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Basically it's your typical Internet musical about a super villain who's trying to make his bones in the super villain community and get some respect, and maybe even work up the nerve to talk to the girl at the Laundromat.

So, like every other Internet serial musical.

Yeah, you know, I mean it's a tired genre but I thought I could wring a few bucks out of it before it dies.

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Teres is curled across the top of the bed, surfing the web on the laptop. I come in and lie down perpendicular, with my head touching hers. She's lying with her head on her right arm; her hand is now in front of my stomach. She tickles it, and this happens:

"I do believe I was just tickled."
"Did you get a good look at the culprit?"
"I'm still waiting for the field team to finish their work, but I'm pretty sure that it was... you!"
"No, I'm sure you were mistaken. It was a wooly worm."

I grab the offending finger and hold it (carefully) up.

"You are a wooly worm? A four-foot-eleven wooly worm?"
She pouts. "All the other wooly worms made fun of me. They wouldn't let me join their wooly worm gam--"

Now we are both giggling, trying to get our words out.

"You're remarkably woolyless, for a wooly worm."
"I thought you'd prefer it if I shaved."
"That's very thoughtful."
"Thank you."
"So you're like, what, the Godzilla of wooly worms?"
"It's a lonely existence."
"So there should be a young Japanese wooly worm that will become your friend, and then be the only one who can stop you."
"Why would I want someone to stop me?"
"Good point. If a wooly worm comes up to you and speaks Japanese, gish him."
"I don't know if I'd recognise Japanese or Chinese or Korean or... or... any other..."
"...ean," we finish together, giggling again.
"So any wooly worm that speaks anything to you other than American, gish him."
"What about an English wooly worm?"
"Better play it safe."
"Canadian?"
"You can let him go, he'll be more polite than the American ones. In fact, come to think of it, the American wooly worms are as likely to shoot you as any oth--"
"This is how Godzilla gets started!"
"Excuse me?"
"I totally get it. You never know which tiny creature is going to betray you and it gets easier and makes more sense to just start gishing all of them until you get fed up and go back into the ocean."

She crossed her arms over her chest, outrageously indignant and red-faced from holding in the giggles. I hugged her and assured her that I would protect her from all the attacking wooly worms who would dare treat her wrong. She would be free, I promised, to do whatever she wanted without fear of military reprisal.

She said, "Oh, good" and started tickling me again.

This sort of thing happens a lot.

My new project has launched! Or, rather, slid silently into the water, but at least nothing's leaking yet, except possibly this metaphor.

"Save Hiatus" is a new web comic written by me and drawn by the incredibly talented Adam Levermore-Rich of Browncoat fame and reknown. It's the story of a group of fans brought together by a shared love of a TV show. Which then goes away. They don't take it well.

There's also a forum where fans of the show can gather and reminisce over favorite episodes and memorized dialogue.

"Save Hiatus" will update on Mondays and Fridays, for now, and the first one is up a day early just because we couldn't wait. So go check it out: www.savehiatus.com

And not because of the Super Bowl.

Woke up Sunday morning to an overflowed toilet and a sewage-soaked downstairs. There followed two long days of cleaning, scrubbing, and disinfecting. Half the tile in the bathroom had to come up, the carpet has been power-cleaned twice, a disintegrating entertainment center and a soggy recliner are now waiting at the curb for garbage day, and there's still a ton of stuff to put away. I think I've washed my hands roughly 85 times in the last two days.

On the plus side, our living room hasn't been this clean since we moved in. So we have that going for us.

Just posted my description of Mutant Enemy Day, the event last Friday wherre over 400 fans joined Joss Whedon and a passle of writers and actors from "Buffy," "Angel," and "Firefly" walked the picket line in front of FOX studios for the writers' strike.

Short description: really, really fun. And somehow, picketing the studio that cancelled "Firefly" was satisfying on several levels.

Long description is here.

I'm on vacation this week, the better to make my LA trip, and I've been picking my son James up from school to save Teres the hassle of pulling into a packed parking lot, waiting 15 or 20 minutes for James and his friend Morgan to get out and find us, and then waiting another 15 or 20 minutes to work our way out of the parking lot. The engineers who designed this parking lot obviously hated children and parents, or else they weren't aware that the school would try to cram three times as many kids in as they had room for. Either way.

Teres came along today so we could grab a late lunch afterwards, and this is more or less a verbatim description of the actual discussion that followed between Teres, me, and our 15-year-old son James after I pulled up to an intersection full of cars zipping along.

Teres: If you're gonna kill us, could you make it quick? I need to pee and a near miss would be bad.

Me: Nothing lingering?

Teres: No, lingering is bad. Quick, clean death.

James: Could you do it so I look cool when we die? In case there are cameras?

Me: No, no. You die cool, everyone talks about you, but then it goes away in a semester and maybe one mention in the yearbook. No, you need to die a spectacular, personally humiliating death.

James: Humiliating?

Me: Like on fire, somehow. And pantsless.

Teres: (giggling) Pantsless?

Me: Completely. That's an image that wil burn into the minds of everyone who sees it. And everyone will see it, that's what YouTube is for.

James: Why am I pantsless?

Me: How should I know? The point is, you'll be a legend. You'll be a god, in your school. Freshmen will be told of you in hushed whispers.

