Taking up the slack

Sleeping in the dark

My hours have switched again, this time in a more human direction. Two huge benefits to getting off work at 4 (a.m.) instead of 8: 1) no longer driving home during the morning rush hour; 2) getting to sleep while it's still dark. I can't tell you how giddily happy this last point makes me. With what I'll be saving on Red Bull, this almost counts as a raise.

Nocturnal living is still a bit unnatural, but not to worry -- I plan to cut my sleep deficit in half within five years.

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And speaking of deficits that may never be paid ...

As Lord Alan Greenspan retires, it's good to see some re-evaluation of his legacy:

... millions of Americans ... have prospered during Alan Greenspan's 18 years as chairman of the Federal Reserve. They lived through nearly two decades of generally stable economic growth with low inflation, low unemployment and modest interest rates. Under Greenspan's watch, the economy thrived despite stock market crashes, international financial crises, terrorist attacks, wars and other shocks. No wonder, as Greenspan prepares to retire next week, economists have lauded him as the greatest central banker ever.

Still, his legacy will be judged not just by his record at the Fed, but also by the economy he bequeaths. And when he leaves office Tuesday, Greenspan leaves a nation awash in debt -- record household debt and a record trade gap.

Yeah, thanks again Alan for signing off on Bush's tax cuts. ...

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Corporate sell-outs at TIME magazine.

No, I don't mean Andy Sullivan -- I mean to two dogs in that caricature. Isn't that Satchmo and Beckham? Does TBogg know about this?

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Can the president eat a baby?

In time of war, if he must do so to keep us safe from terra, then yes, our omnipotent president can eat a baby.

Fafnir explains.

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Since we no longer have Spy magazine and the annual Spy 100, the next best thing is The Beast's annual list of "The Beast 50 Most Loathesome People in America."

You're on the list and so am I. We're at No. 4 -- just above Tom Delay and just below George W. Bush.

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While you're at The Beast, be sure also to check out their "Torture All-Stars Trading Cards" featuring the nine U.S. senators who voted in favor of torture.

They did, too. They voted in favor of torture. And with no apparent detrimental affects for their political futures.

Freaking torture. Jeebus.

The terrorists may not have already won, but Wayne Allard, Kit Bond, Tom Coburn, Thad Cochran, John Cornyn, James Inhofe, Pat Roberts, Jeff Sessios and Ted Stevens are desperately trying to surrender. Or to switch sides.

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100 Best First Lines from Novels according to Litline.

That link is via Julia, who notes that her favorite is No. 47, which I remembered from the last time we had this arbitrary fun conversation, at Michael Berube's place.

(And that, by the way, is the Narnia movie I'm really looking forward to.)

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I might be less skeptical of the Bush administration's claim to be planning to cut the federal deficit in half over the next five (now four) years if they produced even the hint of something resembling a plan or an explanation of how they intend to do this.

It doesn't help their credibility on this point that they're also playing "Mom, I'm pregnant" every year with their deficit projections.

My friend Michelle got a tattoo, a modest, but conspicuous little dolphin on her ankle. This was bound to freak out her mom. So before showing her mom the ink, she told her she was pregnant. After letting her really freak out over that for a bit, she said, "Relax, mom, I'm not pregnant. I just got a tattoo and I didn't want you to blow this out of proportion."

No offense to Michelle, but this is a pretty dishonest trick. In her defense, she only did it once. The Bush administration has done this same thing year after year.

They project record-shattering deficits of half a trillion dollars or so, so that later, when the merely record-breaking figure of around $400 billion comes out they can claim that they've actually reduced the deficit from their previous, Mom-I'm-pregnant projection.

Honest people don't do things like that.

Under normal circumstances, that deficit would be the flashing red alarm -- Exhibit A for why George W. Bush is an awful, incompetent president. But these aren't normal circumstances, what with the disastrous war, the offhand disregard for the rule of law, the nonchalant response to the disappearance of a major city and, again, the freaking torture. With all that going on as well, the inflicting of fiscal calamity on our children and grandchildren becomes almost a second-tier piece of evidence for why George W. Bush is an awful, incompetent president.

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A frog in any language.

Comments

[Duane]

Man, the Beast is a riot. Thanks for the link.

[Duane]

And one more thing Fred, yer frequent posting is messing up my change-the-HVAC-filter-when-Fred-posts method for changing the filter every 20 days.

[bulbul]

2) getting to sleep while it's still dark
I hear you, brother. My working day usually ends at 4am, too, and I am enjoying these long nights while they last.

I always loved the intro to Pride and Prejudice. To this day, I begin all of the 'scholarly' papers with the words "It is a truth universally acknowledged...". It drives my editors mad :o)
I am not sure whether the following is the first line from A Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, but if it is, it deserves a place on that list:

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the phrase, 'as pretty as an airport.'

Any language you say? Funny, mine is missing, so are some others. ٍSo let's see...:
Slovak: žaba (zhaba)
Czech: žába (zhaaba)
Maltese: zring (zreenj)
Roma: chutarďi (khutardjee)
I'll add some more as soon as I think of them.

[Susie from Philly]

Fred, congratulations on the shift change. I know working the night shift on the copy desk has, some eight years later, still affected my sleep. The tiniest ray of light in the room is enough to wake me.

[WatchfulBabbler]

Huh. Is "riverrun..." the first line of Finnegans Wake or the last half of the last line? If there's a list of best last lines, does FW get two entries? Or none at all?

[Julia]

Thanks for the frog link!

[Kim]

I read the list and it left out my favorite first line -- to a book I don't own so I can't quote exactly, but it was something like:
There were no flies on Charlie today, after all, he was a respectable citizen.
Author: John Lennon I'm not even sure which book -- A Spaniard in the Works?

On the other hand, it does include Tale of Two Cities....

[Lucia]

As if a slushy Tuesday weren't depressing enough... thanks a lot, Fred. I do do two things my neighbors don't, actually: I have a clothesline and use it, and I carpool to work with my husband. Enough? I don't think so.

[spiiderweb]

I don't think so. I don't consider myself an enabler of this administration. I've done everything I can think of short of violence to stop most of shrub's actions. He is not my president and not the president of most of the American people. He is a blight on the political landscape and has denegrated the office.

As my name implies, I'm no spring chicken. Learn from history people and read your Constitution and Bill of Rights. You have everything to lose if you don't fight back. Also read about the 50s and how many people were destroyed because they were "communists". Don't ever be complacent because your way of life isn't guaranteed as things stand now.

[Axiomatic]

I'm only missing one book.

Where the hell is Clockwork Orange? Surely, this is the PERFECT example of a legendary way to start a book.

[Nick Tyler]

I don't know about that first lines list; some of those lines seem to be the first line of a really good book, not a really good first line. 59, 26, and 21 stick out as beginning a good book but not being extraordinary. Our memory of the book rests in the first line, and so we come to think of it as a great line.

Also, the word "line" seems to have lost its meaning by this point in my comment...

[Axiomatic]

Good point. Some of those first lines were entire paragraphs. LONG paragraphs.

[Pat Greene]

The first line of Catch-22 the quoted really isn't anything unless you have the *second* line, which is "The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him."

Also, I always held that my favorite line was the opening to Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ("We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold") until I remembered that it isn't fictional, at least in theory.

[wintermute]

I always thought Neuromancer's opening line was a classic. I'm glad to see other people agree with me.

I think I remember Gibson writing in his blog about how a dead TV station isn't static-grey any more, but solid blue on most TVs, which means that anyone under about 20 gets completely the wrong idea about the imagery.

It's a shame when technology spoils poetry.