Puke-Filled Juice Containers + Patti Smith + Mogwai

There are a few regular features to this blog. There's a daily comment on what's in the newspaper. For the last couple of months I've been focusing mostly on Syria. The ongoing civil war there is not only altering the Sykes-Picot Middle East, but it's exposing the fundamental schizophrenia of U.S. foreign policy. We are officially at war with Al Qaeda and its affiliates yet we are officially supporting the Syrian National Coalition, which is working in concert with Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, an Al Qaeda affiliate.

In addition to the daily news comment, there's a Friday night "Hippies vs. Punk" post, a Saturday morning Marvel Comics post and a Sunday late afternoon "Colt 45 Chronicle." Finally, there's a Monday "Remember! Work!" post where I recount something from the work day and as an aside relate whatever music I've immersed myself in the preceding weekend. I'm going to cut back on the weekday evening posts, which were pretty marginal anyway (usually a comment about a run and a song, heard on my iPod, that had tickled my fancy). Also, the Sunday morning post on a recently-released-to-DVD Hollywood big-budget movie has become sporadic of late. So I can't say that I'll be doing it regularly.

The "Remember! Work!" installment for today has to with what I've come to realize is the most stressful part of the rat race -- the morning commute. Once I actually get on the train everything is fine; in fact, it's probably the best part of my day, or at least one of the best. I'm relaxed; it's almost always quiet, except for Fare Enforcement walking through the car now and again checking cards with their handheld scanners. No, the nasty part is getting down the hill to the train station. I give myself 20 minutes to make the trip from apartment door to train door, and that includes a stop at the Starbucks. And there is always a line at the Starbucks. We serfs need our performance-enhancing caffeine to compete in the rat race. Sometimes I jog. Sometimes I sprint. Mostly I walk at a brisk pace. The stress comes at the stoplights. There are a couple extremely busy intersections, and I can usually jump the light on those pretty quick; it's just that by leaving myself only 20 minutes, I have very little time to spare standing waiting for a signal to turn green.

One treat from today at the office is the story a coworker had about cleaning up trash this past weekend around an apartment building she and her husband own in the Fremont neighborhood. Apparently she discovered two large juice containers filled with vomit that were shoved back in the bushes. I asked what kind of juice. She said Sunny Delight or Sunny some-such-thing. I asked how could someone puke into such a narrow opening. She said that the container actually had quite a wide mouth. When I went to the grocery store tonight I sojourned at the the orange juice cooler. Sure enough there was one big plastic bottle, Sunny something, that had a very wide mouth.

My musical immersion happened yesterday post-5K. First, I listened to the two-disk Sons of Rogues Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs & Chanteys (2013). Then the four-disk Occupy This Album: 99 Songs for the 99 Percent (2012). Sons of Rogues Gallery is topnotch; Occupy This Album is a little spotty but has some great stuff: