Always look on the bright side of life

Little things that make life bearable:

1) Waking Up At Night And Discovering You Have Plenty Of Time Left To Sleep.

This list is dedicated to last night when I woke up having to use the bathroom and discovered that it was only 4 am. What an incredible feeling! I still had three hours left to sleep! I was so overwhelmed with joy that, right there on the spot, despite being groggy and only half awake, I decided to write a list of wonderful things.

2) English Accents.

I'm primarily referring to the voices of those BBC announcer guys, not cockney, although it's pretty cool too. For some reason, sounding British automatically confers believability on a person. I think the primary reason we're in Iraq is that Tony Blair said it was a good idea. Have you ever heard a Brit say "controversy?" They put the accent on the second syllable! con-TROversy. Delicious!

The only thing better than Brits are Asian girls who've studied in England and have those clipped, precise Oxford accents. God that kills me.

3) People Who Are Friendly In Traffic.

The other day I was stuck in the usual backed up Beltway rush hour traffic. I was smoking a cigarette, so my window was open and consequentially everyone on the Inner Loop could hear Neko Case blasting out of my stereo. A couple pulled up next to me in a convertible and the woman leaned over and said "Hey, I love that album!" Then traffic started to move and I lost them.

4) The Annual Member Sale At Politics & Prose.

Twenty percent off of everything! Yesterday, I bought:

• Blind Spot by Timothy Naftali
• Nature Noir by Jordan Fisher
• A Pretext For War by James Bamford
• The Unfolding Of Language by Guy Deutscher
• Take Care Of Freedom And The Truth Will Take Care Of Itself, edited by Eduardo Mendieta

All for 64 bucks! What a deal! That last one, incidentally, is a collection of interviews with Richard Rorty, who I really ought to get better acquainted with, apparently.

Four items are all I can think of right now. Eventually I'll probably do a (much longer) list of things that really piss me off. Number one: waking up at night and discovering that you have to get up in two minutes.