Ethereal Standard Time?

I watched Ghostbusters II this evening, and found myself bothered by a couple of typical movie conventions that came up in the course of the film.

First, the plot centers around a cosmic plot that involves the coming of the new year.
Let's get this straight right now: New Year's Day represents exactly one thing in a cosmic sense - that the earth has yet again reached an arbitrarily chosen point in the its orbit around the sun. And here's the funny thing about arbitrarily chosen things: Their very nature as arbitrarily chosen precludes the possibility of them having some sort of deeper significance, no matter how hungover you are.

What's even more galling about it is the concept that anything from the ethereal plain or the religious afterlife would give a flying rat's ass about the new year. Presumably, these things which harness and use powers we can't begin to comprehend aren't bound by humanity's arbitrarily designated descriptions of time. Hell, I'm not bound by the dates in my appointment book, and I'm not even some sort of psychic, much less a demigod, angel, or other transcendental creature.

The second of convention that really gets me is that everything relies on local time in the movie. For instance, the antagonist in the movie is able to reincarnate himself at the beginning of the year. But apparently the entire ethereal plain is bound to Eastern Standard Time, because it's not like it was 12:01 on January 1st in Tokyo 13 hours before it was in New York City.

So, what the hell? The antagonist is a 17th Century Moldovan tyrant whose spirit has been stored in a painting and is planning to reincarnate himself via a psychomagnotheric plasm. I mean, if he's from Moldova, why is he stuck on Eastern Standard Time? Why not Moldovan Standard Time? Why not use a little bit of that resurrection power from the slime to do it at any damn time that pleases you? Is resurrection via slime like an international flight? If you miss it are you that screwed? (I guess missing the international flight is still worse. At least if you miss the resurrection you're just dead, but missing a flight back home means that you'll have to deal with airline personnel.)

Oh, and on the subject of time, was I the only one who got pissed off in American Treasure when they did the whole shadow casting on a spot at a certain time thing? It would only work for like a week out of the year, courtesy of the earth's 23 degree tilt on its axis. Lazy bastard writers fit in the daylight savings workaround, but they never managed to explain that one.

Anyway, I figured I'd share this with you in yet another example of my Knowledge Ruins Everything Series of Blog Posts.

Also, I guess that I should give fair warning that I will be offering free throat punches to anyone who decides to ask why it is I'm completely comfortable with slime that can make the Statue of Liberty walk or a treasure map on the back of the Declaration of Independence, but clearly really pissed off about such trifling matters as time zones. That's for me to know and you to never ask.