See that monster in the box? That's my master's thesis; a rude thing, it refuses to hush or to leave quietly. Notions of hypertextuality and the construction of text rattle around in my head; I could write ten pages a day about Barthes and intertextuality but have already written enough.

While I was in Rome, trapped in that damp hotel room 47 steps from Trajan's Column, I watched parts of The Godfather dubbed into Italian... sparking memories of the film shown on television when I was a wee child, the horror of much of it and an alienation from the rest, so far was I from father and son and the mantle of responsibility, things I couldn't even imagine at six.

And these things prompted me to ask Donna to bring it home the other night, and damn if it isn't charming and seminal both.

Tomorrow is my birthday.