Fine Print

Sunrise Jam I had totally forgotten about the phenomena of Daylight Saving Time (DST). DST requires that clocks in your very home be moved forward or back at various points in the year unless you live in some states which don’t require it. Not to be nit picky but since when did *time* become a state’s right?

In the winter months if you didn’t go back to standard time everyone would be driving to work in the dark. This logic holds except for those who drive to work around 7:00am directly into the (now) rising sun. Then the glare is so intense that it actually forces traffic to stop at certain scenic points to unavoidably witness breathtaking, albeit retina-destroying views of the brightest star in our solar system. I’ve seen accidents directly caused by this haywire astronomy, aided in part by the North Carolina driver’s slavish adherence to the Rule of 75’s: 75 miles per hour separated by 75 inches allowing for a 75 nanosecond reaction time. This is also known as Darwin’s Revenge.

In America you have to be able to read the little teeny words inscribed on the back of virtually everything you buy. I suspect that this is a result of centuries of litigious behavior. And we have adapted to it, transforming from sleek hunter-gatherers into hunched, squinty-eyed loons peering hopelessly at the sodium content on a bottle of dill pickles. Some of these inscriptions seem reasonable enough — warnings against improper use that might cause harm to the consumer, lists of mysterious ingredients prepared stoically by squads of white-coated biochemists with bad hair, and so on. But some labels seem to emerge in full cry from the minds of madmen, a strange mercantile music designed to etch lines on our souls while simultaneously emptying our pockets.

Not only is the print fine, but the guys and gals who read advertisements on the radio are trained to speak extremely fast while intoning the various terms and conditions of the ‘deal’ they are proposing. They have to speak the words for legal protection and to ward off those pesky demons of light and darkness, but at the same time they don’t want to waste valuable air-time-money on what amounts to a contractual boilerplate:

“… and so hurry right down to Pies Incorporated – buy one chocolate honey nut blueberry cheesecake and get another one free! ~~ offer-applicable-in-Alaska-and-Wyoming-limit-one-per-customer-offer-expires-two-days-after-lunar-equinox-other-conditions-may-apply…” I’m especially intrigued by contracts that end with the words “other conditions may apply”. I mean what kind of contract is that? “The OmniContract: Protect Yourself — From Everything.”

“Congratulations Mr. Fenton on buying this Root Ripper Riding Mower for half price. Let’s just make sure you qualify for the discount. Over 21? Check. Employed? Check. Is there a ‘J’ in the name of any relative living or dead that our squad of lawyers can uncover? Oh, I see there was a Jasper Fenton in Wyoming who was hung for ironing cattle in what was apparently an innocent misinterpretation of branding. Sorry, Sale-boy, but you just don’t meet the new condition we made up this very minute. The good news is that since Jasper was hung in Wyoming, you qualify for a pie — two if you meet our simple terms.”

All of this disreputable verbal exploitation is somehow balanced by the fact that no one in America seems to be able to run a simple retail store. I tried to buy a couple of folding tables, a desk and a bookshelf at our friendly office supply store last week. I should have suspected something was amiss when the sales clerk in furniture began careening wildly among droopy, wood-like laminates in search of a pen with which to take my order. I believe the presence of an actual living customer may have tipped his sentience coefficient into the negative. He eventually did take my order, but then proceeded to get every single item wrong. He might as well have written the order for *someone else*. He had four things to write down and he missed them all. Oh for four. Zero. Nada.

Perhaps even scarier was the fact that when the supervisor came over to help, she was stymied by the credit card reversal process. Yes, the use of ‘credit cards’ to ‘buy’ things in a ‘store’ is an arcane practice rendered in mysterious glyph on the walls in caves untouched by human hands in thousands of years, but come ON.

Either the USA is undergoing a fundamental breakdown in social and commercial systems, or a more sinister cause is at work. What if these errors are on purpose?

Either way, the road ahead looks mighty fine.