Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that there are Explosions reported on London tube, bus -police.

More as this develops.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader reads with some sadness that James Doohan, of Star Trek fame, has died of pneumonia complicated by Alzheimers. He was 85.

Chief Engineer Montgomery Scot of the Starship Enterprise is an enduring character of TV and film. And James Doohan will be immortal for that role.

Your Maximum Leader learned a few years back that Doohan had stormed the beached of Normandy with Canadian troops on D-day. But until reading this obituary, he had no idea that the Nazis shot off one of his fingers. Wow! Shot 6 times. A wounded war vet. Perhaps we should remember his as much for that as for any character role.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader read the most recent post from the great and mighty Velociman concerning electric can openers.

Like the Velociman, your Maximum Leader can’t stand electric can openers. Now, your Maximum Leader will admit to having spent some ungodly amount approaching $18 for some piece-of-crap ergonomic über-can-opener once. He forgets who made it. But he loved it. It worked with little effort. And that can opener never had to be “fiddled with” or “adjusted” to get it to work… Well, your Maximum Leader never had to fiddle or adjust the can opener. Mrs. Villain hated it. It never worked for her. It would slip. It would fail to pierce the top of the can. It would take about 15 cranks to get it halfway around the can. She hated it. She threw it in the sink. She threw it on the floor. She cursed at it. She cursed your Maximum Leader for insisting that it “worked fine” for him. If your Maximum Leader remembers correctly, she even cut her finger with it once.

To her that $18 can opener was anathema. She wanted it cast into the outer darkness. She damned it on its coming and going. She wanted a great dark chasm in the earth to open and swallow it whole.

Then one day, the $18 can opener disappeared. Gone. Vanished without a race. Your Maximum Leader made no mention of it. And since he had no cans to open, it didn’t seem like a pressing issue. He made a note to pick up a new can opener if the $18 can opener didn’t reappear.

The next day there was a new can opener in the Villainschloss. It was an ugly piece of equipment. Oversized rubber grips. A massive half-moon handle with some plastic coating on it. Very little metal showing. And although it wieghed a lot more than the $18 can opener, it felt cheap. Somewhere on the grip it was emblazoned with the word “Farberware.” Your Maximum Leader saw the reciept for the new can opener in the trash. $5.99.

The Farberware can opener works fine. It rarely slips. It always seems to work effectively. But it doesn’t work with the ease and style that the $18 can opener did. Your Maximum Leader really liked the $18 can opener.

But it is gone. And will likely never return.

And Mrs. Villain has never complained about the new one.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is sending himself a memo. Never get sarcastic with the Crack Young Staff of The Hatemonger’s Quarterly. One wonders if Dr. Cloud has had enough, or if she will come back for more.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader just had a good chuckle. It was a chuckle in part because what he read was funny. In part his chuckle was a nervous one based in fear.

The cause was Jeff’s recent post: In which I discuss hermeneutics with a leftover steamed dumpling from last night’s dim sum meal, 4

Your Maximum Leader will let you figure it out.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader learns from the always informative Mr. Joyner that according to a new NPR poll Public Likes Democrats Less than Republicans.

Wow. And considering all those other polls your Maximum Leader reads (but to which he doesn’t link) Republicans are only slightly edging out Used Car Salesmen, Pedophile Priests, and Carnies in the popularity department. One wonders where that puts the Democrats.

Sorta scary really.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that the President is going to name his nominee to replace Sandra Day O’Connor in a Prime Time press conference tonight.

This strikes your Maximum Leader as a bad thing. He can’t put his finger on why. But he thinks it is.

On the one hand, it is doubtful that reporters would know enough about every possible nominee to have good questions ready at the press conference. So that might be a little bit of a plus. But it seems that it may not be good timing. Certainly it may deflect some of the Rove attacks, but he’ll still get hammered on that stuff too. And why dothis now? Your Maximum Leader thought he would wait until closer to August and give the Senate less time to dish up the dirt on a nominee.

Well… We’ll see how it goes.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is always amazed to read what things people find in dusty attics. But discoveries by individuals of interesting artifacts in private homes doesn’t really amaze him. Afterall, he’s sure that we all have stuff we never knew about tucked away in boxes here and there. And those boxes can go decades or generations without being opened.

But what really amazes him is when someone finds some interesting artifacts in a collection that had been donated to a college, antiquarian society, museum, or other research institution. One would think that the donation would be catalogued and inventoried at the time it was accepted. Your Maximum Leader knows that colleges, antiquarian societies, museums and research institution are generally not swimming in cash therefore they don’t always catalogue or inventory donated collections.

And because of that you sometimes get a great find. Like the one announced today by the Smithsonian. It seems that a researcher has found “lost” photos taken during the Scopes “Monkey” Trial. The official release from the Smithsonian is a 2.75 MB pdf found here.

