Tag Archives: Daylight Savings time

We Need To Talk

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Does this picture make my ears look big? Click to see more

Listen we need to talk. It’s about this clock thing, the setting it back an hour that you guys do every year when it starts to get cold. I know I’ve heard some humans talking about it as they walk by. How it makes it dark at 3:30 in the afternoon and it’s still dark when you get up in the morning. It really causes us a problem. See it doesn’t matter to us what your clock says. We get up when it’s light and we go to bed when its dark. It’s an agrarian thing. Unless of course we ‘ve been eaten by something during the night, then all bets are off.

I’ve got kids, three of them. Solenoid, Nodule and Edna, the triplets. Yeah I know, I was lucky, but even so that’s the last time I’m going out with that smooth talking buck from Loveland. The point is though, they’re all just one year old and don’t have the brains god gave a toaster, but they’re good kids. The problem is now that it’s night way early for you folks, you’re driving in the dark earlier, the visibility is dorked, and my goofy half-witted kids are standing on the side of the road, in the road, in the ditch ready to dart out whenever a synapse fires in their tiny little brains and you’re tooling along thinking about dinner or whatever and there’s my little ones in your lights.

Yes, the obvious answer is “Hey! don’t stand in the road.” There is an answer for that and it’s a function of what makes us Mule deer. We’re prey animals. We exist to feed other animals up the food chain. Cougars, they’re the really mean ones, Wolves, not too big a problem unless you live in Yellowstone, Wild dogs, a problem anywhere, and unfortunately you guys. Yes I know, you don’t start home with the idea of hunting and killing us, or even hitting us for that matter. Many of you don’t want to, just because of issues with your insurance companies. But because we are prey animals the safest places at night or the edge of it, dusk, are open spaces like meadows, those flat grassy places behind high schools with all the white lines on them, yards, yards are nice, and the open areas along the roads you guys use to get where you’re going. Shoulders, verges, bar ditches, medians, berms, especially at night, that’s when the creepy things are out to get us so it’s safer to be somewhere where we can see for along way.

 I’ve been asked “Why then, do you run into the path of the oncoming traffic, I know you said your kids are dumb, but wouldn’t it be better instead to race back into the shadows of the forest, eh?”. Therein lies the very answer to that question. The forest isn’t safe at night. Safe from you maybe but not from the dark evil things that like to eat us. Some of you have also driven into the forest with what I believe has been the express notion of getting us, and if all those trees hadn’t stopped you, you would have. I don’t why you do that. The end result is still a broken vehicle and the same insurance issues, but you’re the smart ones, so we have to defer to your ultimate wisdom.

My little ones had a near death experience the other night by running out in front of this 18 wheeler. Luckily the driver was able to lock it up and not hit them. I asked them why they did that and their answer was, “the other side of the road was the only thing they could see in all that bright light so they went for it.” We don’t have the ability or the spatial recognition to judge the relative speed of an oncoming vehicle, especially in the dark, so our threat assessment is all screwed up and we become 100 lbs. of ground round before we can get out-of-the-way.

What’s the answer? Simple. Kill all the cougars, wolves, bears, and wild dogs so we can stay back in the woods. That would be cool. If that doesn’t work for you, slow down. Watch for those deer on highway signs. Did you know they were put there because a deer was killed there. We’re creatures of habit. One of us getting taken out doesn’t change the fact that we’ve been using that crossing since before a road was there.

Yes I’ll talk to the kids again. Nodule shows some promise, but the juries still out on Solenoid and Edna, so I don’t hold out much hope. But I will try. Meanwhile put yourself in my place. Cougars and wolves on one side. 3000 lb. unyielding metal monsters that wouldn’t recognize a Mule deer if it slammed through their radiators. Give us a break please. Seeya in the Spring when they put the clocks back to normal. If we make it. Ciao

Remorseful Point

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RemorsePt0646

Here it is another year gone by. You know what that means right? No, we’re not talking about your age. We’re talking about something much more important. That’s right you guessed it, Daylight Savings Time.

For those of you who are completely oblivious to the world around you, and you know who you are, Daylight Savings Time is when the Government automatically changes the arrangement the cosmos has for when we have night and day, and today is that day for one of the mandated changes.

Today it has been ordered and approved by a unanimous vote of people who run our lives that we shall, upon awakening, be 1 hour later in the day than we’d normally be. This was done so you, as a hard-working American, would get an extra hour of sleep and therefore would be more productive tomorrow because of the extra rest. But there are dangers. Let’s say you had an appointment with your lawyer for say 10:00am and you went there at your usual time you’d be an hour early and they’d get to charge you for that extra hour and you’d have to pay it because these are lawyers we’re dealing with here, and you’d be mad and feel stupid.

There is a lot of stigma attached to making this change from Regular Every Day Winter Time smoothly, orderly and correctly so you get that extra hour of sleep. If you muck it up and anybody sees it, you become that guy that can’t even do  the time change right and you’re considered a dumbass. And by the time the word gets around that you like totally screwed the pooch, time change-wise, you’re a Total dumbass. Almost everyone except those oblivious people we talked about earlier do not want to be a dumbass. People who made the change successfully are relentless in their criticism of the dumbass’s who didn’t. They will make fun of you. They will call you names. They will beat you with it like a circus monkey. They will beat you like a rented mule. Their smugness and arrogance knows no bounds. So the deal is don’t be a dumbass.

