Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has had a rather long day. In addition to his regular Maximum Leaderly activities he had to make an extra trip to theVillainettes’ School. He had a technician come by to check out the furnace in the Villainschloss - it wasn’t working before but is now. And of course, there was trick or treating.

After a busy day what better way to relax than to kick back and… read your favourite blogs. And one blog in particular deserves mention today. Buckethead of the Ministry of Minor Perfidy was the host for the Nineteenth Carnival of Music. Your Maximum Leader has diverse, but sometimes peculiar, musical tastes. He fears that his musical curiosity died somewhere around 1997 (right around the time that the first Villainette was born). So, fearing his grasp of popular culture and music has slipped, he finds a post like the Carnival of Music is a good thing. It broadens his horizons.

And if you don’t read the post, you may never get to learn about “Special Ed and the Short Bus.”

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that Loyal Minion Brian notes that today** is the anniversary of the Battle of Tours. Yes… Charles Martel (the first “Hammer” worth remembering in history - and one that didn’t wear parachute pants and have a “posse”) defeated the oft-victorious army of Abd er Rahman.

** - Today might not actually be the anniversary of the battle. Some sites say Oct 25. Another says Oct 10. Your Maximum Leader will check in some texts a little later. If you know an authoritative answer, please comment.

It is a battle that we all ought to remember. Hell, your Maximum Leader’s local paper remembered when he didn’t. (He rarely reads the local paper. It is a low-grade fish-wrap that garners most of what it publishes off the news wires.)

Anyhoo… For more on the Battle of Tours… Clicky here or here or here.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has been celebrating Halloween in his own charming way for a few days already. He wanted to share some Halloween thoughts with you all.

First off… Sadie. Sadie, darling. Your Maximum Leader forgot your admonition of last year and went and rented “Van Helsing.” He watched it last night. Boy did it suck. He should have heeded your sage advice.

In addition to “Van Helsing” your Maximum Leader delved into his own collection of Dracula films. Over the weekend he’s watched many of the various incarnations of Dracula and Van Helsing. He’s watched Langella/Oliver, Lee/Cushing, Oldman/Hopkins, Butler/Plummer, and - of course - Lugosi/Van Sloan.

Late on Saturday night in the midst of an alcohol induced fog (training for NaDruWriNi), your Maximum Leader got to thinking a thought he hadn’t considered since he was a 13 years old D&D playing HP Lovecraft reading geek. If you were could be either a wizard or vampire which would you be?

Well of course you’d have to be a vampire. At least if you were a hormones-raging male D&D playing geek you would choose vampire. Why? Chicks dig the nosferatu.

Yeah baby! Chicks do dig the un-dead. Wizards spend forever in their towers or castles or caves learning all about weird magic and the arcane arts. But when was the last time you ever saw Winona Rider get all turned on by Merlin or Gandalf? You have never seen it because it has never happened.

You see, to a woman, a wizard would be like their dad or grandfather. The kindly old man who knows lots of stuff, but you’d never sleep with. The vampire on the other hand is the bad boy. Yes, a vampire is like the bad boy that if a woman works with and loves enough she can convince to change. But like a real man, the vampire can’t change. He’ll always be an evil bloodsucking demon. He can only act according to his nature. But while he’s acting according to his nature, he’ll get to nail some seriously hot babes.

Then when you start considering the fringe benefits of the wizard vs. vampire debate you see other thinks that favour the vampire. Sure the wizard can move around during the day and isn’t accursed by God; but is that all it’s cracked up to be when you have to go around in those nappy old robes and carrying your staff? (And in addition to their old robes and staff one has to ask, do wizards care about grooming? They always have the wild bed-head and long beards.) On the other hand, vampires are snappy dressers. They have superhuman strength. They have perfect night vision and great reflexes. And all that comes before you mention that a vampire can dominate the mind of the weak-willed. (And really, other than Abraham Van Helsing aren’t most people pretty weak-willed.)

Yeah. Chicks are hot for the nosferatu.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is trying to relax. He’s had quite a day… Where to begin…

First off, thanks to a particularly generous friend your Maximum Leader and Mrs. Villain were without the Villainettes last night. Originally Villainette #1 was scheduled to do a sleep-over with a friend. When Mrs. Villain was dropping off Villainette #1 an offer was made to Villainette #2. The offer was, “Hey do you want to sleep-over too?” The answer was yes and thus your Maximum Leader and his lovely wife were left with just the Wee Villain.

