Twice a year, our benevolent overlords flip the nation’s biological light switch like a bunch of drunk electricians, and the rest of us stumble around for a week wondering what planet we woke up on. It’s that weekend again — when Congress reminds us that time itself is just another thing they can screw up.

In 2007, I chronicled the carnage when the “Energy Policy Act of 2005” shifted Daylight Saving Time into early March. Clocks went feral, Outlook went insane, and my life descended into temporal anarchy. Fast forward to 2025, and things have improved only marginally. Sure, the devices now “handle it automatically,” but so does an intestinal virus. Half of them still can’t agree on when the hell it is. The microwave says 6:58, the coffee maker says 7:02, and the oven just blinks 12:00 like it’s having a stroke.

Meanwhile, my wife, who traps feral cats for a volunteer spay/neuter program, is still out there in the dark because the cats didn’t get the memo about DST. Try explaining “spring forward” to a pissed-off tomcat with his butt in a Havahart trap. If anyone needs “quality time,” it’s those poor bastards.

And speaking of “quality time,” the New York Times chimed in today with a gauzy little essay about “l’heure entre chien et loup,” the hour between dog and wolf. Ooooh, how poetic! How French! I’m sure it pairs beautifully with a $17 oat-milk latte and a smug sense of superiority. The author prattles on about “kairos” — the sacred moment of opportunity — as if losing or gaining an hour were some kind of mystical epiphany. She sees the time change as an invitation to “hunker” and “observe the violet hour.” I see it as an invitation to curse at clocks and wonder why my internal organs think it’s still yesterday.

“License to hunker,” she says. Lovely. Tell that to shift workers, farmers, airline schedulers, and anyone who relies on sleep to stay functional. Or to my cat-trapping wife, whose license to hunker expired at sundown — which now happens in midafternoon thanks to these jackasses in Washington.

Congress sold this scam as an “energy-saving measure.” Yeah, right. Because turning on lights for an extra hour in the morning is somehow less wasteful than doing it at night. Studies have long shown it doesn’t save energy; it just screws with circadian rhythms, wrecks productivity, and increases traffic accidents. But hey — the golf lobby and 7-Eleven sell more French fries, so it must be good public policy.

Some people romanticize this twice-yearly ritual as a moment of reflection — a temporal palate cleanser between dog and wolf. I call it what it is: government-mandated jet lag. Nobody wins except the lobbyists and the makers of melatonin gummies.

What time is it? Time for Congress to stop pretending they can manage sunlight. Leave the clocks alone, and let the rest of us decide when to hunker, when to work, and when to trap our damn cats.