Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has a purient side he admits. One of his favorite guilty pleasures is What Would Tyler Durden Do? A recent update over at WWTDD contained the funniest bit he’s read all day. For those of you who will not click through to read this funny post…

I dated a girl once and it took three weeks to get her into bed, and when I got down there it turns out she’s pierced. So I had to jump through hoops for almost a month but at one point she went to a strip mall and spread her legs for some ex-con with a spike through his nose so he could stab her in the clitoris. Fantastic.

That made me laugh and laugh and laugh.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader presents for your link reading pleasure some items he found over on the Art of Manliness site.

Theodore Roosevelt motivation posters.

Winston Churchill motivational posters.

Hunter S. Thompson motivational posters.

And finally… Ernest Hemmingway motivational posters.

Then after you feel all up and motivated… You can click here to see some de-motivational posters.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader wishes the US Constitution a happy birthday! If you are an franchise-holding American and haven’t read the Constitution… Well… You are a huge fucking idiot. It is only the greatest framework for self-governance ever created from the mind of men. We argue about it. We mess with it in ways we shouldn’t. We disregard it too often and at our own peril. We also revere it in a way that most non-Americans will never understand.

Your Maximum Leader is hoping for at least another 222 years for the Constitution.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader always like to read Robert Stacy McCain’s stuff. He particularly liked today’s post about teen pregnancy, religion, and Margaret Tudor. It takes real talent to weave these items together. Bejeweled floppy cap is doffed in RSM’s direction…

That said… Your Maximum Leader, as longtime readers know, is a big fan of Richard III and not a big fan of Henry VII (or Henry VIII, or most of the Tudors for that matter - okay he is generally fine with Elizabeth I). Just because your Maximum Leader isn’t a fan on Henry VII doesn’t mean that he isn’t man enough to recognize Margaret Tudor’s positive influence on her son.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader’s friend FLG told him of a humorous exchange between FLG and a co-worker. Your Maximum Leader asked if he could take a page out of FLG’s own blogging handbook and recount the exchange here… FLG gave his blessing… Here tis:

A Conversation

One of FLG’s co-workers, who is of Indian Decent (CoID), walks up to FLG.

CoID: Do you have a dick?

FLG stops what he is doing and turns around.

FLG: Pardon me.

CoID: Do you have a dick?

FLG: Uh, yes…why?

CoID: How big is it?

FLG: Massive.

CoID: Really? Mine’s rather tiny. How do you clean it?

FLG: With soap.

CoID: Any particular kind?

FLG: Stop for a second. What are you getting at?

CoID: My dick is warped and dirty and I’m trying to fix it.

FLG: Warped? And dirty? I’m afraid of the answer, but please explain.

CoID: It’s warped where the Sun hits it and dirty in the corners.

FLG: Where the Sun hits it?

CoID: Yes. The house blocks some of the sunlight, but where it doesn’t the boards are warped.

FLG: Oh….the boards on your deck!

Okay… Your Maximum Leader doesn’t care who you are… That there will make you smile…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is still funkified. In a bad way. He’s contemplating blaming Kanye West. But honestly other than what he’s read on the interwebs recently he’s doesn’t know a damn thing about Kanye West. He appears to be dating some bald woman - who other than her baldness and rash of tattoos would be pretty attractive. He seems to drink a lot too. Oh yeah. He’s a jackass too.

But your Maximum Leader’s funky mood is not likely related at all to Kanye…

Since your Maximum Leader is all out of sorts he hasn’t felt like blogging… But if he were to blog about politics and current events recently he’s probably write something similar to the two most recent posts from everyone’s favorite blogger, Skippy.

In the first post to which your Maximum Leader will direct you, Skippy discusses the stupidity of the Obama Administration’s position on trade with China. Your Maximum Leader is a free-trader and someone who believes in living up to treaty obligations. So many of Skippy’s critiques of the Bush (and now perhaps Obama) Administration’s positions on trade strike a chord with him. The prospect of opening a trade war in the middle of a deep recession with our major creditor nation seems like… How does one say it? A bad move? It just keeps getting worse and worse for the ole US of A doesn’t it? Sometimes the best course is to keeps your wits and steer a straight and steady course. Health care reform/takeovers and trade wars in the middle of a downturn when confidence is already shot isn’t a good move.

