Monday, March 12, 2018

DST: Daylight Saving Time, or Demanding Sloth Time?

And so we have sprung forward once again, completing this silliest of human rituals, advancing our clocks one hour so as to have "extra" daylight in the evenings. On this Monday, a day often seen as the start of a new week, a day in which many people will think something like, "Wow, it's still so light!" upon leaving their traditional workplaces, I'll quickly summarize something I've realized about daylight saving time cheerleaders. Beyond the absurdity of semi-annual clock changing and the nonsensical extending of DST to eight months of the year so that it now lasts even longer than standard time, I now see that DST enthusiasm reveals how simultaneously lazy and demanding humans are. 

And if you know me, you know I loathe the combination of lazy (or helpless) + demanding. I firmly believe you should pick one or the other. If you're lazy or helpless, fine, but when people do stuff for you, you'd best not complain about how it's done. If you're demanding, fine, but then you'd best get on top of things and get your stuff done, not whine that it has to be done a certain way but then expect someone else to do it. 

Think about it, though. You hear a lot of positive comments in these early days after the spring forward time change along the lines of, "Wow, it's light until 7 p.m.!" or whatever. But...

1. Demanding. More light - uh, this is how summer works. This is just how our planet works: as summer approaches, the days get longer -- that is to say, there are more hours of daylight and fewer of darkness. Everyone knows this, and for the most part everyone understands why (loony-tunes-flat-earthers notwithstanding). (There are a bunch of absurd things about Daylight Saving Time but one that has always baffled me is this, that the days are getting longer anyway -- and this is the season you choose to change your clocks for?) Springing forward is a weird attempt to make it happen sooner. Like, the functioning universe isn't enough for you people -- you just have to speed things up and instead of passing through each March, April, May day with sunset getting later and later, you have to accelerate the process with this jolt, because you want light at 7:00 in the evening NOW and not in April when it would come along. "Hey universe we know you have this whole sun, light, and changing seasons thing totally worked out, but we're just gonna come along and demand a little improvement, 'k?"  Seriously, what is WRONG with humans? 

2. Lazy. And yet... lest we forget the main absurdity of DST to begin with, namely that there is no extra daylight when you move your clocks forward, just a shifted hour of daylight, these demanding humans simultaneously reveal themselves to be lazy as sin. You want more daylight? You want to enjoy that "extra" hour of sun? All you have to do is get your sorry slug self up out of bed in the morning when a little thing called sunrise happens. I mean, my everloving gods, humans are seriously a terrible species, we know that, but this really takes the cake. You want to enjoy this hour of light but are convinced that you are incapable of doing so in the morning when it happens. You'd rather create a system of semi-annual clock changing rather than just get your lazy bones out of your bed in the morning. What. The. Actual. 

Demanding and lazy. Bunch of sloths - no offense to the sloths, who are nowhere near as demanding and absurd. 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

OK, I'll bite. DST was implemented to give people more time to do things in the evening (such as baseball, shopping, etc) before it got dark. Now with lighting everywhere, it probably doesn't matter any more. But it did stimulate things many years ago. Except in Arizona, where they refuse to fall for this communist plot. Arizonan's however, for the most part, start the day earlier in the clock, whether it is construction or some industries. So Arizonal accomplishes the same things just differently. Arizona doesn't do some outdoor things like kids baseball in the summer, it does this in the Spring, while school is still in session. Arizonan's complain it is too hot in summer, and DST would make it even hotter. HMMM? Not sure how the weather is affected by the clock, someone needs to explain that one to me. Or I suppose we could do like China and just go to one timezone. Dad