Bad News

>Sigh<

So as if I didn't have enough going on lately, my bike is up on blocks in the backyard again, this time with a flat tire. I came out of work the other day and found it completely flat, which means that I haven't been able to get my daily exercise in a while and I'm feeling lazy. Hopefully I'll be able to replace the tire tonight and ride to work in the morning, but in all honesty, with the temperature approaching 100 degrees in the afternoon, I'm not sure that's still a good idea.

In another bit of unfortunate news, I think I may have to start posting less often on here. I've been so busy at home and work lately that it makes it hard to find the time to get on here and update, and when I do get some time in the evenings, I'm so exhausted that I'm more likely to use it to watch DVDs of Angel or play around on Second Life or Rock Band. Not to mention that I'll be starting grad school in a few months and probably have significantly less time for the foreseeable future.

So for now, I'm toning down updates from "Every Weekday" to "Sporadic" I'll probably only be updating when stuff happens that's worthy of an update. I apologize for the inconvenience, but honestly, there's only so much evil to go around and I'm committed to providing quality over quantity.

Catching Up

First of all, I must apologize. It seems that somehow, someone has managed to hack there way onto this blog and replace my last two posts with babbling gibberish from some weak-minded fool posing as your mighty overlord, as if my loyal readers wouldn't notice the difference.

Suffice to say, the perpetrator has been caught, and is currently undergoing heinous tortures the likes of which are unfathomable to most minds. Let that be a lesson to all of you out there never to p*** off someone who collects vintage dentist's equipment.

I would have noticed sooner, but the last couple of days have been incredibly hectic here at the dungeon. It seems that our new boss has decided to make many well-deserved changes to the way things happen around here, but that means that someone has to be the one to make them happen. Yesterday, for example, was spent frantically shelving microfiche the had been lying around for weeks now waiting to be reshelved by one of my colleagues who decided that it would be easier to simply... well... not do anything. I'm not sure what the powers that be decided to do to her, but I do know that the screaming finally stopped sometime after I got to work this morning.

Anyways, with so much going on in the dungeon and such a rash of people to torture lately, I've been entirely swamped this week. In fact, I should probably let you go now, as I think the hacker is just now regaining consciousness and I have an innovative new torture lined up for him that may revolutionize the dungeon industry. It's too soon to tell you exactly what it is (patent issues and all that), but I will say that it involves a scalpel, a staple gun, and three live badgers.

No one messes with The Overlord.

Day off

No real post today. I apologize for rushing off on you like this, but I'm swamped with backlogged work here at the dungeon and I'm still a little... off... from yesterday. I'm mostly feeling better, but there's still a general malaise that's been creeping in now and then. I did update the "Fellow Overlords" section with the blogs of those who responded to Friday's post, however, so go ahead and check them out.

Real posts resume tomorrow, I promise.

Time Out

Those of you who have been here from the beginning know that I don't normally break character. Well today I'm going to. Today the evil overlord thing just doesn't seem as funny to me. Tomorrow I can be funny again and we can maybe try to go back to the way things were, but today I just can't do it, no matter how hard I try.

For those of you who have not yet heard, last night George Carlin, the legendary comedian, died of heart failure.

George Carlin was one of my earliest and most revered heroes; one of the very few people in the world that I'd be willing to label as such. Carlin was not merely a comedic genius; that in and of itself is common enough. He was a prophet; a social commentator without peer. His ideas literally transformed my entire world when I was young, and continued to do so all the way through today. The way I am today, the way i think, the things I do, can almost invariably be traced to his influence.

George was irreplaceable. His unique brand of comedy, philosophy, thoughtfulness, and outright anger will never be duplicated. For many years now I thought that Carlin would live forever. Even despite hearing of his heart problems and knowing that he was getting old, the idea that he could die simply never occurred to me. He was immortal in every meaningful sense of the word.

