Times of Nothing – BET ON CRAZY

Thanks to Daylight Savings Time sunset will come an hour earlier this evening.

I hate the winter shift of an hour.

Back in the early 21st century I was working at a diamond store off 5th Avenue. A good address.

Not West 47th Street. The Diamond District. A squalid block which processes 89% of the diamonds in America. Dusk was always a little scary from November to March and one afternoon I received a phone call from a friend in Bruxelles.

“Are you all right?”

“Sure, why not?” I hadn’t drank anything the previous evening. That’s a lie, but one martini in the Oak Bar couldn’t hurt my system.

“There was an armed robbery in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.” Alan was an art dealer. Criminals in that field never use guns. “A guard was shot by the robber.”

“It doesn’t surprise me.” My police friends have been warning about the rise in crimes of opportunity. Times are tough. Budget cuts deplete patrols. Criminals are freed from prison. “The city feels a little like 1976.”

“Rome seven days after the Huns burn it down.” He was quoting my line from my book about punks. “You be careful.”

“I will.” With two kids in Thailand I have no interest in getting shot.

At least not over money.

Damn Daylight Savings Time

“Time is part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify the motions of objects. Time has been a major subject of religion, philosophy, and science, but defining it in a non-controversial manner applicable to all fields of study has consistently eluded the greatest scholars.” According to Wikipedia.

For countless millennia time had been judged strictly by the simple binary system of day or night.

Shamans for the neanderthals kenned out the passage of the sun throughout the year. The autumn equinox signaled the time for retreat to warmer refuges for winter. The religious hierarchy were the only ones who could tell the time. The rest of humanity day or night worked just fine and for the most part still does for modern man.

Dark – sleep.

Light – work.

That process wasn’t good enough for everyone.

Today all that changed with the annual adoption of Daylight Savings and I cursed William Willett, the British busybody, who convinced His Majesty’s government to shift the hours of sunrise and sunset, so he didn’t have to play golf in the cold autumn darkness of dawn, but also because he was angered by the lower classes sleeping away useful daylight hours.

The desire to standardize time across the globe was the dream of western men such as Benjamin Franklin who proposed to the Paris police that they fire cannons at sunrise to wake the hoi polloi to take advantage of his adage, “Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”

Germany adopted Willett’s suggestion during WWI and the rest of the world followed suit to attack the slumber of the working man.

So the only two reasons for this ‘innovation’ were war and golf.

I don’t do either.

Today the sun set around 4:23pm in the New York area. An hour earlier than yesterday.

I am not happy.”

Damn DST and I’ll vote for any politician who campaigns for its repeal.

Except for Donald ‘Damned’ Trump.

The Ghosts Of Neanderthals

I have wandered through the caves near our rice farm in Ban Nok, Thailand. I shut off my light to be immediately cast into utter darkness. Not even a Neanderthal could’t see their hand in such complete blackness.

The creation legend from the Old Testament’s Genesis claimed that on the first day of Creation Elohim boomed in a similar darkness, “Let there be light.” and created the heaven and earth, although the sun was an afterthought for the fourth day.

To err is human. To err all the time and not care is the blessing only afforded the Divine.

His divine alter ego Yahweh spent the next five days covering Earth with water, rising land from under the seas, dividing day and night without any uniformity, covered the planet with animals, and then on the sixth day formed man in his image.

The seventh day Yahweh fucked off for the eternal shabbath of rest kicking back with other Gods forgotten by Monotheists. Yahweh had been speaking to these nameless deities since before Light and decided that He needed new company, since the other Gods no longer laughed at his jokes.

Thus Adam who as a the only white man wasn’t shamed by his small penis, although Yahweh wore a toga to hide his less than godly member, but as an atheist I reject all Creation myths as well as Evolution.

Scientists have searched for the ‘missing link’ for centuries without success, because there is no genetic bridge between homo sapiens and the apes.

Maybe some of us have Simian descendants, but when I go to Rockaway Beach I spot humans with lizard, ursine, and sloth DNA.

My Neanderthal blood has been adulterated by countless sexual unions with Cromagnons, Desnovians, and countless other human breeds and I know the truth.

And we are not scared of caves

Only the darkness.

I Love My Sleep

As much as I hate Daylight Savings Time, I was happy to sleep another hour this morning.

After waking with the dawn I pulled the covers over my head for shelter from the light and arranged the pillows for renewed comfortability.

The next forty-five minutes belonged to a blissful slumber.

Sleep is the drug.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

Paradise according to Ernest Hemingway, who said, “I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?”

All Saints Day

Yesterday was the Catholic Church’s All Saint’s Day celebrating the over ten thousand saints acknowledged by the Vatican since the festival came into being in the Fourth Century post Jesus’ birth. This liturgical holiday commemorates thousands of known only to the Bearded All-Knowing Deity. Later in that millenia according to Wikipedia on 13 May 609 or 610, Pope Boniface IV consecrated the Pantheon at Rome to the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the martyrs, ordering an anniversary the feast of dedicatio Sanctae Mariae ad Martyres has been celebrated at Rome ever since. The date wAs chosen to supplant the Roman pagan festival of Lemuria, in which malevolent and restless spirits of the dead were honored by the living.

Pope Gregory III switched the day to November 1 supposedly coinciding with the Celtic Day of the Dead to appeal to pagans, creating a day of prayer for the faithful. The Church was very adept at adopting pagan ways to attract converts. As a devout Atheist I no long the saints as a connection to to the Supreme Being. We are all just people. For better or worse, although I am drawn to Brigid of Kildare who was converted from paganism after her death. One her feast day February 1 I used to up to St. Patricks Cathedral to light a candle. The church officials in the 90s covered her statue to prevent pagans from worshipping her. They never stopped me. I carried my own candles to acclaim her holy. After all she had discovered how to make beer and if that’s not a miracle then what is.

Restem en Pacem.

The living as well as the dead.