What do you call it when...

What's the word for that state of mind where you can see the end of humanity coming, and you can feel the extreme similarity between humans and, say, ants? It's a kind of high, distant perspective that soars up away from the news of the day, shrugs about The Grand Ole Opry and sees the Gulf oil leak as a thin gray swirl on a vast ocean.

It makes it very hard to rediscover the fun of my hobbies or to feel the importance of my commitments, and even though riding my bike, for instance, has exactly the same power to trigger endorphins and get my heart rate up as it did last week, I can't quite remember the feeling an hour later.

Is it anomie? Existential angst? Nihilism?

Whatever it is, it seems to come from overexposure to news and ideas that I'm absolutely powerless to affect, and I need to come back down into the anthill, where my little perambulations and carryings of grains of sugar feel like they mean something, you know?

Wheat Thins. Only no wheat. And not that thin.

I followed the recipe for Gluten Free Puff Pastry pretty faithfully, but sadly, it did not result in puff pastry.

( More like crispy critters. )