Monday, March 12, 2007

Time...thought I made friends with time

Good news in that things improved today and my life is no longer in the state of epic disaster that it had been teetering on for the past couple of days. Everything should now be under control and I expect that my anxiety levels will return to normal in a few days. Of course, normal anxiety for me is “freaked out beyond all belief” for everyone else. This weekend my anxiety level was at the “afraid to leave the house because the second I get past the doorway I might die” stage, which is about as much fun as it sounds. Yeah, that sound you just heard was my therapist celebrating the fact that she’ll get to buy a new car this year.

But, since things have gotten under control I was able to turn tonight into a celebration night as I did conquer most of my anxieties. That means dinner of gumbo and crawfish etoufee, which always makes the world a nicer place. And then an evening spent playing Playstation and switching between wrestling and Australia’s Next Top Model, typically staying with the latter. They got rid of the model with the eating disorder this week. I’m pulling for Sam even though her runway walk was described as “looking like a pole dancer’s.” Like I’ve said before, I think reality television exists solely to destroy the self-esteem of nineteen year old girls.

Since I’m kind of short on topics I figure that I might as well do my time change rant now. They moved the time change up three weeks this year, which meant that I was driving to work in the dark. The time change is always a rather bizarre event because the entire country suffers from jet lag for a few days. There is a legitimate reason for daylight savings time and then there is the one politician’s claim. The claim is that we do this for energy savings. That by shifting the clocks ahead an hour people will use less light bulbs and less electricity and the world becomes a nicer place. That is, in fact, complete and utter bullshit.

The real reason is pure economics. Give people an extra hour of sunlight in the evening and they are much more likely to have a weekday barbecue. Or try to fit in nine holes of golf after work. Or go to Home Depot and get cracking on that home repair project. Or even do what I did today, take advantage of the warm weather and see if I can hit a restaurant while it’s light out. The idea isn’t that we’ll spend less money on electricity. It’s that we’ll spend much more money on everything else in our lives.

I also have to tell the story as to why, up until last year, Indiana did not follow Daylight Savings Time. This is the true story of the logic behind the Indiana State Legislature, a body that at one point was one vote away from legislating the value of pi to be equal to three in order to make things easier to calculate. (And yes, remember that Wednesday is Pi Day and an official Battling the Current holiday. Ask your boss to let you out of work on religious grounds.) Anyway, the reason they didn’t move the clocks forward is that it confuses the cows.

It’s not as silly as it sounds. Assume you’re a cow. Not something you do every day but stay with me here. You have no idea of a clock but you understand cycles and you know that at a specific point every day you will be milked. Now suddenly have that switched by an hour because the farmer has to make sure everything is on the same train as before and has to operate on the train’s schedule. Obviously, this is very disconcerting to your little cow universe to have the man in overalls and a funny hat showing up an hour earlier while you were pleasantly asleep. Hence, very upset cows. And in Indiana, upset cows have great pull amongst the legislature.

To be honest, having spent a few years living in Indiana, I’m pretty sure cows are allowed to vote.

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