Editor’s Note: This was the post I kicked off my Prompt the Squirrel II series with two years ago on the subject of Daylight Savings Time. I reblogged it this weekend last year, and am reposting it for a third time as we once again go through that ritual of ridiculousness that attempts to cheat time. This is one of the best damn posts I’ve ever written, so sit back, relax, and enjoy your “extra hour of daylight” by finding out just what kind of a crock of shit it really is!
There has been a 6900% increase in the amount of alarm clock violence this week…
It’s the season premiere you’ve been waiting a whole entire week for! Welcome to the 
beginning of Season Two of my Prompt the Squirrel series… MMXVI style! The Nest dipped into its nonexistent Redbubble shop funds and hired a professional movie poster maker to add that nifty II to the logo to make everything legit! So far I’ve gotten 12 prompts from my faithful readers out there… a big thank you so far to everyone on this year’s waiting list! There’s still plenty of time for me to badger the rest of you to do the hipster thing and donate a prompt for PTS2. If you haven’t entered yet, go here and use the contact form to get in on the fun all the cool kids are having. I’ll be more than happy to do this Friday thing for as long as you keep inspiring me with your suggestions!
And who doesn’t love a squirrel who is more than happy?
For the very first prompt of PTS’s sophomore season, I chose a timely submission from Quirky Girl… a blogger I stumbled across last year while looking for unicorns. Yes, that statement is an actual fact. True to her name, her weekly posts are quite warped and humorous and you should definitely check her out! So, what did she ask of this squirrel with her one wish?
How much does daylight savings suck? Let us count the ways…
Boy, we’re gonna need a hell of a lot of fingers and toes for this exercise!!!
You can use this one after I’m done pollenating it!
I’ve actually written before about the unnecessary biannual mindfuck known as Daylight Savings Time in the US and Summer Time in other places… and am more than on record with how much of a useless waste of effort and stress it is on our nation. Not surprisingly, the concept of trying to manipulate time is rather modern…. having first been proposed a little over 100 years ago, and not enacted on a nationwide basis anywhere until Germany and Austria-Hungary adopted it as a wartime measure in 1916. Heck, our need to have standardized time has only existed for less than a couple of centuries now. That dates back to the invention of railroad as a mode of transportation in the 19th century, as early railroad companies needed a universal concept of marking time so that passengers could note how behind schedule they were running…
Mussolini would not be impressed.
Well, if we are going to count the ways DST is like a concrete enema, we may as well start with the obvious….
Reason Number One: We Got Rhythm
How do you humans handle trying to fool the sun like this?
Even the most impulsive and non-habitual people in the world unconsciously live life to the beat of our inner circadian rhythms. Yanking an hour out of March to duct tape to November is the perfect way to bring all the joys of jet lag to even those who never leave the house. Since the magical DST resetting times fall in the middle of the night on Sunday mornings, it’s our sleep patterns that take the biggest hit. And I can assure you that for those of us who regularly work during the time change, adjusting to magical 23 and 25 hour days is no easier… because even us overnight shifters have our routines, and that loss or gain of an hour is going to weasel its way into our life somewhere along the line to remind us why manmade concepts of time suck ass… especially when they are conceived and enforced by government officials we mistakenly elected…
Maybe we should bring back the monarchy…
Reason Number Two: Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?
And does anybody really care? Yes, we do. Kinda the whole reason we came up hours and minutes and seconds is so we can keep track of the duration of things. That’s really fucking hard to do when 1:59 suddenly becomes 3:00, or even better, when it just becomes 1:00 all over again…
Yeah, tell me about it…
I have worked almost every Saturday night since 1998, and have only had one time change night off in the last 18 years. Since I am an hourly grunt, I have to punch a clock… a clock that has no idea how long I actually worked on those nights. This breakdown in timekeeping logic makes HR people who haven’t had to manually keep track of working hours since dinosaurs quit punching timecards have to somehow figure out how to properly credit our time and pay us appropriately. Needless to say, this rarely works out right. The frightening thing of course is how everything from your car to your toilet to your iron lung runs on computerized technology now. While we freaked out over the Y2K fauxpocalypse 16 years ago, we experience mini-Y2K’s twice a year thanks to DST rendering our timekeeping devices to be blithering idiots…
Or maybe our idiocy is just rubbing off on the machines…
Reason Number Three: We’re All Fucking Time Slaves
The main reason Daylight Savings Time even exists is because people have a preference for wanting more daylight hours in the evening. Having the sun still be out at 8 PM when we might want to sit out on the patio and share our nuts with the squirrels makes much more sense than having it up and shining at 5 AM and disturbing your sleep through the cat-slashed blinds.
