2004-06-09 - 3:16 p.m.

The glamour of going to South America tomorrow is being dulled somewhat by the fact that I a) will only be there for three days, doddering around Venezuela in a jetlag-consumed stupor and b) have to take high strength malaria pills, with a side effects list as long as J-Lo�s book of accumulated wedding gifts. Nausea, dry heaves, mild hallucinations�but enough of my love life, those pills look really scary. Hahahaha! I make zee funny joke, yes?

I�m not one to complain, but I�d fondly assumed my first visit to the continent would be all sambuca-fuelled salsa, kaleidoscopic carnivals, and snorting fresh coffee beans off the shimmying torso of a sashaying dark-skinned dolly bird with interesting pubic hair topiary. Instead I�m looking at the inner workings of a rum plantation in way too much mind-numbing detail, trying to ignore the crippling effects of a 12 hour flight whilst being forced to smell raw sugar cane at every stage of its processing. I�m sure to feel awkward at the sampling, too � I don�t have the right wardrobe to drink rum.

Anywazza, assuming the plane actually makes it, and doesn�t nose into the Atlantic in an explosive raging fireball, it will give me my full house in continental bingo; in the barest terms, of course. I can�t say I really have any extensive experience of any one continent, but I will have stepped one, small, timorous, stinking foot onto each of them at least. Until some gurning nomark brings up Antarctica or something. Yes, very clever.

My book deal looks to be under threat from uncooperative corporate automatons, but I am going on the offensive, and I feel I may make a stand for the little man. No-one needs a stand like a little man, after all. Hunger strikes, dirty protests, I�m pulling out all the stops in my search for justice and easy money. No surrender to the fat cats! Workers of the world unite, we have nothing to lose but the secret royalties that aren�t ours by right!

If you next see me on TV as part of a crack Marxist revolutionary faction in the Venezuelan jungle, call my mum to ask her to send me that hypoallergenic deodorant that doesn�t irritate that delicate underarm skin, would you? Thanks, comrades.