hour

"since 1966 every twenty years congress has given us another month of daylight savings. we're up to eight months now, and there's every reason to believe that the chamber of commerce, the national lobby of convenience stores-which account for eighty percent of all gsoline sales in the country- and congress will continue to press for extentions until we adopt a year-round daylight savings."
michael dowling. tufts university.

"indeed, so great an epicure am i in this matter that i cannot relish a winter night fully if it be much past st. thomas's day and have degenerated into disgusting tendencies towards vernal appearances: it must be divided by a thick wall of dark nights from all return of light and sunshine..."
thomas de quincey from confessions of an english opium eater.

so...the swine at the chamber of commerce and the whores in congress have given me back the hour the rat bastards stole last march ( and will steal again in a few months)...they always take it on a weekend...on my time...souless freaks who want me to drive that extra mile to the mall after work because it is still light out...one stinking hour isn't going to save this economy...i'm with de qunicey on this one ( and quite a few others as well ) it's dark outside as i type this into the infernal machine and i see the attraction...de quincey was an addict who couldn't stand people in groups larger than three ( a devoted father and husband though...that can happen in spite of the drug...don't let the feds, or worse, the mental health professionals, fool you) and wanted to be alone with the drug as much as he could...call it a recidivist behavior, but i understand that aversion...it is deep seated and probably precedes the addiction...addiction as a symptom of a deeper discontent....sometimes it is all there is...that or disintegration...a twisted sort of survival mode...substance abuse counseling is a hard dollar because most of those poor sods have no idea what they are up against...it may seem like we've digressed a long way from daylight savings, but the addictions it feeds are just as symptomatic of a deeper discontent...the consumerist utopia is as much a drug as de quincey's laudnum...bring on the dark.

i am remiss
today marks the nintey-third anneversary of the great bolshevik revolution....some have called it a palace coup led by lenin and trotsky ( stalin was somewhere in a bit role that ate at him until he was in a position to do something about history )...but it seems more like a voteless election to me...the tsar was deposed and the only ones happy about kerinsky's continued pursuit of the first world war were the brits and the french...after all the bolsheviks were offering bread, peace, and land...that they did not come through on those promises should come as no surprise...they were politicians after all...and politicians burdened with a teleology that told them they were correct and everyone else was wrong so they could do what ever they wanted tot get to where the ideology said they were going...too bad isaiah berlin wasn't around then...if they'd been able to read him they could have saved themselves and every damned body else a lot of trouble...i reccomend his book "the twisted timber of humanity"...read it and get a grip.

"surely every body is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a winter fire-side: candles at four o'clock. warm hearth rugs, tea, a fair tea maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies on the floor whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without."
thomas de quincey


ten minutes past five in the evening and the sun is nearly set...home at last.