so we’re only a few days off daylight saving time, and i’m already feeling it. seasonal affective disorder hits me pretty hard this time of year every year as far back as memory goes. whether you ascribe to the theory that it’s all in my head seems immaterial, as my head is devastatingly powerful and is not to be underestimated.

the point is this: gah! i’m tired of being messed with. as i’ve whined before and will whine again (to anyone who will listen), daylight saving time is altogether annoying. it’s a mightily dumb law and we don’t really save any time no matter what we do with the clock.

unless, that is, we were really damned serious about getting more daylight hours, and did something really damned drastic. something like redefining the very notion of the ‘hour.’ we’d have to compress twenty-three hours per diem into the daytime, and expand the remaining hour to fill each night. think about it: we’d work eight hours (we, the soul-crushed wage slaves) daily and still have a monstrous fifteen daylight hours in which to play. we’d sleep a mere one hour a night and be fully rested! think of everything we could accomplish! … lan parties every morning … maybe some other stuff too …

or if we really wanted to shake things up, we’d launch into space a giant sunblocking obstacle, the shadow of which would bring a premature end to the day; complementary to this, we’d launch a giant mirror, positioned such that it reflected some otherwise wasted sunlight and hit the earth where it would otherwise be one hour pre-dawn. we wouldn’t have to mess with clocks at all! i wave my magic wand of science, presto-chango!, and the semiannual temporal vertigo disappears into a very silly past.

or we’d just agree to get up earlier, but how lame is that? it doesn’t even involve lagrange points. seriously.

there’s no easy way to jump into this one. this is why, most nights, i cry myself to sleep.

1. mariah carey – music box.
not so much bad as creepy, and exacerbated by the accompanying music videos.

2. korn – (self-titled).
at some point in their lives, each adolescent male will begin to despise life. these guys made it big by composing the soundtrack. almost as creepy as #1.

3. ace of base – the sign.
said to be a favorite of osama bin laden.

4. ace of base – the bridge.
if my satanic baby-eating neighbors were to make an album, it would sound like this, only less evil. in all truth i only own this one because i thought i was returning the one above.

5. tlc – crazy sexy cool.
when word got out that i owned this one, i got beat up. by my mom.

6. arrested development – 3 years 5 months & 2 days in the life of…
apparently in a past life i was a black man from the south who had to deal with racist oppression and homelessness, and i bought an urban r&b rap album to figure out what that might mean. not recommended for children under the age of 200.

7. homestarrunner.com – strong bad coaster.
there is more musical worth in this unplayable piece of hard cardboard than in everything above. and so i find redemption.

sweet mercy: the dark tower is going to be a comic series. just when you thought the story was done. (via /.)

excuse me whilst i build a time machine to take me to april 2006.

[aside: the beginning is the end is the beginning. i saw it coming.]

does this place look different in safari? compared to, say, yesterday?

it’s important you tell me. tell me.

an argument against drm. read it. read it!
(by way of)

on the agender today:
one. try to figure out why safari hoses my css. still.
two. try to figure out why i woke up at 7 something and actually felt awake. does that ever happen on a weekday?
three. drink tea. drink more tea.

har. now that i have sucked you in with the polarizingly political title i’d like to share some utterly offtopic things with you. you see, i had an altogether odd day at the office and i’ve been itching to tell someone.

to start, there was an unwrapped prophylactic sitting outside the door to the office when i arrived. cute.

then there were the electricians who put some bulbs in some sockets that have not had bulbs in them the entire time i’ve worked where i do. we now seriously have to squint when we come in out of the sunshine.

and the ongoing soap opera relationship between level3 and cogent made the online portion of my day extremely exciting (read: frustrating). i begin to fear for the stability of the internet when power sufficient to wreak this sort of havoc finds its way into any one (or two?) company’s hands. any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. and since it’s kind of what we do there, my boss and coworkers were obliged, though less than pleased, to stay up half the night trying to fix something they couldn’t.

but everything worked out in the end; my leather jacket squeaked every time i moved and it made me feel a happiness that no internet outage could darken. (well, maybe one internet outage.)