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Do you wear a lot of hats? I know I do. Too many, some might say, although I’ve tried to never let public opinion dictate my behavior. It’s not like I need a special room for all my hats or anything. It’s just easier that way. I was starting to run out of boxes.

I think, all things being equal, the fedora is probably my favorite type of hat. Famous people around the world have worn fedoras, and although I can’t think of any of their names right now, it’s comforting to know that they’re out there. Hiding. In the dark. Probably with knives. Incredibly sharp and comforting knives.

Hats, too, should be comforting, and they should fit snugly atop your head. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way I see it. Whatever else you might say about them or whatever plots you might secretly suspect them of hatching late at night in the closet when you aren’t looking, even if they are just hats fedoras are certainly capable of that much. They can fit easily atop a person’s head, as if they were designed for that very purpose. I don’t know much about the history of hats, or of fedoras in particular, but I’ve seen people wear them and I’ve even worn a few myself. So believe me, I know what I’m talking about here.

You can walk down the street wearing a fedora and people will say, “there goes a man (or a woman) who knows what he (or she) likes, a man (or a woman) for whom comfort is important, a man (or a woman) who even now is wearing a soft felt hat with a fairly low crown, creased lengthwise, and a brim that can be turned up or down, depending upon his (or her) mood.”

And that’s just nice to know.

Also nice is the pith helmet, but I seem to run out of room.

The other day, I saw an ad in a magazine that said, “The future is here!” And I thought, oh crap, maybe I had better put on some pants.

As it turns out, the future isn’t here just yet. It is, as they sometimes say, yet to come. But while we’re on the subject, this week marks the end of Daylight Savings Time, invented long ago for reasons I could probably look up, but which, quite frankly, I find quite boring and therefore best left to people who never got any dates in high school. Not that I dated much myself — I spent most nights throughout high school happily chained to the radiator in my parents’ basement, begging for scraps and occasionally barking like a wild dog when company came over — but I think my underlying point, whatever it was, is still valid.

Whether or not Susie Jenkins, the homecoming queen, took a restraining order out against me our senior year is no longer strictly relevant, and I think we do ourselves a disservice by constantly dwelling on the past like that. My wife says that I’m just avoiding the issue and that my barking is starting to frighten the neighbors, but I’m a little confused as to what that has to do with Daylight Savings Time in the first place, and so I tell her she’s just being silly.

The upshot of all this, however, is that, because of Daylight Savings Time, you’ll be reading this column an hour earlier than you would have last week. If you think about it as much as I have — since, chained to a radiator, one has plenty of time to reflect — this is a little like time travel. Except of course it isn’t. With time travel, I’m sure there’d be flashing lights or glowing things or flying cars. There would be some sort of physics or weird-ass, complicated math out of a book or something, and it would probably involve more than just turning your clocks back an hour once a year. Call me crazy, but that’s just how it seems to me.

After all, the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary on my desk defines time as “a nonspatial continuum that is measured in terms of events which succeed one another from past through present to future”, so you can imagine that travel through it would be more than a little wacky. Probably not Three’s Company-style wacky, but pretty wacky nonetheless. Daylight Savings Time, on the other hand, is pretty boring stuff, but at least it means we get to sleep in an extra hour once a year after all those late nights of barking at the neighbors.

Oh, and Susie, if you’re out there — call me, okay?

Virgo: (Aug. 23—Sept. 22)

Certain shortcomings in your education and upbringing cause you to read meaning into the relationships among various celestial bodies.

The other day, I was leafing through my neighbor’s mail when I came across an interesting advertisement for a medical research study. The study, for which participants would receive $300 in compensation, was being conducted on behalf of the local university in order to discover what effect, if any, a strict diet of walnuts would have on adult male prostate health. Not terrifically fond of walnuts myself, I decided not to enquire further, but as I crumpled the advertisement into a little ball and set fire to it along with the rest of the mail behind my neighbor’s bushes, I had to wonder: could I start my own research study, and what exactly could I get people to eat for $300?

This merited further investigation. Having already cashed my neighbor’s social security check earlier that day, I had a little money to spare, so I phoned the campus newspaper and asked to place an advertisement of my own. I was, I said, just beginning a new research study to discover the effect that aquatic water fowl had on urinary tract infections, and I would be willing to pay anyone with such an infection $300 if they would eat an entire live duck.

I should note at this point that ducks have become increasingly easy to find around my house. This is thanks in large part to the small pond that formed in my backyard when, in a fit of what I now jokingly refer to as homicidal rage, I accidentally took a pickaxe to my neighbor’s swimming pool. I had no doubt, as I discussed the content of my ad and mentioned just how fond I am of the Times New Roman font the newspaper has been using lately, that I would in fact be able to acquire at least three or four ducks for use in my study.

Once I had assured the nice gentleman on the phone that I had all the proper licenses (or at least enough money to cover my ass if the police discovered that I didn’t), I hung up, grabbed a bag of stale bread from the kitchen, and wandered out onto the deck to catch me some mallards. However, as I later learned, ducks apparently fly south for the winter which hardly seems fair, all things considered and it’s just about impossible to find one at this time of year.

Man, I hope I won’t still have to pay for that stupid ad.