Dave T's Pros and Cons of Stuff Everyone Has: Times
8:16 a.m.
4:32 p.m.
Noon
Midnight
0800 hours
These are TIMES.
Don’t know what they are?
Times are a measurement of the passing of time. For the purposes of this article, we will be discussing the measurement of times and not time itself. I can’t wrap my mind around the idea of existence outside of time.
If you live in a tribal community that only marks time by where the sun is in the sky, then maybe technically you don’t have times. But you also don’t have a computer and you aren’t reading my blog, so it all evens out. If you get an iPad and get to read this, you’ll also get times thanks to the Global Positioning System and it will no longer be an issue.
Pros:
• Times make it much easier to know how long to cook foods. Without times, you couldn’t just pop something into a microwave, set it for five minutes, and go watch more Gimme A Break reruns. No, you’d have to stand in front of the microwave watching your soup and waiting for it to bubble, which would take away from your Nell Carter quality time.
• Times mean that you have a very definite end to the things that suck. You can look at a clock on the wall and say, “I will only have to soak in this tub of chimpanzee urine for another 45 minutes to prove to my girlfriend how much I love her.”
(Note to hypothetical dude: dump your girlfriend. Love shouldn’t be tested. She’s too needy.)
• Without times, pedophiles would get away with their tomfoolery more often. If a girl looked old enough, it would be really hard to prove that she was a minor. Is she 204 moons (17 years) old, or 156 moons (13 years) old? Who the heck can keep track of that many moons?
• It would be incredibly hard to plan a surprise party without times, especially the crucial part where all of the guests show up a half-hour before the guest of honor.
To be on the safe side, you would have the guests show up at noon and have the guest of honor show up at dusk, by which point all of the guests would be so hammered on Bartles and Jaymes that the party would be no fun for said guest of honor.
• It would be hard to determine prison terms without times. “For the crime of punching all of the nuns at the Holy Birthday Cake Convent, we hereby sentence you to 35 moons of prison. Up for parole in 12 moons.”
• No times means no calendars. And that means no sexy-firemen calendars, and no cats-dressed-as-silent-film-stars calendars. What would the aunts of the world do without those things?
• Without times, runners would have a hard time beating their best... well, I don't know what.
Sports in general would be a mess. Football wouldn't have a delay of game penalty; at some point the ref would just go, "Come on, fellas, get the lead out!"
And what would kids in pools do when they're bored?
"Hey, how long did I hold my breath for?"
"I don't know. A while."
• I bet we would have progressed a lot less with technology and other advancements without the motivator that time can be. Goals for the year would become goals for the whenever you get around to them.
If JFK had said "First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before, like, um, way too much time goes by, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth," something tells me Neil Armstrong wouldn't have had a chance to botch his simple "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind" quote until at least the late 70s.
• I have no chance of ever becoming Time Magazine’s Man of the Year if there is no Time Magazine because there are no times.
Total Pros: 9
Cons:
• If there were no times, you wouldn’t be late for things ever. Unless you were really really late. Like, if you were supposed to be somewhere when the sun is in a certain point in the sky, you probably have an hour or two of wiggle room.
• Thanks to times, I've had to sit through several boring seminars on time management.
• Without times, there wouldn’t be ages, so women wouldn’t have to feel old anymore. And people wouldn’t judge other people for dating way out of their age range.
• Without times, it would be really hard to determine how long a happy hour really is, so there would just be a general happy time, and all you drunkards out there could drink longer with drink specials and half-off appetizers.
• Without times, we wouldn’t know exactly how much longer fun things were going to last. Instead of thinking "This erotic back massage where four women rub oils into my skin using only their breasts ends at noon"—which would cause you some anxiety because you don’t want the experience to end—you would think "This erotic back massage where four women rub oils into my skin using only their breasts ends when it’s over," which would allow you to focus on the boobular pleasure.
Total Cons: 5
Wow, 9 pros, 5 cons, a landslide for times! This surprises me, as I am about the least punctual person I know. I suppose this is proof of just how unbiased this blog is.
‘Til next time, Ciao!
Dave T