Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has returned to the Villainschloss.

(And there was much rejoicing.)

But let your Maximum Leader say this… What the hell happened? Gone for a few days and what do the other ministers choose to do? Sit on their fat arses and eat bon-bons and drink champagne (okay, perhaps nachos and beer).

What did they post in your Maximum Leader’s absence?

Nothing.

They didn’t even succumb to the “when the cat is away…” syndrome. They just posted nothing.

One minister was in line to get himself named panjandrum. But since he couldn’t manage even one meagre post… It should be obvious why your Maximum Leader is, in fact, Maximum Leader.

There will be more over the weekend…

Carry on.

I posted this over at my blog, but decided it’d be a nice followup to the Maximum Leader’s gun control post.

_

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is taking a little break from nefarious planning to read over some of his favourite blogs.

Well, if you want yourself a great laugh at the expense of a stupid armed robber. By all means go right away to see: The Lost Nomad: Gun Control

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader must inform you that the dearth of posting you’ve experienced today will continue throughout this week. Your Maximum Leader has lots of nefarious plans coming together this week, and all these things will take time from blogging. He hopes to get some quality blogging done later tonight and tomorrow night. (Although if Sadie contacts your Maximum Leader with interview questions, those will take priority over original blogging.)

He will be away from the Villainschloss; and indeed away from civilization (read: internet) from Wednesday to Friday of this week. In fac, Wednesday to Friday your Maximum Leader will be in a place with no internet, no phones, no TV, and no room service. He is assured that where he will be going there is electricity and indoor plumbing. (Although he can live without those too if it comes down to it.)

So, catch as catch can from your Maximum Leader this week. He hopes that his loyal ministers will pick up the slack.

Carry on.

Well, MaxLeader, you should tell your daughter she did a great job on the photoshop. Not many grade school kids could do a job like that. Give her a pat on her head. And it’s so obvious that an adult didn’t help her!

Now go away, or I shall taunt you for a second time.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was reviewing the Llamabutcher site and noticed that they laid down a challenge to which he will belatedly respond.

The caption reads: “Wonkette distracts the Llama while her evil assistant prepares to surprise him and produce the famous “orgle” noise.”

Now your Maximum Leader asks you… DOES he have what it takes?

Carry on.

Golly Gee, what a shocker there, eh. Does he expect us to belief that one of the most prominent athletes of his era is blissfully ignorant of chemicals he’s putting into his body? uh huh. He said he didn’t know what he was taking while under oath, right? I wonder if Barry knows what perjury is. Here’s a picture of Barry. Ya think he’s juiced?

As if ML’s ego needed any more stroking, now he’s being interviewed? We’ll I’ll be sure to forward Sadie as many embarassing questions as I can.

A bit of research turned up a site called the Napoleonic Guide, wherein we find this little ditty about the death of Josephine’s dog, Fortune:

Barely has the electronic ink dried on our request for information on Napoleon’s dog and Mike has come up with a possible answer to the Master’s Degree question that Chuck has been [pondering].

“I wonder if the examiners really meant Josephines dog, which was a pug (if memory serves) called Fortune.

“Napoleon hated the animal (a feeling which was mutual) and was therefore quite pleased when his chef’s big dog at Malmaison killed the unfortunate beast in a fight.

“Hope this is useful.”

Well, Mike, you have certainly saved us from having to dig through the old books again and we’ll get a message off to Chuck.

Thanks for the help.

- Richard Moore.

I assume from this that there’s more than one take on what fate Fortune/Fortunato suffered.

_

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has missed two weeks worth of Friday Villainy peices. So he hopes to make up for it today. As the Llamas reminded your Maximum Leader that this week marked the 200th anniversary of Napoleon crowing himself Emperor; your Maximum Leader thought it was altogether fitting that the little Corsican Corporal be the subject of this Friday Villainy.

It is often said that you can get the measure of a man by learning about how he interacts personally with others in private situations. One suspects that a man’s interactions with animals would also shed some light on what type of man someone is.

This brings your Maximum Leader to the story of Napoleon, Josephine, and Fortunato (or sometimes just Fortune). Who was Fortunato you ask?

Ah minions… That is the story.

Around the time that a young general named Napoleon Bonaparte was wooing a young Josephine Beauharnais, the aforementioned Madame Beauharnais* had a little pet mongrel dog named Fortunato.

Every day Josephine would write a little bit in her journal about what Fortunato did that day. They went something like “Fortunato and I took a walk in the Tuilleries.” Or, “Fortunato chased the cats around the garden.” Or, “Fortunato peed are the carpet in the foyer.” Every day Fortunato would get some mention in Joesphine’s diary.

Until the Josephine’s wedding night. That would be the night of her wedding to Napoleon Bonaparte. After the night of Joesphine and Napoleon’s wedding, Fortunato is never mentioned again.

An industrious Napoleon scholar was reviewing Josephine’s diaries and noticed this unusual disappearance. No mention of why Fortunato suddenly disappeared from Josephine’s diary - and presumably her life.

Upon doing further research, the scholar discovered that Fortunato didn’t care much for Napoleon. He yipped, snapped at, and was otherwise aggressive towards the soon to be Emperor of the French.

