Posted 4 years, 7 months ago around lunchtime by oso
This past weekend I was in Las Vegas celebrating the birthday of a friend and generally doing the things that one does in such a timeless, soul-sucking vaccuum of morality. This coming weekend I will be working nonstop from sunrise to late at night. The weekend after that I’ll be in Palm Springs with my sister and grandparents. The weekend after that I’ll be in New York.
And then it will be March, which is not even the beginning of the year any more. In other words, holy fuck. But, for real, does anyone else besides Angel Rampal and Borges obsess over time as much as I do? I’ve asked world to speak to universe about granting us that extra hour each day a little bit sooner.
Speaking of which, I’ve apparently caused quite the contraversy with my shamefully jealous fit towards future generations. They are now considering doing away with the leap second for good. It’s the computer geeks that are behind the movement, que Dios les bendiga. You see, there are two ways of telling time, that most wily of human inventions. In 1884, a bunch of grumpy white men proclaimed that global timekeeping would be synchronized from the site of the most precise chronometers and astronomical instruments then in existence and that it would be named after Bob Dylan’s favorite neighborhood. Hence, Greenwich Mean Time, which should rhyme with sandwich green slime, but does not.
The problem – a typical one among grumpy white men – is that they believed in a rational universe. They trusted the consistent movement of our devious, lethargic planet, which in reality, is slowing down about a half-second each year. So in 1967 the grumpy white men got smart and declared that the basic unit of time – the second – would be defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 cycles of an atom of the isotope cesium-133. Had I been around, i surely would have convinced those stingy bastards to throw in a few more cycles. Before settling on cesium-133, the grumpy white men first experimented with quartz, which is still used in most non-mechanical watches today.
The problem is that even taking into account Pope Gregory XIII’s beloved leap year, atomic time and astronomic time still differ by a fraction of a second. 1972 and the grumpy white men reach a compromise which says that whenever anatomic time differs from astronomic time by more than 0.9 seconds, a leap second will be added. Talk about rasquache.
And so the computer geeks come out in the thousands, their pasty white fists pumping into the sky, shouting warnings of digital disaster if these anatomic nitpickers continue their tweaking of the hourglass. ATM’s rendered useless, flight controls gone bust, the instantaneous failure of traffic lights, power grids, life-support systems and mobile phone networks. (huh, come to think of it, that sounds wonderful)
The problem, however, is that without the leap second (or leap seconds that is), the sun would be overhead at midnight instead of noon by the year 5000. So this, my friends, is your choice: technological abandonment or sunlit midnights. Personally, I am in favor of both.
And finally, more proof that Yankees are brighter than Brits:
England didn’t adopt the Gregorian calendar (named after Pope Gregory XIII who had to clean up Julius Caesar’s sloppy time keeping) until 1752. By then, the difference between calendar time and astronomical time was 11 days, so the day after September 2nd of that year became Sept. 14. The landlords rioted, insisting that they were being cheated out of 11 days’ rent.
Compare that unbecoming behavior to my favorite Yankee stoner and recent birthday boy, Benjamin Franklin who poetically pointed out that we could “lie down in Peace on the second of this month and not awake till the morning of the 14th.”
This week’s The Week is culpable for nearly all of the above nonsense. Hootie can be blamed for the title.
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i’m not trying to sound snotty, but where did you learn the word “rasquache?” and, do you write poems? it seems like a lot of poets obsess over time.
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I don’t write poetry. Sometimes I try to write songs, but I fail.
Sadly, for the seekers of knowledge, when you google “rasquache,” this is the second result.
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oh my lord he quoted hootie and the blowfish. i shan’t bash them though. after all, they started as a band playing a drunken frat parties at my alma mater, the university of SC
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“Does anyone else besides Angel Rampal and Borges obsess over time as much as I do?”
That would be me. For years now I’ve been spearheading a grassroots “eight days a week” campaign (we have a great theme song) in favour of inserting Chooseday between Thursday & Friday.
“Eight days a week is not enough to show I care….”
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I would like to join your campaign sir, but am curious as to how Chooseday was selected to be inserted between Thursday and Friday rather than Saturday and Sunday.
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Sir, you are welcome to join. Membership is free & the initiation ritual leaves the merest scars. Chooseday is meant to fall between Thursday & Friday because most of my deadlines seem to be on Fridays.
Yours obediently,
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By the way, for those who have not heard of the infamous pediatrician, Dr. Angel Rampal, she is the one who poignantly hypothesized on the interminable drive back from Las Vegas:
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Was Angel still drunk from the weekend when she said that?
Honestly, I think this was harder to figure out than el Venado… and he doesn’t even say anything! Congratulations.
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No matter how you divide “time,” it still goes by quickly.
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i lost you at
“cycles of an atom of the isotope cesium-133″
But I still read the whoooooooolllllleeee thing, and I must admit, these grumpy old men and white pasty geeks sound like they could be best friends .. . I mean, if the timing was right and all!
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Cindylu,
I no longer know when Angel is drunk or sober.
Patri,
I try to multiply, not divide time. It still doesn’t work.
Cad,
You know, come to think of it, I don’t know what a cycle of an atom is either. I had assumed it meant menstrual, but that would be a pretty intense life for cesium-133. Anyway, the real point of the post was to be able to quote Hootie and the Blowfish. I had always hoped I could one day be a blowfish, but last I heard, Hootie has gone the R&B route. I guess we all sell out eventually.
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mira mi carota!!!!!
k shido link… muchas gracias!!!!!
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oye weee… soy el unico k te escribe en español, vdd????
que poco internacional soy… y chafo tmb….
cuidate
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Does “rasquache” rhyme with “tlacuache”? If so, I suggest writing a poem using the two.
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i dont have time to post on this blog.
life is a long drive for someone with nothing to think about.
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You lost me at hello…
Oh, wait a minute that is not how it goes
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I have seen hootie live twice… once in a Fourth of July celebration (heard them for free) and the second one at a Rib festival (which I did pay for entry, therefore paid to see them…). I have no idea why that bad did not do better, they were not too horrible… I guess they were too old when they got big or something. Now Rasqueche maybe = Rebuscador?
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catarf,
Jaja – señor internacionalista. Hay otros que dejan comentarios en español, pero creo que están escondiendo.
Doc,
Rasquache is when your rear end itches in public. Tlacuache is when you have an irresistible urge to be breast fed. So yes, I think I could work them into a poem.
Moreno,
Point taken. In the mean time though, your lyrical affirmations do just fine.
Julissa,
You had me at hello?
Logtar,
One drunken night I had the brilliant idea to start a cover band called Hottie and the Glowfish. RuPaul was going to be our lead singer and my friends and I would make up the band, covered in glow-in-the-dark paint, of course.
No follow through I tell you. I would say rebuscador is a fantastic definition of rascuache, but there seems to be little agreement on what the word means. I don’t think I met anyone in Mexico who had even heard the word before.
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In Colombia we do use the term “El Rebusque” to identify what the rascuache does… is actually pretty deep when you think about it, it is that necesity that latinos call “ganas” and that we see missing from American culture at times.