OMG DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME!!!

 

As we approach the beginning of Daylight Savings Time this Sunday, the media is full of advice, self-help, personal testimonials, historical overviews all there to help people cope with moving the clocks forward. It's quintessential 2023 America: uber anxious and neurotic, people running around screaming their heads off, unable to deal with LOSING AN HOUR OF SLEEP. The media has been going wild with misery memoirs and TED talks, YouTube and TicTok postings, online rants, shrinks, University studies, op eds and of course experts!, experts!, experts! all whipping folks into a frenzy. The world is ending! AGAIN! Details at 6.

Jesus H. Christ, I acknowledge that we've ALL been under a lot of stress for years but at some point, y'all need to choose your battles as to just what you're gonna get upset about. One helpful thing I think is for folks to "back away from the devices, (sir, ma'am)". "If it bleeds, it leads" is an old newspaper saying and today this slogan is on radioactive steroids. Everything is catastrophized with all aspects of life being examined and the worst is reported by the media. 

A good example of this is NPR's OneA show. I cannot listen to it anymore. Unhealthy. Sure, I understand what they are doing. "Let's inform the public of how fucked things are. Once informed, we hope they will take action, start a discussion group on FB, write their legislative representatives. It's democracy in action!" Good idea but I am telling you, after several months of it, you will be in despair. No wonder those who are woke or at the very least empathic are fraying badly at the edges. Go to the market: well, those sale raspberries are so cheap because those bastards who grow them use slave labor so if you buy them (it is insinuated), you are culpable for prolonging the misery of these workers; you used to enjoy red wine and dark chocolate-sorry, now, they're saying any alcohol is bad for you and most dark chocs contain dangerous elements you need to avoid (fine print: only if you consume 8 lbs per day); you used to shop at Starbucks and Trader Joes, but now you find that their much advertised progressivism was marketing bullshit and they are just your typical union-busting capitalist fuckers who care more about the shareholders (and their executive pay) than anything else. On and on. 

164 years ago, Charles Dickens in his opening paragraph of "A Tale of Two Cities" wrote:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” 

Ayup.