If you’ve got an untrustworthy cell phone that you use as an alarm clock, then you’re probably up an hour early today like I am.  I swear that my cell phone is out to fuck with me however it can, probably bitter with neglect because I’ve only used it once in three months and that was to just see if I had Tetris on it while I waited for a tow truck or something.

Daylight savings time is an institution of the devil, I tell you. I grew up in a part of the world that never had any time changes (in Soviet Russia, time changes YOU) so I’ve never really understood the whole thing. Yes yes, the sun sets later, I get that, but that’s the hour I’m driving home and all angry still after calling my clients ‘cockswillers’ with the phone on mute all day. So it’s an hour that’s lost on me anyways, it might as well be dark out.  I do like an extra hour of sleep the Monday after the time changes, but as you can see, that didn’t turn out so well this morning.

However, being up an hour early this morning gives me all sorts of time to do important things, like listening to Iron Maiden, getting all pumped up and loading up a flash drive full of Iron Maiden songs to take to work, thinking about how I’ll have Iron Maiden cranked at work loud enough to drown out my coworker’s ghastly phone voices, and generally being pleased with my Iron Maiden choices this morning.

Have I ever mentioned that I love Iron Maiden? It’s true! I also love Abba and Vivaldi -do you see my additional sensitive side?- but only Iron Maiden fills me with the pleasure of getting a geography/history/sociology/psychology/science lesson with each song.

For one, they have about 72 albums and about 70 of them are live albums, so nine out of every ten songs starts with “Raise your fucking hands Borginkie!” or “Scream it for me Dongleton!”  Where the hell are all these places?  You’ve gotta have an atlas handy if you want to make sense of it all.

And then their lyrics are always about WW2 battles, Egyptian pharaohs, abortion, Greek mythology, democracy, religion, or some other mind-expanding subject.  Your grade 8 social studies teacher only needed to play Iron Maiden songs for the whole class every day and you’d be all full of knowledge and angst and revolution to this day.  Heck, I learned more about Jesus from listening to Iron Maiden’s Killers album than I learned in three years at the seminary.

Just kidding, I never went to a seminary.

(It sounds too much like ’semen’.  Not that there’s anything wrong with semen, I just don’t want future priests coming on me.  Or my face.  Like in a porno.  That I rented last week.  Nothing wrong with it at all.)

Anyways, I’m glad you stopped by this morning, I have a big present for you!  Kidding, no presents, just words.