Good question, Nancy!
Why in the name of Your Deity of Choice should we give a rat’s ass what “time” the sun is out? For countless millennia, humans have lived their knuckle-dragging lives around the rising and the setting of the sun. Pretty much all of our animal friends still keep time the old fashioned way as well. If we’re so concerned about the fact that we sleep away too many sunny hours in the morning, why not just adjust our schedules as the year progresses? Hell, one of the trends in the workplace is “summer hours” that borrow Friday hours and distribute them throughout the week… so why not adjust work and school times gradually throughout the year to account for changing sunrise times?
It’s time for Warren G to regulate!
Warren G. Harding is not on Mount Rushmore, and his scandal filled, two year Presidency is not looked upon highly by political historians. But the man knew what a fucking crock of shit Daylight Savings Time was. When his predecessor Woodrow Wilson tried (and failed) twice to veto the end of the US’s temporary DST due to World War I, Harding offered no resistance at all when he took office, and in fact ordered that all government employees in DC would have to work from 8-4 during the summer rather than inconvenience the entire nation with more clock winding. Forget Herbert Hoover, we could use a man like Warren G. Harding again…
Stifle yerself, Evil.
Reason Number Four: The Clock Shop Operator’s Nightmare
Here is a real search term that I received on my blog in 2014 that I answered thusly in that year’s Sandy Awards…
did we lose a couple of minutes during this year’s daylight saving time change? – Yes we did… the couple of minutes it took us to set all of our fucking clocks an hour back.
Man…. fuck this shit.
While computers and smartphones will reset themselves even if we do forget to check the batteries in our smoke detectors and vibrators, our $10 digital alarm clocks and the creepy cat clock with the eyes that go back and forth you inherited from Grandma will not. Nor will that wristwatch you’re wearing, if you’re all into quaint stuff like that. What a major pain in the goddamn ass to have to go through twice a year just so some plus-foured asshole can enjoy a 7:30 PM round of golf…
Reason Number Five: We Love The Night Life
You know who one of the major opponents of DST is? Businesses that make their money after dark. By pushing the sunset time an hour later in the day, many people are going to start getting tuckered out by the time the neon starts lighting up the night. TV Networks see their ratings plummet during the summer for reasons other than their shitty reality shows. Is it a coincidence that drive-in movie theaters started to become dinosaurs after universal DST was implemented in the US in 1966? And what about the venerable and respected adult entertainment industry? Do you want to cut into this woman’s profits just to save a damn kilowatt or two?
Support your local stripper. Repeal Daylight Savings Time!
Reason Number Six: What In The Hell Are We Saving Anyway?
DST’s existence is often justified by the massive amount of energy it helps save by forcing the sunlight into more of your waking hours. Too bad most of the studies that have been done in the DST era say that’s a steaming load of bullshit. Despite the fact that every DST change in America has been tied to an energy policy, those laws end up being about as effective as any others Congress passes because the facts say we end up using the same amount, if not even more energy regardless of how we manipulate our clocks. Throw in the well known fact that there are more vehicular accidents, suicides and possum attacks in the week following Daylight Savings Time going into effect, and just how is DST actually making our world a better place?
The future we have to look forward to thanks to Daylight Savings Time.
Reason Number Seven: People Are Fucking Stupid
Over the weekend, there was an ad that was airing on Mecca Radio advising customers on how they could enjoy their “extra hour of daylight.” Sadly, many people really do believe that DST magically keeps the sun above the horizon for an extra 60 minutes each day rather than just timefuck us into actually being awake during more of the daylight hours. You only need to look at your local TV listings or the latest Presidential candidate poll to see how stupid Americans already are…. do we really need our pathetic timekeeping practices to add to our Mensa resumes?
Even our toys are mocking us.
I’m sure there are many more reason why Daylight Savings Time needs to die an excruciating, torturous, bloody and gory death… but my word count is already getting way up there, and you just might need that extra hour of daylight to actually finish this post. So thanks again to Quirky Girl for helping kick off the second season of Prompt the Squirrel with this most excellent suggestion, and I’ll spring forward to answer another one of your prompts next Friday!
Being diurnal is so overrated…
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
I do not find it hard at all to adjust to ONE hour change – it is as if I was on a visit to the UK from Germany … And I have half a year to enjoy it.
