Villainous minions often express surprise that a group of fellows so diverse in their political views can be good personal friends. We may go at each other’s ideology hammer and tongs, but if you look beneath the surface, the Maximum Leader and his minions are remarkably similar in their core values. Our friendships have stood the test of time. The Minister of Propaganda and I have been friends for two and a half decades. The Maximum Leader and Foreign Minister and I used to be college carousing buddies. Now we are family men whose families look forward intensely to our (too infrequent) reunions.

I think Brian B. would fit in very well with this group. My political commentary may drive him to disraction, but if you compare our “four things memes,” we aren’t that far apart.

Brian here.

Smallholder here.

I note with pleasure that Brian is also a fan of “Mad Dog and Glory,” a wonderful, subtle little gem of a movie.

His list of books differs from mine, but all but the Lewis work COULD have been on my list. I particularly smiled at the Armour book - I have a well-thumbed edition that I probably read once a year. I get on a sci-fi powered infantry kick and read Armor, The Forever War, and Starship Troopers in a weekend. I’ll confess that on long weekends, I’ll even add a couple of books from the considerably lower-brow Hammer’s Slammers series. I would add a caveat about Killer Angels. I enjoy the read and have re-read it several times, but I am troubled that Shaara seems to buy into the Southern hero mythology a little too strongly. I just can’t bring myself to think charitably of fellows who waged a treasonous war to preserve slavery.

I never watched the Firefly series, being unaware of its existence, but want to know that I’ve seen Serenity. The movie script lived up to Whedon’s reputation for snappy two-level dialogue. Brian and I are both fans of the Buffy series. It might interest that Willow hit on one of the Naked Villains, who spurned her advances. I won’t call out the putz. Said putz can confess his sins against the “great story value” code of guydom if he wishes.

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