And how did your Maximum Leader and his adoring spouse spend their nearly free time… They went grocery shopping of course. Then came hom and had some dinner (freshly purchased - already cooked - at the grocery store). After dinner the Wee Villain sacked out. It was 8:15.

Now many of you are probably thinking to yourselves, “Selves, I bet my Maximum Leader (aka: Fine Ass M Ice) got his groove on and made some sweet sweet lovin’ to Mrs. Villain.”

Well… If you were thinking that you’d be as disappointed as was your Maximum Leader. Mrs. Villain needed sleep. And sleep she got.

If you want to read about your Maximum Leader’s day, click below the fold… Otherwise here are just a few fun links for your amusement.

A link for the Big Hominid, in case he missed it’s reference by the V-man and JohnL.

Find out what crime you are most likely to commit by clicking here. (Thanks to Mo for the link.) Your Maximum Leader will let you guess which one he got…

Don’t forget to add yourself to the Loyal Minion Locator map. It is cool.

And your Maximum Leader must thank the three minions who bought stuff from the Villainous Commerce store. Two of you were women (guessing from the orders) and one of you is a man. Of course this is an assumption. The two orders for women’s stuff could have been made by men who want to give their lovely feminine companions the finest in Villainous apparel. (And vice-versa on the order of men’s stuff.) Just so you know, in case you are unfamiliar with how Cafe Press works… Your Maximum Leader doesn’t get any of your personal information when you order. He just gets a message saying he sold stuff. So whomever you are out there buying minions know your Maximum Leader loves you. (And he means that in a purely platonic way. Unless you are female, hot, morally liberal, and discreet. In which case he’d be happy to mean it in other ways… Heh.)

What does amaze him however is that his store has sat for months with no activity. Then in one night - BAM! Three orders. Many thanks to you… Remember that scientific studies have shown that weekly wearing of Naked Villainy apparel will increase testosterone production in men by 150% and increase women’s bra cup size by a full letter.

With that…

Carry on.
(more…)

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader agrees with the Velociman that this smells somewhat of meme-ness, but it seems fun nonetheless.

If you would like, add yourself to the Loyal Minion locator map.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader thinks he’s game. Game for what you ask yourself? Game to try and give the NaDruWriNi a shot. He read about NaDruWriNi over on the Ministry of Minor Perfidy.

Your Maximum Leader thinks he will try to do the whole drunk blogging on Saturday November 5th. Rules are:
1) You must tell everyone what you are drinking.

2) No post-editing is allowed. You can spell-check as you go, backspace and delete, and edit along the way, but there is to be no editing after-the-fact. First drunken drafts only.

Sounds like fun. So your Maximum Leader will give it a shot.

Did he mention they have a cool logo?

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has read with great enjoyment the comments to his Men’s Club post below. He’s enjoyed the commentary so much that he’s decided he needed to write a second post to address some of the additional topics that have been raised on this hot-button issue.

The first one to tackle is a succinct comment from Kathy of Cake Eater Land. Kathy writes:

But what about the woman’s right to control her own body? You kinda
skipped over that bit.

A ha! If your Maximum Leader may channel the Joker for a moment. “Hello Benny. It’s your Uncle Bingo. Time to pay the check.”

Here is some check paying. First off, your Maximum Leader approached the question set before the Men’s Club from a purely theoretical point of view. Perhaps he should have been explicit about this. Kathy correctly points out that if you frame the argument from the point of view of “it’s a woman’s body a she has a right to control it” then you must take a completely different tack with your argument. Indeed, Kathy’s point is reflective of how this issue is actually adjudicated in our nation at this time.

If you start with the assumption that a woman has full control of her body, and further assume (as we do in this country) that at least to a certain point a fetus is nothing more than a tissue mass growing inside the woman then it only makes sense that the woman should have the only say in whether to abort or not. This is pretty much the “settled” jurisprudence of our day. It is a perfectly logical and cogent argument to advance. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t agree with it, but he certainly understands it.

Your Maximum Leader determined to construct an argument based on how he thought about the subject. If one starts by assuming that a fertilized egg is a human life, then you have three people (mother, father, & child) and their respective rights to deal with. Your Maximum Leader, rather than deal with all the possible permutations of situations, made another unstated assumption in his previous post. He assumed that the people involved in this ethical/moral/legal dilemma were not married. Indeed, all the possible variations on this theme can boggle the mind, so for the purposes of his discussion he will continue to assume that insofar as this topic is concerned, the man and the woman are not married.

