I'm back...Or am I?

Greetings dear reader (and I use the singular with both affectation and accuracy),

Maybe it's the fact that I need to register today for the big Gothic conference that I am really excited about but terrified by due to the amount of work needed to produce a paper out of my random musings scrawled thus far on post-it-notes and scraps of paper; maybe it's the viral chest infection I am currently playing a less than convivial host to (don't worry, no pigs were harmed during the contraction of this virus); perhaps it's the fact that it's Friday, I've got a veritable tsunami of work to type up, a thesis outline for my current chapter to construct. Most probably, it is all of the above, but I am not feeling entirely myself this morning. I shall support this statement with evidence to you, my jury of peers:

1) I am actually writing something on my blog.
2) I feel quite positive about the ideas being gathered for the present chapter.
3) I have just bought the Daily Telegraph...I'll repeat that one for those who do not know me quite so well as others, I have just bought the lousy Torygraph rag. Admittedly only to read up on the MP expenses story, but still I had to buy the Guardian for the dual reasons of assuaging my guilty conscience and to wrap the filthy broadsheet in. I was tempted to succumb to a copy of Bizarre as brandishing that would have been less embarrassing for my hard earned bearded sandal wearing image.
4) I am drinking tea. This makes me shiver even as I type it. The words seem familiar, the sentiment expressed has an uncanny resemblance to an activity that I would generally indulge in, and yet that one final word exposes the doppelganger that is purporting to be me, the projection of my innermost demons manifested in a tangible enough physical form to control the movement of the keys on my, yes my, laptop. There is coffee in the office, this is not an act of desperation brought about by an absence. No, this was a seemingly conscious decision made by ?me?

I can say no more, I feel drained from the consumption of bovine lactation within a caffeinated environment. I may need to have a little lie down. I may even try to work off this pyschophysiological homonculus. Or perhaps, and this last option is the most likely, I'll go and have a cup of coffee and subsume this dark alter-ego to the furthest recesses of my subconscious and continue with my day.

I will return soon with thoughts on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, some thesis ideas that came to me in the shower, and the inevitable rant once I have had a chance to read and digest the contents of the Torygraph expose. Until then, dear reader, I leave you at once myself and yet still in some uncanny way seemingly some other Mosca, but as always, dutifully yours.