Winter is the perfect time to rest, rejuvenate, and refine those plans for world domination. So you had a small problem with ninjas. And maybe there was an unfortunate incident with disobedient piranhas and a prosthetic leg. Could have happened to anyone. The important thing is to move forward with your plans. Onward, upward, evilward. To that extent, here's a list of movies you'll be too busy plotting to watch.

Dead Tides: A late night cable classic, featuring sailboats, druglords, Rowdy Roddy Piper (yes, he of the gum/ass fame) and Tawny Kitaen, who manages not to slither on any form of transportation, at least during the 10 minutes I watched.

Lesson: First, we write a script. *Then* we get a video camera.

Hospital II: Five hours of depressed Danish people in a hospital rumored to be haunted. Apparently the main terror is a budget-slashing administrator. Or perhaps the terror comes from five hours of subtitles. Oh! There was something about an unmanned, disobedient rampaging ambulance, but it had such a minor part that after seeing a brief, tantalizing glimpse of it at the beginning, there's then 45 minutes of harumphing, scowling doctors. I gave up.

Lesson: Just because you're a hyperintelligent, bloodthirsty autonomous ambulance, doesn't mean you don't need an agent.

Blood of the Mummy? Bride of the Mummy?Bride of the Bloody Mummy: A movie so memorable that the title completely eludes me. Who knows what lurks in the hearts of late-night cable programmers. An archeologist's daughter is the reincarnation of an evil Egyptian princess, and if you watch any horror movies at all, you'll know that this is pretty much an epidemic in the explorer community. If you run into any archeologist's offspring, stake first and ask questions later. There's also an insane asylum, a severed hand, and proof that from 1971-1982 inclusive, there was a law requiring untrimmed facial hair on absolutely everyone, especially women over 55.

Lesson: Apparently, an army of severed hands may be more effective than conventional law enforcement.

Jason X: Oh Tivo is so naughty. So completely naughty. How else to explain not taping this for me? I wound up flicking past it by accident and only catching the last 45 minutes. It's Jason. He's in space. Space station, frozen virus, containment breach, machete-cakes. Although it's kind of amusing when the stoner gets his arm chopped off, and then, through the miracle of future medical technology, talks to his hand, which waves back. Note to hench-costumers: even 1000 years in the future, midriffs will be poppin' out all over. Seriously though, I think this might be my favorite entry of the franchise. Liquid nitrogen is burny.

Lesson: Remember to put machete-detectors at all entrances to the space station.

By the way, early alert: Dark Waters, this Tuesday, 8pm, SciFi channel. Bloodthirsty, bioengineered sharks and the underwater specialists who love them. This will be on the quiz.

This list was brought to you by the fact that I spent today doing absolutely nothing that could be considered "productive" in the classic sense. I read edifying books, pet fat and fuzzy rabbits, cleaned portions of the house, talked on the phone to the Deadly Meringue (still Deadly, thanks for asking) and took two naps. Yes, two. Number of secret agents assassinated: 0, number of hyperintelligent insects bred: 0, number of floating lairs (undetectable by radar or sonar) built: 0.

Although I did pull together the brainwear page, for all your fly zombie gear. So I guess the day's not a total loss.