So, where are we? If you accept that there are three people in the equation then the matter can be made as complicated as one wants to make it. For the purposes of brevity and clairity, your Maximum Leader just put down the basic points to his theoretical position. All things being equal, if a woman wanted to terminate her pregnancy, and the father of the child did not the ethical calculator in your Maximum Leader’s tips towards life for the baby. This is certainly a considerable pain for the woman. There is emotional distress, physical distress, pychological distress involved in pregnancy. Even a desired pregnancy. To have external forces prolong n unwanted pregnancy would surely cause complications and problems.

But now one starts to hit the underlying issue of responsibility. Here we can bring in some of Ally’s comments. Ally wrote:

Okay, first, you cannot possibly claim that the responsibility of a child born would fall solely on the father with no aid of child support for the woman. It doesn’t work that way on the flip side - women sue for child support from men who do not want the children the woman insisted upon having.

If your Maximum Leader may indulge for just a moment in some glibness… He can claim whatever he would like on his blog. You may choose to disagree. (At least until the Mike World Order comes… Then disagreement can be quite costly to you.)

Your Maximum Leader made his argument in a quick “cutting the Gordian Knot” type of way. All things being equal, if a woman gets pregnant and determined she doesn’t want to have a baby; but the father of the baby wants to take responsibility for the baby; then he should be allowed to do so. The father should be required to assist the woman financially during the course of her pregnancy - for the good of the child that he wants. And the woman should take care of herself and the baby if for no other reason than to avoid harming or killing the child intentionally. (Which in this hypothetical case would seem to be an action that should come at some criminal cost.) But when the pregancy is concluded the two parent should go their separate ways FOREVER.

Your Maximum Leader feels this way because of his overdeveloped sense of responsibility. If a man feels strongly enough to want to keep a woman from aborting his child, he should be prepared to go it alone. The woman has already determined that she does not want to be responsible and thus is aborting the child. In your Maximum Leader’s mind this is a serious decision to take. And once entered into there should be some finality to it.

Conversely, your Maximum Leader believes (theoretically) that if a woman becomes pregnant she should notify the father. If he does not want to take responsibility for the child, but the woman does, she should be prepared to go it alone.

As your Maximum Leader has said before, this is a hypothetical argument. We all know that current family law looks nothing like what your Maximum Leader is describing. But current family jurisprudence also doesn’t promote responsibility or societal stability - in your Maximum Leader’s mind.

Ally makes a second fine point when she wrote:

Second - if you want the right to have a say on something that is occurring outside your body, marry her. Then you stand some chance of actually having a being that is allowed to reach the oxygen-breathing stage. Otherwise, we will have to make it normal practice to remove a fertilized egg and bring it to term in an artificial womb. Having a child brings life-long change to a woman’s body….if she doesn’t want that, you are going to have a hard time trying to equalize fathers’/mothers’ rights.

Whoa! Lots of good stuff here. Your Maximum Leader heartily agrees that two ought not to procreate except in the context of marriage. To do so otherwise, he believes, is irresponsible. Hence his fixation with radical responsibilty in his argument. You either are or are not going to be responsible for a child. If you are and the other parent isn’t then you ought to be prepared to do it alone. The system we have now makes people pay for irresponsibility (sort of) after the fact. Well… It actually makes men pay for their irresponsibility after the fact. If that societal crutch were removed, perhaps it would promote more thoughtful decision taking at an early stage.

Next your Maximum Leader will just say that insofar as he can see in our day there is no equality of fathers’ and mothers’ rights. Family law is quite slanted in favour (rigthly or wrongly) towards women. Only by taking a step towards radical responsibiity could some sort of equality start to emerge.

And then there is the science fiction aspect of artificial wombs. Well, it is sci fi now, but as he said before, it is going to happen… Probably sooner rather than later. Once you get an artificial womb you will start to see fewer and fewer pregnancies among (at least) married people with some money (or health insurance). This is not to say that there will be fewer children. Just if the technology is out there your Maximum Leader thinks a significant number of women (and their husbands) will choose to use it. Why wouldn’t you? Less strain on the woman. Potentially it is safer for all involved. There are lots of upsides to artificial wombs.

So… There are some comments and (hopefully) clairifications on your Maximum Leader’s earlier post.

Further discussion is welcome.

Carry on.

Prior to yesterday, I missed my last three shots with the rifle - missing two groundhogs and a dog. Since I generally hit everything I aim at (I have a nice scope - it is not that I’m sniper material), I was beginning to suspect that I had jiggered the sights.

Yesterday I caught a standing groundhog at 150 yards - dead center in the chest, blew out his backbone. So, while I was proud of the shot, it means that I was just screwing up somehow on the last three.

