I was surprised by how upset I got. And I found that upsetting... :-/

[capri0mni]

So, yesterday, on the LiveJournal Side, I got into a thread discussion in my Daylight Savings Time pet-peeve post. And, even though I never intended to, going in, I got defensive, and argumentative, and ...just icky.

And the level of my reaction surprised me. And then it upset me, because I shouldn't have gotten as upset as I had. And then I descended into that downward spiral of depressive thinking, and that made me even more upset. So I had to back off, and post a Saint Paddy's Day Spoof vid, and a meme, and then trawl YouTube for Animaniacs clips.*

And then, as is my wont, I had to do some self-examination, find that pesky button, so I could put some sort of fail-safe on that sucka, or at least slap a Big Red Warning Sticker next to it.


This is what I've figured out, so far (links in this list go to Wikipedia articles):

• I have no problem with time zones, per se, nor the related system of longitude, since longitude was developed through a long history of scientific inquiry, of people studying the Heavens, the Earth, and our place on it. Yes, there are arbitrary bulges, and corners, and dips and zags to accommodate artificial boundaries between states and countries. But at least each time zone is based on the actual circumference of the Earth (1/24th).

But:

• I inherited much of my distrust of DST from my father, who grew up in the age when it was reserved for wartime, and not a regular marker of the changing seasons. So, in recent years, when it's rolled around, I'm reminded that Dad's gone, now, and I have no one to with whom I can blow raspberries at the whole Idea of DST. And I get a booster shot of sadness and loneliness.
  
  
• DST is a man-made thing. Its start time and end-time is decided by politicians and corporate lobbyists who want to sell more sporting goods, french fries, and charcoal briquettes. Selling more sporting goods and briquettes may be a perfectly fine goal, nothing wrong with that, per se, necessarily. But it does mean that DST as become the synecdochic file in my head into which I slip All Things of Human Cultural Hubris, and having to go around changing all my clocks just reminds me how much I "Do Not Fit" with American Culture as a whole, and how far I am "out of sync" with the world around me. It's a bit like getting poked in the cheek with a sharp stick.

And finally:

• I remember how Bush sold this most recent extension of DST -- as his contribution to Combating Global Warming, by saving energy without having to make any really hard choices. Which... Just No.

*A Buttons and Mindy sketch called Mindy in Wonderland; I've seen Buttons and Mindy criticized for being repetitive, but these bits were less formulaic than the Road Runner cartoons they were spoofing (the chase and wallop trope). And in this one, it's a remarkably good mash-up with Alice in Wonderland, and Buttons finally gets praise and a hug for his trouble.

Comments

[trouble]

♥

DST drives me up the wall. I am also the daughter of two people from Saskatchewan, which is still the only province not to observe the time change.

[capri0mni]

One thing that cheered me up a bit in that Wikipedia article on the history of DST was the global map showing all the places where DST has never been observed, and all those places where they tried it once, but then got rid of it...

And you know what? Human civilization keeps running just fine (to varying degrees of "fine"). So the whole argument that we NEED DST to keep us from disaster is proven to be... you know... not so much.

I wish we could go back to the Roman System of Flexible hour-lengths, with daylight hours divided into twelve and nighttime divided into twelve. So you can work eight short hours in the daytime winter, and sleep eight looong hours in the winter night. Perfect set up for those with SAD, who need to hibernate. And your workload would average out over the course of a year. But even I admit that would be hard to work, now that we have trade and communications between the north and south hemispheres.

A girl can dream, though.

[trouble]

Oh yes! When I lived in Australia there was such a thing about DST because they wanted it in Melbourne so they were pushing it on the people in Western Australia, even though it had been defeated in referendum twice. But it was so haaaaaaaard for business owners if they didn't have DST like Melbourne. And, of course, business owners are more important than the bulk of people who are working.

[capri0mni]

A Brit on my f'list informed me (on the LJ side) that the pro-summer-time business lobby over there wants England to switch to Central European Time, because they need that, if they want to do business with the EU.

Can you imagine?!

Poor little business men with their tiny business brains. It's just so hard for them to work, if they have to incorporate knowledge of other people's time zones into their plans...

Actually, you know... that explains a lot about corporate mentality, now that I think about it...

[jesse_the_k]

There's a lovely book called Spring Forward by Michael Downing. In brief: there is no science and no rationale in support of DST; there never has been; every argument we've ever heard (and I'm too chicken to check out the LJ thread, but I bet every argument over there, as well) has been repeatedly made and never tested.

[capri0mni]

Well, the augument over there was with just one person, who was saying she loves DST, because it's darker in the morning, so she isn't woken up prematurely by the morning sun, and it's still light when she gets home from work, and I made the mistake of trying to argue with her that DST still didn't make any sense.

And both of us oversimplified our own points and overstated the other's, and after two backs-and-forths from each of us, she said she was tired of arguing and was walking away, now.

So, it probably doesn't look at all ugly to an outsider, but I found my eyes welling up at the thought, and was surprised by that... 'Cause, really? DST is dumb, but it's not that big a deal...