How to be an Evil Overlord, and NOT be Overthrown

This is old, but it's fun! From Peter's Evil Overlord List:

The Creator's Copyright Notice:
This Evil Overlord List is Copyright 1996-1997 by Peter Anspach. If you enjoy it, feel free to pass it along or post it anywhere, provided that (1) it is not altered in any way, and (2) this copyright notice is attached.

The Top 100 Things I'd Do
If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord

1. My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.
2. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.
3. My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell of my dungeon.
4. Shooting is not too good for my enemies.
5. The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.
6. I will not gloat over my enemies' predicament before killing them.
7. When I've captured my adversary and he says, "Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?" I'll say, "No." and shoot him. No, on second thought I'll shoot him then say "No."
8. After I kidnap the beautiful princess, we will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony, not a lavish spectacle in three weeks' time during which the final phase of my plan will be carried out.
9. I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large red button labelled "Danger: Do Not Push". The big red button marked "Do Not Push" will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not clearly be labelled as such.
10. I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner sanctum -- a small hotel well outside my borders will work just as well.
11. I will be secure in my superiority. Therefore, I will feel no need to prove it by leaving clues in the form of riddles or leaving my weaker enemies alive to show they pose no threat.
12. One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.
13. All slain enemies will be cremated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them, not left for dead at the bottom of the cliff. The announcement of their deaths, as well as any accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after the aforementioned disposal.
14. The hero is not entitled to a last kiss, a last cigarette, or any other form of last request.
15. I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.
16. I will never utter the sentence "But before I kill you, there's just one thing I want to know."
17. When I employ people as advisors, I will occasionally listen to their advice.
18. I will not have a son. Although his laughably under-planned attempt to usurp power would easily fail, it would provide a fatal distraction at a crucial point in time.
19. I will not have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero's rugged countenance and she'd betray her own father.
20. Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied, it's too easy to miss unexpected developments that a more attentive individual could adjust to accordingly.

... 

Read the other  80 items on his page (Peter's Evil Overlord List)  (I don't "get" them all, but enough of them for it to be funny!)

Thanks to Fr. Z's blog for the link.

Back in Mexico ... for Now

A typical store in Colosio

As I mentioned last post, I'm back in Mexico for a few weeks.  Since I'm here alone, I spend most of my time working; for brief times in the evenings I walk through Colosio, the neighbourhood my family and I first lived in when we arrived in Playa del Carmen.  The community is disorganized and dirty; it's full of half-built homes and shirtless men sitting on the sidewalk.

Right now my neighbor across the street is loudly singing passionate love songs; does this mean his girlfriend left him?  This is what it meant other times.  Who knows.  Today, in the middle of the week I can hear loud music from at least one house; while I was walking, I weaved my way through a house party that had overflowed into the street.

However, among all the dirt, chaos and noise, there are so many little things to discover; even the music and parties might be considered something good, so long as you're not trying to sleep.

Tonight I went to a bakery which has gained such a good reputation for its fresh bread that in the evenings there are perpetual line ups of people waiting to buy the bread as it comes fresh out of the oven.  Tomorrow I will write about this bakery.
 
This morning I walked past the community's church; it was dark and rainy out, and the inside was lit by a mix of candles and the electric light illuminating the Virgin of Guadalupe (for whom the church is named.)  Inside, the rain could be heard on the roof and there was a silent beauty.

There are more.  But for now, in the middle of such an unsightly neighborhood, I remember why I love Mexico.

(I need to get a memory card for the camera I have so I can add some pictures. The one I have here is recycled.)

Coffee Press Offers End to my Coffee Woes - Soon

A Coffee Press

Among all my recent coffee woes, there is some exciting news.  About 2 weeks ago, I found a coffee press in perfect condition in a thrift shop for $2!  I bought it without a second thought.  Coffee presses make amazing coffee, and they're also very easy to use and versatile. For example, you can easily use one to make good tea, and use the press to keep the leaves out of your cup (without violating the integrity of your coffee maker or creating a mess that's hard to clean up.) Also, there's not much that can go wrong with them, unless you have a habit of dropping glass things.

There are only two problems with my coffee habit.  One is that I'm in Mexico (as of Wednesday) and I now have to be content with Nescafe (which is superior Folgers beyond a doubt) for 2 and a half weeks until I get back.  The good thing is that they have regular coffee maker at work, and I bought some good Mexican coffee to use there.  I'm still trying to figure out the right measurement since I'm not used to using a drip pot anymore.

