Okay, what the hell.
I mean, seriously. What. The.
Hell.
I was going to tell a story about my continued attempt to
outwit the clocks springing ahead. I
intended to write all about my Daylight Savings Time nightmare when I
remembered a little factoid about DST that had gotten under my craw
recently.
The "Daylight Savings Time" factoid that was
supposed to come up referred to Ben Franklin.
This blog post was supposed to debunk the myth that DST was instituted
for farmers which is, my dear agriculturally-challenged pals, simply a
fallacy. DST started way before any of
that silliness. But I wanted to get my
factoid as correct as possible.
So I typed Daylight
Savings Time into one of the major search engines on the Internet.
You know what came up?
Do you? No. Not porn, although that probably would've
made me less hot under the collar then I am right now.
Here's what came up in my search: Daylight
Saving Time (aka Daylight Savings Time)
When in the name of all things acceptable did that happen? What is this shit?
And now I find out this Daylight SAVING (not SAVINGS) Time
has been an acceptable moniker all along.
What in the hell is wrong with people?
No, really. What. The.
Hell.
Look, it's a simple matter of semantics, people. Daylight Savings Time means there is a time
that gives us savings of excess daylight, as in dividends paid, bonuses
retained. Daylight Savings means we have
an economy use of our daylight, as in making the most of it. Savings mean alternate resources, as in we are
using our resources of daylight for more light during the normal, most common
hours of outdoor human interaction.
Savings.
Daylight Saving Time has too many ambiguous meanings. First of all, it implies that Time is in
trouble and needs to be rescued.
Daylight rides in like Dudley frikking Do-Right and saves Nell the
Errant Sundial, saving time for … all … time..
Or maybe it means Daylight needs to open a bank account. Don't do it, Daylight; bank rates are
terrible right now. Perhaps Daylight is saving
itself. It's going to start saving
itself for … what … what the heck is it saving for, a rainy day? Maybe Daylight is an addict. That's it.
Daylight is all about ultra violet rays.
It can't get enough of 'em. It's
time to save Daylight! It's not time to
spring forward; it's time for an intervention.
Quick! Someone call Moon!
All along people have called it Daylight Saving time? Can this really be true? Never in my life have I ever heard it
referred to anything other than Daylight Savings Time. It just seems strange to me that what I've
known all my life turns out to be the alternate and not the norm. Dang.
What I really wanted to tell you is that it originated
centuries ago and has existed in some form or another in many cultures who adjusted
their concepts of time to include more daylight hours when possible. I also wanted to tell you that it was
championed by Benjamin Franklin while he was living in France. He believed it might save candles, as
apparently there must've been a huge wax shortage in Paris. Of course, Franklin used to open his patio
doors and stand on the balcony completely naked, especially in thunder storms,
because he believed it was good for his health.
Bad for the people in Paris who had to witness his 18th
century nudity. Perhaps that's where all
the candles went.
PASSERBY: Sacre
bleu! Holy fuck, what the hell is
that? Merde!
GARCON: Oui, it is
Moisieur Franklin, the American. He is
airing his privates again, n'est-ce pas?
PASSERBY: Douce mere
de Mary de Dieu, is that his--
GARCON: Bagette?
PASSERBY: I was going
to say croissant, mon fils.
GARCON: When there is
lightning, he will tie a key to his bagette and wait to charge up.
PASSERBY: Hmmmm, a
fried bagette! Americains fous! Everyone knows bagettes need to be baked!
GARCON: You should
see him at night, Monsieur. The candles
make his shadows dance on the walls.
Dans nue!
PASSERBY: Baise
sainte, hide the candles! Close the wax
factory! Mes yeux! Mon coeur!
Is it any surprise that with a whacko like Franklin in
charge of things that we somehow managed to screw up Daylight Savings Time and
turn it from a proper noun into participial phrase? Saving is what it does; Savings is what it
gives us.
Maybe it's just me.
Maybe it's just semantics. Maybe
it's Ben Franklin's fault. Remember,
he's the guy who wanted the turkey as our national bird, and everyone knows how
that turned out for WKRP in Cincinnati; as god is their witness, they thought
turkeys could fly. Franklin probably
did, too, but he didn't have a helicopter.
By the way, as if anyone cares at this point. I slept extra time on Sunday morning in an
attempt to outwit DST. Instead, I had a
hard time going to sleep Monday night, fell into an immediate nightmare, and
woke up twenty minutes later biting the inside of my left cheek. Okay, I wasn't just biting it, I had actually
clamped down so hard, had my teeth so tightly clenched, that I woke myself
up. I hate losing an hour of sleep, even
though I didn't really but my body just thinks I did, and I hate Ben Franklin,
and I hate Daylight SAVING Time (but like Daylight SAVINGS Time).
If anyone's looking for me, I'll be at the bakery. I suddenly want a few bagettes of French
bread and some cheddar cheese croissants.
Au revoir!
