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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024

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To those early birds who think that it getting light a 4 is just as good as it staying light until 9, you either do not have a job, a family, or other real-world obligations.

Can I ask how you put a 7 year old to bed when the sun is still up? As a hobo the only thing that matters to me is getting up super early so I can get all of my nothing done for the day. Here's my usual schedule.

3:00 to 4:00 - get up, tie up my bindle and dodge the bulls.

4:00 to 5:00 - tell a sympathetic McDonald's worker an amusingly circuitous anecdote in exchange for the dead nuggets in the frier

5:00 to 6:00 arrange my collection of bark and strings by aesthetic preference.

6:00 to 8:30 gather all of my cans and garbage bags into a discarded shopping trolley and take it down to the nearest major road so I can laugh at the wage apes stuck in their daily commute and waggle my genitals at anyone in a lexus

8:30 to 2:30 chase sunbeams in the park and if I manage to catch any torture them for their secrets

2:30 to 4:30 dupe widows out of their savings

4:30 to 6:00 on to public transport to take up far too much space and recruit agents in my war against the sun by angrily staring at strangers

6:00 to 8:00 where is the sun? Has it retreated yet? What about the moon? Remember, it also can't be trusted! The moon beams are just secret sun beams, find out what they know!

8:00 to 10:00 find tonight's boxcar

10:00 to 3:00 methylated spirits/sleep

The only reason anyone I know is an early riser is real world obligations. Maybe you need to hang out with classier people.

Can I ask how you put a 7 year old to bed when the sun is still up?

You tell him to go to bed, just as my dad told me to go to bed when I was seven and had to go to bed at 8:30 in the spring. I don't know when or why putting school age kids to bed became an hour-long ordeal for the parents.

I wasn't thinking of parents, I was thinking of when I was 7 and made to go to bed while the sun was up. I would lie in bed, wide awake, until after the sun went down. So I wouldn't actually get to sleep until hours after my 'bedtime' (7 at 7) and then be utterly wrecked when I woke up the next morning. And then everyone would wonder why I was so tired. It was perverse.

Once again, the whole of society must reorient so that parents aren't mildly annoyed with their toddler.