To the right and down…

Here in the western world, it’s the way we read.  It’s the way we organize things from smallest to largest.  In mom’s obscure cleaning system, it’s the way you remember to wipe the counters before you sweep the floor so you don’t rake crumbs onto a clean floor…  among a myriad of things.  Since it’s the way we read, it’s also the way we lay out our calendars.  Yet in every business measurement paradigm, it’s considered a bad thing.  Always to the right and up.  Increase.  Upswing.

Or not.

The long and short of things is that regardless of what we do, time marches steadily on to the right and down.  At this time of year people tend to pay more attention to a particular moment in time and ascribe particular significance to a certain moment simply because it means you have to get another stack of papers with a new number written on the top so you can keep track of where you’re supposed to be.  After spending time in Arizona and then Iraq, and then Arizona again, I have come to see the foolishness in the purportedly ‘energy-saving’ benefits of Daylight Saving Time.  It’s a really stupid, stupid idea.  And from that thought follows the simple step to “Why does the calendar look like it does?”  Why don’t we have 10 months with 36 days each, and a 5 (or 6) day party at the changeover?  Tradition dictates that we do things this way.  And I guess without a particularly specific and pressing reason, there’s no real benefit in changing things.  (Thus the self-apparent stupidity in DST, since there’s more light at the beginning of the day too, which is wasted because you’re sleeping until after the sun comes up… but I digress).

So what, dear readers, does this all mean?  Bupkus.  Diddly.  Squat.  Sound and Fury.  I think that’s going to be my theme for the year.  Sound and Fury.  Enlightening, but only to the already enlightened.  Which is as it generally goes anyway.

F*ck it all.  I’m going for a ride, and maybe I’ll post some pictures.  Assuming I can find my camera battery charger, which has somehow migrated from its usual spot plugged in above my computer power-cord… Oh well.  Either way, some good wheelies should do wonders to cleanse the soul.