Saturday night the time CHANGED.

Sounds like a sci-fi movie, right? The Time has changed into a huge hulking beast that is gonna tear up your hometown, but not really hurt anyone.

You may think I am going to bash Daylight Savings Time here, as people are wont to do out here in the far  reaches of the internet wasteland, but you would be mistaken.

Instead, I’m going to say that I like it.

For one thing, you never hear people bitch about Daylight Savings Time when it’s time to “Fall Back” and we all get an extra hour of sleep. Although being on a Saturday night, this doesn’t mean a whole lot to most of us, but to people who attend early Mass this is quite a boon. Also, for a lot of people, it means an extra hour of party time. For me, personally, it means an extra hour of sleep, because I work on the weekends while the rest of you are doing your weekend stuff, like late-night-that-turns-into-early-morning video game sessions.

Unfortunately, it also means that we get shorted an hour of sleep come “Spring Forward” time. This is when all the “We don’t need Daylight Savings Time anymore because farmers and blah blah blah yackity shmackity” people come out in full force, mostly because they are crybabies about being shorted an hour of sleep on a Saturday night.

To me, Daylight Savings is a great example of the inherent “give and take” nature of life. If you are on a midnight shift at work, for example, then on “Fall Back” night you hafta work an extra hour (but you get paid for it, at least where I work). But! When “Spring Forward” night comes around, you only hafta work 7 hours, instead of the 8 that you get paid for.

I also like Daylight Savings Time because I feel like we get “Bonus Night Time” and, as we all know, the night time is the right time. I realize that it is not the Time Change or the clock that gives us this night time, but that it is the inevitable conquering of the Forces of Good by the Forces of Evil and whatnot that happens every year around this time. So we celebrate the longer nights and shorter days as the forces of Darkness hold sway over all the Earth, at least for a little while. A fact that I have perfectly illustrated here, with the Debbil smashing that bad ol’ clock back into “Darkness Rules” time.

"Devil smash!!!!"

It’s fun to think that, anyway.

Rotation of the Earth, tilt on its axis, and shit.

One interesting side effect of the time change is that the crowd at the JFZ was different today.

Mondays are always the busiest day at the gym. I attribute this to two sociological/psychological causes:

1. People feel like Mondays suck a fat one anyway, so you may as well wake up at the crack of dawn and go to the gym.

2. Mondays are like mini-January 2nd’s. It’s the beginning of a new week, you spent the weekend being a total loser and watching teevee and munching leftover Halloween treats, so now a new week is like a fresh start, a time to get back on the horse and really do it this time.

Well, today the JFZ was not as crowded as it normally is on a Monday, which means that the parking situation was not a complete Charlie Foxtrot, as it normally is on Mondays (the parking at the JFZ is a whole ‘nother issue, which I plan to address eventually). As far as the whys of the JFZ not being as crowded, I do not have an answer, but I do have some theories. The most obvious one is that everyone simply forgot to change their clocks and alarm clocks, so they could have shown up after I left, thinking it was 6am instead of 7am.

Once inside the JFZ, none of the usual lions were there. None. Strange. It makes me even more sure that they travel in roving packs, so that when one is absent, they are all absent. It doesn’t really matter to me anyway, as lions do not show much interest in the workemout machines (like the ToT), preferring the more advanced shit like free weights and barbells and dumbbells and any other bells that may be littered about the savanna. The only explanation for their absence that I can come up with is that, given that they are wild beasts, they prefer to be home before the sun comes up, which would have been impossible if they didn’t get there before 5:30am, which is usually when I arrive. Perhaps they had already fitnessed by then, but since I have observed the lions at length, I don’t think so.

I think a more practical answer is that they are still at home grieving Bama’s loss to LSU over the weekend, as nearly every lion I’ve ever seen in the JFZ is also a Bammer. I know this because they’ve talked (loudly, I might add) about nothing else but this game for the past month. So maybe they are just at home in a state of mourning.

I will admit, it felt extremely strange to be leaving the JFZ in full daylight. Before Satan crushed the clock, when I left the JFZ it was still dark outside, which made me feel really productive. A friend of mine once said that when you get up really early in the morning, you feel productive all day, even if you don’t really do anything, and I agree with him. Coming out of the JFZ into a still-dark parking lot made me feel like, “Heh heh, everyone else is still asleep, but I’ve been working it out! So I am better than everyone else.” Coming out of the JFZ into the daylight makes me just reach for my sunglasses and feel like I’m already behind in what I want to get accomplished today (which isn’t much besides this blog and going to work and playing Warhammer Online).

Yeah. So hurray for “Fall Back” time, right? Yes. Hurray for more nighttime and less piercing, burning suntime!

Change of subject

Last night I traveled to the local Super Target. I don’t know if Target is on that blog “Stuff that the White Folk Enjoy”, but it should be, because Target gives us low prices and, as a huge bonus, a feeling of superiority over the poor saps who shop at the Wal-Mart.

There is no denying that Super Target is a wondrous place.

I normally do my grocery tradin’ at the Winn-Dixie, but last night the wife wanted to go to Target so I thought I would go ahead and pick up a few of my grocery items.

In my shopping cart, there are a few staples that are always up in there (lately, anyway):

Triscuits, sardines, apples, yogurt, granola, coffee.

I went to the “canned meat” section (as a side note, this section is only moderately busy at Winn-Dixie, but was nearly abandoned at Target, as I assume the wanna-be yuppies who do their tradin’ there feel they are too good for any sort of “tinned” meat product).

There, amongst the usual assortment of sardines, sat numerous cans of my most favorite sardine in the whole entire universe!!!!!!11111!!!!!1

I thought that these cans of sardines were extinct, as I haven’t seen them at Winn-Dixie in a looong time, but it turns out that Winn-Dixie just stopped catering to my own particular taste in Sardinery.

King Oscar Brand Mediterranean Style Sardines!!!!

Expect a full-on lovefest review tomorrow.

I bought 4 cans last night, and ate one immediately upon arrival at the casa, with a side of these:

Famous Amos Spicy Pickle Chips!!!

Famous Dave’s is a BBQ joint that may, or may not, be out of business. All the ones that I knew about are all closed, but apparently Famous Dave is still cranking out his delicious spicily-sweet pickles. I can’t believe spellcheck didn’t just underline “spicily”. I guess it’s a real word. Shame.

I know I have a stomach like a goat, but these pickles are fucking awesome and I very nearly ate the whole damn jar before realizing that my stomach was pissed at having so much vinegar and weird spices thrown on it all of a sudden. Plus, these pickles were not cheap, so eating them all at once did not make much financial sense, and the fiscal consequences of my diet are something that I need to keep in mind during these times of more-expensive-than-skim-milk gasoline and economic uncertainty.

Anyway, a dinner of sardines, triscuits, and pickles is healthy, right?

At least it ain’t fried chickens.