The second post to which your Maximum Leader will direct you is the whole Conservative vs. Republican divide. As time has gone by your Maximum Leader has realized that he is more and more a “conservative” and less and less a “Republican.” He’d consider voting for Libertarians, but they are a little wacky for his tastes. The only two items with which your Maximum Leader will have to respectfully disagree with Skippy in this post are these. While it is absolutely true that Reagan spent piles of money without doing much to try and balance a budget, the overriding plan was to defeat the Soviet Union. Once that was done budget balancing would become a higher priority. The second minor quibble is that there are plenty of conservatives in the Republican party, but they just don’t seem to do much in terms of directing the debate.

Your Maximum Leader hopes his funky mood will disappear soon.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, while geeky, is not a geek. Sad but true.

When he reads stories of real geeks having cool ideas and carrying them through he feels stupid. Or at least unimaginative and uninspired. (Damn… He must still be funkified…)

So when your Maximum Leader read of how two MIT students spent $150 and got cool photos on a digital camera from space he was feeling particularly uninspired (himself) but proud of their accomplishment. The cool bits:

The two students (from MIT, of course) put together a low-budget rig to fly a camera high enough to photograph the curvature of the Earth. Instead of rockets, boosters and expensive control systems, they filled a weather balloon with helium and hung a styrofoam beer cooler underneath to carry a cheap Canon A470 compact camera. Instant hand warmers kept things from freezing up and made sure the batteries stayed warm enough to work.

Of course, all this would be pointless if the guys couldn’t find the rig when it landed, so they dropped a prepaid GPS-equipped cellphone inside the box for tracking. Total cost, including duct tape? $148.

…

The balloon and camera made it up high enough to see the black sky curling around our blue planet. The Canon was hacked with the CHDK (Canon Hacker’s Development Kit) open-source firmware, which adds many features to Canon’s cameras. The intervalometer (interval timer) was set to shoot a picture every five seconds, and the 8GB memory card was enough to hold pictures for the five-hour duration of the flight.

The picture you see above [ed: not reproduced here] was shot from around 93,000 feet, just shy of 18 miles high. To give you an idea of how high that is, when the balloon burst, the beer-cooler took forty minutes to come back to Earth.

Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh… Your Maximum Leader doffs his bejeweled floppy cap in your direction. He will toast your ingenuity and know-how tonight. Color him impressed.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has nuthin’. Nada. Rien. Zippy.

He was pleased over the weekend at a Packers win. But on the whole, football wasn’t doing it for him.

He is feeling generally funkified. And that isn’t funky in a good way.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is hardly able to contain his laughter…

HELSINKI—Members of the Group of Eight, the forum for the world’s most powerful industrialized nations, held a special session Tuesday to discuss how best to prod the European microstates of Lichtenstein and Andorra into fighting.

The G8’s proposal, which seeks to pit the small, landlocked principalities against each other in military combat, was reportedly drafted after the leaders of the eight nations had grown bored with their recent negotiations over international energy tariffs.

“After much careful deliberation, we have come to the consensus that the nations of Liechtenstein and Andorra need to just man up and fight, ” said U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown during an afternoon recess. “All of the bigger countries want them to, and everyone agrees at this point that it would be quite lame if they didn’t. Therefore, I would advise Liechtenstein and Andorra to grow some balls already and get on with it.”

“Seriously,” Brown added. “Fight.”

According to French president Nicolas Sarkozy, the group has scheduled the Liechtenstein-Andorra military conflict for tomorrow afternoon at 4 p.m. sharp, provided that neither country “pusses out.” Sarkozy also assured reporters that, if Liechtenstein and Andorra were to engage each other in battle, they would almost certainly find themselves in improved diplomatic relations with members of the G8 for years to come

Via The Onion.

Your Maximum Leader is putting money on the Andorrans. Those wimps in Liechtenstein are soft.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader remembers the morning well. Trying to find a TV in the office that we could hook into the cable jack in the conference room. Staring in disbelief as the second plane hit the second tower. Being on the phone with a friend who was working in Crystal City, VA with a view of the Pentagon from his window when he declared “Fuck, the Pentagon just exploded. I gotta go.” I remember watching people leave work to go home to aid loved ones in the Navy get to their ships which then steamed to sea as rapidly as they could. I remember the ships passing through the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay to open seas faster than anything I’d ever seen before.

