Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is tired. He is tired due to a combination of lack of sleep and the onset of some nasal stuffiness.

Why is your Maximum Leader tire due to lack of sleep? Well… Friday night he went to a formal ball and didn’t get home and to bed until way past his normal bedtime. Indeed, he was only crawling into be at 2am. Then he woke up on Saturday morning to the loving embrace of his villainous progeny. That occured at about 7 am.

Then on Saturday, your Maximum Leader and his good friends Kevin, Smallholder and Polymath got together and went out to see Bruce Campbell’s new flick “My Name is Bruce” at the E Street Cinema in DC.

The orginal plan was for Smallholder to buy tickets to the 7:45 pm showing. After the 7:45 showing the man himself, Bruce Campbell, would give a little talk and answer some questions. Being geeks, this appealed to us all.

Alas, Smallholder isn’t as technology savvy as we would like. He has trouble with Al Gore’s fancy interwebs and clicked on the 5:30 pm showing (one without Bruce Campbell). So… We saw the early showing and missed out on Bruce Campbell.

We toyed with the idea of trying to sneak around in the the cinema and insinuate ourselves into the 7:45 showing and get to see the movie twice and Bruce Campbell once. Alas… There were cinema employees crawling all over the place to assure that this very course of action could not take place. Your Maximum Leader supposes that if we’d had a little more time to plan (and slightly fewer scruples) we could have made it work out. As it turned out, we now have something to hold over the Smallholder’s head and did get to see the film. Mocking Smallholder for not being able to click the correct circle will almost be worth missing the main event.

After the film, we four trudged up to Georgetown and had sandwiches at “The Tombs” - a favorite of Kevin’s since his Hoya days.

After “The Tombs” we dropped Kevin off at his house and returned to the Villainschloss. Then we watched Tivo’ed episodes of “Chelsea Lately” and “Get Wild with Cindy Garrison.” We turned in at about 1am. Then it was up at 7am with the kiddies and breakfast. Smallholder and Polymath left in the late morning to return to their homes. Your Maximum Leader cleaned up the Villainschloss and watched football. It was during football that he realized that his nose was runny and that he was feeling worn down. Rather than doing the smart thing and going to bed early, he had to stay up and watch the Redskins/Cowboys game.

Tonight he will likely be out by 8 pm…

Review of the film will follow…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has always had a favorable view of Mitch McConnell. It was with great interest that your Maximum Leader watched for Kentucky results on Election Day. He wanted to see if McConnell would win another term in the Senate (and by winning keep his position as Minority Leader). McConnell did win. And now he appears to be the most important Republican in Washington now.

Did you see George Will’s piece on McConnell today? Will concludes:

McConnell is Kentucky’s most important politician since Henry Clay, “the Great Compromiser.” Clay’s attempts to defuse the sectional crisis rooted in slavery failed, but they bought time for Northern strength — in population and industrial muscle — to become sufficient to save the nation. McConnell, too, has the patience that politics repays and that the Republican recuperation might require.

Your Maximum Leader agrees with this sentiment. We’ll see what happens.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that FLG is out there defending Latin on a pretty regular basis. His defence of Latin reminded your Maximum Leader of a post from waaay back in March of 2006.

Sir Mix-a-lot’s magnum opus: De clunibus magnis amandis oratio

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader hasn’t been motivated to write much. To be honest, he’s been motivated to write something more thoughtful and meaty than the shit he’s been slapping up here recently.

But until that happens…

Mr Atoz over on Agent Bedhead’s site points out the most important (and underreported) election results from last Tuesday.

Bacon is a winner.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was going to write a polemic for President-Elect Obama for today. Alas, he started to write and didn’t like the tone he was going to take. So, he will rewrite and post later…

But you really ought to read Mrs P’s story in the comment section of the previous post. A taste:

I recall Squeeze being one of the mainstays of the music selections for the parties my best friend and I used to throw back in the Boston days. She had this terrific newly renovated condo in Back Bay - exposed brick walls hard wood floors and deck - very mid to late ’80’s. And you’ll especially appreciate this feature - it had been -before renovation- one of the first buildings the Boston Strangler had struck…

It just gets better from there.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader’s iPod dished this out last night…

Make of it what you will.

Carry on.

PS - Before some of his liberal friends start writing him and calling him a right-wing-nut-job predicting the end times… You should also know that the olde iPod also dished out “I’m Still Standing” by Elton John, “Finland” by Monty Python, “If I Can Dream” by Elvis, “Black Coffee in Bed” by Squeeze, and “Baby It’s Cold Outside” by Tom Jones. So your Maximum Leader really doesn’t think his iPod is predicting the end of the world…

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has voted already. In fact he voted this morning. The whole experience took him about 4 minutes. He was the 257th person to vote in his precinct. On most election days (he tends to vote at the same time most elections - the morning rush is done and lunch has not yet begun), he is normally he is between the 40th and 60th person to vote.

