And what are we supposed to do with this?

You know, there's a certain kind of news story I hate. It's a story that has a combination of "no sh*t, Sherlock" and "but there's no solution to it proposed" in it.

It's like the OMG WTF AMERICANS ARE LIKE SOOOOO OBESE stories. The only solution is individual people doing what they can. And to stop taunting the people who for whatever reason (hormone imbalance, on long-term prednisone therapy, whatever) who can't slim down to an "acceptable" weight (And I hope to God the upshot of these stories is not some kind of massive fat-camp movement where all of us with bmis over 20 or some not-in-this-lifetime value are herded off to break rocks for 14 hours a day until our next meal of shredded lettuce and lemon juice...)

But anyway. That particular crochet of mine aside, there was another one of those annoying stories this morning on the radio:

"MORE AND MORE AMERICANS ARE RISING BEFORE DAWN TO DRIVE TO WORK!"

um, yeah? And we're supposed to do what about it? I know they're referring to the people with hellacious commutes, who are leaving at four a.m. or some time like that just to try to avoid the worst of the traffic.

I have a five-minute commute and I often leave the house before dawn. This is because I have to be at work before 8, and I LIKE to be at work at least an hour before my first class so I can (a) put out any "fires" that came up overnight (and it happens, sometimes) and (b) prepare mentally for the class.

I put up with it. I put up with getting up at 5 am most days to work out. I do that because there's not really any other choice the way my life is configured. Is it a pain? Sure. Is it kind of depressing to drive to work in the dark at 6:45 a lot of the time? Sure.

But - absent Congress deciding to give us back the weeks of Standard Time they took away from us this year, I'm just GOING to be driving to work in the dark a lot.

So what Earthly use is it to me to hear a news story (at 6 am, when I'm staring in my closet and trying to figure out what to wear) about how so many Americans, poor babies, have to get up really early to drive to work, and they're doing it in the dark? I do not see any benefit of that story other than to make a lot of people feel kind of sorry for themselves. (I admit I did for a few moments after listening to the story).

I hope this isn't some kind of whipped-up issue, where one candidate or another is going to declare some kind of "public transport FOR ALL" and make the claim that people could leave the house later (or at least not have to drive to work at 0-dark-30) by all of us coughing up a few more bucks come tax time. (And, comes to think of it, perhaps part of a reason so many people work such long hours is the tax rate?) Or I hope it doesn't lead to some cockamamie scheme to require all businesses to start after 10 am or some fool thing.

What I WOULD like is to get Standard Time back. I honestly don't think this extension of Daylight Savings is going to save anything for anybody (except maybe for members of Congress who can get a few holes of golf every Thursday afternoon in after voting themselves bigger paychecks and us larger taxes...hrm.). And it means a lot more of us are driving in the dark for a lot longer this year.

What I DON'T want is some kind of top-down solution (well, other than giving us back something that worked in the past) like what Hugo Chavez did, where he set clocks forward a 1/2 hour to "benefit the metabolisms" of his citizens. (Seriously: WTF?)

What I also DON'T want is some kind of boondoggle where they're going to make buses run faster or something for the people who ride buses, and they're going to let all the rest of us pay for that. I can't take a bus to work, even if I wanted to: the buses in my town run from 8 am until 3 pm, and they're kind of "reserved" for seniors and the disabled (We don't have many buses). And at any rate - in a town of 12,000, it's kind of foolish to have a large-scale "intracity" public transportation system. (Now, if they wanted to bring back the Interurban trains that would run between my town and the nice shopping and arts areas of the cities an hour to three hours away from me, I could go with that. I'd love to be able to hop on an Interurban early on a Saturday, go see a matinee somewhere, do some shopping, and then get home by 8 pm to sleep in my own bed that night).

But - again. Why the news story? Why tell people something they already know: that commuting sucks and people are trying to come up with dodges to make it suck less. I've heard a few weak cries for "affordable housing close to places of employment" but in my experience, it seems that "enforced" affordable housing quickly becomes a place few people want to live (well, few people other than criminals).

So I don't know. But it irks me - especially on my longest workday of the week, especially when I'm already carefully planning the strategy to get prepped for my classes AND get the demonstration set up for one class AND set up the involved and extensive lab for another class AND make sure I'm available for a student who needs to take an exam early AND remember to do preparation for youth group this afternoon AND sometime find the time to change the burnt-out lightbulb in my porch light (which I need, so I won't break my neck on the stairs when I'm leaving the house before the sun's up, and coming home again after it's dark), that I hear some news story about how getting to work and the hours we must spend there sucks and we're all miserable.

As I said at the outset: no sh*t, Sherlock.