In talking to my friends this morning, I realized that Carlin is only the third person who's ever died in my lifetime that I will really and truly miss, who wasn't a member of my family. The other two being Douglas Adams and Hunter S. Thompson. I won't say that all of my heroes have died, because that's obviously not true. There will always be heroes, as long as there are people for them to inspire. But I will say that most of the people who truly inspired my childhood and changed the way that I look at the world have now gone away. The only ones left of the five giants that shaped my worldview are Roger Waters and Tom Waits. I guess Rock and Roll really does make people live longer.

I know that whatever I say about George will be hollow and meaningless. His work is his own greatest monument to his genius. I like to think that every time I make someone laugh, or think about some small thing in a new way, that's a tiny tribute to George Carlin, a man who dedicated his life to changing the way people look at the world around them.

Like George, I'm not a religious person. At best I could be described as "non-religious", although I'd be more likely to use the term "Agnostic". So I won't waste anyone's time by saying that I'll "pray" for him, or that "I know he's in a better place", because that's not true, and even if it was it would be insulting to his legacy and memory to say so. All I know is that a bright, fiercely burning light has gone out of this world and for the moment, at least, everything seems a lot darker for it.




"I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately."

"Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck."

- George Carlin -
- 1937-2008 -

Please to meet you, hope you guess my name...

Good morning, all my foul little pets.

This morning, during my ride to work it occurred to me that while you all now know a significant amount about me and my interests, I know almost nothing of you other than the few short comments on previous entries. Bearing this in mind, I've decided that today I'm going to kick back a little and hopefully learn a bit about the deranged denizens that come visit the dungeon on a regular basis.

So consider this a short customer survey if you will. All I'm asking is that you comment on this thread with a sentence or two about yourself, and maybe your interests and so forth, as much or as little as you feel comfortable with. If you have a blog of your own go ahead and link it if you want. I know that several of you that read this blog are people I know in real life, but I also know that several of you are people I've never met, and I'm interested to know a bit about you. And because I'm such a wonderful evil overlord, I'm even giving you the whole weekend to think about it.

So go out there and dance for my amusement, and remember, if this doesn't work there's always other ways that you can be of amusement to me, and most of those involve hot pokers and vice grips.

More Tales From the Dungeon

I'm not sure what's worse: the fact that our reserves collection hasn't been cleaned out since 1999, or the fact that I now get to be the one to do something about it.

Scratch that. I know which one is worse. The second one is worse. Very much worse.

Here at the Library Dungeon Reserves Department, we keep track of all of the dark, musty tomes that professors want set aside for their classes so that their students always have access to them. Basically, whenever the professors want a book pulled from the stacks for the reserve collection the give us a form and we go get it and put it in our collection. Simple, right?

You may notice, however, that there is a gaping flaw in the above mentioned plan; nowhere in there did I mention when the books come off reserve and go back to the main stacks. That's because until two days ago, they didn't. Great plan, huh?

Just recently we replaced our head of reserves (IE: Boss), and as soon as they discovered this they rightfully decided that this idea was profoundly and disastrously stupid. We've been running out of room to keep the reserve collection in for years now, and we're almost at the breaking point. So now comes the time to go through every one of the thousands of books here in reserves to determine which ones are still being used and which ones haven't been touched since the professor retired to Hawaii back in 2001.

So basically, this means I'm chained to the computer with a list of paper several inches thick, occasionally printing out lists of books for my minions to pull off the shelves and process back into the general collection.

We've already removed about a quarter of the collection, and it's still shrinking fast.

But I suppose this project was long overdue. It'll be nice to streamline the collection and not have to sort through quite as many books to find the nice thick ones that make good weights to jury-rig the thumbscrews.

Because after all, a tidy dungeon is a happy dungeon. You know... in an evil way.



Oh, by the by, we just hit our thousandth page view. Granted, half of them are probably from me in my obsessive compulsive need to correct every little mistake I ever see on this page, but you know, whatever. Yay for more pointless milestones!