The dog I can understand - I was so pissed that the neighbors had let him into my pasture again that I was breathing hard andprobably let the breathing jerk up the aiming point. But I shouldn’t have missed the bloody groundhogs.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is glad to read that Harriett Miers has withdrawn her nomination to the Supreme Court.

Your Maximum Leader is glad of this turn of events and hopes the President will seriously consider another nominee. (If he’s looking for someone who isn’t a judge he might consider Ted Olson…)

Your Maximum Leader will also admit that he feels a little bit of pity for Ms. Miers. He is sure she’s a good woman, and a fine lawyer. But President Bush should never have put her in this position. It was wrong of him to nominate someone so dedicated to him in a position for which they were ill qualified (as we have come to see recently). One hopes that Ms. Miers will be able to return to Dallas and her law firm and quietly practice her trade.

Fare thee well Harriett Miers.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is joining you this Thursday to write about a hot-button topic for the Men’s Club. Indeed, he can’t remember the last time a truly serious and polarizing issue was the topic for the Men and Divas.

This week we discuss the rights of fathers. Specifically, does the biological father of an unborn child have a legal right to block an abortion? Furthermore, can a woman who has aborted a child without notification of the father be subject to “damages” should the father want to pursue a civil action?

You see now that your Maximum Leader wasn’t joking when he said this was a hot-button issue.

The very terms used in the framing of this post can inflame people. Unborn Child versus Fetus is the most glaring example of how the terms of the debate can influence the direction of the debate.

Your Maximum Leader has made no secret of his position that human life begins at the point of a fertilized egg. Furthermore he has said that he is against unnatural termination of pregnancy. (He says unnatural because there are many “normal” yet tragic circumstances under which a pregnancy may terminate - or miss-carry.)

Now, having reminded his readers of this point allow him to say that he understands the many objections to his position. In a number of cases the arguments against his position are thoughtful and valid - if you accept a few basic premises. Unfortunately, most of these premises have to focus on the viability of a child/fetus. Thanks to modern science a child/fetus that was not viable in 1972, or 1982, or 1992 or even 2002 may well be a viable life today. Viability is a moving target. It is conceivable that in your Maximum Leader’s lifetime there will be artificial wombs into which fertilized eggs may be implanted and grow to full-term. Recognizing the futility of using viability as a criterion for life your Maximum Leader uses fertilization. At which point the genetic code of a human being exists.

So any argument your Maximum Leader might put forth on this topic is, naturally, informed by his belief in when life begins.

So… To address the first issue, should a biological father have the right to prevent a woman from aborting her unborn child? In your Maximum Leader’s view a father should have the ability to prevent an abortion.

A father should have this right because, if one views the unborn child as a person with rights; the parents have equal custodial rights to the child. (In this your Maximum Leader will assume that a court hasn’t already intervened in some fashion to abrogate the rights of one or the other party.)

Now, having stated this point, your Maximum Leader will continue. If a man were to exercise this right to prevent an abortion a number of other positions naturally seem to follow from the decision. By choosing an abortion, the woman has made clear her intention to not want to be a parent to te child. The man, by exercising his right, has made clear his intention to want to be the sole parent to the child. The trade-off in this situation would appear to be that the woman would have the baby, but then would have no further obligations to the child. All responsibility for the child would fall upon the father. Furthermore this situation should never be allowed to change. The woman should not be allowed to change her mind years later and sue for joint custody. Nor should the man be allowed to sue for support down the road.

Having a child should be a considered decision entered into jointly by a man and a woman who want to be parents. Unfortunately this is not the case in modern society. One would hope that the process leading to parenting would be 1)find a spouse; 2) establish a stabile home; 3) have children. The recent studies by the Brookings Institution showed that among poor women the process is essentially reversed with children coming first, then the spouse, then the stabile home. Some women, no doubt, realize upon getting pregnant that they aren’t ready to be a parent. This realization leads to abortions in many cases. But the tragedy is that birth control is widely available and could prevent the situation from ever arising.

But your Maximum Leader digresses…

So your Maximum Leader does believe that a father should be able to exercise paternal rights to intervene to save the life of his unborn child?

What happens if he’s not told that he was, before the abortion, going to be a father? What if a man hears that a former fling/girlfriend/wife had an abortion - and he figures the child could be his? This is a very tricky question.

Your Maximum Leader will say that, if there was a way that paternity could be established between a man and the unborn child; then some form of damages might be awarded to the man should he take the matter to a civil court. But that is a big if… How exactly would one do that? Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure.

