Monday, March 15, 2010

Just Say No to Daylight Savings Time

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," fellow earthlings! And a blessed howdy to any faeries in orbit around us. It's me, Anne, on my netbook. Snark in the park!

I'm usually a bright and cheery person with an unshakably optimistic outlook on life.

Okay. Not buying it, are you?

I'm usually a serene person on an even keel with a calm and collected outlook on life.

Still skeptical? As well you should be.

I'm at core a pessimist and a cynic. I need to force myself to laugh. Otherwise I'd be a female version of Ebenezer Scrooge ... only more generous to the poor.

But today I think I'll cut loose in all my savagery. You know what I hate? This early application of Daylight Savings Time.

I know, I know. Daylight Savings Time gives us a precious extra hour of daylight in the evenings, which is a green savings on energy consumption. That's the whole rationale behind moving Daylight Savings Time to earlier in the spring.

Do I have to like this because I try to be green? I hope not, because it pisses me off. Oh, I'll do it. And save energy too. But I'll complain about it. Complaining is something I don't get to do enough of.

Farmers successfully lobbied against the whole Daylight Savings Time thing until the 20th century. (Remember, it was first proposed by Ben Franklin, who I otherwise like, but this idea sucked.) It seems the growers of our nation's food and the milkers of our nation's cows kind of liked getting up in the daylight a few months of the year.

I like it too.

Just last week the slightest hint of dawn was starting to creep into the world as I heaved my weary body out of the sack. It sure helped to see the sky brightening a bit.

But no. Spring forward! Back into the inky blackness I plunge, as the alarm screams and EVEN THE CAT DOESN'T BUDGE FROM THE BED. Unfair! Unfair, I tell you! I want my dawn!

You needn't remind me that in a few weeks that dawn will re-surface. We're talking heart-of-the-school-year teaching weeks here, people. I do not need to be sitting here feeling like my melatonin level is off the charts.

Sometimes I can't help but feel a bit nostalgic for the era when the Wheel of the Year turned, and people got up with the light and went to bed with the dark. They say we're more civilized now, but when a little electronic device bleets like a foghorn in pitch darkness, and I have to lumber into the false brightness of a bathroom for a hot shower I really don't need, it just makes me wonder how far we've really come.

How about instead of Daylight Savings Time we call it Daylight Spend Wisely Time, and just get up whenever the hell we want to?

I appeal to all you teenagers out there to endorse this modest proposal.

10 comments:

Dancing With Fey said...

Why just get the teens to endorse it? This 21 year old college girl will endorse it!

This morning I was getting up and was like "I want my sunshine!!!"

I guess I'm not as irritable about the whole daylight savings thing as you are, but I'm a night person and I REALLY like to have sunshine if I have to get up early at a "reasonable" time in the morning.

Lavanah said...

There is nothing "green" about daylight savings time. In fact, recent studies have suggested that we actually use more energy, than before we change the clocks. The whole energy saving idea came from the WWII era when there was gasoline rationing, and people needed daylight to get things done. Now, we just flick a switch and the electric meter goes whirrrr.

yellowdoggranny said...

about the time my body gets adjusted to daylight savings time, it's time to fall back an hour and here we go all over again.

jarjar_head said...

I must concur with Lavanah. I'm aware of at least one study from California and another from Australia that suggest DST wastes electricity. I don't personally mind the extra hour of light in the evenings, but the 24 hour clock is really just an arbitrary measurement of the day/night cycle, so we don't 'gain' an hour anyway. Um...that's all my nitpicking.

~The Muse

Debra She Who Seeks said...

You should consider emigrating to the province of Saskatchewan, Canada. It's the only jurisdiction in North American that does not go on Daylight Savings Time. Never has, never will. It's a point of stubborn pride with them now. Plus there are other benefits to living in Saskatchewan, like gun control and free health care!

Aquila ka Hecate said...

As a person who rises before dawn and goes to bed an hour or so after the sun every day of her life, I'm trying hard to feel your pain.
But I have an advantage in Joburg - we're only 26 degrees south of the equator, and the daylight variance is not so large. Maybe going down to 10.5 hours at the winter solstice and up to 13 and a bit at the summer one.
So, my advice would be to move to a tropical or slightly sub-tropical location, and get your biorythm in synch again!
Lots of Love,
Terri in Joburg

Servitor Lucem said...

It's not so much tht we use more electricity during DST, we use more motor fuels. With daylight hours skewed toward evening, we go out more after work. And when we go out more after work, what else do we do? We spend more money! That is why Daylight Savings Time exists nowadays, folks, so that we'll spend more money. During WWII, with rationing, and, let's face it, less widespread use of automobiles, DST did save energy and fuel. Nowadays, not so much.

Pom said...

Wait a minute! You mean to tell me that Bush signed that DST change making it a few weeks earlier in the spring under the guise of being more eco-friendly??? And all this time I thought he was simply trying to help the corporations keep their employees working longer hours in the earlier spring instead of waiting... and later into the fall since he pushed that one back. I guess this is from the point of view of a construction worker's wife... The "eco-friendly" angle never stuck in my sticky matter between my ears because I never bought it in the first place.

Why must we play with the clock anyway? I'm perfectly happy letting nature do what it's going to do without playing head games with myself or my clock.

Dancing With Fey said...

Guess what Anne? I just nominated you for a blog award. You can pick it up at http://collegegirlsdays.blogspot.com/2010/03/sunshine-award.html.

Mama Kelly said...

40 years old and still cant get the hang of daylight savings time. I was so enjoying that little bit of sun in the mornings when I had to get out of bed and now its gone. ::whimper::