Today is Sunday, March 14, which means there are only three days until everyone wears green clothes, eats and drinks green consumables and pukes green.  Yippee!  Today we remember the birthdays of Peter Musschenbroek, Jens Worsaae and Pedro Duque.  On this day in 1794 Eli Whiney patented the cotton gin, in 1870 the California legislature approved an act making Golden Gate park possible and in 1971 The Rolling Stones left England for France to avoid taxes.  Today is National Potato Chip Day and National Learn About Butterflies Day.

By now we have all sprung (sprang, springed?) forward.  I am not sure what the actual purpose is to daylight savings time or if there is a purpose.  The official spelling for this is Daylight Saving (no s) Time.  This is actually inaccurate because no daylight is actually saved.  The practice was originally suggested by Benjamin Franklin as a means of cutting back on candle usage.  It was instituted during the world wars as a way to save electricity by cutting the use of incandescent lighting.

It is believed that an extra hour of daylight in the evening is more usable than an hour of daylight in the morning.  Retailers are generally in favor of DST because studies show that people stay out later and spend more money.  We were always told that the time change had something to do with the farmers, but it seems that the farmers have nothing to do with it.  Some formers oppose it because grain is best harvested after dew evaporates, so when workers arrive and leave earlier in the summer their labor is less valuable.  Dairy farmers complain because their cows are sensitive to the timing of milking.  Delivering milk earlier disrupts their system.

There are groups who are in favor of DST and groups who are not.  Personally, I don’t care one way or the other.  Frankly, I think we should just pick one or the other and stay with it.  If DST is so great, why don’t we just jump ahead and stay there?  If we are ultimately going to fall back, why not just not jump ahead in the first place?

Is it me or are commercials getting more inane lately.  One of the ones that gets me is where we open with two guys in a locker room.  They talk a little and then one guy offers the other a piece of gum.  Suddenly they don’t know how to talk and use armpit farts to communicate.  We are given a translation and I spend the time trying to figure several things out.  One is what the gum has to do with what they are talking(farting) about.  Another is why the gum makes them unable to speak.  Finally I wonder why whoever created this commercial thought this was funny or why they thought it would make me want to buy their product.

Another series of commercials is the one with the settlers.  If you are trying to sell a product, why don’t you talk about how good it is instead of using these ridiculous commercials.  I cannot believe that people would actually feel like these “settlers” because they do not use the product that is being advertised.  I do not use the product and I do not feel like a settler.  Nor do I have any plan to switch to their product based on these commercials.  In fact they would make me want to avoid their product.  They do not inspire confidence.

There is also a series of insurance commercials that annoy me.  I have mentioned this in the past, but I feel that they should be mentioned during my commercial tirade.  You know the ones I am talking about.  The ones where “you named the car Brad” or where they don’t want you riding around on three wheels.  The one that gets me is where you buy a new car, crash it into a tree and have a problem with the insurance company.  Are they the ones who put the tree in your way?

I am not sure why, but insurance companies seem to have some of the most annoying commercials.  You have Flo, a gecko, settlers, etc.  None of these commercials are particularly amusing and generally people find them annoying and ignore them.  The other problem I have is that they are causing me to have weight and sugar problems.  Whenever they come on I go to the kitchen for some kind of snack like ice cream or cookies or something.  I wonder if there is an insurance company that can help me with that.  If there is, I hope they don’t have annoying commercials.

One more and then I will end this.  There is a restaurant chain that is making a big deal about the fact that their roast beef is hand carved.  What were they carving it with before?  How does the fact that it is hand carved make it better?  I would think that if they were using a machine that they would have more uniform slices.  That would seem like an efficient way to do it.  Shows how wrong I can be.  Okay, my rant on commercials is done, for now.

This week our fact tells us that in 2010, some schools in Southern California banned a dictionary for including a definition of oral sex.  First of all, did they really think kids use a dictionary anymore?  Second, did they really think that most kids needed a book to give them a definition?

Anyway, go have some chips and have a good week.