What I do not get is why so many people fly to three or four hours time-zones for a two-week holiday. That is torturous. I only was to New York once and could not enjoy my first week at all – six hours time-difference is not fun. Give me one hour anyday – ok, maybe not EVERY day …
Daylight Savings serves no purpose for me since I’m usually asleep during the hours that are supposed to be the main benefit of the time change, and have to deal with the screwiness twice a year at work since I’m always on the clock that night. But all that aside, I’m, also very OCD about time itself and it bothers me a lot that we basically make an entire hour disappear in the Spring, and then make up for it by having a different hour repeat itself. I wonder what the party people think of Spring Forward when the booze has to get cut off an hour earlier than usual….
You already know how I feel about this semi-annual exercise in stupidity. Only one comment about it now. It’s technically “Daylight Saving Time” (it’s not a bank-there is no SAVINGS). Happy one more hour of sunlight manipulation in spite the chicanery.
Since my alarm is get for 8 in the evening, I still don’t get to “enjoy” that sunlight manipulation until about mid April or so. It was dark as heck when I woke up yesterday evening, just as it has been for the past six months!
It was brutal waking up this morning and I’m actually a morning person! Felt like I’d been hit by a Mack truck.
So does this mean you are going to countinue Prompt the Squrriel 3, or are you not going to do that this year, either way is fine.
No, PTS is dead dead dead, and I’m not even going to try and bring it back this year. This post is an annual tradition that just happens to be a previous PTS entry…
DST is some kind of government conspiracy…..gotta be…..nothing else comes close to making sense!! I read a big long explanation of DST on Wikipedia this morning and even THEY are confused by it. LOL
Pam
The origins of DST are dubious at best… from giving farmers more “time” to do their chores (Farmers now generally HATE DST because they’ve always just gotten up with the sun anyway), to allowing for more post-work rounds of golf (The “inventor” of DST was an avid golfer, of course). Now it gets bandied about as some mechanism that saves energy by putting more daytime hours into the normal American’s waking schedule… but a lot of people (including me) are pretty skeptical about that too. Encouraging alternate work schedules during the summer months would give all the benefits of DST without forcing EVERYONE to change their clocks and get a dose of jet lag twice a year!
Amen…….!
How many times (ha!) am I going to have to like this before you stop repeating it? What do we want? New posts! When do we want it? Uh….I’m not sure either an hour ago, or an hour from now or……..? I’m so confused!!
Now that I’ve done it three times, it’s an official tradition…. so you’ll like it every year and like it! I think next year I’ll schedule it to post at 2:30 AM on Sunday morning just to see what happens…
I’m always happy to read and engage in a rant about daylight saving time, even if it’s a repeat! The time change really messes with me and there’s just no benefit in it for me this early in the year. I like it to be light when I get up in the morning and having an “extra” hour of daylight that falls during dinner time does me no good, it just makes me grumpier about being trapped in the kitchen doing something I hate. So, yeah, I’ll be a raging bitch for the next few weeks until I adjust.
I just read that several states want to do away with the time change and two states want to go on permanent DST. That would really suck for the northern states in the wintertime.
Prior to 1966, the federal government stayed out of the DST business (Other than Woody Wilson’s love affair with DST at the end of his Presidency), and allowed the individual states (and even localities) to have their own rules regarding DST…. which led to some real confusion regarding exactly what time it was anywhere. About the only good thing about DST is that, for one hour each year, it makes it possible for someone in Florida and someone in Oregon to call each other and have it be the exact same time in both places! Think about it…
My brain is too sleep deprived to comprehend how that would be possible!
(1) I think we do it because we do it. Whatever reason we had in the past, it has long, long since vanished.
(2) My dogs are THRILLED. They never accepted dinner being an hour late and apparently, they do not read clocks. They have been pestering us since last November to get back on schedule. Today, they realized they have been right all along and got dinner when their stomachs said it was time.
(3) I don’t have to change the clock in the car. I procrastinated long enough that it has self-corrected.
(4) Garry changed one clock. I changed another. One remains … and who knows when I will get to it? Maybe next November?
This is my first time change with a modern car, and I was stunned that the time changed on its own when I got off work Sunday morning (It still took a couple seconds after I started the car up)… so I guess there’s one advantage to new technology. I have three clocks in the house, and the only one I have to change is the alarm clock. My squirrel clock in the computer room is still an hour behind, and I’ll change it eventually…. probably as soon as I get annoyed that it doesn’t have the “correct” time on it.
This post always makes me smile. 😀