Well, here it is… the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year… and I’m pissed! School is barely out, the summer is just kicking off, the All Star game hasn’t even been played yet and the days are going to begin to shorten. This stinks!
Perhaps you think I grouse and complain all the time… and I do admit that I let certain things get under my finger nails… like scrambled eggs of improper consistency, or the traffic light at the junction of Route 25 and Route 59… the person who timed that light should be drawn, quartered and roasted on a spit.
But on the whole, I’m an easy going fellow.
However, this pre-mature shortening of the day is a bit un-nerving. You will be glad to hear that I have been working on a solution.
We already tinker with the nature of the day with Daylight Savings Time. My idea is just to expand on this formula for “extending our daylight.”
Beginning tonight at midnight we will move our clocks ahead 1 minute. And we will do this every night for the next 60 days. 1 minute ahead each night. That way we will diminish the effect of the days being shortened… we will be able to enjoy our later sunsets, more time to cookout or grab an extra swim.
And then when we get to October and move our clocks back to Standard Time, we move our clocks back two hours!! Two hours to party hardy… and to grab extra winks! Woo hoo!
I know what you’re thinking! “I get up early in the morning… I like to drive to work and see the rising sun.” So do I! A beautiful sunrise is a re-birth.
We could instead move the clocks back 1 minute tonight… and for the next 60 days do the same thing… we can extend our earlier rising sun thru the summer. And when it comes to October, and all the newspapers put those little graphics on page one with a clock as a reminder to move the clock back, we can say “fuck it! I don’t have to do anything… let everyone else run around like a nudnik fretting about what to do with an hour!” And when those talking dummies on the News Shows remind us to move the clocks back, we can say “HAH! I don’t have to pay attention to this crap” and we can turn off the TV and grab a beer.
You can see there are two choices to this shortening of the day dilemma. We can opt for earlier mornings, or later afternoons… either is preferable to doing nothing. This is a matter that should be left for each State to decide. Each State can hold a referendum to decide whether to be a “Sunrise State” or a “Sunset State” and then it will be settled.
Then we’ll make one of those maps that colours the States red and blue the way we did when Bush beat Gore… and everyone will know which State observes Sunrise or Sunset, See? Easy.
Remember, it’s not just a matter of complaining. We have to be responsible for coming up with solutions!
Now that we have that sticky little problem resolved, I can turn my attention to the next project… each State issuing its own currency. I can see it now — Connecticut can have a $1 with Jim Calhoun on it… and instead of keying the value to gold or the strength of the economy, we can value it to UCONN victories in basketball… Kentucky could value their currency to Bourbon. You get the idea.
Stay tuned.