"I'm running out of time!" - Jack Bauer, 24

I pulled up behind this car on I-10 on Saturday. At first I thought someone was towing a bright red cannon to lay siege to the Umpa-Lumpa fortress. Or something. Turns out they were towing Ronald McDonald's ride. Why does it make sense he drives a shoe? I don't drive a big white Nike home, so why does that clown need a shoe?


So, Ronald's ride has a nice rear view mirror. This makes sense, except for the fact that his big high-top blocks the view of anything behind him. See the dangly fries?

It’s Daylight Savings Time again. Now that Daylight Savings Time is longer than Regular Old Standard Time, it makes me wonder why we even bother with Regular Old Standard Time. It would be simpler to never change the clocks. Heck, I’d be happy if they turned the Regular Old Noon into the Daylight Savings Time 6PM. It would simplify lots of things, and the people in the convenience store wouldn’t be so darn grumpy, plus “be home by dark” would take on a whole new meaning to the eight-year-old set. Admittedly, it would make sneaking around hard (you know who I’m talking about, Enron!), but if you don’t have that much sneaking to do, well, that would be okay.

What, you say, would happen to crime? Criminals are lazy, and want to get up late to sneak around. If it’s broad daylight at 2am, well, they’ll just give up, go home, and sleep in until noon the next day. When it’s still light.

Result? Crime would plummet.

Other, less verifiable results: Insurance rates would go down. SAT scores would go up. Milk would stay fresher longer. Broccoli would taste like candy. Taxes would go down. Bosses would give raises for no good reason. Inflation would be zero. Pez® would once more fall from the heavens like hail, but it would be better, because it wouldn’t ding your car and you could eat the tasty Pez® by the handful by scooping it up from your windshield.

I think that my plan would also make either Global Warming® or Al Gore go away once and for all. Either of those would be worth it.

Did I mention that the people in the convenience store were grumpy? In front of me was a henpecked husband being yelled at in Hindi, a middle-aged Texas woman henpecking her husband on a cell phone in Texan, and an hombre behind me being henpecked in Spanish. Me, I didn’t get henpecked, even in Wilderese. The Mrs. likes me.

Oh, I know the general populace was busy stocking up on Pampers™, Pez® and poodle detergent in order to survive the coming chaos of Y2K7, when a CEO whose Outlook© schedule sent him to the wrong meeting at the wrong time would suddenly realize that the End Times were here, pull out a machete, and execute a really hostile takeover. Me, I took it in stride. I changed my watch setting this morning. Oh, and I pressed the “H” key on the car and changed that clock, too. I even changed the one wall clock The Mrs. is too short to reach. (The Mrs. isn’t really short, she informs me, just low to the ground and “hard to push over.”)

So, outside of a polyglot of angry wives that were all more or less incomprehensible to me, Y2K7 was a non-event.

One concern that we have about the whole time-changing thing since we moved from Alaska is the whole “You can’t make me go to bed, it’s not dark yet,” coming from The Boy. Given the wacky daylight (and dark) hours in Alaska, you cease to become wedded to the concept of day or night except in the most abstract sense – “day” is when the stores are open. Only some of them are open at “night,” and most of those you don’t want to go into unarmed.

So, given actual experience, I heartily suggest that we free “when we go to work” from the shackles of “when it’s light outside.” Since everybody leaves the lights on in Houston all the time anyway, it won’t have any impact on work, except that in the summertime it’ll be nice and cool when you go to work, and only slightly roasting when you get home. By the time you’re ready for bed, well, it should start cooling off again.

This, my friends is sheer genius, and no doubt my ticket to the Nobel as well as that MacArthur Fellowship . . . why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?



Sorry for the delay in posting, I must have had some sort of internal Y2K7 effect that I didn’t realize until just now – yet another reason to implement my plan without delay. Given that it’s spring break (I just pulled my shirt up and said, “wooo”) I will likely miss Wednesday’s post (and maybe Sunday’s, if we don’t get back in time). Fear not, I will return with oodles of pictures and other blog fodder.