Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Spring is Sprung
Listen to me, Blog Peoples:
Tell it, Chuckles!
Yesterday sucked. Testify! It sucked long and it sucked hard - and it did not suck in any of the nice ways. It didn’t suck in the way that operates a vacuum cleaner, nor as an old-fashioned fuel pump worked. Have mercy! Lo, it did not even suck in the manner in which physical desire may be expressed between consenting adults. It just. plain. sucked.
And why? Why, Chuckles? Was it because I did not feel physically well? Because I had many small detailed tasks to perform that were both dull and unsatisfying? Was it because of the farting guy with the smelly leftovers in a plastic sack who sat next to me for the entire bus ride home?
No, all these were merely symptoms of an essential suckiness, evidence of a much deeper, structural problem. What was that, Chuckles? What was the problem? My friends - my colleagues - Dear peoples of the web: Yesterday sucked big dangling donkey nards for one reason and one reason only: I sprang forward. And springing forward bites. Blows. Gnaws. Chokes. Springing forward macerates and masticates. It totally, totally sucks.
And don’t give me that crap about farmers and shopkeepers and saving candle wax and all the guff that Ben Franklin spouted back in the days of Poor Richard. I actually went to a college that purports to have been founded by Ben, and you know what? Springing forward sucked there too. No one gets any more done after springing forward. You know why? Because we’re all like the walking dead, off our rhythm and starved for sleep. Ben Franklin didn’t need sleep because he had lots of french mistresses and rum and electricity to keep him all juiced up in various ways. But normal, non-dead people like us who don’t have those things are often stuck with something else: alarm clocks. And whatever the opposite of being juiced up is, that’s what the alarm clocks bring us on Spring Forward day.
Here’s the thing: I love sleep. Sleep is golden, and dreams are diamonds on a chain of clouds. Sleep is what makes this country great. My supine time with the duvet on the big comfy bed is precious to me, moreso than I am generally even aware. And yesterday was my first workday in a year in which I had to function after having been deprived of a big piece of this beloved resource - my daily rejuvination more than decimated, a full hour out of the six I usually get, wrested from my weary, clumsy fingers. All else in life, that I could erstwhile manage in my fully-rested state, is fatally tainted, painfully exacerbated by this circadian insult. And I say - indeed, I preach and plead to you, and to every one of you: action must be taken.
Or, perhaps, inaction. There is no reason to compel us, as a workforce, as a sentient species, as god’s own creatures that partake of the divine likeness, to endure such ill-treatment, such indignity. We should just take the damn day off. I think the Monday after springing forward should be a vacation day, a national holiday: Get Some Rest day. It’s the least they could do for us.
But why stop there, Chuckles? Oh I don’t intend to, party people of the internets. As is my wont, I’ve got a little stack of other holidays I think are long overdue:
Election Day: Democracy makes this nation great. But do you want people to think that this nation really cares about democracy? Give us a full day off to cast a ballot. That’ll give us a chance to enjoy a few pints of suds, or a hike in the woods, or half a day of deep tissue body work - along with voting for whatever the hell they think they want my opinion on, as if I had one. Now that’s showing true support for the exercise of the common franchise. It might even increase voter turnout. Better yet, it would allow me to sleep late on a Tuesday. You know what the man says: Give a Hoot! Sleep late and vote!
Sweeps Week: it’s not really worth debating whether the United States, as a nation, has a national religion. Of course we do: television. There are more houses with televisions than with flush toilets in this great land of ours. The whole world watches our re-runs; our commercials are better entertainment than that crap Lincoln was watching when he got shot. But it’s not all about entertainment, either - the entertainment is a means to an end, not an end in itself. The goal, my friends, is ad sales. What’s being sold, how, and to whom - that’s what television is all about. Without television’s ability to instigate nationwide consumer frenzies, our entire economy would founder. And in the end it comes down to one week in March (right? March?) when all the networks bring out their fanciest programming, their most irresistable entertainment nuggets, in a desperate attempt to lure us in as loyal viewers, and, at the same time, to lure sponsors for ad sales. And during this critical phase of our national evolution each year, they want us to go to work? To tear ourselves away from the cool soothing fire of the small screen? To turn off the set and go to sleep because we have “jobs” to attend, and then leave the freaking house for eight or ten hours with no access to “shocking expos’es” or “never before seen footage?” Forget it. That’s not what made this nation great. What made this nation great, was the willingness to sacrifice personal, and even corporate, wellbeing, for a few more hours of the Jerry Springer “ten skankiest episodes” marathon. Give us this one week off, my friends - and we will watch tv. With pride in all for which it stands.
Halloween: This really demands two days off. On October 31, it’s unfair and unreasonable to expect anyone to think of a costume, get the stuff needed to create it, acutally assemble it, and then wriggle into it, with enough time left over to get hard candy to throw at stoopghosts and still be able to make it to the party before it’s too late to see everybody else’s costume before they get all sweaty and uncomfortable and strip down to the underlying layer of clingwrap. Halloween is a major national event, a generator of billions in sales of makeup, photo processing, fake cobwebs, glowsticks and alcohol. (To say nothing of the legions of pumpkin farmers depending on our illuminated gourd fetish!) We need the day off to prepare, to buy stuff - stuff that America counts on us to buy. And then, after the party, which no one will leave till well after the witching hour (unless the keg gets kicked, in which case there must be a bar open somewhere that will serve us in this condition), when we all stagger home, bloated with cheap candy and strangely colored cocktails, this nation is not well served by forcing us to be at our desks, jobsites, or customer service centers at the asscrack of dawn the next day, wincing at the office equipment in the cruel dawn and cradling our shattered self-respect with candy-and-mascara-stained fingers. Don’t ask America to count on a bunch of still-drunk revelers with unintentional eyeshadow, fake scars and glitter stuck where it doesn’t really belong. The day after Halloween, known to the ancients as “All Hung Over Day,” needs to be work-free. It’s what makes this nation great - the gorge-and-snooze cycle. It’s part of the natural order of things. We should respect it as such.
First Day of Each Season: This is a four-for, quite a coup in the pantheon of holiday-scamming. But let’s face it, each season deserves a day of quiet contemplation and appreciation. The first buds of spring. The first frisbee of summer. That first crisp autumn day. Some damn thing or other about winter that’s worth noticing for thirty seconds. But then, once those thirty seconds have elapsed, you can readjust yourself. You can take stock of the cosmic cycles, the waxing and waning of the earth’s vital essence, the changes that emerge from within and without to transform, not only our natural environment, but even our bodies, our minds, and our essential, ineffable souls. To meditate on the melting of old snow, or the emergence of cicadas from their unholy underground burrows or wherever they live when they’re not floating around like screaming whiffleballs and freaking everybody out.... one day, every three months, to achieve some share of participation in the glorious spiral of the eternal helix of creation: that is what makes this country great.
Or it would, anyway, if I wasn’t so damn tired and cranky. I’m going to try to get some sleep now and see if that helps. Unfortunately, it’ll have to be at my desk, because this is yet another day in a long series of days that nobody is going to pay me to stay at home.
Happy Tuesday, everybody! G’nite!