What an amazing find. According to the release there is an action shot of Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan on the lawn in front of the courthouse arguing some point. (The trial was moved out of the courthouse onto the courthouse lawn due to the crowds.)

And for the first time in his life, your Maximum Leader now knows what John Thomas Scopes looks like. He’s read all about the trial, but never seen a photo of Scopes.

It is pretty incredible stuff.

If you Maximum Leader weren’t being Maximum Leaderly, he wouldn’t mind just volunteering to go through and inventory and catalogue various collections at the Smithsonian. He wouldn’t be an efficent worker, but he’d have lots of fun.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that there is a mini-kerfluffle concering members of the Northwestern University Ladies LaCrosse Team wearing flip-flops to their White House meeting with President Bush.

First off, your Maximum Leader is glad that college-chicka footwear is a big enough story to deflect ome attention away from Karl Rove. But frankly, to maximize the cover that this story could bring to the White House your Maximum Leader suggests that some other Senior White House Staffer start dating one of the women atheletes in question. Perhaps it should be Scott McClellan. Or perhaps they could bring Ari Fleischer back just for this mini-scandal.

Secondly, the flip-flops in question, while probably not what your Maximum Leader would allow one of the Villainettes to wear to the White House don’t appear to be that eggregious. But your Maximum Leader will defer to others who know these things better. Like the very lovely Annika, or perhaps Minion Molly.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees on the wire that General William C. Westmoreland has died.

General Westmoreland was for a time commander of US forces in Vietnam. Your Maximum Leader is conflicted, as are so many Americans, about Westmoreland. Personally, your Maximum Leader feels that Westmoreland did the best he could with the resources at his disposal and under the conditions for action set for him by LBJ and Robert McNamara (et al).

Westmoreland was, to say the least, a contraversial figure. May he now rest in peace.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader continues to be amazed at how hard the whole Rove story is being played by both sides. The Dems will not rest until Rove is hanged. And now the President has officially lowered the ethics bar to the “you had to do something illegal” level to be fired.

Of course, this issue would be a non-issue (almost) if Rove were to step aside on his own.

Perhaps there is another aspect of this. While the Rove story burns bright, other stories are on the back burner. Like potential supreme court justices, social security, the war. All that stuff. Is is possible (though improbable) that the Administration is working behind the scenes while the l’affaire Rove keeps attention focued elsewhere?

Anyway… For more thoughtful consideration and punditry on the Rove situation, so and read Skippy’s latest. It seems your Maximum Leader isn’t the only one who makes Skippy feel sexy any more…

There is only one item which your Maximum Leader would like to interject into Skippy’s point. It appears that there is a list kept by the CIA called the “NOC” list. It was mentioned by Eleanor Cliff and someone else (Mort Kondrake?) on some of the Sunday talk shows. To hear it spoken about, this “NOC” list is a master list of undercover CIA agents protected under the 1982 Intellegence Agents Protection Act that is at the heart of the legal case against Rove. To hear these pundits talk about it, Valerie Plame was not on the “NOC” list. Where this is made unclear is that the CIA referred this leak on the Justice because there is some internal CIA discussion about how certain subject matter experts (SME) may need to be covered under the law without being on the “NOC” list. Your Maximum Leader will try and find some transcripts and update this post accordingly.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has, from time to time, been known to play computer games to let his escape from the daily strains of being Maximum Leaderly. He recently bought “Rome: Total War.” Well, he bought it about a week ago, but just loaded it Saturday night and started playing.

Now your Maximum Leader is a great fan of all the Total War games. He bought Shogun: Total War and then moved on to Medieval: Total War. Until yesterday night, he would have told you that Shogun was the best game. He would have said that for many reasons. It was so ground breaking and innovative. You get macro-level strategery for your faction and you get unit command on the micro-level when you battle other factions. The animations were excellent. And those cool movies everytime you attacked something with a ninja were cool.

Medieval brought many new features and complexities. But it also added time. It was a longer game to play. It really wasn’t so much a reinvention of Shogun as much as an improvement in some areas that didn’t always need to be improved. Still an excellent game, but its added complexity diminished it somewhat when compared to Shogun.

And then there was Rome. Now the campaign mode of the game looks to be even longer than Medieval. So that might not be a plus. But there are better animations and more angles at which to view both the strategic map and the battle map. Rome has made considerable improvements in how reinforcements are made during battle. Also, the way terrain is chosen on which one fights battles is vastly improved.

Though your Maximum Leader can go on and on about how much of an improvement Rome is over the other games, all the improvements pale in comparison to ONE.

