What is time but an artificial construct devised by man to keep himself on his toes as he progressed noisily into the infinite din?

Then again, it might just be something Timex made up to sell watches.

I read a few years ago that a scientist believed time to be an infinite progression of personal snapshots that go on as long as we do, and the reason we remember certain things better than others is because the snapshot is better.  No, wait.  Maybe because we shook the photo as it exited the cosmic Polaroid.  You know, in about eight more years, we won't be able to use that Polaroid metaphor without looking like we are out of our minds?  Film is going far, far away.  Everything is running on pixels, which are just digital expressions of ones and zeroes, oughts and naughts, a long string of numbers we let our computers comprehend because we should have been paying more attention in math class.  And here is the fate of mankind, if one believes in fate (and I, for one, don't):  as we become more and more dependent upon these little (and getting littler) marvels such as the shiny silver marvel upon which I am typing this text, our memories will become less and less useful, just like film and the gills we had when we were all living underwater back in the Jackpalanceolithic Era, and thus we will eventually be born without Kodak or Fujifilm and without minds.  Some people say this has already happened; I can't remember who.  But the day they take away the serene, sublime wistfulness of a silver nitrate-laden black and white portrait and replace it with a bunch of intangible pixels is the day they - oh, right.  They already did.  So where does that leave us, the common man with a Canon AE Rebel?  Of what should we stock heavily, 1600 speed film or scuba gear with Sony Memory Sticks?  Yes, absolutely.  Feel free to blow the inheritance and the eBay mad money on whatever makes you feel much better about whatever it is we are supposed to still be doing here in the cold recesses of space, where the swing-sets are always full and there's nobody to get on the other end of the see-saw.  So this is what it is like to be modern man incarnate, the embodiment of freedom and knowledge and free speech and speeches paid for by the Committee to Re-Elect Dark Days, or CREDD.  Works either way you slice it, just like buffalo nickels.  The best part about all of this is that no matter what you say, nobody is ever really listening because they are far too distracted by the ordinary parts of life we face:

Work
Traffic
Dinner
Lawn
E-mail
Television
Family
Hobbies
Bathroom
News
Sleep

And if you try to take any two of those out of your daily routine, you will be labeled as an elitist, and not just by me and my army of undersleeping, overreaching zombie folk.  We used to have direction, my army and me, but now we just have a certain homeostasis,