This time change has hit me harder than past ones I can remember. I have just been dragging myself around the last few days. I think the ideal time change is when you have a week off. I remember several time changes during vacations in which I was ready for the grind whenever work came around.
I realize I am not the only one affected by the clocks being moved ahead one hour. It is well-known that a number of injuries happen during the time change to Daylight Savings Time. This sobering assortment of facts from the Injury Board tells the story:
“Studies show that there is an increase in car crashes in the week after changing the clock forward an hour. Sleep habits change and accidents happen when a person is deprived of sleep. For a person with good sleeping habits it takes about five (5) days to adapt to the time change. A person without good sleep habits may take longer to adapt. The loss of sleep also adds stress and distractions to people operating cars and heavy machinery.”
The Tampa-based Injury Board is “a growing community of attorneys, media professionals, safety industry experts, and local activists committed to making a difference by helping families stay safe and avoid injury, and helping those who are injured get the assistance they need to move on with their lives after an accident.”
Ah, but all is not lost. Some sane advice from the Injury Board includes:
“To ease the transition to Daylight Savings Time and avoid accidents some suggestions are to increase exercise and immediately try to expose yourself.”
Oops. My bad. That should be: “To ease the transition to Daylight Savings Time and avoid accidents some suggestions are to increase exercise and immediately try to expose yourself to daylight upon waking up.“
Yes, exposing yourself to sunlight makes more sense than to just expose yourself. Don’t you think?
Today I brought a meal home for lunch while driving the “company” car. After a short while under way I noticed that the console cup holder was all of a sudden full of dark liquid which, after shaking my Styrofoam cup, I knew was from my iced tea. The cup had a hole in the side, perhaps from a straw. I noticed that the tea stayed put in both cup holders even while making sudden stops and curves. It also apparently didn’t leak into the console box. It was getting about time to get a car wash and detail, so I got them to “de-tea” my vessel. But I wondered if some kind of light-colored lining was inserted in the cup holders and water was added to it, whether I might have my own little seat-side aquarium?
It would definitely be something to show off if I got stopped for speeding.
My first-born brother e-mailed me what turned out to be an epiphanous “meme” yesterday on how rapidly words can fade into antiquity.
The anonymous writer of the piece started off somewhat wistfully as to how certain automotive terms nowadays requires translation by someone over age 50. He — I am assuming the writer is a male — mentions “fender skirts.” Hmm, well that might require someone more than 55 perhaps.
Fender skirts are, of course, pieces of automotive body work which cover usually the top portion of a car’s rear tires. I say usually because there are front fender skirts but you hardly see them anymore. Well, you don’t see them on the rear either. That’s what I was saying! Some show and tell here in a photo of a detachable rear fender skirt on a ’69 Buick Electra 225 a.k.a. “Deuce and a quarter.”
Gonna find me a Deuce and a Quarter and drive like I had good sense! Photo by Christopher Ziemnowicz.. Courtesy Wikipedia.
The writer went on to terms that have all but disappeared:
–Continental kits which had a bumper extension and spare tire cover that would magically turn your car into a Lincoln Continental. Good luck with that.
–Clutch. The word is now used to excess in sports, especially baseball, such as a “clutch hitter.” That is not to be confused with a “clutch rider.” Don’t ride the clutch, you’ll wear it out, for sure!
–Dimmer switch. This as opposed to a lighter switch. Okay, that’s really going to screw with someone’s mind who doesn’t know what I am talking about. Yes, you had a metal button on the left side of the floorboard that you had to tap with your foot to make the car’s lights dim. I swear! I don’t have the imagination to make something like that up.
Okay, here is a bonus to mess with your head. Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s I used to drive fire trucks that weren’t equipped with electric sirens — the sirens you hear that make wailing, yelping and other odd noises these days on emergency vehicles. We had old-school “mechanical sirens” (turn up the volume) which can still occasionally be heard these days, especially on fire trucks. These loud warning signals were set off by tapping one’s foot on a switch identical to the dimmer switch, only it was located by the right foot. I think. It’s been so long. Sucker was loud though and I was cruel enough to use them at 2 o’clock in the morning because if I wasn’t sleeping, no one else should be sleeping. What a guy.
–Speaking of clutch — this is my own — how many of you out there ever drove a 3-speed on the column? A what’s-that-on-the-where? This was also called a “Three on the Tree” although not by me. I’m a poet but don’t know it but my feet show it. They’re Long fellas.
