Things That Make Me Crazy
I have concluded that life is filled with petty annoyances. I've been frequently advised to just shrug them off and get on with the important things, but there are times when that simply is not possible, and this weekend is going to be one of those times. Daylight Savings Time ends on Sunday.
I don't know who came up with this lame brain idea, but I hope whoever it was is suffering eternal torment. I mean, really. I'm told that the idea was generated to give farmers more daylight hours to work on their crops, but that simply makes no sense. Nor does the excuse for extending the number of weeks of DST given by Congress several years ago: it gives customers more daylight hours to shop. The old joke that the time change is evidence of the White Man's Derangement Syndrome in which he cuts the top of a blanket off and sews that part on the bottom of the blanket to make it longer makes about as much sense (and may even be accurate).
Kathryn Wilkens points out just how crazy this time change business really is in the Los Angeles Times. Not only is the time change crazy, she indicates, it is crazy-making because twice a year it is an enormous waste of time. In her case, she and her husband have 40 different time measuring devices to change: cell phones, car clocks, computers, stove and microwave, watches, clocks ... the list is horrifying. I don't have nearly that many items to shift, but I have enough that I'm tired out by just thinking about the effort.
The biggest problem, however, is one that does not involve outside things, but internal things, and Ms. Wilkens gets it right:
There's one clock, however, that's impossible to reset: my internal clock. My brain and body will be out of sync for days. My insomnia will get worse and I'll be cranky — especially when I realize that in five months, I'll have to go through this all over again.
I say we end this nonsense. Pick one time for each region and keep it that way year round. I don't particularly care which time scheme (DST of Standard) is chosen. Just keep it so I don't have to go through this twice a year.
I don't know who came up with this lame brain idea, but I hope whoever it was is suffering eternal torment. I mean, really. I'm told that the idea was generated to give farmers more daylight hours to work on their crops, but that simply makes no sense. Nor does the excuse for extending the number of weeks of DST given by Congress several years ago: it gives customers more daylight hours to shop. The old joke that the time change is evidence of the White Man's Derangement Syndrome in which he cuts the top of a blanket off and sews that part on the bottom of the blanket to make it longer makes about as much sense (and may even be accurate).
Kathryn Wilkens points out just how crazy this time change business really is in the Los Angeles Times. Not only is the time change crazy, she indicates, it is crazy-making because twice a year it is an enormous waste of time. In her case, she and her husband have 40 different time measuring devices to change: cell phones, car clocks, computers, stove and microwave, watches, clocks ... the list is horrifying. I don't have nearly that many items to shift, but I have enough that I'm tired out by just thinking about the effort.
The biggest problem, however, is one that does not involve outside things, but internal things, and Ms. Wilkens gets it right:
There's one clock, however, that's impossible to reset: my internal clock. My brain and body will be out of sync for days. My insomnia will get worse and I'll be cranky — especially when I realize that in five months, I'll have to go through this all over again.
I say we end this nonsense. Pick one time for each region and keep it that way year round. I don't particularly care which time scheme (DST of Standard) is chosen. Just keep it so I don't have to go through this twice a year.
Labels: Change
posted by Diane at 3:30 AM
1 Comments:
I for one am happy for Daylight Savings Time, for a purely personal reason — if not for DST, the June sun would be streaming into my windows at 4:30 AM. Humans used to live by the sun but now we live by the clock; however, the earth is still tilting and some of us need that adjustment.
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