Reports indicate that Tom Waits is set to appear on the next season of The Simpsons. Waits will portray a “prepper,” a group that is convince Armageddon or some other disaster is right around the corner and have prepared accordingly. Producer and long time Simpsons staffer Al Jeans is quoted as saying “We did a lot of research into the ‘prepper’ phenomenon, where people are convinced that some horrible catastrophe – like an electromagnetic pulse – is going to occur, and that people will have to survive without the grid…” As he is wont to do, Homer will fall in with this crowd with Waits’s character as his mentor. Unfortunately he will not sing these lessons so we’ll have to get by with the distinctive Waits speaking voice alone.