2002-10-17 - 1:59 a.m.

Ramble time!

I'm about to run outta shampoo, conditioner, face wash, toothpaste, and pomade, and all at the same time.

This is bad news. It means that I gotta buy five random things that I can't put off buying, and, again, all at the same time. It's like when the month, day, hour, minute, and second all renew at the same time. Doesn't happen very often.

Speaking of time, I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER understand why it's 12:43 AM right now, when just an hour ago it was 11:43 PM. Why not wait just one more hour, until 12 becomes 1, for the PM to change to the AM? Who made this rule? A farmer?

I bet it was a farmer.

Fucking farmers. Do you know how many times I�ve set my alarm clock, one of the most important things I do every day, sometime between 12 PM and 1 AM, and have had to sit for awhile, puzzled, and think about it, I mean really think about it, before being sure that I had set my own fucking alarm clock correctly?

I mean, I can work a fucking computer. I can hear a song I haven�t heard for ten years and remember it. Let�s break it down a little--I can speak a very complex language (and that includes intonation, facial expression, and body language) while at the same time doing basically anything else I can or care to do. I can simultaneously feel a wide range of emotions, I can love, can cheat, can steal, can hurt someone and make them feel good about it. I have corpuscles. I don�t know what they do, or exactly what they are, but they work. I can follow somewhat cerebral arguments while inebriated. I can understand what idiots would have liked to have said if they weren�t idiots based on the verbal leads they give me. My body tells me that I�m injured when I feel pain. I have a highly developed (and picky) sense of humor, and I can laugh, but not when it isn�t appropriate. I can use italics with bravado. I can feel as if I�m falling in love with streetlights echoing off rain-soaked pavement. I can chew gum. I can add, subtract, multiply, and divide numbers in my head with a minimum of thought, and, if absolutely necessary, with a pen and a bar napkin. I�m more brilliant than any living person, through dreams, and that�s in my sleep.

But, for the love of God, I cannot and will not ever ever ever understand why, when on a system of 12 hours in a half-day, equating to 24 hours in a day, the first designated half begins with 12 AM and ends at 1 PM, and the second half begins at 1 PM and ends at 12 AM. Am I wrong to assume that 1 means 1? Why is it midnight if there�s still an hour to go before 1?

It hardly seems democratic. Fucking farmers. I mean, did we all vote on this?

Can we change it? Does everyone else in the world think that this arbitrary system is logical? Do they just accept it? Are the others, like me, with a highly developed sense of time, living in caves in Montana, constantly reassuring each other that it�s 64:80:54 o�time?

Why not have the day start at 1AM? When 12AM ends, 1AM marks noon. 12 PM? 12:59? Just one more minute, and it�s tomorrow.

I can only hope that there�s some weird explanation. In fact, I�m assuming that there is (a la 2000 is not the millenimum, 2001 is), and that I just don�t get it, like an athlete in math class.

I mean--am I wrong? It�s like saying, OK., so we're going to base counting by 10�s, and since there are 10 numbers from zero to ten, nine is the tenth number in our counting system.

I just can�t fucking understand it.