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Boo to Captain Clock: Jay Griffiths sides with the agitators and celebrants who subvert the regulation of time by potentates and pencil-pushers. (Taking Back Our Time).

Article Excerpt
'We do not recognize history, patriarchy, matriarchy... or lollipop men/ladies... Our currency is to be based on the quag barter system. We do not recognize the Gregorian calendar: this day shall be known as One...' Thus spake British road protesters in a 1995 manifesto.

The clock and calendar have long been a locus for power struggles. Potentates, princes and priests, hypnotized by hopes of hegemony, have always stood on the borders of space and looked at time -- for time is a kingdom, a power and a glory. When the ancient Chinese empire colonized some new territory, the people of that region were sinisterly said to have 'received the calendar'. Pol Pot declared 1975 Year Zero in Cambodia. Mayan priests in Central America gained their power over people through accurate knowledge of time. In 1370, Charles V of France gave an order that all clocks were to be set by the magnificent clock in his palace; he was the ruler of the land and now would be ruler of time. But wherever there are clock rulers, there are clock rebels, and in the French Revolution, Charles V's clock was severely damaged in an act of articulate vandalism. A new time-measurement was announced: 1792 became Year One.

The Benedictine monasteries began scheduling time and ringing bells through the night in the sixth century, controlling and ordering time according to Christian dictat. The Industrial Revolution created time-owners; the capitalist factory bosses, erecting clock-bound fences of work-time and the sense that employers owned the time of their employees, enslaving their time, enclosing it. Stealthily, nastily, one type...