[explosive sneeze]

I haven't set sneaker outside since Friday. Yesterday, I had that "swallowing a razor blade" feeling whenever I gulped. This morning, I was awoken at 6.30am by a shrieking flock of sulfur-crested cockatoos (that some joker up the street insists on feeding) to find I'm the owner of two leaking nostrils and one painful, chesty cough. Left a croaky message on my boss's answering machine to explain my absence. While my concentration's OK - I seem to have skipped the headache/fever stages - it wouldn't be fair to risk infecting my coworkers or their families.

The only advantage to being inside for 60+ hours is you burn through plenty of media...

I finished Coach Dungy's autobiography, which was intensely moving. Tears rolled down as he described the suicide, for reasons unknown, of his teenage son Jamie - and again when years of humility and hard work were rewarded with a victory in Super Bowl XLI. My bookmark now protrudes from an altogether different sort of athletic memoir, Paul Shirley's "Can I Keep My Jersey?", subtitled "11 Teams, 5 Countries And 4 Years In My Life As A Basketball Vagabond". It's cynical, sarcastic, often witty, never boring and as anti-religion as "Quiet Strength" was devout.

Have only crammed half the contents of "Dungeon" #150 into the cobwebbed corner of my brain reserved for role-playing modules. While enjoyable, it's slow going when you need to continually refer back to maps to see where the room/area being described fits into The Big Picture, or pause to process a bunch of stats.

"Clangers" is all watched. Four hours of sheer wonderment. Further examples of the series' inventiveness - the Clangers hook space junk from a flying boat using a magnet on a fishing line, their caves are lit by glowing deposits of honey, a pair of top hats are linked by a cosmic wormhole, a type of golden fruit contains compressed air...

Next disc into the DVD player will be the two-part, live-action TV adaptation of Terry Pratchett's "Hogfather". Tired of waiting for it to screen here (unless, stealth bomber-like, it managed to avoid my dorkgeeknerd radar), I imported the deluxe edition. Hogfather, the Discworld version of Santa Claus, is AWOL, so it's up to Death and his grand-daughter Susan to save the annual celebration. A cast that includes David Jason, Nigel Planer, Ian Richardson (AS THE VOICE OF DEATH) and Tony Robinson augurs well.

As I sit at my computer, nana rug over my lap, box of aloe vera-infused snotrags on my left, tumbler of water on my right, the only noises I can hear are the machine's cooling fans and traffic from the main road. Even in the eastern suburbs, Mondays are peaceful. That wasn't the case yesterday as our medium-density hive was alive with the sounds of people entertaining, vacuuming, relocating and, in my case, playing Mr O. Osbourne's latest album on repeat. It's laughable how heavily treated his vocals are, yet "Black Rain" is eminently listenable.

By the way, it might seem to regular readers that I go through a lotta music CDs that I discard after a day or so. No-one could be blamed for surmising they're pirate copies on which I place no value. Such is not the case. I'm in the enviable position of having a friend (LA) who reviews albums for three or four magazines and shares the love.

Now that's cleared up, here's something free for YOU.

In 2006, despite never having graduated from college himself, writer/director/actor Kevin Smith co-taught a class for UCLA's School Of Theater, Film And Television. The big fella helped his students put together six short episodes of a lifestyle show entitled "Sucks Less With Kevin Smith", designed to be watched on the Net or mobile phones. Each ep featured three segments about diverse leisure activities (eg. visiting a "haunted" house in the desert, turtle racing, Cut & Paste showdowns*), with links filmed in KS's Los Angeles comic store, Jay & Silent Bob's Secret Stash - West. MTV's university channel mtvU was a partner and you can watch the entire series on its site at www.mtvu.com/on_mtvu/sucks_less.

*Gun graphic designers are given 15 minutes to create a digital poster on a mystery topic that isn't announced until the comp kicks off. The audience watches their efforts on huge projection screens while partying in a nightclub setting.