So, Surprise Tuesday is coming up, and we thought we would give a gentle reminder. Not a flashing red light, or a siren or any of that. The annoying claxon horns have been rattling for so many months now that is time to calmly and reasonably look at the horizon and recognize what we all […]

Legal told us to insert the reminder that the opinions contained below- and above- are those of independent contractors and necessarily those of Socotra House Publications, LLC, Arlington, VA. Morning, Comrades! This was a week of jitters and twitters wasn’t it? There were a few pivot points in our continuing anxious state of affairs. They […]

We actually don’t know if we are between them, or whether this is all really one big surprise. Creative Team Leader DeMille directed us to have a focus group to ascertain expert opinion, since Thursdays, like many other days, has a challenge in that act. Focus, we mean. Thursday are vulnerable due to traditional Wednesday […]

There are multiple spinning cyclones in the world this morning. Those are the tight circling winds that break 75 miles an hour and can go to hundreds of mph in speed. Those are profound, and we have been told to treat them with respect. We are permitted smiles of mildly bemused amazement. It also accounted […]

Press reports indicate Iran did their bit with missiles arcing in the heavens this morning. They responded to the Israeli ground offensive in southern Lebanon with a barrage of ballistic missiles today, less than 24 hours after the Israelis initiated a limited incursion to target Hezbollah assets. The IDF said all Israeli civilians were waiting […]

It is New Years! It is a day we used to celebrate with smiles on the little budget staff nestled in the bowels of the big five-sided building a shade less than four miles away from the Picnic Table. We used to do a whimsical sort of party with a glass of wine to celebrate […]

Arrias did the heavy lifting this morning. He took on the issues of mass destruction so we can worry about the missing metaphors. We thought we would use this Monday as a sort of metaphoric leap into a quick encapsulation of this week of transition. The foreign stuff is powerful, and immediate, like a movie […]

When we stumbled down in the general direction of breakfast- or at least the dark steaming liquid substance that begins the headlong fall into the day. This one warmed as the coffee cooled, and was tinged with surprise. We were going to start with a nice and poignant piece by a distinguished scholar. She isn’t […]

OK, how do you deal with a historic week filled with incomprehensible and dramatic stuff? Naturally, we went to the Chairman’s stack of old vinyl 33RPM LPs and grabbled one from the bottom of the stack. It happened to be one of Foreigner’s, a great group that came out of New York City in the […]

We asked Legal to have their intern Melissa stop at the Metaphor Locker on her way to the morning production meeting at the picnic table. Splash had pulled in some of the more striking examples late in the previous day when the storm was changing intensity and pulled his end of the picnic table to […]