Source: Weather Underground
Twice a year I get thrown off by Daylight Savings Time, and the whole “spring forward, fall back” mnemonic doesn’t help me a bit because I can never remember whether “forward” means add an hour or subtract an hour and the same for “back”. Or “fall”. As we all know time isn’t really linear bit a wibbly wobbly ball of timey wimey stuff, but that’s another story.
There is one advantage and that is that for a few weeks at least I’ll be getting up in the dark again. That may not sound like a good thing but on days when the sky is clear I can look up and see the stars of the Milky Way, which is the galaxy where we are, galaxies being big strandy bandy balls of starry warry—yeah, that’s getting away from me.
Right now when I go out and look to the southwest early in the morning I can see Jupiter and that reminds me of something I wonder about every time I look at it. How did the Romans know to name it Jupiter? It’s the fourth brightest object in the sky. First is the Sun, the Moon, and Venus is third. How did they just happen to know Jupiter was the largest planet in our solar system? Doesn’t Venus obviously look bigger because it’s brighter? Maybe Venus was called “Jupiter” for thousands of years because it looked bigger. And maybe Jupiter was called “Venus” because it’s the setup for a joke I’m about to make in the next few sentences. Maybe when Galileo discovered four moons around Jupiter he didn’t name them Io, Ganymede, Europa, and Callisto after some of Jupiter’s lovers but instead named them Adonis, Phaeton, Anchises, and Richard Burton.
And all this was covered up by modern astronomers, although why they would care about the accuracy of the Greek and Roman astronomical names is beyond me since they’re all pretty much hit or myth anyway.
Nicely done sir. Nicely done.
Daylight Saving messes up my timey-wimey detector something awful. All that incessant dinging makes it really hard to remember not to blink.
And you have to blink every once in a while or your eyes get all crusty. I’d prefer to just stay in bed with my eyes closed, though.
And this is why we love you, sir.
I can’t describe the warm fuzzies that gives me.
I hate Daylight Savings time, plus I always get confused about which is the REAL time. Is it now, or is it in the fall? It was dark this morning when my alarm went off, and I got mad, thinking I’d set it too early by mistake. Damn those farmers. Or was it because of the war? I can never remember.
I can never sort out which is the REAL time either, and we have the Sumerians to blame for giving us sixty-second minutes and sixty-minute hours, although I guess we have nature to blame for giving us twenty-four hour days and years that are 365.25 days long forcing us to add a day to February every four years except every four-hundred years and when it sounds like ‘I’ as in ‘heist’ or ‘Fahrenheit’.
It was because of the war, wasn’t it? Some farm-heavy areas like Indiana refuse to go on Daylight Savings Time. The poet Randall Jarrell said when he was in the army they were on double Daylight Savings Time meaning they had to get up two hours earlier. Why’d they even bother? Why not just say “get up at O-early hundred”? The “O” stands for “Oh my god it’s early!”
(1) Thanks for making me feel less stupid for not being able to follow the whole “spring forward…” thing. I’m freakishly insecure about my own intelligence and you are the smartest person I know, so you’ve just made my day. Usually you whip up my intelligence/insecurity problem…
(2) Totally didn’t notice the time change this year b/c my mind is currently racing so much I’ve been averaging 4 hours of sleep per night for the past 6 days and I keep forgetting to eat and take my meds. WHY HAVEN’T I LOST ANY WEIGHT?! (Hey…I just figured out that this may explain the insanity problem a little, so again, thank you!)
(3) The last sentence of your first paragraph made me laugh so hard that I started making that sound again that made my son hide under a blanket the other day. Good thing I’m seeing my doctor in 2 hours b/c I seriously need to have my lungs checked. I sound like one of those people they use on commercials to scare people out of smoking, and I’m not a smoker. You are totally helping me today!
(4) Your comment section is heating up in an awesome way. High 5! My son just asked me if I haven’t let the dog out yet because I’m over-commenting on “that dude Christopher who lives in Nashville’s blog again.” Welcome to my family! I won’t be offended if you don’t want to come in and have a drink. Even I wouldn’t do that right now.
(5) If you were serious about being willing to listen/read to/about what is causing the “incoherent babbling” give me your email address, please. (It’s a piece good news that I really needed. Gina was game. Don’t know if you really are or not). I’m sure you realize by now that I’m a complete techno-idiot. I couldn’t find your site’s email address here OR on Facebook. The twitter thing is fun, but too inconvenient and time consuming because of the Grammar Nazi/140 character rule/my DMs keep disappearing into thin air combo/clusterfuck.
That is all (for now).
(1) The last thing I want to do is make anyone feel stupid or insecure. Wait, that’s not true. The last thing I want to do is jump off a cliff onto a giant spike. But on the list of things I don’t want to do making anyone feel stupid and insecure is pretty high on the list.
(2) I hope things settle down, assuming you want them to settle down, but if you don’t that’s okay too because it’s okay to do and feel stuff.
(3) It’s great that I’m helping you out and your coughing fits remind me of an old gag (no pun intended) about a stop smoking help line that people would call. It played a continuous loop of some of the most horrendous coughing you’ve ever heard.
(4) Hey, thanks to you and Linda for heating up the comments section. And I’m always up for a drink. I’d also be happy to take the dog out.
(5) Techno-idiots unite! I mean that seriously–I’m moderately capable with this blogging stuff but there’s a lot of technology that just leaves me baffled and don’t get me started on the stupidity and needlessness of “upgrades”. Anyway feel free to drop me a line anytime at freethinkers@nerosoft.com.
I think I may have just fallen platonically in love with you! That’s a big improvement from wanting to hit you with a dictionary, isn’t it? Don’t worry though…my back is too fucked up to drive all the way to Nashville without my husband. And he can stop me from doing just about anything. He once had to physically restrain me from peeing on my boss’s desk, so I think you’re safe from me causing you any actual physical harm.
The making someone feel stupid thing is totally my fault, not yours. Apparently I have a “staggering lack of confidence in my own intelligence”. (According to my husband). You, sir, are a rock star.
The time change brings out the worst in me, too, and your posts, Chris, bring out the best.
My aim is always to be funny, but if I can bring out the best in others I consider that a bonus.