House of Eratosthenes

The last Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) award of 2009, the seventy-seventh one, goes out to Lee Doren’s twitter account (hat tip to Ann Althouse, via Gerard).

This is pure gold, folks. True too.

The people calling for Rush Limbaugh to die are the same people who ask to control your healthcare.

Know what I’d choose as worst sentence of the year? Something about the Cambridge cops acting stupidly…but close behind that, I think I’d pick any one of a number of journalistic bromides I’ve seen lately about how much the past decade sucked, and was the worst one ever. Time Magazine, I’m looking at you.

I’m sure if you’re in the print media somewhere, it did suck large. Well, here’s how I see it: Yes, it sucked, and the nineties sucked just as bad. But with the nineties it was much easier to stick your head up your ass and ignore reality. That means, if you think this one was really so different from the nineties, that must have been precisely where you stuck it.

Housing bubble, dot-com bubble, oil market bubble, radical Islamic terrorism, S&L mess — these things were all Philip K. Dick stuff, unreality-within-reality. You know what happened in the decade just past? We all got our heads pulled out of our asses. Whether we were ready for it or not. Some among us still aren’t ready for it.

But time keeps on rolling on, regardless of who’s ready. Best wishes to you all, hope 2010 fulfills all your hopes. And wherever it doesn’t, hope you find wisdom and strength in that experience.

I haven’t even got the energy to cogitate on the “last decade,” because I suspect for many, it’s just going to be “hate Bush, hate Bush, hate Bush.” After all, he was president for most of it, and as any fool knows, presidents are omniscient and can control anyone and anything, anywhere in the world, by sheer will.

I don’t even particularly like it when I hear people prattling on about how much 2009 “sucked.” First, they said the same thing last year. Every year has its problems and its noteworthy events & trends, and inevitably some of those are negative ones.

Second, for me personally, 2009 was a banner year. Absolutely the best, other than watching my country swirl around the drain, thankyouverymuch Obama. I didn’t get laid off – making great money in fact – my first child was born, and I’m about to buy my dream home. Really, I’m pretty grateful to God for what He’s done for me this year, and I really cannot complain.
- cylarz | 01/01/2010 @ 00:15
Congratulations Cylarz on the new arrival!

Personally, I’ve found the year, and the decade as well, to be better than most. But when you look around since the beginning of ’08, it is difficult to deny or even doubt that something is terribly bollywonkers. What is malignant has always been malignant, but it is growing, and in the process of surpassing some restraining device thereby pushing itself past some critical event horizon. Like some hideous human-devouring plant in our midst that is outgrowing its pot.
- mkfreeberg | 01/01/2010 @ 06:52
I’ll have to agree that 2009 has been, personally, a better year – although considering the preceding years as competition, it didn’t have to do much.

I would like to address an aside, however, to the charming locution “that sucks.” Ever since it became common currency in the ’80s, my instinctive response was “Oh lovely, now we’re all referring to fellatio in polite conversation.” Besides inspiring a jarring response when employed by everybody from 5 year olds to little old ladies, I was always left with the, to me, unavoidable WTF moment in re “When did sucking become a bad thing?”

This all became more or less unavoidable in the ’90s when the adorable “Mean People Suck” bumper stickers became more or less ubiquitous on the freeways around the Bay Area. The whole argument was resolved to my personal enjoyment and deep satisfaction the first time I saw some kid with a sticker farm on the back of his beater that included, by itself, the bumper sticker “Nice People Swallow.”

The perfect comment.
- rob | 01/01/2010 @ 07:42
Happy New Year, Morgan. I’ll not comment on the presence or absence of suckage, in general, but will only say things… in a cultural and national sense… worked out pretty much like I thought they would. It wasn’t all that bad a year, personally. This “every day is Saturday” thing is just about the best gig I’ve ever had, even after considering the income is only about 25% of what it used to be. But it IS sufficient.

Life is good. I hope yours is, as well.
- bpenni | 01/01/2010 @ 12:25

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Best Sentence LXXVIIThursday, December 31st, 2009

Best Sentence LXXVII
Thursday, December 31st, 2009