with you, at least in state of consciousness or coherence. When one knows they have to get up at such an hour, it's hard to get to sleep and even harder to sleep well. And then pointless trying to go back to sleep when you get home later. My day is trashed.
ReplyDeleteFortunately, even in my highly compromised state, I am still more than able to match wits with AOC. Just let me put it this way: If AOC and her ever get their socialist paradise, she's right that the jobless will not be "left to die". Like all previous worker's paradises, they'll be sent to gulags to be worked to death.
Ocasio-Cortez also said during her interview that automation could allow for more time to focus on art, invention, the sciences and "enjoying the world that we live in."
Oh great. More bad art and awful garage bands.
But also seemingly contrary to the rest of her Green New Deal which literally eliminates life as we knew it. You really won't have much time for enjoying the world that we live in if you're either in a gulag, or having to spend every waking hour of your day foraging for "green" food.
@Geoff King --- Waaaaaaaait a minute. If Florida stays on DST year-round, isn't that the same as going on Atlantic time?
ReplyDeleteFortunately, I live in Arizona, where we do not go through this ritual of "spring forward, fall back", so I honestly do not feel your pain. It is only an hour! I remember getting jet lag going to Paris, France, but that is a hell of a lot more than one hour. Flying from New Jersey to the west coast when I was younger was an inconvenience and took a minor adjustment, but for just one hour?
ReplyDeletePlease let me know if I a way off base here, as I am sure you will.
I remember going to Hawaii in '84 and kept waking up at 3:00 A.M., drinking coffee on the patio and watching all the other folks that woke up as I did. Pretty funny, you knew they were not from Hawaii. I am not sure what the point of DST is anyways but it probably has dem fingerprints all over it.
ReplyDeleteI have heard, but have not confirmed, that Benjamin Franklin first thought of DST to save on candles. Whether or not that is true, we have come pretty far from saving candles. I do know that the candy manufacturers lobbied Congress, successfully, to move the fall date to after Halloween to give the little trick or treaters one more hour of daylight, therefore selling more candy.
ReplyDeleteIt's not the one hour diff (or one time zone) so much as when in the day change immediately hits most. Early & late in the "day". Getting up & out, Commuting, Kids off to school, Dawn or dusk runs or cycling, Dinner time, Scout meetings etc, Bed time.
ReplyDeleteI'd just like to pick one and stay with it. Let the seasonal sun cycle do what it's going to do. Many Employers and employees can change their hours summer/wsinter if they want to. And I don't know why DST has steadily grown to include more weeks of the year; I'd bet it's really money grubbing commerce, a few deep-pocketed individuals, & paid-for politicians.
Hey Stilton--Great stuff!
ReplyDeleteYou gotta watch this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h5iv6sECGU
I found it on https://theferalirishman.blogspot.com/
EXPAINS AOH to a tee!!
-Tony in Upstate NY
Time is a confidence trick invented by the Swiss just so they can sell more clocks. If you want to blame someone, then let's nuke all those cheese-eaters and usurious bankers. We need to stand together on this issue and return to the calming sleep cycles we so desperately crave. Enough is enough, says I.......
ReplyDeleteWhen I used to live in Michigan, and had to do the bi-annual clock changing ritual because of DST, I was also forced to endure non ending supposed PSA's telling me it was also time to change the batteries in my smoke detectors.
ReplyDeleteNow, speaking as an Arizona electrician, I can tell you that the battery in your smoke detector is only there in case the power is out when your house is burning. Otherwise, that battery should last 7 years or more. Plus, when the battery gets weak, the detector will beep intermittently to notify you of a needed battery change.
Now, twice a year, you are urged to change your smoke detector batteries.
Ya suppose Duracell or Eveready has a hand in perpetuating the DST nonesense?
Alfonso Bedoya: You will find, if you haven't already, that Prescott is an eclectic mix of political flavors. Most of the growth in the area over the past 20 years or so has come from Phoenix retirees and Cali ex-pats. The political climate is part Liberal, aligning with the college town influences of Flagstaff, and Ultra Conservative, aligning with the right-wing bastion of Prescott Valley.
ReplyDeleteIf part of the reason you're immigrating is because you've had your fill of political b.s., you will find refuge in the establishments on Whiskey Row.
Welcome to the rest of your life, probably the best part.
@mamafrog- That's an important (and terrifying) video. Welcome to the sci-fi world of social media political Hell.
ReplyDelete@Sortahwitte- Decades ago, I won first class airfare to Hawaii. I'd never traveled that far out of my body's timezone before, nor had I ever been offered free champagne for 7 hours. The combination was devastating.
@Jack Wiegman- GREAT point, and one that is almost entirely overlooked in mainstream media. "Collusion" is not, in and of itself, a crime...or even necessarily wrongdoing. Substitute the words "cooperation" or "communication" and suddenly it doesn't sound so bad. We've deliberately been dragged down a dangerous semantic rabbit hole.
@jpb252- Damn the Great White Father and his forked tongue!
@PaBlum- Lamont Cranston had that same problem. And no, unless you're older than dirt that alleged "joke" won't mean anything to most people.
@Emmentaler "Suspension Bridge of Disbelief" Limburger- Make no mistake, I like the way the time and reality match up during this period of DST. It's the transition that kills me.
@Geoff King- "What do we want?! Freedom from DST! When do we want it?! An hour ago! No, wait - an hour from now! No, wait..."
@Murphy(AZ)- Careful about who you're callin' a snowflake, podnah (grin). And at least I don't have to figure out when my favorite shows are on, because I TIVO everything and watch it when I damn well feel like it.
