I get 25 minutes. That's right; less than half an hour all to myself. No duties chores responsibilities--other than cursory polite gestures to fellow commuters stuffed into this dingy sardine box that smells faintly of body order and expensive French perfume. I don’t have any dishes to clean, mail to open, coworkers looking over my shoulder at what’s on my screen. This is my time. So when you, my friend get on the train, understand that you are interrupting my 25 minutes. You are robbing me of precious restorative moments—a flash of inspiration before the subway doors slide shut, and it’s gone. I regroup. I peruse. I dream. I create. At least play an accordion, or do some chanson, mon gars, while I'm traversing the world’s most poetically charming river view available from a train seat. No boom box, je vous en prie. And can ya keep it to one musician per car, per ride? How much polite civility am I really required to dish out on a daily basis, when the music is as bad as a group Japanese tourists at a karyoke bar? You may very well be deserving of a Euro or vingt centimes for that jazzy tune sung so pretty with the backdrop of your tatty guitar, but right now I swear ta god if one more dude gets on the metro with a circa 1981 American boombox karaoke backup and a voice like Bob Dylan (present day), I'm gunna show the French the definition of going postal. Hmm…observing the reverse cultural definition would require me to throw myself in front of train—eew. I guess part of being a stranger in a strange land is to learn to muster the patience to handle a train ride of really bad karyoke.