Friday, July 17, 2015

The big clock.

My wife enjoys watching remodeling shows on HGTV, and I prefer it to the stupid stuff that clogs up the rest of the channels. While I'm composing brilliant blog entries like this one,* she may be watching Fixer Upper or The Property Brothers or something. As long as I don't have to adjust our house for every idea that comes down the pike, I'm glad.

One idea that seems to be popping up on all the shows is the Giant Clock. You'll see a living room or a dining room when it is staged for the big reveal; in such rooms where you would once only see a grandfather or mantel clock, you now see a clock on the wall with a four-foot diameter. Maybe five.

These seem to be all the rage. The million home decorating catalogs that clog up our mailbox all have big clocks. The Wayfair site has almost four thousand wall clocks listed, and it appears that hundred upon hundreds of them have a diameter of 40 inches or more. Mostly distressed to look old.

I like clocks. I like to be on time. I like to know what time it is. But I think having a big clock would make me distressed after a while. I would think it was bearing down on me, reminding me that life is fleeting, that time waits for no man. That no matter how on top of things I think I am, I am already late.


When you think about it, in a way, clocks are silly. I mean, I know it's important to know what time it is. You don't want to miss your train, be late for your colonoscopy. And it is extremely difficult to figure longitude by the stars without a sea clock. But as a device, the clockwork does nothing but move. It doesn't push a vehicle or drive an assembly line belt. It just moves hands around and around. In a way, it does less than all other machines, all of which have to power gears and wheels in a rhythm, but they do it so they can do something else. The clock does it so you can see how long it's been doing it.

Anyway, I'm glad that the big clocks I see on TV are all analog. Wayfair only has 64 digital wall clocks, and few of them are gigantic. Maybe they sell those to stadia.**

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*Warning: Contains no actual brilliance. 

**One stadium, two stadia, yes? No?

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