As it turns out, after all of the wedding celebrations Napoleon went up to Josephine’s bedchamber to “consumate” the marriage. Perhaps unbeknownst to Napoleon, Fortunato was also in the bedchamber. Fortunato it seemed regularly slept with Josephine.

Now if any of you minions have a dog that sleeps in bed with you, you know that dogs don’t appreciate being cast out by some other person. Fortunato was no different than any other dog in this respect.

As the Corsican approached his wife with amour on his mind, Fortunato sensed trouble. The dog leapt up from out of the covers and bit Napoleon Bonaparte on the arse.

Bonaparte, who didn’t like the dog as much as the dog didn’t like him, was injured and enraged. The general and soon-to-be-Emperor ran out of the room and returned with a bayonet or sword from another room and ran through Fortunato. Poor, dead Fortunato was then thrown out the window and became the late-night feast for the large hounds kept for gaurding the house.

And such was the end of poor Fortunato.

Your Maximum Leader will allow you to decide what you think of Napoleon after reading this. In the course of writing this peice your Maximum Leader tried to find some resource on the web that could be linked to. He didn’t find too much. He did find an interesting time-line on this site that mentions the incident. (Although it doesn’t mention Fortunato’s death; and places the bite on Napoleon’s calf.)

Carry on.

*- Josephine was Madame Beauharnais because she had previously been married to Alexandre de Beauharnais - who was guillotined during The Terror.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is having some difficulty writing bloggy goodness today. Writers block or something. He’s started a Jennifer Love Hewitt post, a Weblog Awards post, a Friday Villainy Post, and a few others that he’s deleted. We’ll see what he can come up with for later.

In the interests of picking the low hanging fruit, your Maximum Leader will answer a loyal minion’s question. This minion, who wishes to remain annonymous, was wondering about the provenance of the three “porn” images (here, here, and here) to which your Maximum Leader linked yesterday. Your Maximum Leader is happy to share that information. Those images are photos of wall paintings from a brothel in the Roman city of Pompeii. As your Maximum Leader understands it, the various acts that the prostitutes would perform for a fee were painted on the walls of the reception hall of the brothel. Patrons could “view the menu” while waiting their turn.

In case you are headed to southern Italy and would like to see Pompeii for yourself, here is the offical site of the Superintendent of Archeology in Pompeii. (And here is an interesting virtual tour site.) But your Maximum Leader is informed by a visitor to Pompeii that the brothel is not on any tour.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, as you all know, doesn’t blog too much about his “real life.” But occasionally he reads somthing that affects him in such a way as to want to crack open the blast doors of the Villainschloss and let his minions glance in.

Today’s Hatemonger’s Quarterly made your Maximum Leader want to open the blast door.

You see loyal minions… Your Maximum Leader must live with the sensory affront that is Enya all the friggin time. A close relation of your Maximum Leader, who shall remain nameless (cough - mrs. villain - cough), likes Enya. So periodically, your Maximum Leader compelled by a desire to keep domestic tranquility intact, he has to listen to entire CDs in one sitting…

The horror… Oh the horror…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader fears he’s done it. Yes… He’s revealed too much of himself to the very Sexy Sadie and now she’s stymied. She is having to bleg for questions in her upcoming interview of your Maximum Leader.

Think of this as your moment. Have you ever had an aching desire to know some deep dark secret of your Maximum Leader’s? (Well you may have, but your Maximum Leader isn’t gonna tell you any.) Do you desire to know your Maximum Leader’s take on boxers/briefs? Does he play any musical instruments? Is he a good cook? Has he ever done anything really nice for someone else and not used it as leverage later? Does he have any interesting habits or foibles?

Now is your chance minions! Go to Sadie’s site. Send her your questions. E-mail Sadie those most random thoughts of yours. Drop her a line at: themirthfulones-at-mac-dot-com.

And while you are looking over Sadie (ahem) you might check out some classic sexiness de Sadie by reading her Fuck Yahoo post. Or her Sex & Politics Pt 1 & Pt 2 posts. Or Bad Grrls. You’ll be glad you did.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader posted earlier that some British profs chose Clement Attlee as the greatest Prime Minister of the century. (Snubbing Winston Churchill.) Now he reads that nearly half of Britons never heard of Auschwitz. What is happening over there?

Of course, upon quiet reflection your Maximum Leader isn’t sure that half of Americans have heard of Auschwitz either. (Or for that matter could name a single Prime Minister of Great Britain.)

Stupid people are easier to dominate in the MWO! Yay! There IS and upside to this story!

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader checks the Llamas out a few times a day. (You gotta keep your eye on those yippy beasts.) And he wants to draw your attention to their tribute to Napoleon on the 200th anniversary of his self-coronation as Emperor of the French.

Your Maximum Leader loves it! And allow him to say that he has reproductions of all two of the three of the portraits the Llama’s have posted. Lord Nelson hangs in your Maximum Leader’s study next to Winston Churchill. And the Duke of Wellington hangs above the stairs leading to the dark dungeon depths of the Villainschloss.

Carry on.