What is it about those tiny bubbles that make us happy? I was pondering this sitting in the tub today, trying to sublimate my worries with a bath of raspberry scented bubbles. Don Ho sung about it, we enjoy the leopard pattern of crema on espresso, surfactants are added to shampoos for that luxurious lather (though it is the ingredient that stings our eyes), and it was a food craze for avant-garde science chefs. The bubble is the perfect (most efficient and smallest) form of a solution to enclose a given volume. It’s a happy thought to think about when you’re splashing in the warm water.

Archimedes pondered the very same thing, I wonder if raspberry bubble bath got him to think about it too.

I bought a coffee, spring water, a pack of cigarettes and caught myself saying “that was all pretty cheap. There were times in my past where I didn’t make enough in an hour to cover the price of my afternoon refreshment, and when I indulged, I felt satisfied… almost sophisticated. I am not complaining that my earning power isn’t well justified, but I miss that feeling of satisfaction elicited by what has now become mundane or easily accessable.

Perhaps the apothecaries of the old world were right, maybe I do have animbalabce of bodily humors. Scorn, happiness, humility, pleasure… set off kilter with our modern coping chemicals of caffeine, nicotine, refined sugar, and distilled spirits are throwing things off kilter. Pop psychology isn’t helping me. This critical thinking and self-reflection is becoming as much as a burden as tools to better one’s self.

It’s times like these I wish I were a good fiction writer. This would be good fodder for a tortured protagonist…

I’ve been off of my game this week.  I can’t really say for sure what is causing it but I’m playing the victim and placing blame on something or someone.  The mystic inside me blames the last quarter moon dwindling to waning crescent.  The rationalist, blames late night television and wacky things on the internet which prevents me from sleeping.  The hypochondriac is still searching for the disease it could be, encephalitis is the front runner.

It’s just not me, I see this overall — insert German word for global malaise, distate, and discomfort here — unbequhlsscheuen perhaps?  Driving into work today on the expressway, one poor soul suffering from unbequhlsscheuen was having a bad day.  Approaching the accident, there was a broken down mini-van in the far right lane, two cars on the shoulder and what I could gather is meister unbequhlsscheuen’s car – flipped over and perpendicular to the direction of the road.

For now, I’m counting my blessings and offsetting my juu-juu with coffee and cigarettes.