RIVE CITY JOURNAL: INVENTOR OF DST DESERVES PUNCH IN THE NOSE

Violence isn't usually the answer to a problem, but in this case there just doesn't seem to be a good alternative.

Here's the deal: I am about to launch my semiannual whining and moaning about daylight-saving time. Because you, dear reader, don't have a remote device to turn the page for you (see below), you may want to manually avert your eyes or physically turn the page, particularly if you are tired of time as a column topic.

However, I feel it is my duty at all times and in all places to let anyone within my reach know exactly how I feel about DST. Goodness knows my family thinks the burden of putting up with my rantings should be shared widely. Even the cat gets tired of the displays of outrage when the clocks have to be set forward or back. Animals, you know, have a keen sense of time, an internal clock of some kind, and they know when to hide under the sofa.

Even my poor barber wishes he had a sofa nearby whenever the twice-a-year adjustments are made to the clocks of the land. "Oh, no," he says to himself. "I have to be pleasant to this raving lunatic."

Simply put, DST is a farce, phony to the core. But because it has the full weight and authority of the United States of America government behind it, no one puts up much of a fuss. Oh, sure, my fellow man will gripe and grit his teeth over taxes and pork that come in a barrel, but he meekly lets some civil minion put our bodies out of whack every spring and autumn.

I don't have anything against DST itself. A lot of folks seem to like having daylight that lasts until bedtime in the summer. What I don't like is having the adjustments forced on me by the time change. Call me a creature of habit, but my internal clock is almost as good as the cat's, and my body doesn't like to be fiddled with for no good reason.

I say "no good reason" because it's the truth. If DST is such a great, all-out cure for making order out of chaos during the warm months of the year, why the heck don't we just stick to it? Keep it all year. Stop going home after work in the dark just because of some clock jiggling during the cold months.

There. I feel better. How about you?

* * * * *

Now about that remote control for the television set.

In case you haven't figured this out already, the TV remote control is the most important invention in the history of man. Notice I said "history of man." I think it has been satisfactorily proven that, in the history of women, the clicker is just about the worst thing God ever permitted to evolve, unless you don't believe in evolution.

This happens to be the 40th anniversary of the first TV remote control. These devices have been around in one form or another ever since television sets became a big deal just after World War II.

I imagine that the big-time inventors who thought up TV in the first place probably wondered why sales didn't soar right off the bat. Never mind that there were no stations broadcasting in those days, not even sitcom reruns or afternoon talk shows. No, the TV inventors said to themselves, "What we need to get TV going is something to control the picture without leaving your recliner." This is how all really great ideas get started.

Just think. Without TV remotes, the incidence of heart disease and obesity among American men would be a fraction of what it is today. Entire health-care complexes would be out of business, because men would be playing with their children, chopping wood (except during DST hours), jogging and tending their lawns instead of watching TV. No red-blooded American male would sit still for the drivel on television if he didn't have the power to zap from channel to channel seeking eternal truth. Or maybe a good western. One or the other.

Oh, did I tell you the TV remote was invented by a medical doctor looking for ways to boost walk-in business? That may or may not be true. But it sounds good.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.