I remain thankful that my own relatives working at the Pentagon that day were unhurt. I am thankful and grateful that my friends and relatives serving overseas are doing the great work they are. I appreciate all those who watch and stand guard.

God Bless America.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader decided to go silly for day four of his listmania trip. He sees that his readers want a list with women… So here it is… A revised edition of the list that started it all.

THE TOP TEN MOST DESIRABLE WOMEN IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD - EVAH!
(In no particular order and excluding the lovely Mrs Villain - who is always my number one.)

1. Helen of Troy
2. Sophia Loren
3. Jennifer Love Hewitt
4. Olivia de Havilland
5. Vivian Leigh
6. Salma Hayek
7. Ornella Muti
8. Summer Glau
9. Irene Langhorne
10. Grace Kelly

Honorable mentions: Carole Bouquet, Raquel Welch, Katharine Hepburn, Diahann Carroll, Hedy Lamarr, Veronica Lake, Catherine Deneuve, Monica Bellucci, Eva Green, Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, Margaret Thatcher, Deborah Kerr, Marilyn Monroe, Queen Rania of Jordan, and Christie Brinkley.

There you go. Have at it…

Carry on.

UPDATE FROM YOUR MAXIMUM LEADER: Damn… So. Many. Names. So. Little. Memory.

Even more for the list: Ingrid Bergman, Parker Posey, Ava Gardner, Evelyn Nesbit, Mary-Louise Parker, Mara Carfagna and probably many others… (Others including Grace Thorsen…)

Oh yes… Your Maximum Leader has no real methodology for assessing desireability in private life across so much time and distance. Indeed he’ll concede that many of those on this list are probably not the type of person you’d want to spend lots of time with… He’s talking about base desire…

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has given some thought today to Rep. Joe Wilson’s little outburst last night during the President’s speech.

The US Congress (House and Senate both) have for quite a long time been caught up on decorum and politeness. Indeed, in most legislative bodies around the world you are just as likely to be punched in the mouth as you are to be called “My honorable friend from (insert district/state here)”. Politics is a rough and tumble business. And emotions sometimes run hot. When they do, well… Shit happens… In a legislative body the shit that happens is often manifested by someone saying something not-so-nice or a little rude. Frankly, your Maximum Leader wishes the House of Representatives were a little more like the British Parliament when it came to debates and “feedback” from the backbenches. Last night the backbencher who couldn’t hold his tongue was Joe Wilson.

Was Joe Wilson being rude? Well… He was given the way people today expect our legislators to behave when being addressed by the president. But then again… Remember that George Washington decided never to give a speech before Congress after the way he was treated after his first State of the Union address.

Perhaps our legislators have lost their edge.

Perhaps Joe Wilson will spark a return to more rough and tumble debate…

If we see more enlivened debate in the House, your Maximum Leader might watch C-Span more often.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader fears that if Sir Basil doesn’t start blogging again soon he’ll have to replace the link on the sidebar with something fun…

Like the Art of Manliness.

Indeed… The Art of Manliness might wind up on the sidebar regardless.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader promised you a variation on an old familiar list. Well here tis.

Your Maximum Leader knows that every “President’s Day” (known to civilized Americans as “Washington’s Birthday”) that lists abound enumerating the “Greatest Presidents of the United States.” Well… Your Maximum Leader has decided to enumerate the worst Presidents of the United States. Here you are:

THE 10 WORST PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

(This is an ordered list with #1 being the worst President in the history of our Republic.)

10. George W. Bush
9. Franklin Pierce
8. Zachary Taylor
7. Millard Filmore
6. Jimmy Carter
5. James Buchanan
4. Woodrow Wilson
3. Richard Nixon
2. Ulysses Grant
1. Warren Harding

