There was once a Chinese emperor who abolished time. Wei Ming decreed that day broke when the dawn sky flushed the color of his pet bullfinch's breast. Nighttime began whenever he retired from the audience chamber with his concubines, and was consequently rather longer.
Chronology started anew from the moment he ascended the Jade Throne, and so the first person to pass away during his rule, an elderly and decrepit woman, was less than a minute old when she died.
The emperor's reign was one unending year, although it lasted a mere 424 days. He was murdered by desperate peasants who were starving in their thousands, prohibited from working the fields other than during the uselessly brief days. It is said that he was cut down with a scythe -- though the irony of that is perhaps only apparent to those versed in the Western iconography of time.