always wind up feverishly clicking through a series of episodes whenever I come across some new webcomic. There's almost a mathematical equation to finding a good comic. How do you know you've found a good comic? I've compiled a short checklist to help fulfill this very quandry:

First, Your otherwise-steady clicking is consistently interrupted with sudden fits of laughter. Generally, the most important rule in online comic hunting.

Second, the unavoidable urge to cut-and-paste a few examples of the comic's hilarity to as many people on any contact list possible.

Third, as time progresses and your contacts begin regularly reading the comic, phraseology used in the comic becomes part of everyday communication.

Along those same lines, the comic is undoubtedly superior to others, should the use of the comic's phraseology begin surpassing so-called normal internet communication acronyms (OMFG, WTF, STFU, LOLLERSKATES, ROFLCOPTER).

This list proved to be fiercely true during the "Red Meat Discovery of 1998." Friends and I wasted around three solid hours sifting through the likes of Milkman Dan, Karen, Ted Johnson, Ted Johnson's son, and Priest (to name a few). So simple, yet so devastatingly wrought with entertainment.

More or less, it's all an excuse to link to a strip in Alien Loves Predator that I found particularly hilarious: Ma Calling. The archive system is pretty bad-ass, too -- someone finally found a good use for thumbnails.

Anyway, I finally bought Fellowship of the Ring. I had The Two Towers and Return of the King, but not Fellowship of the Ring.

And now you know as much as you did.