2002-08-12 - 7:01 p.m.

I�m not sure if you�re aware of this, but they made a film version of The Lord of the Rings. I watched it via the means of a video cassette recorder machine the other night, and enjoyed it much more than I thought I would, considering the purulent hatred with which I regard the time I pissed up against a wall reading those godforsaken books. I�m the first to admit that I have no imagination and that the thought of the genre of �fantasy� appeals to me about as much as the thought of suddenly sprouting a long, un-prehensile tale and having to have all my trousers adjusted round my tradesmen�s entrance. But it was OK. I liked the bit where the evil wizard makes Ian McKellen do backspins. And you just know that Ian McKellen probably spends all his time down a bar called The Prancing Pony in real life anyway. I made a pant-wettingly hilarious joke with the punchline �John-Wayne Hobbit�, but I�ve forgotten it now.

The rest of the weekend I spent writing like an infinite number of monkeys being fed an infinite number of especially inspirational bananas.

I got home from work just now to find a postcard from the postman saying that they�re holding a parcel for me that was too big to fit through my letterbox. Whilst this seems initially exciting, in my experience, it�s never anything very sexy in these scenarios � in this case I can�t imagine it�s anything more than an extra large bottle of diarrhoea tablets from my mum, who is bizarrely and completely obsessed with the idea that I am continually suffering from said ailment, despite my never having complained about it to her, or even ever had it to her knowledge.

I�m thinking of taking a break. From this. I�m not feeling very entertaining or clever at the moment. Maybe someone brighter could fill in for me for a while? That would be OK.