Still trying to figure memcached in mercury .9 ... seems to behave weirdly (breaks theme layer) when flush all caches is run. You can test this on the stock mercury 0.9 instance install admin_menu and run Flush all caches or use the drush cache clear all command and theme layer will break.
Im back to the apc method until I figure whats with that, I suppose this can be avoided by keeping normal cache on while deving but if you forget and have external on and clear the caches the theme will die, which is easily fixed but not trivial if a less knowledgeable drupal user happens to flush the caches.
It seems at least for me the cacherouter/apc method accounts for this issue on cache clears and even respects namespaces for multiple sites outta the box AFAICT, I need to test it again to be sure but it seemed to work, unlike memcache method.

Comments
Misconfiguration
This typically happens when you are running memcache and have not set your Pressflow page cache settings to "External page Cache." There can be a bug where the CSS aggregation regeneration occurs without all the pages being properly flushed, meaning there are stale references, which mean no CSS which "breaks" your theme.
If you stick with "External page cache" like the system starts with, you won't have this problem. It'll also get you the most bang from your buck with Varnish.
https://pantheon.io | http://www.chapterthree.com | https://www.outlandishjosh.com
I could have sworn that on a
I could have sworn that on a fresh mercury it was doing this when that catch IS set to external as per the installed default, but not happening when its set to normal. I'll test it again on another fresh instance to be sure.
Am I the only one noticing this?
I can confirm it on a total virgin install of mercury 0.9
once you create your drupal user and login look at the dblog its full of include_once errors
then go to performance settings and press clear cached data
theme layer will break ... and a new set of include_once errors will be added to the dblog
The only way to "fix" theme layer is to change themes, disable garland then switch back to garland.. my workaround was not to use memcache at all since I havnt the foggiest how to stop it ... on my other tests I also went further and made the suggested changes to memcache as far as 9 bins etc and still had the same results.
You are not setting it up correctly
You are doing something wrong. Perhaps you don't have the memcache module in place? Attached is a screenshot of a current/clean boot from 0.9.
To be clear, those are the only entries in the log.
https://pantheon.io | http://www.chapterthree.com | https://www.outlandishjosh.com
Thats strange .. I am getting
Thats strange .. I am getting what I mentioned without making any alterations whatsoever, only spinning up the ami, creating the new user and logging in. I'm using the 0.9 ami from us-east region. Upon login looking at the dblog I have like 4 pages of include once errors.