I wish Daylight Saving Time were a person so I could punch it in the face.

Well, maybe not an actual person. Real people faces are full of teeth and little bones and other things that go crunch and destroy your knuckles when you hit them.

Maybe my Daylight Saving Time punching bag could be the creepy Raggedy Ann doll a relative made me when I was a kid. Jesus, that thing was a nightmare. Just knowing it was in the same room with me made my skin crawl. I used to turn it to face the wall and bury it under all my other toys, but it didn’t matter. Nothing escaped those soulless black eyes.

Daylight Savedy Ann. Fuck yeah, I’d beat the living daylights out of her, easy.

Anyway, you might say I’m in a bit of a mood. I’m in a mood because I ended up coming to work several hours early because I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep because, after a glorious and unprecedented streak of actually being good at the whole sleeping-and-not-just-staring-at-the-ceiling-all-night thing, Daylight Saving Time had to come along and cock it all up like the infernal twatting cocktwat it is.

And okay yeah, maybe I’m not so much working as redditing, and it is nice to have the office to myself in the early hours before anyone else shows up, and the birds outside are warbling away sweetly to each other just like angelic little Disney caricatures of birds…

…but that still doesn’t make up for me being awake and dressed and sitting in a dusty office cubicle in my dusty office chair staring at a dusty ancient ugly hand-me-down computer monitor at an hour when I should be balled up unconscious under a down comforter in penguin pajamas with my feet crammed into blue fleecy socks with fluffy white sheep on them and not one solitary thought of the waking world to be found even remotely near to my head.

Part of me wants to believe I’m overreacting. It’s just one tiny little hour. It shouldn’t cause this much chaos. And yet – *gesticulates wildly at everything while scowling* – here we are.

Why? Why does that one miserable little hour have such an immense capacity to ruin everything?

And more importantly, is someone in the building making Cup Noodles or am I just hallucinating the smell due to sleep deprivation? I hope it’s the former, because I’m having enough of an existential crisis right now without phantom ramen coming into play.

Or maybe I have a brain tumor and DST is the least of my worries. Probably not, but it’s always good to keep your options open.

Fuck, I really want noodles now.

Goddamn phantom ramen.

NanoPoblano, Day 1: Fall back fail.

The end of daylight saving time is upon us once again.

As much as I think the whole daylight saving thing is a crock, I do look forward to “falling back” every year. However outdated and pointless I may feel something to be, if it lets me sleep another hour longer then it still gets my hypocritical stamp of approval.

“Springing forward” in March can, of course, go fuck itself.

I’ve never attempted an empirical study on whether or not the extra “fall back” hour actually does me any measurable good. But as far as my perpetually exhausted brain is concerned, our annual re-do of the hour preceding 2am (whose bright idea was the 2am thing anyway?) is the closest thing to heaven I might ever reach.

I pine for that hour each autumn. I stalk it on my calendar like an insomniac lion would stalk a gazelle made of Ambien.

I…completely miss out that hour because Fall Back 2015 just so happens to take place while I’m on vacation in Asia, and Japan don’t do DST.

D’oh.

But hey, we’re still on holiday, right? What should we do to relax instead of turning the clocks back?

I know! How about a date with Tokyo Disneyland…in costume?
Disneyland? Costumes? AWESOME!
It’s going to be packed, though. If we’re going to get into the park we’ll need to get there by 7am. Which means we need to be up before 5am to catch the right trains…
Okay, less awesome.
…after a late night of Hallowe’en partying in the streets of Shibuya.
Uh…

NAILED IT.

Gifts of spring: birds, blooms, and bitterness.

The sun has been shining all week. Little birds are singing show tunes as they flirt and flutter from tree to tree. Burrard Station is awash in a thick canopy of cherry blossom trees in full bloom.

I hate it. I hate it all.

As a part-time photographer in a city famous for its rain, I am required to take advantage of the good weather and fresh flowers while they last.

As a rest-of-the-time grumbling malcontent, spring can kiss my ass. And I’m not saying that just because my ass could use a little kissing after Daylight Saving Time just kicked it so thoroughly.

By some cosmic joke, I was born near the end of April, right smack dab in the middle of the season I hate the most. Most people with seasonal blues experience them in the winter, or slightly more rarely, the summer. Me? I get mine in the spring, during the otherwise traditional time of hope and renewal and all that bullshit.

The Universe: “Happy Birthday, Nutty. I got you some apathy.”
The Nut: “Aw, just like last year. Thanks, Universe.”

I’m out. You can keep your stupid tulips and your zombie Jesus and your blatantly shrunken Cadbury Creme Eggs (yeah that’s right, Cadbury, I said it). It’s not even officially spring for another eleven days but already I just want to find a cool dark place and hibernate until it’s over. The bears will know where you can forward my birthday presents.