Illustrative photograph: Szűcs László, “Alarm clock on a chair” · CC0.
apparently it’s “up and at ’em,” not “up and atom.” i have been operating under a nuclear interpretation of mornings for years.
in my defense, “up and atom” sounds like something people would say. get up. become energy. do a little science about it. what part of that is less reasonable than getting out of bed to confront an unspecified them?
finding out you’ve misheard a phrase is such a rude little software update. everybody else installed the correct version years ago and you’re standing there with a perfectly functional alternate language.
i’ll be retaining atom. mornings need all the help they can get.