I am not a well-kept man.

Well, saying that as a middle-class British citizen who lives in relative prosperity.

But recently, no, I've not been taking very much care of myself. Breakfast has been non-existent since the start of secondary school, and lunch has become a rarity (this has the neat side effect of dooming me to remain 5'10 short and weedy for life). I've noticed that my capacity for food over the years has actually lessened accordingly- for every two bites 18 year old Shaun eats, Shaun circa '06 could've eaten three or four. Which is kinda sad.

I'm so tired these days. I work until late, distract myself with instruments (and bass) for a while longer, and find myself overtired once in duvet. My mean sleepytime has been 3-4 hours nightly.

I'm fairly sure I'm not cycling as fast as I used to- but that could be down to my tire's deficiency of air, and my own of saddles.

And when I get home (typically late, due to commitments thoughtlessly accepted), I always binge on milk, collapse upstairs and nap uncontrollably. An hour or two later, it's time to groggily go downstairs and deliver late papers in the cold and dark and keep my throw up in my tummy.

Rinse and repeat.

And there's work on Friday and Saturday, but that's no big deal.

I can't complain though, as it's all worth it.

I can't wait until Uni. I'm really stuck in a rut here. I can't wait for freedom, for re-invention.

(For social groups not based on elitism)

I have this weird idea that, if I go to Uni, my quality of life will magically increase despite the harsher poverty and the bigger workload. But it's that delusion that'll probably fuel me. It certainly won't be breakfast.

Cobwebs are the ghosts of absence.

The first spiderweb I saw today made me happy.

Entangled was a wasp. Call it cruel, call it sadistic, but wasps terrified me for the entirety of my younger life. We all have our vices.

I was soon rebuked by the second cobweb. Another wasp. This one, however, struggled, for it was being eaten. It spasmed so animately as to convey a near sentient appreciation of fear. This didn't sit well with me, but what could I do?

The third was the most unsettling. I had delivered a paper to a certain house in the early hours of Saturday. It was now a deceptively bright Monday evening. And before me lay weeks worth of pristine webwork, draped along the front door. Its sole architect peered curiously through eight eyes at the disturbance from his sabbatical seat.

And that weekend wasn't exactly shut-in weather, either.

Confronted with such a lonely reality, I cycled away more solemnly than I had started, promising myself I would become less emotionally invested in the wanton doodlings of spiders.

An open letter to Jeff Mangum.

I wish we could talk.

That's hard, as you're a hermit.

When I look at your lyrics, when I read them, they're so alien. They mean so little. they're odd, nonsensical. They look like the ravings of a madman. And you've been accused of worse.

But then I hear them, and I realise that I've never heard anything that I have been able to so strongly relate to. I don't know how. But I adore it. To be able to understand your stream of conciousness, to empathise with your worries, it comforts me. It feels so... personal.

Sometimes, I don't listen to you for months at a time. Partly so I actually listen to other bands.

Mostly for how it feels to have an old friend return after departing for so long.

I'm looking at my iTunes, and I own ~2 GB of Neutral Milk Hotel songs. About 80-90% of that are bootlegs and demos I'd downloaded. I've been making it a personal mission to listen to them all over the past few weeks. Properly listen. Sat alone, eyes shut, headphones on, listen. Today I finished.

I downloaded them because I wanted more. Because you stopped so suddenly, so harshly.

But I also downloaded them to hear you. to hear you talk with the crowd. To hear you stutter and swallow away your anxieties. I wanted to hear you try so hard to explain what you were trying to say in your songs, before you broke away so upset. No one present understood. I didn't even need you to tell me.

I wanted to get to know you. To understand why you felt and thought the way I do. I wanted to wish myself to a small club in '97, where I'd stand silently, trying to take it all in. I wouldn't talk through your set, and make Neanderthal noises and heckle you with requests. I'd realise I was in the presence of a true artist.

Your music came at a difficult time for me. Frankly, it was the only difficult time I'd ever had, and for many many people it would've been a fairly mediocre time, if that. But you helped. I'll never be able to first listen to "King of Carrot Flowers" or "Aeroplane Over the Sea" happy, or in love (oh, how music sounds when you're in love). But they got me back to happiness, to optimism, to living.

I can't thank you enough.

Just paying the bills, folks...

So apparently Digeus System Optimizer is a thing (I wish they'd spelt "Optimizer" with an s). Having a quick browse through the features, it brags a "Duplicate File Finder", tweaking for your Media, Security and System Speed and at least three different ways to clear out the garbage that easily fills up computers. As someone who is scraping the last 5 GB of his hard drive, I'd say it's definitely a worthwhile investment. Plus, it comes from the good guys at Digeus, whose software I've reviewed before, and it's been goog, solid non-spyware (which is quite refreshing). So for anyone running a pc junked up with disorganised downloading, I'd give it my personal recommendation. More info here (Safe link, I haven't been hijacked by a spam-bot).

I'm in that kinda mood.

[As deciphered from my spidery scrawlings)

The mood where I want to write, but all I have to write is definitely too raw for the blug, but happens to be just raw enough for my Moleskine (Which I adore). Hopefully, writing in here should allow me to temper my pointlesses into something that carries a little meaning and coherency. My only fear is to inhabit my Moleskine entirely and end up never post anything on the blug.

I like to believe that everyone is a person. In that, I like to believe that everyone has unique thoughts and feelings, and explores their own universe in a way that is alien and beautiful. I try and persuade myself that everyone has moments of profoundness. That everyone thinks. All the time.

Which is why it really shakes me when I see people who aren't. It really upsets me. People who keep themselves alive if only to witness a tv programme, people who live for Facebook statuses. People who replace being human for the emotions pimped out by 2nd rate writers and directors. People who need scraping off of the floor. It really scares me.

There are people, acting like they are normal people, and they don't even have an imagination.

At the time of writing, I'm blinking back tears.

How can this happen to someone? How can you exist and live in a world like this, and not care about things, wonder about whys, worry about ifs? These flat, colourless blobs are everywhere. They're sat on buses, watching their children with matte eyes.

They huddle and hive together, pretending they're feeling.

They don't know what they aren't.

This used to be about Maths.

Her name was Jenny.