Katie & Scott & Simon & Cecily.

Tag: time (Page 2 of 2)

Day 49: april fool’s day jokes that require excessive commitment prior to the actual day

  • Secretly become pregnant and wear large clothing for several months or simply disappear to a writer’s retreat.  On April 1, arrive home and immediately give birth.
  • Work for a bank until you are trusted enough to handle the money that goes into stocking an ATM.  Write “There’s an ostrich behind you!” on every bill you stock in the ATM the night before April 1.  Also, raise and train an ostrich to trust you and to squawk “April Fools!”  When you go to the ATM with your friend, they’ll see the message, scoff at the ridiculousness of it, then turn around and see you riding a talking ostrich.
  • Create a fake Twitter account for your friend which, through viral means, becomes insanely popular.  Use this as a launching point for registering your friend as a candidate for city council and schedule a speech and rally on April 1 with printouts of his face.  Joke about how it’s funny that your friend shares the same name as a famous politician and convince him to go to the rally.  When he arrives, just before he gets cheered onto the stage, yell “April Fools!”
  • Plant an assortment of flowers in your friend’s front lawn that, when blooming, spell “April Fools!”
  • Have identical twins, but raise them in separate environments until they are teenagers.  Then, arrange for them go out one night to the same place and to go to adjoining bathrooms at the same time.  Install a “fake” mirror between the bathrooms and watch as they try to figure out why their reflection is being all weird.
  • Invest in the field of robotics until research has progressed to a stage where you can get a fully functioning robot hand that looks and feels like human skin.  Replace your hand with the robot hand and go to shake your friend’s hand.  When they shake, send a small shock through your hand, then use the built-in flamethrower to light their pants on fire.  Don’t forget to say “April Fools!”
  • Become the charismatic leader of a extremist group that wins popular approval and a government position through democratic means.  Ascend in power and over time, transform the country into a dystopian fascist state.  Arrange to have a friend seized and executed on April 1, but as they put on the blindfold, it says “April Fools!” on the inside of it.

Day 25: william willett

William-Willett I have no time to blog today, because I lost an hour in my sleep due to a man named William Willett.  This guy ->

So instead, because I have miles to go before I sleep, I will give you the inspiration words of Willett himself as he argues for the need to disturb everyone’s days by an hour:

Everyone appreciates the long light evenings. Everyone laments their shrinkage as the days grow shorter, and nearly everyone has given utterance to a regret that the clear bright light of early mornings, during Spring and Summer months, is so seldom seen or used.

Nevertheless, standard time remains so fixed, that for nearly half the year the sun shines upon the land for several hours each day while we are asleep, and is rapidly nearing the horizon, having already passed its western limit, when we reach home after the work of the day is over. Under the most favourable circumstances, there then remains only a brief spell of declining daylight in which to spend the short period of leisure at our disposal.

Now, if some of the hours of wasted sunlight could be withdrawn from the beginning and added to the end of the day, how many advantages would be gained by all, and in particular by those who spend in the open air, when light permits them to do so, whatever time they have at their command after the duties of the day have been discharged.

By a simple expedient these advantages can be secured. If we will reduce the length of four Sundays by 20 minutes, a loss of which practically no one would be conscious, we shall have 8o minutes more daylight after 6 p.m. every day during May, June, July and August, and an avenge of 45 minutes more every day during April and September.

I therefore venture to propose that at 2 a.m. on each of four Sunday mornings in April, standard time shall advance 20 minutes; and on each of four Sundays in September, shall recede 20 minutes, or in other words that for eight Sundays of 24 hours each, we shall substitute four, each 20 minutes less than 24 hours, and four each 20 minutes more than 24 hours. (Another means of arriving at approximately the same end would be to alter the clock thirty minutes on only two or three Sundays.) This is the whole cost of the scheme. We lose nothing, and gain substantially. Having made up our minds to be satisfied, on four occasions, with a Sunday of 23 hours and 40 minutes, the advantages aimed at follow automatically without any trouble whatever; everything will go on just as it does now, except that as the later hours of the day come round, they will bring more light with them. Those who have travelled by sea east or west, will remember how easily they accommodated themselves to the frequent alterations of time on board ship. They simply adjusted their watches, attended to the engagements of the day in correspondence therewith, and quickly dismissed from their minds all recollection of the alterations which had been made. If this can take place at sea day after day for several weeks without discomfort, may not a similar operation be possible on land?

Note that his original suggestion was actually a more gradual change over multiple weeks.  I think I might find that less jarring than an entire hour in one day, but it would mean remembering to change your clocks every weekend for a month.

That is, if you even have clocks that don’t change automatically anymore.  Luddites.

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