Adam Sandler to direct The Hobbit.

HOLLYHELL, Monday — In an admirable display of synergy between hard-headed business sense and sensitivity to artistic rightness, New Line Cinemas has hired Adam Sandler to direct The Hobbit, the prequel to The Lord Of The Rings.

"Peter Jackson may have made us three billion dollars and paved our goddamn driveways with Oscars," said a spokesdroid, "but when he dared question the three nickels and a gum wrapper payment, well. We knew we just couldn't work with someone so risibly unprofessional."

Sandler is likely to be working under renowned producer Uwe Boll. "Okay, here is what I am thinking, ja? Your Bilbo Baggins will be a WOMAN in Nazi Germany. A naked woman. And the One Ring will not show up. And she gets raped by Hitler! Gandalf will be played by Keanu Reeves. I AM THE DIRECTOR! I mean programmer. PRODUCER."

Jackson has lost weight, shaved his feet and gone back to his roots to make a warmhearted New Zealand-based family film in the style of his earliest works, under the working title Zombie Cancer Bukkake Pus-Nodules, with a budget in the range of over forty New Zealand dollars.

Work at New Line continues. "We at New Line are convinced that Professor Tolkien would have agreed with us that Adam Sandler will realise her artistic vision eleventy-one percent. We've bought three years' worth of shark futures."

Sources

• Edgar T. Harris "Piss off and make more puerile and icky films about vomiting Muppet aliens, you freak". Cat Piss Wire, November 20, 2006

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Inspired by crack; Euwww Boll quote by jackichijouji, here. CC-by-nc-sa 2.0. I suppose I should get some sleep now.

Scenes of devastating beauty views from inside a packed communter train Into Hell.

• I'm trying to make Rocknerd look a little less like a ghost site. Any of you who write about music or related popular culture are heartily invited to contribute.

• A Firefox extension to download videos from YouTube. The resulting .flv files play very nicely in VLC.

• You liked the Complaints Choir of Helsinki? Now hear the Complaints Choir of Birmingham. (High-quality videos at the site.)

• Liz is currently bittorrenting this. OH NOES. ("For research," she says. INTO THINGS HUMAN BRANE WAS NOT MEANT TO KNOW!)

• Cycle path of the week.

Is there anything happening Friday night? I feel an overwhelming urge to go out. Saturday, redcountess and I are seeing Mötörhëäd again and Sunday gothgeekgirl is in town \o/ so we'll be hitting Camden.

The cold continues. The landlord's chosen gas fitter has ordered the relevant flue part and it should arrive Saturday or Monday, and he said he'll be over to fit it ASAP. The landlord has offered us the use of another of his houses, if he finds the CORGI cert for that one ... ahem. I need to stick here for work, but the girls may consider it when the CORGI cert is produced.

We have decided to work around the shower problem by visiting Leyton Leisure Lagoon tomorrow. They will have showers there ... I will be wearing my twenty-year-old Speedos, which will be most perturbing.

Work is thankfully very dull indeed. By far the most annoying thing about this week is all the still-packed boxes of Ikea that I wanted to get set up so (a) the house would be cosier (b) we could get arkady's stuff and my rekerds out of that bloody storage locker. Gah.

A glass raised to Tal and Sava last night.