Daylight Savings Time: A day late, an hour short

Pardon me whilst I rant.
Daylight Savings Time is one of the more idiotic, boneheaded, and frankly bullshit ideas we humans have saddled ourselves with since God placed us here on His green earth.
Would someone explain to me exactly why I would want it to be nearly 8:00 in the morning right now rather than nearly 7:00 in the morning?
We live in Indiana, which means that by legislative fiat we live in the Eastern time zone. That’s great if you watch a lot of TV and can’t convert Eastern time to, say, Central time. But it sucks if you live practically within spitting distance of the boundary between Eastern and Central time.
My main objection to DST is that it is too dark in the mornings and too light too late at night. I have trouble sleeping when there is the tiniest amount of light (by way of example, the green LED on the Dish Network receiver is often enough to keep me awake all night). So the sun being up until nearly 10PM of a summer’s day just doesn’t work for me (and I know this having lived in the East and having put up with DST).
The idea of DST actually started with Benjamin Franklin on what must have been a bad brain day for our revered Founder and Savant. Then idiots came up with DST as a wartime exigency that apparently was supposed to make people think there was a war on. The problem is that it started clear back in WWI and nobody ever thought to turn the clocks back. And there was no Federal law mandating DST until Nixon (another reason he couldn’t possibly have been a Republican), which law made it mandatory unless a state said “Fuck you, Jack, we ain’t having any of that,” which after a year’s experiment that I remember vividly, particularly from all the people cursing about having to change their clocks (and this in a day before every household appliance including your electric toothbrush had a clock in it), was exactly what Indiana said.
My attitude has always been, why change the clocks? If you want more time in the evening to spend outdoors, why not change your behavior? Why can’t corporations agree that in the summer, 9 to 5 ought to be 8 to 4? Personally I work for a company that is located in Maryland, so in the summer I work from 7:30 to 4 and in the winter I work from…well…7:30 to 4 because I prefer it, but there was a time when I did switch an hour in the winter just so as to be on the same time with my colleagues in the east.
The argument is that Indiana should switch like everyone else because it confuses people who want to do business with people in our state. To people who promulgate this argument in the digital age, I say: Fuck you. You don’t understand the concept; in an age of e-mail, faxes, voice mail, and electronic fund transfers, THERE IS NO COMPELLING REASON FOR US TO CHANGE TIME. Our legislators and other idiot savants who adopt this reasoning say that Indiana loses commerce because nobody in New York City knows what time it is in Indianapolis. I say, it’s an hour’s difference, big stinking whoop, so call me back when I’m available; and anyone who tries to call me from the East at 8 AM their time in the summer gets what they deserve anyway, because NOBODY should be making business calls before 10AM anyway (it takes time for the caffeine to work). Plus, given the fact that these days you usually get voice mail anyway when you call, regardless of the time of day, what exact difference does it really make?
The same morons say that our recalcitrance on DST makes it difficult to schedule meetings with people in Indiana because the people in NYC never know what time it is here, so they set a 10AM summer conference call and the Indiana people never call in because they think it’s an hour later than it really is. I’m living proof that if you have any common sense and live in Indiana (meaning that you probably ought to have more common sense than anyone who lives in NYC), it is not difficult to remember that in the summer you have to call in to that 10AM conference call at 9AM, regardless of whether or not the caffeine has kicked in. It is an adjustment that is done on the Indiana end, not the NYC end, and it is not difficult to do as long as you are aware just when NYC is on EDT and when it is on EST. Which does require a minimum amount of brain power, but we’re Hoosiers, so most of us have at least that.
The upshot of all of this being that Rep. Julia Carson (D-IN) is a fucking idiot who needs to be retired before she manages to get Congress to mandate DST whether we like it or not. (She’s a fucking idiot anyway but that isn’t my main point. Unless it is.) Thank God for the family farmers in this state; they don’t like DST and it probably won’t ever get a serious hearing in our legislature as long as they don’t. But Carson running around in Washington saying we ought to switch is an embarrassment. I for one would rather fight than switch.
If the world ever comes to its senses and drops DST, though, I think we should be on CST year round instead of EST. We’re 180 miles from Chicago and over 700 from NYC, so why in the world are we on EST? Oh, yeah, because the world financial markets are in NYC. Which is meaningless because our world is wired now. Who really makes phone calls anymore? I haven’t made a business phone call outside of Indianapolis since 1995, personally, except for the monthly departmental yak-yak conference call I grudgingly participate in.
So screw DST and the horse it rode in on. I’m going back to bed. Oh, wait. It’s time to go to work.