Now, your Maximum Leader will admit that through sheer laziness he is not touching on many issues that could and probably should be mentioned at least in passing in this post. Well… Sheer laziness is not precisely true. This has been a challenging week at the Villainschloss. He hopes that next week will allow more time to create bloggy goodness.

For other views on this topic check out the Men: Phin, Stiggy, That One Guy and Jamesy.

For the ladies check out: Kathy, Silk, Phoenix, and Sadie.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that the Chicago White Sox have just won their first World Series since 1917.

Congratulations. The Chi Sox beat a formidable Houston team.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has just completed a brief note that he will mail tomorrow to the Acidman. Your Maximum Leader hopes that he will find the help he is looking for and that the help will take. So to speak…

In the meanwhile, he’s been reading Gut Grumbles every day - as is his wont.

And he just has to point out this story from Queenie. She says its from her archives, but your Maximum Leader doesn’t remember it. Frankly he doesn’t remember why Queenie isn’t blogrolled… A problem that will be soon remedied.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s Grand Jury deliberated and left for the day without making any indictments. The Grand Jury is only empaneled for another 3 days (although they may be extended). Will all of political Washington have to wait another day, or two, or even THREE before we know if Rove and/or Libby will be indicted for their roles in the Plame affair? How much more buildup by the media can we take?

The world wonders.

Carry on.

Julius Caesar You scored 51 Wisdom, 73 Tactics, 49 Guts, and 42 Ruthlessness!

Roman military and political leader. He was instrumental in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. His conquest of Gallia Comata extended the Roman world all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, introducing Roman influence into what has become modern France, an accomplishment of which direct consequences are visible to this day. In 55 BC Caesar launched the first Roman invasion of Britain. Caesar fought and won a civil war which left him undisputed master of the Roman world, and began extensive reforms of Roman society and government. He was proclaimed dictator for life, and heavily centralized the already faltering government of the weak Republic. Caesar’s friend Marcus Brutus conspired with others to assassinate Caesar in hopes of saving the Republic. The dramatic assassination on the Ides of March was the catalyst for a second set of civil wars, which marked the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire under Caesar’s grand-nephew and adopted son Octavian, later known as Caesar Augustus. Caesar’s military campaigns are known in detail from his own written Commentaries (Commentarii), and many details of his life are recorded by later historians such as Suetonius, Plutarch, and Cassius Dio.

Credo.

I feel that I must respond to the scurrilous libel being slung by the Maximum Leader.

I am sure that loyal minions of Naked Villainy have come to see how very proper and cultured their beloved Smallholder is.

And they knew instinctively that the phrase “Would you like to test fly the button fly?” would never cross these proper and cultured lips.

The Maximum Leader must be maliciously conflating me with one of his drunken carousing college buddies.

And in that drunken carousing buddy’s defense, it wasn’t his fault.

Said drunken carousing buddy was verily provoked by his roommate and his roommate’s girlfriend who demanded that he try to find, um, company after midnight.

Said drunken carousing buddy replied testily, “What am I supposed to say? ‘Hey baby, would you like to test fly the button fly?”

This sent the roommate and the roommate’s girlfriend into fits of hysterical laughter. They then looked up and dialed the number of a girl with whom the drunken carousing buddy occasionally danced.

Drunken carousing buddy, succumbing to the iniquitous double-dog dare, took the phone and uttered perhaps the worst pick-up line in history, assuming the girl would laugh and tell him to go take a long walk off a short pier.

Imagine the drunken carousing buddy’s shock when the girl replied that she would be right over.

Said drunken buddy, thinking the night’s festivities were all in fun, was mightily chagrined when dancing girl began sending him love poetry. He felt like a heel.

So you see, it wasn’t really the drunken carousing buddy’s fault.

Plus, he felt bad.

Perhaps unfairly.

I mean, really.

Was he supposed to be rude?

Hang up the phone?

Turn the girl away when she knocked on the door?

And, seriously, this drinking buddy was only nineteen. He hadn’t yet fully developed his moral compass.

Nevertheless, I am shocked - yes, shocked! - to see that the Maximum Leader has tried to pin this sordid episode on his Minister of Agriculture.

But I am sure that my proper and cultured reputation will result in this slur boomeranging back on Mike. Our loyal minions are surely asking themselves, “seles, why are we the loyal minions of a despot who once associated with depraved, drunken carousers? A leader who tries to smear the reputation of a good and decent man?”

Shame on you, Mike.