Living Dead: Time to Vote Zombie! Or--Daylight Saving Republicans??

Newsflash: Halloween has been extended through Tuesday, November 7th.

"We have lived as if in a trance. We have lived as people in fear," commented Keith Olbermann on October19th.

Keith, Halloween was just around the corner. TV campaign ads are just following custom--vote zombie! With the midterm elections right after the scaring ritual, it just seems fitting to continue scaring the living daylights out of people. Daylight saving was not immune to the scaring as it abandoned us at 2 a.m. on Sunday, October 29th this year, leaving us to wake in total darkness.

Although we walk in darkness... to work and back home again in pitch black... there is a light at the end of our scary darkness. The midterm elections? No. Still darkness.

The light, or rather daylight, which our great and fearless president has recently modified, will return early in 2007 on Sunday, March 11th. Is this a ploy to ruin St. Patrick's Day celebrations, as festive partiers will have to adjust to an earlier time to get to mass the next day?? Or is there a more sinister and diabolical plot?

I can't deny that the daylight saving-standard time changes in the spring and fall changes the way we act and live our day lives--it does. Standard time sucks. How do I hate standard time so? Let me count the ways...

So, how do these seasonal changes affect our perceptions on things like politics and other scary things? I'm sure it does alter our perceptions to wake in darkness and come home in darkness. Everything seems dark. It is a bleak time. Obviously.

And, although we must rise earlier for daylight saving, we wake in the spring of sunshine. It is a glow of hope, and a glimmer of summer that we rise to celebrate daylight saving in the spring. And in the spring there is no taunt of political mudslinging, no robo-calls of candidates barking their message before the elections.

Get this: The changes on daylight saving and standard time extends the length we get to "enjoy" daylight time. That's right. Yea! I love daylight time.

As far as I can remember, we have always changed the clocks the first Sunday in April and the last Sunday in October. Now, according to King George, beginning in 2007 we will change clocks the second Sunday in March and the first Sunday in NOVEMBER! That's three more weeks of daylight! WoooHoo!

Wait... The first Sunday in November? (...sounds of gears clicking and whizzing in my head...) Now, don't we have general elections in November? That means I get one less week to adjust to the time change before the elections. So, I get to enjoy waking to the sun one more week before the elections... Hmmmm... Does this mean I get one more week of optomism before the dreaded darkness sets in?

In 2008, the general election is scheduled for Tuesday, November 4. Do you know what this means? In 2008, we will endure only two days waking into complete darkness before the next presidential election. I think we need to change it from "daylight saving" to "republican saving" time.