Moka Pot

The other problem is that when I get back, at least half a kilo of Folgers is waiting for me.  Folgers doesn't taste any better in a coffee press.  It also doesn't taste any better in a moka pot (those little stove-top coffee makers that make really strong coffee which many people stove-top espresso machines.)  I tried everything.

When I get back, I'll have to get a bit of good coffee just to enjoy my coffee press - just once.  Then I'll suffer through the Folgers.

Folgers Coffee, Again ...

Early on writing this blog, I wrote a complaint of how one of my favourite morning routines of all times was soured because a well-meaning friend decided to change her locally roasted, delicious Mexican coffee for Folgers; "It's American, and it's from Walmart - it must be good," was the reasoning. (See Coffee, Wonderful Coffee!)

About a week and a half ago, I did the unthinkable and bought a kilo of Folgers coffee.  It was on special for $5 at Walmart!! Even at that price, I hesitated.  However, we were have a large number of guests over (see Baptism of Our Twins), and so someone managed to convince me that it was a good idea, especially at a time of tighter budget constraints.  I now regret the decision; I could have bought a much smaller container of better quality coffee for only a bit more and still had enough.

I am now paying the price.  At the gathering we used about 1/10 of the can.  That leaves us with the rest to use up on our own.

Even my wife, who cannot tell the difference between butter and margarine, between real whipped cream and the edible oil product version or even between real artisan Mexican coffee and Nescafe has said she has trouble getting a whole cup of Folgers coffee down.  (In fact, even way back 6 years ago in Cuernavaca when that friend duped us with Folgers coffee, my wife was in pain trying to finish the cup out of politeness; this friend had made it very strong as well!)

This is a really bad sign when even my wife has trouble getting it down.  She has no taste for quality or "food elitism."

We've realized that if we make it just the right strength and drink it fresh it's doable.  However, if it sits even half an hour, the re-heated product simply won't go down.  We feed it to the plants. (The plants can't complain!)

To make things even worse, this morning I was opening up my green bin (the spacial garbage can for organic waste.)  Normally smells of decomposing fruit waste and meat scraps blend with that of week-old dog droppings.  Today I'm sure that it was the smell of Folgers coffee grounds that came wafting out.  I still can't decide if this was a good thing or a bad thing.

Tolkien's Last Letter, Bilbo Baggins' Birthday & the Hobbit's 75th Anniversary

This is an excerpt from a post on an excellent blog I read fairly regularly (my emphases in bold):

Today is Bilbo Baggins’s Birthday and yesterday was the 75th anniversary of the publication of The Hobbit.
I found an image of the edition that I first read.
I first read The Hobbit when I was in 7th grade.  I have a clear memory of sneaking some pages during a wood-shop class.   The following summer, having read everything else I could get my hands on and longing intensely for The Silmarillion, I wrote to The Professor at the urging of my grandmother (the one who had given me sets of lp records of Shakespeare plays).  The professor wrote back.   I received his letter, an aerogramme, in September 1973, some days after he had died.  In his letter he wrote that he had to be brief because people were waiting for him in the car.  He went to Bournemouth and he died that same day.  I may have the last thing he ever wrote.

Tolkien’s books were one of those pivotal forces which veered me into a life changing path.

...

Could you imagine having the last thing J.R.R Tolkien wrote in his lifetime?  Reading The Hobbit and Tolkien's books was also "one of those pivotal forces which veered me into a life changing path" for me.  I think the beauty of Tolkien's writings impact people on a much greater level then simply fictional entertainment.

But the last thing Tolkien ever wrote ... Wow!

Read the entire post at his blog, Some reflections on a life changing book.

Baptism of Our Twins

This Sunday, our baby twins, who will be 2 months old in 2 days, were baptized!  Here are some pictures:

Grandma getting the babies dressed

The blessing of the water.

The annointing with oil.

The sermon

The baptism itself

Closer view of the baptism

Welcoming of babies into the Church



 After the baptism, the priest gave my wife the blessing for mothers of newborns, known as "churching":

Here's picture of the church's beautiful high altar.  It's a beautiful little church building in the countryside:

Finally, our celebration afterwards. Fortunately, the weather was beautiful, so we enjoyed lunch outside, at our house:

and The Huffington Post is ...

(WARNING: this is somewhat vulgar, but completely true)

"the never-ending ritual of intellectual masturbation that is The Huffington Post"

I'm glad Bad Catholic said it, so I didn't have to.

Lesson from this post: Don't read Huffington Post; everything Bad Catholic says about it is true.  DO read Bad Catholic; it's worth every minute of your time!

(I was going to create a "Huffington Post" label, but I'm sure this is the first and last time I will mention that ... well, you now know what it is.)