anonymous February 11th, 2008 05:23PM  
Well its pretty obvious it's about a person who works nights and sleeps in the day...

ben August 15th, 2009 01:25AM  
The person in this song works the night shift presumably printing newspapers, hence the imagery about the newsprint fray and the references to stories in the daily paper such as the bull and the bear (stocks), Hong Kong and Taipei (international).

The emphasis is on how living around such an unnatural sleep schedule is damaging his health (circadian rhythm), causing him depression and emotional problems (I cried the other night/I can't even say why). The ocean machine is one of those sleep machines that plays the sounds of the waves, he's having to crank it up to 9 just to try to sleep through the day.