The shame can be so great for some people that they take the ultimate step. And that step happens to be off of Remorseful Point here at the Grand Canyon. Named for those people who got up too early thereby completely messing up the system well thought out as it is, and knowing what’s coming when people find out, they feel that they have no other recourse but to go to Remorseful Point and take the necessary step to reclaim their honor.

There have been groups formed, kind of like the safety nets they put up on the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco to try and keep people from jumping, to try and help these poor souls deal with the shame, but most of  them sneak around them and make the plunge anyway. It’s like the gene pool has to have a way to keep itself healthy and society’s best efforts to overcome that won’t change nature.

So our recommendations to avoid the shame and heartache of screwing up the whole time change thing is to get totally hammered the night before, I mean toilet hugging, running around the neighborhood yelling “Where is Aunt Maud, I’ve got to find Aunt Maud”, looking for your car keys and not finding them because you swallowed them on a dare, that kind of hammered. It is guaranteed that you will not wake up an hour too early the following morning. In fact it will probably be late afternoon before you’ll even be able to lift your head. This will be considered cool by your peers as they will see that not only did you handle the time change well but you totally get the concept. The later you get up the cooler you are.

If you have any doubts about your ability to make the change as prescribed you’d best head for the nearest LiquorMart and get a jug of Everclear, the 190 proof stuff and make sure you’re covered. It’s a little late this morning to take those measures now unless of course you did screw things up and can not get to the Grand Canyon in time. Then I guess you’ll have to decide the best course of action to take. Hope you did well this year. And you’re not a total dumbass.

Daylight Saving Time

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DaylightSaving5518Snow Goose – Bosque del Apache        click to enlarge

Hey people, It’s Daylight Saving time in many parts of America today. It sounds weird to say Daylight Saving time, which is singular, instead of Daylight Savings time, which is plural. You’re supposed to say Daylight Saving time when you’re talking about one event like Spring Forward, or Fall Back, and Daylight Savings time when you’re discussing the time change process in general. Like when you say to your neighbor over a warm shot of tequila “Say that Daylight Savings time is something, ain’t it? All changing back and forth like that.” Everyone around our neighborhood says Daylight Savings time regardless and don’t really give a large Rat’s posterior whether it’s right or wrong. But then I live in a low-income neighborhood.

Did you remember? Did you get up or did you take advantage of that extra hour to sleep in? Guess what this guy did? The goose above I mean. If you guessed he slept in you’re today’s winner and you get an extra helping of cauliflower puree at Aunt Pheeb’s Happy Daylight Savings time dinner tonight.

Of course while he was sleeping everybody else got up and went to work like good little geese and now he’s late. He didn’t get the memo on which cornfield they’re going to be ransacking today, his girlfriend didn’t wake him up and he’s bent about that, and he has to flap all the way to where he thinks they are on his own because there’s nobody to do the V thing with. And to top it off he has to honk until his honker is sore to find them. This isn’t shaping up to be a good day to be him.

Now you’re probably saying to yourself “Now wait just a gosh-darn minute here, bucko!” this scenario happens in the Fall when the time changes to Fall back rules. Time goes back an hour and catches everybody off guard so they don’t get up in time and they’re all late and miss planes, burn the toast, and it’s still dark out when they get up and they can’t see good, etc. Remember last year? That was when Uncle Skid backed over the lawn mower in the dark on his way to the seven-Eleven to get cigarettes and it punctured the gas tank in his ’85 Buick LeSabre and it caught fire and exploded and Aunt Pheeb had to bring him lard soup because he wouldn’t eat that health food crap they tried to feed him in the hospital. This time change stuff can be tricky.

Or you know what? It could be the other way around entirely and all this stuff could be happening because of the Spring Forward thing. I told you this time change stuff is tricky. And to add to the problem there are places in our great country that have said “To hell with it.” and don’t even recognize the whole time change thing. That’s where this guy is from so he is constantly confused as to what time it is. Those folks that don’t recognize the time change thing, which is used by ‘Them’, to trick Able-bodied, Red-blooded Americans into thinking there’s more daylight than there really is, use the old system where, ‘when it gets dark they go to bed and when it gets light they get up’. They’re what we call Contrarians. Like on some of Indian reservations and Arizona.

I understand contrarian. But as luck would have it they had one not so evil genius on the program when they set this whole thing up that said “Let’s do it on a Sunday so it screws the least amount of people up.” So because of that guy (Thank you buddy) I just get up when I feel like it, go around and change my clocks, finding out first which direction they go, have breakfast, drink a little tea and am thankful I don’t have to find where everybody else is or flap my brains out trying to get there or wear my honker to a nub calling for them. So regardless of whatever the “Great Gray They” do, I’m cool.

By the way, it is 8:00am Daylight Savings time as I’m writing this. Hope it is where you live too.