Teres: With a lot of gestures.

James: People could get those memorial stickers for their back windshields. "Born 1992, Died--"

Me: Pantsless. And on fire.

Teres: Flaming Jamie.

(general laughter)

Me: You'll go down in history.

Teres: And get a drink named after you.

James: So what part of me is on fire?

Teres: I assumed the head.

Me: I was thinking fully clothed, shirt, jacket, all on fire... but pantsless.

James: In my underwear?

Teres: Oh, no, those would go right up. Poof!

Me: Perhaps your pants caught on first, and after you got them off, you panicked and ran.

Me: Maybe a movie. Like Ghost Rider. You could fight crime.

Teres: That would be just the head on fire, then.

Me: Well, whatever looks better on the logo.

James: People could hold up their lighters and imitate me, like that comedian--

Me: Richard Pryor.

James: Right.

Teres: They'd have to take the bottom of the lighter off, though...

This is not an unusual discussion for us. I feel certain that somehow James will become a stronger, mentally healthy person for our little talks, possibly by shoving all of them deep, deep inside his psyche where they can only get out if the right word triggers it. And then, the rampage. Oh, the rampage.

Which will be devastating, And pantsless.

Finally, after months of waiting, the folks behind Futurama -- one of my favorite shows -- produced their straight-to-DVD movie which will later be carved up under four separate shows for TV broadcast. A weird reversal, but it makes sense, somehow, for this show.

Watched it the other night, eager with anticipation. And... it was OK.

It reminded me a lot of the Simpsons movie, actually. Lots of good lines, it reminded me why I loved the original show, and ultimately it fell kinda short.

The pacing seemed off, and the jokes weren't as dense-packed as I'm used to. Futurama at its best was crammed full of one-liners and sight gags and odd backgrounds. This one wasn't anywhere near as good as their best episodes, but it was better than, say, current Simpsons.

The part that really bugged me was the insistence on referring or revisiting every single plot point from the show. I can see sticking in all the characters -- and they did -- but after a while the forced insertion of yet another show reference got old. Had to get them all naked. Had to have one of the Dr.'s doomsday devices. Had to bring back the Globetrotters and limbo and the Nibbler race and the frozen dog and... I understand the desire to give shoutouts to all the shows for the fans and for themselves, but after a while I started wondering if they were going to have any new ideas at all or just keep shoveling in bits from the old shows.

I'm really hoping this is out of their system now so the next Futurama movies (three more coming) won't have to bother. And I did laugh a lot, there are some great bits in there and a wonderfully twisty plot. And I loved the DVD extra of an entire episode of HypnoToad, but then I think I had to. 

Well worth getting. And it makes a great drinking game! Drink when you recognize a character, drink when you recognize a plot point from the show, and chug if you see anything new. Drink!

My son James and I ducked into Wal-Mart tonight to grab a few things, including a new game he was lusting after. (Any game he mentions is immediately followed by the phrase "that I really, really want" to the point where now we say it with him in joyous harmony)

Loaded up on dog food, cat food, some groceries, socks, and other sundries, grabbed his game of desire, and settled down to wait in the holiday rush of the entertainment area register. Also to recover from the effort of not getting nailed by the hordes of shoppers who were all apparently under the impression that wherever they wanted to steer their heavily loaded carts was the right of way. Or else we were just invisible, I didn't check. After the fifth time I hurt my shoulders pulling my cart to an abrupt halt to avoid the person rushing past me (and not one of them acknowledged my presence at any point) I decided the massed shoppers of Wal-Mart quite simply wanted to hit me with their carts so I just settled on getting in and out of there alive.

Which was why I was cheered when a pleasant looking woman excused herself and reached past us to grab a rebate or coupon or something from the register where we were waiting, then joined another woman to walk away. She was polite! The social compact still exists! My faith in humanity is renewed!

Then she stopped. And gave a disgusted grunt, and said, and I quote: "It's not in American!" She reached past us again - no "excuse me" this time -- and flipped through all the rebates. All in Spanish. I thought that was silly of Wal-Mart, and figured there was another pack somewhere. No worries.

She reacted somewhat differently, throwing the card in the air. It flipped up and came down near a large man waiting to talk to the cellphone guy. He picked it up and looked at it as the women came around to the other register to see if there was an "American" pack there (there wasn't). He responded by taking the entire pad of rebates off the rack and dropping it into the garbage can behind the registers, saying "There's what I think of that."

James and I decided that the garden register was more to our liking and left.

It is startling to see open bigotry (and rudeness) displayed like that, and it's a brusque reminder that there are idiots everywhere. It did make for an interesting conversation on the way home ("What is 'written in American,' anyway? Were the rebates supposed to be in Apache?").

It did help me understand the other shoppers, though. I really wanted to hit them with a cart.

Went to Big Rig II in Deland for some chicken and dumplings (the special). They were out, so went for the pork chops.

The best pork chops I've ever eaten. Seriously. Golden brown, tender, with a crunchy breading.

Or at least the first one was. The second was the color of a new sunrise, as I discovered after the first bite.

To their credit, the waitress reacted much the same way I did (except without the spitting) and ordered me another, which came in time for me to enjoy with my now-cold potatoes. Still, awfully good (and much crispier).

At home now, awaiting my stomach cramps..