Blah

I'm in a bad mood today, and I don't know why.

I already tried taking it out on my minions, but no matter how many times I take various sharp instruments to parts of their anatomy, nor how loud their screams of terror, I just seem to get more depressed.

I get like this every once in a while. Sometimes there's a specific reason for it, like stress or some kind of bad news, but more often I just get into a very minor funk for a day or two for no reason at all. It's kind of like a very vague cloud of angst settling over everything I do, and for a just a little while I go from being an evil overlord to being an emo overlord.

Anyway, to avoid boring you with my pointless whining and also because I don't seem to have the wherewithal to write very much today, I'm just going to leave you with a TtRWYS update and call it a day. Hopefully I'll feel better soon.

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Things to Read While You Suffer update:

No Pink Ponies - This is a cute comic about a geeky girl who opens a comic book store to impress the guy she has a crush on. This one doesn't really have much philosophical commentary on the nature of humanity or any other profound topics, but it's both funny and fun, with interesting characters, a few sweet story lines, and enough comic book and roleplaying fandom to keep even the geekiest amongst us happy.

Musical Chairs

Good morning, my foul little pets. Last time I said I was going to talk about music, and it seems to me the best way to do that would be to explain the random sampling of songs I gave you to muse over. For those of you who managed to figure out some of them, you may have noticed that my music tastes tend to be extrememly ecclectic, ranging from country to rap to classic rock to musicals to punk, and hitting pretty much everything in between.

1) "Love has got me down. A tear just hit the ground."

Okay, this one was easy. It's Aerosmith's "Shut up and Dance", and it's firmly in the classic rock section of my music library. This is one of those bands that I listen to not because they're deep or profound or have some sort of world shattering message. They just know how to rock unlike anyone else. Sometimes that counts for a lot.


2) "I tried to kill the pain, but only brought more."

Number two is Evanescence with "Tourniquet". I only discovered Evanescence about a year or two ago, but I was immediately hooked. The complex melodies and hard rock background give them a wonderfully eery feel, while at the same time giving the music an incredible amount of energy. Plus Amy Lee is like, the hottest thing on two legs.


3) "I don't go to therapy to find out if I'm a freak."

This is "What Do You Hear in These Sounds" by Dar Williams. My wife, Mrs. Overlord turned me on to Dar a few years ago, and I'm really glad she did. She has a quirky, folksy sound and incredibly profound songs about topics ranging from religion to sexuality to personal introspection, and she also knows how to rock. Quite a combination. Being somewhat less than mainstream, she may not be the easiest artist in the world to find recordings of (although everything is possible via the interwebs), but she's more than worth checking out. "The Ballad of Mary Magdalene", "Iowa", and "Are You Out There" are a few other incredible songs by her.


4) "When the sleigh is heavy, and the timber wolves are getting bold..."

This is Roger Waters, with "Too Much Rope", from the album Amused to Death. Roger was one of my first loves, musically speaking. I grew up listening to Pink Floyd albums like The Wall, The Final Cut, Animals, and Dark Side of the Moon, and when I learned that Roger had produced some solo albums I ate them up like popcorn. Describing Waters' work is difficult at best, but if you've ever listened to any Pink Floyd, it's like that, only more so.His work is musically nuanced, lyrically complex and charged with more raw emotion than virtually anything else I've found. It's easy to see why the band went downhill after he left.


5) "I touch the fire and it freezes me."

Okay, this one is a bit of a guilty pleasure. This is from a song called "Walk Through the Fire" by the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. For those of you who aren't fans of the show, they did a musical episode in their sixth season that won them an Emmy, and this is one of the songs from that episode. Even though I love Buffy as a show, the quality and cleverness of the songs on that episode still blew me away the first time I saw it.


6) "All the world just stopped now. So you say you don't want to stay together anymore."

