Or at least nocturnal-ize ourselves:  from the time the school year ends in late May until it begins again at the end of August, 7:00 AM is now 7:00 PM and 7:00 PM is now 7:00 AM. It’s that simple!

Call it Southern Savings Time–why shouldn’t our official time be modified by latitude as well as longitude? It’s clearly different.

And let’s face it–it’s fucking awful out there! Remember, 95 degrees in the shade means 105 degrees in the sun, and that’s 115 degrees on the blacktop, and the blacktop is inexorably spreading everywhere down here. But at night, it’s not so bad–77 degrees, balmy, breezy, and shade everywhere.

Think of the energy savings. Think of the night life. But most importantly, think of the tourist industry–we Floridians could much better fulfill our destiny of entertaining tourists if we just slept during the day and woke up at dinner time.

Because tourists, especially European tourists, love the funky, the different, the off-beat, and nothing could be more funky than an entire society that switches to nocturnal living for three months of the year.

(Well, perhaps “society” is too strong a word–“population aggregate” might be more apt.)

So while not every town can be the city that never sleeps, our cities (again, probably too strong a word–“condensed suburbs” might be more apt) our cities could become just as lively as New York City at the 3:00 in the morning, if only for those three sweaty months when no one is in New York anyway.

And they might just be down here, spending the money that we send up to their wealthy bankers and Wall Street tycoons every time we buy something or crank up our air conditioners.