March 14, 2025
By Pudge Wicklesworth
The Hogjaw Times Tattler
Hogjaw Hollow, West Virginia
Well, I’ll be dipped in diesel—America’s gone and done it. Some brainiac up yonder in Washington decided we don’t need no time zones, no daylight savin’s time, no nothin’. Whole dang country’s runnin’ on somethin’ called “You-Tee-See (UTC).” Sounds like a fancy watch brand to me. They say it’s to “modernize national efficiency,” whatever fool talk that means. I say it’s like tryin’ to herd cats through a screen door durin’ a tornado.
Government says it’ll “reduce clock-related stress.” Hell, I didn’t even have clock-related stress till they said that. Now I don’t know if I’m late, early, or dead. The President’s announcement came by email, fax, and carrier pigeon—all three sayin’ different times.
Some college feller named Professor Thaddeus McPhearson—you can just tell he ain’t worked a day in his life—held a press thingamajig to ‘splain it. He was standin’ next to a clock that weren’t even plugged in, talkin’ ‘bout “the tyranny of local time” and how “now everybody can be wrong together.” Lord help us. Equality at last, he says. Yeah, equal parts stupid and confused.
Ain’t nobody in Hogjaw Hollow knows what time it is no more. Mahlon Peets, who milks cows out by Council Bluffs, says, “I got up for work at two o’clock You-Tee-See time and found out my shift ended yesterday.” Cows looked at him like he was crazier’n a sprayed roach.
Hospitals are chock full of folks with what some doctor lady calls “Chrono-FOMO.” I don’t rightly know what that means, but sounds like when you wake up thinkin’ you missed church and it’s still Saturday. Doc says her rooster done started crowin’ in shifts. Probably unionized.
Starbucks quit tryin’ altogether. They just sell coffee whenever they feel like it. McDonald’s changed their motto to, “We serve McMuffins when it feels cosmically appropriate.” Amazon’s got somethin’ called “Emotional Prime Time”—your package’ll show up whenever your chakras line up. I don’t know what chakras are, but I think mine’s been outta whack since ’92.
Then there’s Lavinia Peebles, the library lady in Sioux City. She claims she likes it. “I just tell folks, let’s meet when it feels right,” she says, like she’s all enlightened and such. Her therapist disagrees. Of course, her therapist lives in another time dimension, so that don’t count.
Over in New York City, the stock market went belly-up ‘cause nobody knew what “open” meant. Some of ‘em was tradin’ tomorrow’s money yesterday, others sellin’ last week’s dreams next month. One fancy-pants analyst said he “made five trades in the future and lost ‘em in the past.” Hell, I been doin’ that with my paycheck my whole dang life.
Congress tried to fix it by startin’ the “Office of Temporal Coordination.” It lasted less time than a snow cone at noon in Furnace Creek. Their first memo started with “Effective tomorrow” and ended with “Retroactive to last Thursday.” That’s about the most meaningful government thing I ever heard.
Churches ain’t far behind. Reverend Burlap Jenkins over in Wichita said he’d hold service “at noon, spiritually speakin’.” Only three people showed up—all of ‘em had watches sayin’ different things. “God’s never late,” he said, “but He sure as hell ain’t early no more.”
Schools? Lawd, they just gave up. Principal Gladys Cudworth said they got “fluid learnin’ schedules.” Translation: class starts when enough kids show up. Bells are gone—they just use “vague optimism” to keep track of time. Ain’t that somethin’?
Little Kenny Mudge, bless his heart, said, “My math class is at ten o’clock You-Tee-See. I think that’s three in the mornin’. I done converted it twice, but now my calculator just sighs.” That boy’s gonna fail math ‘cause of math.
At the Denny’s off I-95, there’s a whole rebellion brewin’. They call themselves the “Timekeepers of the Republic.” Mostly old-timers with pocket watches and bad knees. They meet daily—or nightly, dependin’ who you ask—to keep Eastern Standard Time alive. Harold “Buddy” Claiborne said, “You-Tee-See will have to pry my watch from my cold, arthritic hands. We eat breakfast when God intended—mornin’, whenever that is.”
