Daylight Savings Time

I meant to mention something in the last entry and totally forgot. Today is the first Monday after the dreaded "Leap Back" of daylight screw up time.

It is 5pm eastern and it is pitch fucking black out there right now. My body is in shock. My eyes hurt. I just got summoned to an office for a brief meeting and I stared out the window at the streetlights which are already on, and sat slackjawed and gaping at the sight.

I hate this time of year. I don't care if it is brighter in the morning, I can't stand driving home in the dark. In a few weeks it WON'T be bright in the morning, it will be just as dark as right now, and I'll be just waking up.

When I used to work for a small company in Beverly, MA, the head technical writer would sit at his desk and refer to himself as Mushroom Man. I never got it until Doug explained to me that drives to the office in the dark, early hours, sits in a room with no light, and leaves after the sun sets and they throw shit at him all day. Mushrooms live that way too in caves, I guess.

It was a gross and disturbing analogy for what this man's life was like. His name was Rick and he'd sit and smoke at his desk. It was when people could still smoke in the office, back in the day as it were, and Rick would light a butt and leave it smoldering in his ashtray while he wrote. That always bothered me. I mean, it's one thing to smoke at your desk, it's another to just light it and have it burn, being all wasted and unused and still stinking the place up (I dislike smoking, but have tons of friends/relatives who smoke... hate the sin, love the sinner as they say). So I'd point this out to Rick and he'd get mad. Dude, just trying to help you save some cash... man!

Our receptionist used to do that too. She smoked these abysmally stinky very cheap (super cheap... cheapest things on earth) "Montclair" Cigarettes. This lame brand had the stupidest advertisements... Some Mickey Rooney-esque old fart in a sailor hat and scarf around his neck making some horrible astonished/surprised/aghast/amazed face. I should see if I can find an old advert from that. Doug used to run around the office pretending to be the "Montclair fag" as we called him.

That office stuff brings back a lot of memories... my friend Morgan used to like to walk over to the Kwik-E-Mart and get what we lovingly referred to as a "Black Death" slushie. You basically take all the dark colors and add them into the slushie ice and it comes out black. It was awesome. Black Death. mmmmmmmmm...... I miss Morgan, and it has been years since I've enjoyed a Black Death slushie.

Anyway, I am on my way out of here but just thought I'd share my horror at the blackness in the sky. I feel like the troops of Rohan in "Return of the King" as they faced the darkness to go fight for Minas Tirith...