Four O’Clock is so yesterday

Welcome to the biggest conspiracy in the world, the great grandmother of all conspiracies, a plot so seamless we don’t even realize it’s a conspiracy at all.
 
Yes, it’s Daylight Saving Time. Since two o’clock this morning, or maybe it was 1:37  last Thursday, we’ve all entered into a plot to convince ourselves, and our poultry, that the sun and the moon and the stars and all the planets skipped a beat. For roughly eight months, we will tell ourselves and anyone who will listen that the natural order of the universe shifted ever so slightly, just because we decreed it so. 
 
Spring forward, fall back, do the hokey pokey, it’s all a giant delusion that we agree to share. Yesterday, the sun set at 5:45. Today, we’ll all agree that it’s setting at 6:47. Then, in early November, we’ll take it all back and whine about how early the sky gets dark in the winter. 
 
The whole concept is just a bit crazy. The very fact that we have time zones owes more to train schedules than to any underlying need. When every city had its own time, noon was when the sun was directly overhead and everything revolved around that consistent standard. Today, with typical human hubris, we’ve declared that the heavens revolve around our clocks, not vice versa.
 
In a very real way, though, technology has eliminated the need for time zones. Dividing the country, or the world, into standard times was a great idea for the railroads, but why shouldn’t I have my own time zone to meet my special needs? If I can stream my videos whenever I want, why can’t I change the hourglass to suit my mood?
 
F’rinstance, I love the idea of the sun setting late in the summer, but it sets before nine p.m. in Chicago. A few miles east of me, in Indiana, sunset is close to 10 p.m. Why should all those Indiana-inians get to dine out in the sunshine at 9:45 while I’m in the dark? Isn’t it my God-given right to live in a world where my sun sets at ten or eleven? Of course it is.
 
If I had my own time zone, I would always be on time for meetings, because we’d change the clocks to show the right time whenever I arrived. If I had my own time zone, I’d never have a late fee from Visa, because I’d just adjust the clock to make my payments meet the deadline. I’d never forget my wife’s birthday, or our anniversary, because I would just reset the time/date as soon as she reminded me. I’m liking this idea more and more by the minute, whichever minute I choose it to be.
 
Of course, I’ll need to be careful of the space/time continuum. Too much hopping back and forth to make time my servant could lead me to meet my future self and collapse into anti-matter. I promise to use this power only for good, or for really good pranks.
 
I haven’t quite figured out all the details for making this a reality, but I have eight months to figure it out before everyone wants to set their clocks back and I stop the motor of the world. In the meantime, maybe I can convince the fine folks at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich to just move all the world’s clocks up an hour or two and save me the aggravation. How could they possibly refuse?
 
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