Government’s tellin’ folks to “stay calm, remain flexible, and avoid temporal labelin’.” Undersecretary Lucinda Prall said, “Just follow your internal rhythm.” Lady, my rhythm left me around the same time as my hairline.
Planes are worse. Delta Flight 451 took off from Chicago at 02:00 You-Tee-See and landed in Boston at 01:58, meanin’ that it landed two seconds before it took off. “We achieved time travel,” the airline said. I call that “poor scheduling.” Amtrak replaced all their clocks with ones that just say “Now.” I gotta admit—that’s the first time Amtrak’s ever been on time.
On the radio, some feller from Northwestern Missouri Metaphysical College said, “Time is a social illusion.” Well, so’s my cousin Eunice’s diet, and she still swears she’s losin’ weight. Another danged professor said, “We’ve achieved temporal equality through universal bewilderment.” Translation: ain’t nobody got a clue.
Romance ain’t safe neither. Doris Mabeline from Atlanta said her feller told her “let’s meet at eight.” She thought local, but he meant You-Tee-See. She showed up twelve hours late, and he’d already moved on with another young filly. “I can’t compete with yesterday’s women,” she said. Lord, that’s a country song right there.
Divorce courts are backlogged through next week and last Tuesday, all at once. Marriage counselors are drownin’ in cases of what they call “Chronological Misalignment Syndrome,” which I think just means “men forget anniversaries.”
But somehow… we’re adjustin’. Elbert “Hank” Tewksbury, who farms out by the interstate, said it best: “The cows quit milkin’, the roosters forgot when to crow, and the kids think bedtime’s a hoax—but for once, we’re all confused together. Feels kinda patriotic, don’t it?”
ESPN changed its name to “The Eternal Sports Network.” Their slogan’s “Somewhere in the world, it’s game time.” Netflix drops shows “whenever the universe wills it.” And Taylor Swift? She released her midnight album at five, then again at three, then once more just ‘cause she felt like it.
Yale had a big ol’ conference called “The Ethics of Clocks.” They didn’t figure nothin’ out, but they agreed time’s “just a suggestion.” Some Harvard professor wrote a paper titled Tick Tock, Who’s There? which boils down to: “Quit worryin’ what time it is—focus on what you’re already late for.”
And down in Portland, there’s a café with a sign that says, “We don’t know what time it is. We’ll open when it feels right.” Folks say that’s the first honest business in America.
Funny thing is, people seem… calm. After all these years of fightin’ about daylight savin’, alarm clocks, and bein’ late for work, maybe we finally found somethin’ we can all agree on: nobody knows what the hell’s goin’ on.
Professor McPhearson, that same dang fool with the unplugged clock, said it plain: “For the first time in generations, every man, woman, and confused child in this country shares the same temporal disorientation. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker—all marchin’ in step, outta time.”
So maybe, just maybe, this You-Tee-See nonsense is doin’ somethin’ good. Brought us together—not by sense or purpose—but by shared bewilderment.
If you got any questions ’bout it, you can holler at The Great Plains Poultry Gazette, The Dakota Dental Digest, or The National Accordion Quarterly—whenever now happens to be.
Media Contact:
Mr. Festus Nibbs
The Hogjaw Times Tattler
Director of Temporal Relations
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(515) 000-1927
About the Author:
Pudge Wicklesworth is The Hogjaw Times Tattler’s most punctual reporter in a world that ain’t got clocks no more. His stories have included “Corn Prices and Cosmic Energy,” “The Left-Handed Tractor Epidemic,” and “Moonshine or Moonlight: The Legal Gray Area of Midnight Farming.” He lives in Hogjaw Hollow with his wife Dorcas, their three young’uns—Cletus, Clara Belle, Tater Joe—and their pet Cape Buffalo, Buford Sizemore, III.
