Does anybody really know what time it is?

Sunday night, a semi-annual ritual is here and some of us complain about it.

“First of all, Daylight Savings Time was created for farmers and there are only four of them left,” says comedian Daniel Tosh.

Some of us complain about the people who complain about it.

“It’s just an hour. You didn’t get off a plane from Australia,” says comedian Paul F. Tompkins.

But no one’s serious about fixing the problem, which is that twice a year, most of the nation compliantly submits to institutionalized sleep deprivation.

‘But Dave!’ you say, ‘I love it when we move the clock back an hour. I get to sleep in.’

That’s what they want you to think: Buttering you up before Election Day.

Sleep researchers say it can take a week to acclimate because in the United States, you’ve just come off eight months of Daylight Saving Time. So you’re probably going to wake up when you usually did.

Except now, you’ll have to stay awake longer. Then on March 9, after only four months and six days of so-called Standard Time, you’re forced to wake up an hour early again!

And for what? Any safety benefits of having more daylight in the afternoon are negated by having 220 million sleep-deprived drivers who forget which one is the brake pedal.

As for the safety of school children? It’s 2014, any child who actually walks to school is wearing a neon jacket with enough flashing LEDs to make a fire truck pull over.

Don’t you think it’s strange that we Americans, who are always seething over something the government just made us do, still let the government tell us when to wake up?

I say, when we get that extra hour of sleep, this time, we keep it.

Telling us when to wake up is not the government’s job. It’s your bladder’s job.