In case you hadn't noticed, I really enjoy these moments of Anagnorisis sown from past misinterpretations.

Of all the idioms I had come to detest, "You can't have your cake and eat it too" was high up there, along with malformed phrase "I could care less". I just couldn't stand it. Why should you not be able to eat the cake? Utilitarian implications aside, isn't that the purpose of owning the cake? I could just never understand it.

I had not ever realised that this illogical confectionery fallacy was also butchered through time.

It turns out it was originally structured "You can't eat your cake and have it, too", and is perhaps most well known as Ayn Rand's response for a simple aphorism to her second, epistemological tenet of Objectivism, Reason.

I now like it more.

There's this fantastic Vignette in The Great Gatsby.

It's the one where the pragmatic Nick Carraway is being driven around by Jordan Baker, a careless Femme Fatale. He tells her, half joking, half serious, that she's so careless a driver, that she shouldn't even drive. She argues so long as she only meets careful drivers,

“They’ll keep out of my way,” she insisted. “It takes two to make an accident.”

“Suppose you met somebody just as careless as yourself.”

“I hope I never will,” she answered. “I hate careless people. That’s why I like you.”

I realise only today that I've actually had this precise moment happen to me, right down to the wording, though we were more vulnerable- we were pedestrians. I can't believe I let such a moment pass without more immediate acknowledgement.

I'm really glad that it happened, though.

My Dream Girl Don't Exist (hopefully)

I was in a super-macho discussion once. The topic came onto "Dream Girls".

Actually, I believe they declared it "Most fuckable girl our imaginations can render".

They were discussing all these attributes that The Most Fuckable Girl would have. Long legs, long hair, big lips, shapely tits, the usual. When someone suggested something less physical, it never really got much further than "nice" and "nymphomaniac". You know the conversation.

(PS if you're female, don't even begin to pretend that all owners of XX chromosomes are so elite that they are beyond these discussions and daydreams.)

Anyways, it got me to thinking as well. My dreamgirl.

Well, let's get the base stuff out of the way. Pretty and cute without being hot. No cigarettes no tatoos no piercings. Personal: Has to like Disney. And video games. And maths. Can't like hip hop metal dubstep rap twilight soap operas clubbing. Can't be too religious, can't be too immoral, must like peanut butter, can't like it crunchy, hates wotsits....

And suddenly I'm in Hell.

This thing I've created, it would be made to perfectly fit ad suit me. And I would be enamoured. I would cite Love at first sight. It would be everything I wanted, and I would be complacent.

There'd be no Love.

How could there be?

Friendship is kindled from similarities, but Love is born of differences and clashes. They allow growth and understanding and compromise (and not the shitty sort).

What would I have?

The conversation would be the first thing to go.

After raising up each of our interests and confirming our mutual approval of each thing, we'd be stuck.

"Man, isn't _____ just the greatest?"

"Yeah, it is."

But with this girl, this perfect girl, how could I ever consider leaving her? She's perfect. We're soul-mates (as if this construction would have one). There would be no way I could tear myself from this safety. I'd have this half-assed, lukewarm happiness, and I'd think it was Love. I'd believe it. And any reaction against this hell, any stirrings of recognition and warning, would be shot down by my own "love" and introspection. Perfect girl is perfect, so anything bad must come from the only other component in the relationship. And how I would torture it until it was fitting of this perfect girl.

And that's the scariest thought I've had in a while.

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).