Welcome to the 21st Century
Sunday, November 06, 2005
If you've been following the national news lately you probably know all about the fact that this Midwestern state has chosen to join the rest of the nation in the utilization of Daylight Saving Time. That's right. Come spring many of the residents of our state will be changing their clocks for the first time in their life. The expected result is Chaos.
The new governor is a Republican. This is the first Republican governor in at least 16 years or so and he's not doing too bad. Since Republicans support state rights, internally they must also support individual county rights too. To facilitate this, every county was given the opportunity to vote whether they wanted to be on Eastern or Central time.
This resulted in the sporadic placement of some counties wanting to stay with Eastern time, while others wished to have Central time. If everyone's wish is granted, you could literally drive across the state and have to change your car's clock 4 or 5 times! You'll have to get the manual out of the glove box each time because no matter how many times you program your car's clock, you won't remember how the next time. A lot of old people will have to pull over to change the clock because they can't read the manual or touch small buttons while in transit. They'll have to stop at rest areas to do this since old people love rest stops. The counties at these transition points will have an unusually high volume of rest stop visitors which means more rest stops will be built and more perverts will have a place to hang out. The need for more police will be paid for by increased vending sales and brochure distribution.
I think that if we are to support the rights of individuals, we might as well let each and every person choose what time they want to be on. I applied this idea to the state citing the fact that it would be possible to cram an entire 8 hours of work into 2 hours by changing time zones half way through the day. We would then reclaim our status as the Party State since no one would have to wake up before "noon". The governor chose not to return my calls.
Rebel without a reason.
No one here really wanted to join the DST program. We were doing just fine without it while all of the other states played this mindless biannual game. We always knew that in October Pimp My Ride and CSI would come on an hour later and everything was earlier in the Spring. The only complaint was from school children who had to go to bed in the winter without being able to stay up for their favorite TV show. Television. We were holding our own.
The real problem was that no one from another state could keep up with what time we were on. It takes quite a bit of selflessness to realize the benefit, but just being on a different time from all of the other states 50% of the time has a profound effect on the economy and quality of life.
A business would call the State Chamber of Commerce at 4:30 in the evening asking if they could place a new multimillion dollar facility in our state to find out that the office had closed for the day. They'd hang up the phone confused and angry wondering what the hell time it was in our state because they just called earlier in October at the same time and someone answered. They vow never to deal with us again. As a result we do not get the multimillion dollar facility. Our high tech jobs go to Ohio or Illinois and so do all of the college graduates, leaving us with a disproportionate amount of people who spend their free time hunting squirrels around the rivers or teaching their babies how to smoke.
So for the sake of conformity we chose to follow your crazy clock changing game. Most people aren't going to have a problem clicking the hour button a couple times a year. There could be a few snags at the beginning but it will work out ok. Some people will most likely hole themselves up in their suburban fortress with a shotgun and a case of Jack Daniels, boldly refusing to follow this dictator nazi devil worshiping hitlership government conspiracy. Janet Reno was hired locally to deal with these chronographic rebels.
I'm taking bets on how long it is before the rest of the country drops DST and we are the only state following it for the next 50 years.
posted by Ghengis @ 11:48 PM,
2 Conflict(s):
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At November 7, 2005 at 8:25 AM,
supine has news of...
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Dude, you are so funny! Who knew? I sure didn't.
A case of Jack Daniels sounds good right about now. -
At November 17, 2005 at 1:50 PM,
My Life In Indiana has news of...
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Dear Dan,
I received your postcard today! On my birthday! Your timing was perfect.
I only got one birthday card--from my grandma. (I decided today that I have no friends.)
