March 11, 2018

You know that feeling? — when you wake up and look at the clock and think, oh, good, it's late enough to get up...

... even though it's only 4:30 a.m., but at least it's not 3:30 a.m. Now that would be too early. But 4:30 — early, but okay. It's fine to get up. You've had enough sleep. It's good to get up early. And blah blah blah. Thoughts thoughts thoughts. You're fully awake now. There's no going back. And then you realize: Daylight Savings Time. The phone-clock sprang ahead on its own while you were sleeping. It was 3:30 (essentially). And that is far from the worst mistake I've caught myself in this morning. I did something else so stupid that I'm not even going to blog about it.

IN THE COMMENTS: Of course, people are prodding me to say what was the "something else so stupid," but I notice that Trump — in his rally last night — said he'd love to run (in 2020) against Oprah, because he knows "her weakness." He spoke of her weakness many times, but he never said what it was. I don't know if he — like me — has a very specific thing that he knows for sure, but what a fabulous rhetorical device. If you fall for it, you've got to think about all of the possible weaknesses of Oprah — brainstorm a big list, frame everything about Oprah as a weakness. She's warm and easily able to perform empathy in the presence of almost anyone. Bzzztt. Weakness!!! Your thinking about it like that is far more effective than his (or my) naming that one thing.

41 comments:

Mr. Groovington said...

How about a hint, please.

Lash LaRue said...

We all do stupid things. What’s yours?

TerriW said...

4am is now my "fine, might as well get up" threshold. It keeps creeping backwards as I age.

If Trump pledged to get rid of DST, he might pick up some electoral college votes, but he'd have to do it during Spring Forward, not Fall Back.

AllenS said...

When does daylight savings time happen? When we spring ahead, or when we fall back?

whitney said...

I got in my car this morning and thought "why is the clock at 530" apparently it is the only clock in my life that doesn't change automatically

Kevin said...

Oprah's weakness is that she wants to be liked and doesn't want to throw everything she's built into a race for president she might lose.

Does she want to become Hillary? Someone who lost to Trump and is now on a crappy book tour getting her daily dose of "you're so great" while the rest of the world pitties you and moves on?

For some people that would be a step up. **cough** Kamala Harris **cough**

Those are the people who are going to run in 2020, people who see getting schlonged as a career move.

rhhardin said...

My 11 atomic clocks are of two minds this morning. Eight of them will reset back to standard time at 8pm tonight and recover at midnight, owing to a firmware bug in La Crosse atomic clocks, probably since fixed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkhD51DmF4

The Drake R8B clock radio that turns on for Rush I have to find a serial line and a laptop to reset the clock on. All the panel buttons are nonfunctional now but it has a computer input port that works. It's a great radio otherwise.

Hagar said...

Terry McAwful will be the Democratic candidate in 2020.
You read it here first.

My computer has the only clock in my life that sets to Silly Time automatically and then I still have to go to the clock thingy to make it reset the seconds.

Phil 314 said...

Her weaknesses...

Chocolate and fries.

Bruce Hayden said...

I looked at the time, saw that it was 5, and figured no one out there would be up and blogging. Then went, "wait". The rest of the world is now on Daylight Savings time, and that means 7 am in Althouseland. 8 am in the Eastern time zone. Soon, apparently, 9 am in most of Florida.

When I was working full time, being 2-3 hours behind the east coast was an issue. Now? Almost an advantage.

AllenS said...

So, let's say that you live in the central time zone, what time should it be without the daylight savings time crap?

AllenS said...

Tine for me to sing a little song --

♪ ♫

Does anybody really know what time it is
Does anybody really care
If so I can't imagine why
We've all got time enough to cry

♫ ♪

AllenS said...

Tine meant time. My spelling goes to hell when I take out my harmonica and break into song.

Ann Althouse said...

"I got in my car this morning and thought "why is the clock at 530" apparently it is the only clock in my life that doesn't change automatically."

We were just feeling relief that the clock in the clock in the Audi will start being right again.

tim maguire said...

The stupid thing I did was stay up late last night instead of going to bed early. It's going to make getting up tomorrow harder than it needed to be.

Darkisland said...

“Say, excuse me.” I turned again to the sack across from me. “Could you tell me the time?”

“The time?” His stubble split in a grin. “Golly, fella, we don’t have such a thing as the time. You from outa state, ain’t that so?”

I admitted it and he thrust hands in his pockets and laughed as though they were tickling him in there.

“Time, eh? Time? They got the time so fouled up that I guess there doesn’t nobody really know it. You take me,” he offered, leaning the whole prize toward me. “Now you take me. I’m a millworker an’ I work switch shifts, sometimes weekends off, sometimes a day here, a night someplace else, so you’d think that’d be enough of a mess, wouldn’t you? But then they got this time thing and I sometimes work one day standard, the next day daylight. Sometimes even come to work on daylight and go home on standard. Oh boy, time? I tell you, you name it. We got fast time, slow time, daylight time, night time, Pacific time, good time, bad time . . . Yeah, if we Oregonians was hawking time we’d be able to offer some variety! Awfullest mix-up they ever had.” He laughed and shook his head, looking as though he could not have enjoyed the confusion more.