He voted as he has indicated he would. He did go ahead an pull the trigger for Mark Warner for Senate. If Warner turns out to be a typical Democrat (which one can argue he was not in the Governor’s mansion) in the Senate your Maximum Leader will be sadly disappointed. He will also never vote for Warner again… But he gets one try (especially since your Maximum Leader didn’t vote for him for Governor).

Your Maximum Leader also voted for a roads bond issue. Normally he is contrarian and votes against bond issues. But given the crappy economy and all the construction type people in the region needing work, he opted for a little “pump priming.”

Your Maximum Leader has also received 5 recorded calls from Senator McCain, Governor Palin, Mark Warner, and Rob Wittman (your Maximum Leader’s congressman) to get out and vote.

Your Maximum Leader was offered a drink by the kind people supporting Barack Obama in front of the polling place. And by drink he means coffee or a soft drink. Discovering that the Obama supporters only had regular Coke (not Diet) your Maximum Leader declined the offer. If they had Diet Coke your Maximum Leader would have gladly taken a coke…

So, your Maximum Leader must run an errand or two… Then he thinks it is a night of computer games and fine Scotch for him…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has very little to add right now. You all know that he’ll be casting his vote for John McCain tomorrow. So will Mrs Villain. So will a large portion of your Maximum Leader’s extended family. He hopes that McCain can pull out a win in Virginia tomorrow. He also hopes that McCain pulls out an electoral win as well. He isn’t expecting it to happen. He maintains that Obama will win the day tomorrow.

Your Maximum Leader thinks that McCain will carry Pennsylvania (narrowly). But that will be the only big surprise on the electoral map.

You know what the worst thing about this election being nearly over is?

The 2012 elections will begin on January 21, 2009.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has long been a fan of the V-man.

If you’ve not checked out his latest post (wherein he responds to those commenters who attacked him for attacking Obama) you need to read it.

Light in August October

Your Maximum Leader would quote a little bit here, but to do so would do an injustice to the scope of the V-man’s invective.

Just read it yourself.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t have much time today. It being Halloween and all. Villainette #1 is home sick (day three actually - persistant virus).

But from our friend FLG we do have a very interesting post to share with you all.

Click here to visit Rooked Again…

Your Maximum Leader will have to keep an eye on Mr Perry.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader just thought that since he’s blegging for particular musical recommendations…

Does anyone (Skippy?) have a list of Randy Newman songs that your Maximum Leader should purchase?

And to counter balance your Maximum Leader’s blegs…

He recommends to you all either of Sophie Milman’s albums. They are “Sophie Milman” and “Make Someone Happy.” They are both great.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maxmium Leader owns one John Prine album. “Jesus - The Missing Years.” He loves it. He saw John Prine once (back in 1992 - when he toured with the Cowboy Junkies).

Now your Maximum Leader requests that some knowledgeable minion(s) give him a hand…

If your Maximum Leader were to buy another Prine album, what should it be? If not a full album - what selection of songs should he buy off i-Tunes?

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has a really good Johnny Cash playlist on the olde iPod. He was listening to it yesterday night.

Your Maximum Leader has decided he really likes the last few albums that Cash made. The various albums he recorded with American Records in Nashville. (Particularly “American Recordings,” “American IV: A Man Comes Around,” and “American V: A Hundred Highways.” These albums speak to him.

Today he was listening to “Further On (Up the Road).” He probably replayed the song 3 or 4 times. It was moving. Your Maximum Leader tried to find a linkable audio file to post here. But he couldn’t find one. So here is this video that some guy made to the song.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was listening to his iPod today. It randomly dished up one of the 8369 songs residing on the hard drive that caused me to rethink its rating. You see, your Maximum Leader has a number of playlists that are based on the number of stars he’s given a particular song. Your Maximum Leader had given 4 (out of 5) stars to “Closer to Fine” by the Indigo Girls.

NB to disloyal minions who have ill on their minds: Go ahead and laugh if you like. Your Maximum Leader does like a few Indigo Girl songs. There was a period when a few girl friends of his were big into the Indigo Girls. The songs bring back particularly fond memories…

Anyhoo…

So, your Maximum Leader was listening to “Closer to Fine” and rather than enjoy it it seemed more like a bunch of new age hippie crap. He couldn’t remember why he liked the song at first. Then he remembered that whole bit about college professors struck a chord in him back in the day. He contemplated reducing the rating to 3 stars… He didn’t. But he is eyeing them suspiciously.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, like all of you he is sure, gets quite a bit of spam every day in his email. From time to time a message slips through the spam filters and winds up in his inbox. Today one such message meandered into his inbox. One “Justin Green” wrote an email with the subject line: “Lesbians!“. The whole body of the message contained the word “Lesbians!” again. The word was a link to some (surely) disreputable web site.

For some reason the simplicity of this message appealed to your Maximum Leader. If he didn’t know any better, he might have actually clicked through… If only for curiosity… Intellectual curiosity…

Carry on.