Daylight Savings Time

With the beginning of Daylight Savings Time, we can always count on a few things:

1) Having that first shock of "did I wake up an hour earlier than normal for no reason?" before I remember I forgot to set my clock an hour ahead;

2) Rejoicing in the fact that it feels like I get to come home from work early because it is light out an hour later;

3) Hearing everyone bitch about DST messing up their schedules and talking about how we should do away with it.

Sure, we could be freaks like Arizonans and not observe DST, but then in a desert where they have scorpions and tarantulas to deal with they probably don't have time to set clocks back and forth. Originally, the idea was that DST was to help farmers, though this is pretty stupid because farmers could just as easily adjust their work hours to meet the daylight--it's not as though they have to say "well, it may be light out but I'm not waking up because it ain't 6 yet".

And Congress a few years back extended DST to cover a few more months, because they were trying to pass an energy efficiency bill and no one could agree on gas taxes, efficiency mandates or pretty much anything else, so they stuck with the low-hanging fruit of adjusting DST to somehow save electricity. Yay Congress! Keep earning those six-figure salaries!

Still, if they're going to do away with the time changes completely, my vote is to keep it at the current summer hours. Who really cherishes the daylight on our way to work, when compared with having some light at the end of the day when we can sit on our balconies and stroll our neighborhoods without fear of stray bullets from gangsters?