The last comic in this particular story arc is published at Space Monkeys! today, concluding our brief, but tempestuous, affair with gay feline robots who partake of clubbin' on the wot-wot.

We plan to tackle the world of furries next, so watch out tail-bearing luvahs!

Brooke is separating from her plastic surgeon husband, just when she's getting to the age where she might be thinking about taking some in-house advantage of that.

In any case, sorry Brooke -- you're too late. I'm now happily married and unavailable. I'll send you an autographed photo and you can do what you will with that.

Here is my song for you, Brooke:

Oh Brooke,
Yeah, Brooke,
You had me on a hook,
Your ta-ta-talent was all it took,
But then I got married, by the book,
Can't you see, can't you see --
It's too late to go Wild On me.

The Harry Potter book came in the mail last night, so I'll be dunking my head into that for a week or three. The other book I was in the middle of is Hank Stuever's Off Ramp, which I bought when it was first released, but which I haven't gotten to until recently.

It's good. I've read so many of these stories before it was like reliving my favorite moments spent with an old friend, which, given Hank's kindness over the years to me feels pretty apt. His Web site is down, don't know why, but there's a good article about him over at Poynter.

The reason it took me so long to get to it? Don't laugh. I was reading The Da Vinci Code. Hey, stop laughing.

And you know, for like the first 150 pages, Dan Brown had me completely fooled. I was like, "This book fucking rizzknocks!" And then his characters wouldn't stop acting wooden and the plot got more and more stupid, and the puzzles became more annoying than exciting and I was picturing Tom Hanks getting all googly-eyed with Audrey Tautou and by the last 100 pages of it I just wanted to it end, come Hell or Highpocalypse.

Which is the problem with me and bad books. It takes me forever, like months, to get through them and then I spend all that time not reading the good books I should be moving on to.

I have another stack of books, including a few from some friends that I haven't gotten to yet. But I'll be damned if someone's going to spoil the end of the Harry Potter book before I've gotten there. I hear Harry does coke for the first time and kills a co-ed with a snitch while accidentally trying to tip over a sleeping dragon. And then Hermione poses for Maxim.

Hard drive swapping! Excitement! Salivate!

Man, you haven't lived until you've read someone else's account of copying information from one hard drive to another. All the kids are doing it. They call it "Skimmin' the Savant."

No they don't. There are no cool kids. My life is a lie.

Anyhoo, the same week I tasted hard drive triumph, I also did something I still don't quite understand called, "Setting up an SQL database." We're doing it for Space Monkeys! and the ultimate goal is to make the current kicking-a-horse-in-the-balls process into something more pleasant, like, say, a day at the spa. Where they kick the horse in the balls for you while you get a sea salt scrub.

PJ and I were suddenly in the uncharted world of PHP and SQL, stuff we honestly don't from the ass of the horse whose balls have recently come under attack by hard kicks.

So I called Greg Friday night and I was all, "Greg! Wah wah php sql whine whine, what the fuck, help!"

Greg told us to call our Web host, which was good advice because next thing I know our Web host had set up a "SQL" database, which is pronounced, "SQUEEEE(l)!" and we were on our way to setting up some sort of comic automation process that we'll see the labor fruits of sometime in... oh... a year or two.

Note: no horses were actually kicked in the balls in the process of producing this entry.

(Although, looking back on that title, I guess it sort of is for children. Or producing them. In that way.)

I just got an e-mail from "Nora G. Puckett" with the following subject line:

"Has your cum ever dribbled and you wish it had shot out?"

Well, Nora, I would have to say that quite the opposite has tended to be true.

New Space Monkeys! comic, featuring homoerotic overtones. Which I guess is new for us.

Well, no. Not really. Not at all.

On mail-in rebates, hard drives and other geeky stuff.

Incidentally, I'm allowed to say something "stinks," but not that it "sucks."

This is, of course, so that I'll sound more like Jay Sherman from The Critic.