Honestly, this was a very hard list to put together. One has so many choices it is sometimes hard to split hairs. (And although Richard Nixon is on this list, you very well could put him on a list of the greatest presidents as well. His presidency is schizophrenic that way. So many great accomplishments and so many terrible mistakes.) Your Maximum Leader, in all honesty, feels that although he has just left office we can judge George W. Bush’s presidency negatively. Your Maximum Leader is basing his rating there on the basis of fiscal policy and mishandling early on of Iraq. Your Maximum Leader voted for Bush (twice) and can’t say he regets either of those votes. But in the end, Bush just messed things up.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that his list today has elicited some feedback from our addle-brained friend FLG. FLG writes, “FLG fears that the Maximum Leader has taken to blogging and smoking crack while drunk in the midst of an acid flashback after being hit on the head with a sledgehammer repeatedly because he’s losing his senses.” FLG then reprinted your Maximum Leader’s list of the 10 greatest rulers in the history of the world and states:

FLG can countenance Augustus at number 2, but this is the correct order:

1. Alexander the Great. King of Macedonia. Son of Ammon. Conquer of the Known World. Biggest Badass In History.
2. Augustus Caesar. First emperor of the Roman Empire.

Well… What can your Maximum Leader say save that FLG is obviously delusional and in need of serious professional help. (NB to Mrs FLG: Your Maximum Leader can recommend both caring and helpful professionals that can care for your husband. They can also administer ECT in doses that will bring FLG around.) It is plainly evident that Augustus Ceasar is a greater ruler, by the criteria used, than Alexander. Unfortunately for FLG length of rule, issues of taxation, building roads and public buildings do count towards being the greatest ruler in the history of the world.

Of course Alexander the Great would be the greatest ruler in the history of the world - if one looked only at the period from the dawn of civilization until about 30 BC. (That Augustus visited the tomb of Alexander doesn’t amount to much. Alexander’s body was a tourist attraction and many lesser people visited. Your Maximum Leader seems to remember that it was another royal tourist who actually wound up destroying the body of Alexander. Wasn’t it the Byzantine Empress Irene who demanded that a small candle be put into the sarcophagus of the King so she could see the body better and it caught fire and burned?)

After careful review of the comments left on FLG’s post your Maximum Leader would agree to two revisions to his list. Your Maximum Leader would gladly take Ancient’s recommendation and remove Louis XIV in favor of Henry II of England. As readers here would note, your Maximum Leader has Henry II on a permanent place of honor in the “Pantheon of Greatness” on the top right of this blog. Your Maximum Leader was debating Henry vs Louis but decided to put Louis on the list because he thought to put Henry on the list might be due to a native bias your Maximum Leader has towards Henry. Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure about Ancient’s other suggestion about Alfred the Great. Certainly Alfred’s personal contributions to the English language can’t be underestimated as a cultural contribution. Also he was a great unifier/conqueror. In comparison to Henry, Alfred’s kingdom was smallish. (Then again, Henry inherited or married into much of his kingdom.) Your Maximum Leader will have to say that Alfred doesn’t likely make the cut.

Then there are the suggestions of Arethusa and Alpheus. The first suggestion is replacing Alexander the Great with Philip II of Macedonia. Without Philip laying the ground-work Alexander might not have amounted to anything. Your Maximum Leader sees the wisdom of this recommendation. But in the end, it was Alexander who did the conquering and not Philip. That puts Alexander on the list and would likely keep Philip off the list.

The really great suggestion that Arethusa puts forward is Sulieman the Magnifcent. Sulieman didn’t make the list probably because of the pro-Byzantine and anti-Ottoman tendencies of your Maxmium Leader. Indeed, Heraclius makes the list even though your Maximum Leader keeps thinking to himself that if Heraclius had spent a little more time subduing the arabian penninsula… Well… History could have been much changed…

In light of what he’s read here is a revised list:

THE TOP 10 GREATEST RULERS IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD (revised)

1. Augustus Caesar. First Emperor of Rome. Creator of an empire that lasted in the west for 450 years (and in the east for 1453 years). Builder of roads, aqueducts, temples, baths, forums, and great cities. He ruled his empire for 44 years.

The runners up in no particular order:

Qin Shihuang. First emperor of China.
Tokugawa Ieyasu. Shogun of Japan.
Peter I of Russia. Tsar of Russia.
Rameses II. Pharaoh of Egypt.
Charlemagne. Holy Roman Emperor and King of the Franks.
Alexander the Great. King of Macedona.
Kublai Khan. Emperor of China.
Henry II (Plantagenet). King of England.
Sulieman the Magnifcent. Emperor of the Ottoman Empire.

There you have it.

Carry on.