Take THAT, Benjamin!

Daylight Savings Time. BAH HUMBUG, I say! What GOOD is it? It disrupts sleep patterns, does NOT, NOT, NOT save one red cent as far as electricity is concerned. And - well - it annoys the (okay, I HAVE to say it) DAYLIGHTS out of me! I started wondering what IDIOT had the idea to declare that in a certain month we would ALL happily lose one hour of sleep so that he or she (Ha! I KNEW a woman would NEVER have come up with such a ridiculous idea. We are sleep-deprived ENOUGH as it is!) could stand back from afar, laughing his a** off at us. Soooo, I did a little Googling and looky what I found!

Daylight saving time, a source of confusion and mystery for many, will strike again this weekend. The idea of resetting clocks forward an hour in the spring and back an hour in the fall was first suggested by Benjamin Franklin in his essay "An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light," which was published in the Journal de Paris in April 1784.

                                                          
Franklin's suggestion was largely overlooked until it was brought up again in 1907 by Englishman William Willett, who penned a pamphlet called "The Waste of Daylight." Although the British House of Commons rejected Willett's proposal to advance the clock one hour in the spring and back again in autumn in 1908, British Summer Time was introduced by the Parliament in 1916.

Many other countries change their clocks when adjusting to summer time, but the United States only began doing so towards the end of World War I in an attempt to conserve energy. The House of Representatives voted 252 to 40 to pass a law "to save daylight," with the official first daylight saving time taking place on March 15, 1918. This was initially met with much resistance, according Michael Downing, author of the book "Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time."

"When the Congress poked its finger into the face of every clock in the country, millions of Americans winced," Downing wrote. "United by a determination to beat back the big hand of government," daylight saving time opponents "raised holy hell, vowing to return the nation to real time, normal time, farm time, sun time—the time they liked to think of as "God's time."

Benjamin Freakin' Franklin???? REALLY???? For crying out LOUD! Didn't you have ENOUGH to do, Ben Franklin, without deciding that playing MUSICAL CHAIRS with the nation's clocks was a good idea? You know what I would tell you if you were still alive? I'd put my hands on my extra wide hips, give you my best, "I'm SO disappointed in and disgusted with you stare, then holler, "GO FLY A KITE!"