The object of the game (in Rome: Total War) is to lead one of the three great Roman families to become Emperor and conqueror of most of the world. You can choose the Julii, the Brutii, or the Scipii. Each family has members (depicted on a neat family tree) who are your generals, governors, and so on. Your family can also recruit diplomats, spies, and assassins. All these “characters” (ie: family members, diplomats, spies, and assassins) can have retinues. These retinues are sub-characters who add to or detract from certain abilities of the main characters they follow. For example, in your Maximum Leader’s game many of his diplomats have translators in their retinues. Having a translator in a diplomat’s retinue makes it more likely that the diplomat can complete a mission. Some of his family members have siege engineers, poets, priests, exotic slaves, philosophers, and playwrights in their retinues. But there is one retinue that just made your Maximum Leader laugh and laugh and laugh. It was the ONE improvement to which he just alluded.

In the game your Maximum Leader recruited/trained an assassin. This assassin was sent on a number of successful missions. He killed two Gallic diplomats and then a Gallic general. After killing the Gallic general a message indicator appeared on the screen. It seemed that the assassin had acquired a retinue. This was strange as your Maximum Leader couldn’t imagine what sort of a retinue an assassin would have. So your Maximum Leader read the message. The assassin had a cataite in his retinue.

A catamite.

Heh.

There are probably two readers of this blog who will find this as funny as does your Maximum Leader.

For the rest of you loyal readers… Sorry. Inside joke.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was over reading JohnL’s fine blog when he saw this web-thingie to get your own battle cry. So, in a never ending quest to surpass the Big Hominid’s post total here is another stupid post…

According to this machine your Maximum Leader’s battle cry is either:

Or this:

Of course, your Maximum Leader already has a battle cy. If you recall it is: “Close your eyes!” He doesn’t need anything more fancy. After all, he was born of Time and Struggle, is Protector of the Realm and Vanquisher of the Other Kingdom, and is the prophet, sage, leader, and lover of you all.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader wants to relate to you a little incident of which he heard outside a movie theatre.

(Imagine Aussie accents if you will…)
Patron 1: G’day there mate. That was a pretty good film, eh?
Patron 2: Wha? Pretty good? Crikey! That was the best bleedin’ film you’re gonna see this side of Sydney.
Patron 1: I dunno mate. It was pretty good and all. But don’t you think that it wasn’t all it could be?

Patron 2: Whattya mean? It was artsy. There was plenty of violence. And it’s got that Jessica Alba in it. She’s hot mate. Really hot.
Patron 1: Sure. The film was entertaining, but it didn’t contain any of the required elements of an Aristotelian tragedy. In that respect, it didn’t adhere to a classical form; which as we call can agree is a requirement for superlative filmmaking.
Patron 2: What are you saying? You high?
Patron 1: I’m just saying the film is good. Not great.
Patron 2: I think you’re fuckin’ effete bastard. Who the fuck do you think you are mate? Roger-fucking-Ebert? You’re certainly fat enough to be.
Patron 1: Now there’s no reason to start cursing mate…

Patron 2: Whattya mean “there’s no reason to start cursing mate?” Of course there’s a reason. You’re fuckin’ mad. Mad. Mad. Mad.
Patron 1: Stop that now. I’m not mad. You’re provoking me.
Patron 2: Provoking you? Now you’ve gone round the bend my friend. Round the fucking bend.
Patron 1: Don’t say that. I’m just trying to say.
Parton 2: I don’t really care. Shut up.
Patron 1: I’m just trying…

Patron 2: Shut up.
Patron 1: No really, I’m…
Patron 2: No. Shut the fuck up.
Patron 1: I really don’t…
Patron 2: If you don’t…
Patron 1: But I…

Patron 2: Alright! You’ve ad it.

[Patron 2 bites nose off Patron 1 and flees into the night.]

Well… That’s what is might have been like anyhow.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that there can be serious cardio-vascular reprecussions for watching porn in India.

Stop snickering! Not that type of cardio-vascular reprecussions.

It seems police made nearly 200 men who were watching a porn movie were forced to do sit-ups in public to shame them. They were also made to promise that they would never watch porn again.

First off… Who knew that porn was illegal in India? You know with a population of nearly 2 Billion people you might think that they would want to encourage more masturbation and less reproduction. But that aside…

Who knew that doing sit-ups in public was shameful? That doesn’t seem so bad to your Maximum Leader. Now surely watching your Maximum Leader do sit-ups might not be that much of a joyful experience to you, but it doesn’t seem all that shameful to him. In India is there a cultural more about exercising in public of which your Maximum Leader is unaware? Are there no gyms or fitness clubs with large windows facing the street so that passers-by can gawk at the hardbodied patrons work out?

All-in-all, this story has made your Maximum Leader wonder more about that mysterious place called India. (Or in-jah for those of you who prefer the old British colonial pronounciation.)

Carry on.