The price of 2 shots.

Each day for three days in a row I bought two shots of espresso from the same coffee shop, and each day was charged something slightly different. The price changed from day to day within a ~50-cent range. $1.90, $2.20, $1.75; something like that. On the third day, while waiting for my drink, I speculate on why what has happened has happened….

The fluctuating price of coffee? Does this place buy their coffee from a merchant each day, like fancy-dancy restauranteurs buy fresh fish? The coffee merchants change their prices each day, given a host of agricultural and economic factors. My fluctuating espresso price is a result of the merchant's art, which rides the waves of vast untold social and environmental forces. I feel part to something bigger than myself, covarying along with multitudes of variable circumstances, yet confined within my ~50-cent range. Maybe the price of fresh fish even is an economic factor on the price of coffee in the day-to-day food merchant economic world? Does it all come down to the price of fresh fish?

Maybe some baristas here secretly gouge the prices? Do they add a couple cents to each transaction and just pocket it? Maybe there is a bet going between the baristas about who can gouge the price the highest without a customer noticing? They pool the change they get from charging extra, and the winner after a month wins the pool of change? Do they keep the change in a jar? Or maybe each person got the idea to gouge the price independently and so they each steal without knowing the other baristas do, so they aren't coordinating their thefts to make them unnoticeable? Can I discern any obvious signs of confidence and daring in the barista that charged me the most?

Is it all just a meaningless accident? Is it all just a meaningless accident?

What if there is some other really clever and interesting and unique set of circumstances that could account for the price change which I am overlooking? Some set of conditions that change each time I buy espresso, but which I am presently overlooking, which the price could be secretly indexed to for some complicated reason which I am not keen-sighted enough to think of? I must be humble: there are more cute, unnecessarily complicated reasons than I can cook up that explain the fluctuating price.

Should I return to the fresh fish hypothesis? Did it not get enough airtime? Fish. Airtime. In my brain. Brain air time. Air time brain. Brain time air. Air brain time. Time brain air. Time air brain.

The secret 100 blogs are put on hold because I'm broke!
Must. Not. Starve.
If anybody wants to hire me to write 100 secret blogs let me know. My fee is that amount of money that will get me through until September without my starving/being insolvent. $20/post should more than do it. I'll write them about whatever you want!
Think about it!

So Buddha is all "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it."

And I'm like, "Says who?"
And then I add this nice little "stfu buddha you're not my dad".
And he doesn't say anything back because I don't want to go search wikiquote for possible Buddha replies.

Then Mencken goes "Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt."
I'm like "WHO INVITED YOU."

Some other stuff happens. Exciting stuff. People. Etc. Things embedded in quotation marks. I grit my teeth and squint my eyes.

The Swingrovers.

Louis: Oh man! X-Men First Class comes out today!
Lindsey: Can you get the lotion, an overnight diaper, and footy pajamas?
Louis: Is that all you can think of at a time like this!?