I learned to drive on a 3-speed column shifter, first in my parent’s ’65 Ford pickup and subsequently their 1972 Dodge pickup. Pull in and up for reverse, in and down for 1st gear, out and up for second and straight down for third. Oh, you’re supposed to engage the clutch or you’ll produce a very unpleasant sound. My first car, a Ford Pinto and all but two of the subsequent 10 cars I have owned have been equipped with manual transmissions operated by floor shifts. I think the majority were 5-speed transmissions, but some like the Pinto’s “SelectShift Cruise-O-Matic were 4-speeds. I imagine driving might seem complicated as hell, and I did have a bit of trouble at first learning to drive fire trucks with 5-speed, high-low, split shifts requiring double clutching. By now kiddos, I imagine your mind has achieved meltdown since you’ve only had to put the car into “D” and drive all your life.
Perhaps my Pinto had a SelectShift Cruise-O-Matic but it didn't come with one of these.
The writer of the meme continued with words that evoke cultural change such as “bra” instead of “Double-barrel slingshot.” I didn’t say that. Or someone was in a “family way,” even they might be a proton short of a nuclear family.
I really enjoyed and was, at the same time, fascinated with what was just a simple essay about words someone knew growing up and were suddenly gone. I’ve been there. Lake pipes? Bong. Pong. Ding-dong, Avon calling.
When you look up a word in a dictionary — it used to be “the” dictionary — it may be marked as archaic but who knows if the word is archaic wherever it is you plan to fly tomorrow? Do you plan to find a bar when you hit town? Maybe someone will tell you about a good “gin mill” or a “pub” or a “tavern” or “watering hole.” Then after you go to the “cafe” or “restaurant” or “deli” and get you a good “sub” or “grinder” or “gyro” or “hoagie” then perhaps you might want to catch a band at the local “nightclub” or “supper club” or “cabaret” or “honky tonk.” Although if you go for the latter, don’t expect to enter a building full of white folks playing a hand of knock rummy.
I suppose some kind of snappy closing is in order but I am getting hungry and I lack a “gentleman’s gentleman” to serve me my “TV dinner.” Don’t worry, I won’t eat my TV.
List this. Everywhere one goes on the Internets is where a list can be found. The “Top 10 Cities for Romance.” “The Top 15 Scenic Municipal Sewage Treatment Plants.” “The 20 Places Where Paris Hilton’s Wimpy Little Chihuahua ‘Tinkerbell’ Bit Someone.”
The Bluetick Coonhound pictured is not a wimpy little dog, by the way. I just thought I’d mention that seeing as how my painter, as in paintings, friend Teddy asked my preference in hunting dogs. I explained to her that I no longer hunt — nothing against hunting other than my lack of patience — and I never used a dog for hunting, but my favorite hunting dogs is the bluetick. I mean, come on, who couldn’t love a bluetick except for maybe Tinkerbell? But I think a bluetick might like a nervous little Chihuahua. A little friend to play with. Awwww. Well, maybe not.
Realizing the immense significance of lists on the Internet — I even got paid for one or two — I proudly present for this Friday afternoon’s viewing pleasure:
“Mr. EFD’s Big Freakin’ List of Vacuousness.”
1. Congressman arrested while double-clutching a paradigm shift.
2. Shrimp on a stick, crabs on a bed.
3. Pompous naked guy says a lot about little.
4. “Four jack rabbits are sliding up the flagpole, Marge.”
5. To dial “15” press 1-5. To dial 1-5, press 1. To dial 1, press 5. To dial 5, press 1. To hear this message in eastern Scandinavian press the pound sign. To hear this message again, dial “15.”
6. Gerald lived a life of quiet desperation during the 25 years, 7 months and 10 days it took him to program his remote control.
7. Sandy idolized Marilyn Monroe until the day she stood waiting above a helicopter’s rotor for her white cocktail dress to blow above her knees.
8. The noted proctologist and amateur hockey player is being sued for malpractice after allegedly leaving his hockey stick, socks, skates and puck inside the patient during surgery.
9. Nothing’s impossible I have found. Except when I am mugged by a clown. I pick myself up. Dust myself off. And spend a year on my analyst’s couch.
10. “Then the fish came alive, with his death in him, and rose high out of the water showing all his great length and width and all his power and his beauty. He seemed to hang in the air above the old man in the skiff. Then the old man shook his head and looked down into the chair where his patient was having a root canal. The old man thought to himself: ‘I think I just used up the laughing gas.’ “