The trouble started, he explained, when the Portland district was legislated daylight time, and the rest of the state standard. “All them dang farmers got together is why daylight got beat for the rest of the state. Danged if I see why a cow can’t learn to get up at a different time just as easy as a man, do you?”

During the ride I managed to find out that the chambers of commerce of other large cities—Salem, Eugene—had decided to follow Portland’s lead because it was better for their business, but the danged mud-balls in the country would have no part of such high-handed dealing with their polled wishes and they continued to do business on standard. So some towns didn’t officially change to daylight but adopted what they called fast time, to be used only during the week. Other towns used daylight only during store hours.

“Anyway, what it comes down to is nobody in the whole danged all-fired state knowin’ what time it is. Don’t that take all?”

From Sometimes a great notion

Nelson Algren had a similar riff in one of hos earlier books.

John Henry

Ralph L said...

Trump knows her weakness because it's the same as his. She hasn't put herself on every cover of O for nothing.

Clark said...

One year when I was a kid growing up in the U.P. they tried splitting the state, with the lower peninsula on Eastern time and the upper peninsula on Central time. But all state institutions were on Eastern time, so the University (which was half the town) was an hour different from the rest of the town. We had two sets of clocks in the house. It was tough (especially for my dad who worked at the University) to keep track of two times. They changed it back before too long.

Ralph L said...

How the fuck did I end up with 9 clocks to change? Plus the cars.

Darkisland said...

Indiana has always confused me.

2 time zones. Parts of each go on dst and other parts don't

John Henry

rhhardin said...

It's time to rotate the sundials too.

Danno said...

Blogger Bruce Hayden said...I looked at the time, saw that it was 5, and figured no one out there would be up and blogging. Then went, "wait". The rest of the world is now on Daylight Savings time, and that means 7 am in Althouseland. 8 am in the Eastern time zone. Soon, apparently, 9 am in most of Florida.

I saw that the Florida legislature had passed a all-year Daylight Saving Time bill. It needs federal approval I hear.

Yay, I like riding my bicycle in the late afternoon.

Danno said...

The only drawback to my January in the FL panhandle (on Central time) was the early sunset.

Danno said...

a s/b an in 8:46

tcrosse said...

Weaker Together.

Danno said...

With all-year DST, there would be no annual/semi-annual nonsense to it!

tcrosse said...

I looked at my watch and it was seven-thirty

Tcdq1293 said...

So,here I am, Oprah. In front of the mirror of my mirror house. Invinsible.
WTF? ORANGE fucker says, he knows my weekend (news, ness). Still looking. Yo hablo español y yo miro mi espejo.

Oh my gosh! I can't see my toes! Is it my wholesome bosom?

This must be it.

Not Laslo

Rich Vail said...

Sadly even getting up 2@ 4:30 is sleeping in for me. I normally get up @ 3am!

Ann Althouse said...

"Her weaknesses... Chocolate and fries."

I really thought you were talking about me... and that the stupid thing you're guessing I did involved chocolate and fries.

FullMoon said...

If you fall for it, you've got to think about all of the possible weaknesses of Oprah

Oprah knows her secret weakness and wonders if Trump actually knows it also

FullMoon said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
mockturtle said...

One benefit of living in Arizona is no Daylight Savings Time. :-)

Sebastian said...

Her weakness is that she's waiting to hear from God.

Trumpit said...

Her weakness, according to Garp, is that her ancestors were former slaves. Slaves were from hellhole countries like Africa. Trump Tower is a short Uber drive to Hell's Kitchen. By deductive logic Africa's only kitchen was dismantled and put on a slave ship to Manhattan. That's why there are so many starving children in Africa. They don't have a kitchen to prepare meals. Why doesn't the fake media point that sad fact out? Can we all pitch in to buy Africans kitchen utensils on Amazon using Althouse's portal?
They desperately need our help.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine#Africa

Ralph L said...

Trumpit, I really like the Supoon I got for Christmas. Stiff, one-piece silicone spoon with a blunt end for scraping. I bought 2 more for gifts through the A Portal.

Yancey Ward said...

I am down to three personal clocks- my phone, my computer, and the one on the dashboard of my truck.

Yancey Ward said...

The country should just move to Daylight Savings Time all year round. When I live in CT, it was annoying and depressing that the Sun set by 5 p.m. from early November until the end of January. It was far less a problem for me to get up while it was dark.

Original Mike said...

”You know that feeling? — when you wake up and look at the clock and think, oh, good, it's late enough to get up..."

No, I don’t. I look at the clock and hope it’s early enough that I can roll over and go back to sleep.

BTW, here in New Zealand it’s 8 am. (It’s also Monday)

Original Mike said...

Blogger rhhardin said...”It's time to rotate the sundials too.”

I was studying a sundail yesterday. There were two corrections that had to be applied to the apparent time indicated by the gnomon shadow according to the plaque afixed to the sundial (actually, there were three, because it’s still DST here). There was a variable “equation of time” correction (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equation_of_time). I get that. But there was a constant 30-minute correction, apparently for longitutde. What I don’t get is when they installed the sundial, why didn’t they just rotate it to null that out?

roger said...

How about a hint, please.

You want a hint?
Yes, please.
How long can you tread water?