Sunday, November 3, 2013

"It's Time... for Time."


In America, most communities set their clocks back an hour last night. You would think this would please me, as it supposedly gives me an extra hour of sleep in the morning. It did in the old days and I suppose it would still if I had to be anywhere to hand over the reins of my life to some Evil Bastard of an employer. But for now, at least for this year, I am making my own hours and the clock has become something that forces me to see to it that my quats are fed regular and proper.

Standardized time in my country came about of course as a result of the once-vital and growing railway system; it was just too maddening to schedule arrivals and departures when every little town lived by its own time. 

I rather like that idea of localized time now, wildly impractical as it is. Our four time zones can be confusing enough; imagine if there were hundreds, maybe thousands! Everyone living by his own time — how wonderful it would be to say to some Suited Corporate Bastard, “Sorry, guv’ner, but it may be nine o’clock by your watch, but by my personal clock it is actually seven-thirty… making me not late by an hour but actually early by a half an hour.”

— and smile sweetly while the miserable twat stews in his juices.

(In case you are a recent arrival here, there are two kinds of people that I hate unreservedly: Suited Corporate Bastards and the kind of Policeman who believes that he is Licensed to Bully. But that’s a subject for another column). 

Here in my doddering “middle years” (though one sometimes hopes they are closer to the end ones -- and I don't mean that in the same way that the bible thumpers do), I have learned that the only time that really means anything at all to me is Daylight Savings Time. This relatively recent add-on actually shifts the organization of days much closer to the way they should be all year round. There are people who call for the elimination of Daylight Savings Time. I’m just the opposite: if we stick with one set of hours year ‘round, the system that we should lose is Standard Time. 

Extending Daylight Savings Time by a couple of weeks at both ends is about the only good thing that George Bush ever did for this country,

It’s all kind of amusing really, and shows humanity’s arrogance in the bright Daylight Savings Time light. Having the unbridled egotism to believe that we can manipulate Time when we are so patently at its mercy, or lack of mercy… what a jest on us! If anything at all separates us from the animals, it’s this kind of pomposity and self-importance — hmmm, maybe this post is about Suited Corporate Bastards and Cops after all! 

— Freder
www.ducksoup.me

3 comments:

  1. Here in Canada we have five an one-half time zones. That's confusing enough so I'm all for the standardized system. Sorry ;-)

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  2. I can definitely see the advantages of poking the Corporate Bastards in the eye with an alternate time system. I have an entire tiny town full of Bullying Cops who could use a nice attitudinal nudge, too.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I find daylight great in summer as it means more daylight to spend more time outdoors but it is confusing when we have 5 different time zones in Australia.
    It can be an hour to 3 hours difference between them all.

    ReplyDelete

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