@Fred Ciampi- I see no flaw in your reasoning and say full speed ahead!
@Rod- Fred needs to rent some Hispanic kids and then say that it would be cruel for them to be separated from him while he's in jail.
@Igor- That was WONDERFUL!
@Judi King- See, that's what baffles me. I don't work a regular day job (or, uh, any other kind of paying job) and my schedule is entirely up to me. So you'd think I just have a jolly laugh and dismiss DST. But nooOOooo...it absolutely kills me twice a year.
@Anonymous- Suddenly, resetting my digital clocks doesn't seem so bad...
@WDS- Gandhi had some pretty unusual personal habits, including (if I recall correctly) drinking urine and sleeping with naked young girls in his bed to test his vow of chastity.
@Velveeta Processed Cheese Food- AOC is clearly a prop. Even though she didn't show strongly in the election (16k total votes, I understand) she's never held more than a restaurant service job, owes back taxes on a children's book company she partnered in that never created any children's books (but did receive government subsidies), and she's too scatter-brained to run any kind of campaign. She's a puppet.
@Alfonso Bedoya- I've lived a long and unusual life, but I've never heard the phrase "eat the rear end out of a Gila monster" until today. Thank you for reminding me that there are still surprises out there.
Stilt, don't need to rent any Hispanic kids. I have six Hispanic Step Children and 15 grands and 20 great grands). They will be happy to jump on he proverbial band wagon WhooHoo, full speed ahead. OK, where's my moonshine?
ReplyDelete@John the Econ- Ocasio-Cortez's remarks about automation giving people time to "focus on art, invention, and the sciences" reminds me of when Nancy Pelosi was claiming that unemployment was great because it allowed people to chase their passions and create meaningful art, write poems, and compose songs. Because so many people are currently suppressing their sparks of genius owing to the necessity of pulling the fries out of the boiling grease when a beeper goes off.
ReplyDeleteAnd you're right that nobody is going to find the (ahem) "leisure" afforded by a broken economy allows them to "enjoy the world." Ask the people in Venezuela who are scavenging from garbage cans.
@Dan- That's too vague a question; can you make it more Pacific? (No, that's not funny - but I've got DST brain...)
@udaman- It seems like "just one hour" wouldn't be that big a deal, but I guess some people might think "just one gunshot wound" wouldn't be much either.
@James Daily- That was my experience in Hawaii, too. I never saw so many freaking sunrises in my entire life.
@udaman- Ben Franklin was well known for being a prankster. I think somewhere he's still laughing about this one.
@Rod- You're right that it's not really the one hour difference which makes such an impact. It's the fact that DST casts us into Hell.
@Tony in Update NY- Yep, I've seen it. And largely believe it!
@Regnad Kcin- I'd back your effort to attack the Swiss, only don't forget that those bastards also invented Swiss Army Knives. Personally, I have no desire to charge a barricade of Lederhosen-wearing combat troops who are wielding corkscrews and tiny scissors.
@Geoff King- Okay, now THAT'S a conspiracy that makes sense! On the other hand, it's a good idea to check the smoke alarm batteries because when DST hits, people are more likely than usual to accidentally set their homes on fire.
@Murphy(AZ)- You paint an appealing picture. Fortunately, my neck of Texas is still pretty solidly conservative.
@Fred Ciampi- Holy cow, you've had this figured out for a long time! (grin)
In case anyone is interested, Amazon is taking Pre-orders for the The Mueller Report: The Final Report of the Special Counsel into Donald Trump, Russia, and Collusion Kindle $7.99 or Paperback $9.40
ReplyDeleteThis title will be released on March 26, 2019.
Maybe this thing will be done soon.
@Stilton: If you'd really like to experience time zone physical and mental discombobulation, I suggest hopping on a direct east coast to Japan flight, where when you arrive, its the afternoon of tomorrow and when you wake up, its the morning of the day after tomorrow. Or fly direct the other way, departing in the morning and when you arrive back on the east coast, its still the morning of the same day -even though you've been in the air for some 13+ hours.
ReplyDelete"Kindle $7.99 or Paperback $9.40"
ReplyDeleteWe paid millions for this giant nothingburger. (We got more confirmation of that yesterday when even Pelosi has given up on it) Making me pay more just to read it is an insult.
@Stilton, you are right about the similarity of AOC's Star Trek fantasy post-work universe and Nancy's ObamaCare dream. The unfortunate reality is that most Americans are already now freed of the necessity to work. The problem is that they aren't using their historically unprecedented amount of free time very constructively. Most of it gets wasted in pursuit of calorie-free entertainment, or more personally destructive behaviors. Even worse, the whole SJW phenomenon is basically people with not enough imagination to do something truly useful with their free time just causing discord with those of us who do.
Giving all these people more money is not going to improve anything.
@Joseph ET,
ReplyDeleteWow. Amazon's website says, "There has never been a more important political investigation than Robert S. Muller III's into President Donald Trump's possible collusion with Russia. His momentous findings can be found here, introduced by constitutional scholar, eminent civil libertarian, and New York Times bestselling author Alan Dershowitz.
So.... Amazon is trying to sell this because it's "the most important political investigation" EVAH! I'm kind of the opinion that, if it really were that Earth shattering, Mueller wouldn't be waiting until now to act on his so called damning evidence. Guaranteed, it's a big, fat nothing burger. Geez...
In unrelated news, today is the 30th anniversary of the web, and some nobody named Tim Berners-Lee is trying to take credit for inventing it. Wait 'til Al Gore finds out!