May 2006 is National 'run over a hulking albino monk' month. Now a major motion picture ...

Prepare yourself for the tsunami of runny shite about to crest and break across the anglosphere. Ya can run but ya can't hide. It probably won't kill you but it'll get in your hair, eyes, clothes, ears, nostrils, mouth, bed, shoes, socks, underpants, and brain. People you've known for years and would trust with your life will succumb, and you won't be able to tell who's clean and who's been tainted.

Yes, like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I recommend you begin stockpiling those white SARS facemasks now - it's doubtful they'll be of much help but this is not a time to be taking chances.

Just two hours ago in Northland "Safeway" (that name is so not appropriate) I uncovered evidence that the food is contaminated. The germs are airborne you know. Direct contact is not necessary.

Five reasons The Da Vinci Code is a bucket of arse:

1. "Pretentious and illiterate verbal sludge"

A.D. Hope thought Patrick White was a hopeless case; luckily for Hope he passed away before Dan Brown arrived to besmirch everybody's eyeballs with "writing" like this:

“Do you approve?” Fache asked, nodding upwards with his broad chin. Langdon sighed, too tired to play games. “Yes, your pyramid is magnificent.” Fache grunted. “A scar on the face of Paris.”

Strike one. Langdon sensed his host was a hard man to please. He wondered if Fache had any idea that the pyramid, at President Mitterand's explicit demand, had been constructed of exactly 666 panes of glass - a bizarre request that had always been a hot topic among conspiracy buffs who claimed 666 was the number of Satan.

* * *

Sophie sensed a rising air of academic anticipation now in both of her male companions.

* * *

The Tarot indicator suit for divine femininity is pentacles, Langdon thought, realising that if Sauniere had been stacking his granddaughter's deck for fun, pentacles was an apropos inside joke.

* * *

Silas was stunned with the devilish simplicity. The brotherhood stopped at nothing to mock the righteous!

2. A farrago of sexist claptrap thinly disguised as religious mumbo-jumbo

The big deal in the DVC is that Jesus is supposed to have had sex with Mary Magdalene, and then they had a little baby! And not only that, but The Holy Grail, which everyone is always questing after, is not in fact a cup that Jesus and disciples drank wine out of, but Mary Magdalen's womb!

According to the book the Catholic Church did a cover-up and smeared Mary M by making her out to be a prostitute rather than acknowledging her as the vessel bearing Jesus's holy sprog. For my money that is a good deal more reactionary and misogynist than the actual Bible, where being a prostitute doesn't disqualify Mary M from being one of Jesus' best and closest friends (note: friend, not love interest.) Likewise the book's mention of the Sacred Feminine basically boils down to the idea of the woman as incubator.

All this is served up for consumption with some pretty sickening mealy-mouthings about the mystical awesomeness of sex:

“Professor Langdon?” A male student at the back raised his hand, sounding hopeful. “Are you saying that instead of going to chapel, we should have more sex?”

Langdon chuckled, not about to take the bait. From what he'd heard about Harvard parties, these kids were having more than enough sex. “Gentlemen,” he said, knowing he was on tender ground, “might I offer a suggestion for all of you. Without being so bold as to condone premarital sex, and without being so naive as to think you're all chaste angels, I will give you this bit of advice about your sex lives.”

All the men in the audience leaned forward, listening intently.

The next time you find yourself with a woman, look in your heart and see if you cannot approach sex as a mystical, spiritual act. Challenge yourself to find that spark of divinity that man can only achieve through union with the sacred feminine.”

The women smiled knowingly, nodding.

The men exchanged dubious giggles and off-colour jokes.

Langdon sighed. College men were still boys.

(I had to wash after typing that out. Commentary seems superflous.)

3. Stupid about pictures

Dude ... that picture of the Last Supper where disciple John is supposed to look like a woman because he has long blonde hair? I have shortish dark brown hair, I suppose that makes me a fella now. Has Dan Brown even heard of Peter Frampton?

4. Ecological desertification in the bookshops

I have made a controlled double blind (blind with hatred) study of this. The average Australian bookshop has on hand two or three copies each of a few hundred novels, and between 50 and 300 copies of the DVC, plus tall piles of a dozen or so associated "Cracking the DVC" type publications.

The DVC deprives hundreds of other books of space and resources. It kills and murders other books before they have a chance to grow. And because books beget other books, the rampant unchecked spreading of this worthless parasite means that book diversity in the future is already seriously compromised.

It should be stamped out. I wouldn't even care what books replaced it, as long as there were many of them. Can you picture how depressingly uniformly yellowy-brownish the op-shop book shelves of tomorrow are going to look?

5. It's crap and will rot your brain!

The DVC represents, to my mind, definitive proof that all arguments in favour of books-at-all-costs are dangerous and sophistical. To say, when your loved one picks up the DVC, "well at least little Roger is reading" is to commit a very dreadful mistake. Roger would be far, far better off watching Big Brother, or even appearing in it.

To adapt a “funny” about the novels of Jane Austen which Mark Twain was overly fond of trotting out whenever he could: The Da Vinci Code? Why I go so far as to say that any library is a good library that does not contain a copy of The Da Vinci Code. Even if it contains no other book.