Tori Amos, "Tear in Your Hand". Tori is a strange subject for me. I discovered Little Earthquakes when a friend introduced me to it in high school, and I immediately fell in love with it. The album is haunting, deep, and phenomenally introspective. So naturally I went right out to find more of Tori's work. And I did. And it sucked.

The Tori fans out there are probably ready to burn me (and if you think it'll be the first time I've been burned at the stake, you're very mistaken), but I have yet to find another album of hers that was anywhere near as good as Little Earthquakes. My wife still swears by her music, but to me anything other than her first album just sounds lacking somehow.

7) "I come beatin' down the block and I bust the bedrock."

Okay, now we're getting into the bloody, still beating heart of my musical tastes. This one is "Haunted Bump", by the Insane Clown Posse. I've been an ICP fan (or Juggalo) for many years now, ever since High School. ICP is one of the funniest, most intense rap bands in the world, and their music is both visceral and intense. Although it's rarely "Deep" in the traditional sense of the word, it is often filled with twists, puns, and double meanings that reveal an incredible understanding of lyrical poetry and theatricality. Anyone who thinks that this is just a Shock Rock band with nothing going on under the surface is severely mistaken.


8) "If hello could only drop its 'O' and it stayed in the front doorway of your home, would you live there still?"

This is the song "Once Upon Your Dead Body", by Coheed and Cambria. Coheed and Cambria is a band that I only recently started listening to because of a Song of theirs called "Welcome Home" that's featured on Rock Band, a recent obsession of mine. They have an interesting and complex sound, reminiscent of Pink Floyd or Queen, that includes a high degree of theatricality and musical power. I've only listened to one of their albums so far, but I definitely plan on hearing more of them in the near future. By the way, the album is Good Apollo I'm Burning, Star IV: Volume 1. From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness; quite possibly one of the longest album titles ever.

9) "My words are like a dagger with a jagged edge."

Eminem, "Criminal". Eminem is another of my musical tastes that dates all the way back to high school. I still remember when he burst on the scene with "My Name Is" and for a while it seemed like that was the only song on the radio. Eminem is one of the recording artists that I have the most respect for because of his unflinching defiance and ability to transcend musical boundaries. Also, very, very few people put as much of themselves into their music as he does, and it shows through in the raw energy in many of his songs. Although I must admit that I like his earlier albums better than his later ones, even the worst of his work is better than most of the rest of today's pop music.

10) "The bats are in the belfry. The dew is on the moor."

Tom Waits, "Innocent When You Dream".

Oh Tom Waits... how do I describe you? Tom Waits is an artist who is self-described as sounding like "A chorus of drunken bullfrogs gargling bourbon and razor blades." It's an accurate statement. His voice is gravelly and rough, but at the same time mesmerizing, and his lyrics are so complex and expressive as to be almost indecipherable until you've heard them over and over again. Tom is probably my favorite musician of all time, and his work is among the greatest poetry in the world of music. I honestly can't describe it. Just go out and pick up Rain Dogs or The Heart of Saturday Night right now. You'll wonder why you ever listened to anything else.

Clean Up

Well that was a wasted weekend.

After the zombie invasion on Friday, I spent most of the afternoon scouring the area tracking down and decapitating undead before I realized that decapitating zombies isn't really the best solution because it leaves hundreds of zombie heads laying around still alive and trying to latch onto random plebeian bystanders.

So then I had to spend all of Saturday running around with m-80s and a shotgun to get rid of the heads, and a hand axe to take out the new zombies that they had managed to create by biting people's ankles.

Sunday I spent mostly showering.

So now, hopefully everything is back to normal, but I never did figure out who was responsible for all this carnage. I consider it a lost opportunity.

Regardless, after all the running around dealing with the zombie menace this weekend, I've been too tired to think of anything interesting to blog about today, so instead I give you a cheap ripoff game that I found on someone else's blog. Enjoy.

Here's how it works. I'm going to go put my mp3 player on "shuffle" mode and right down the first line or two of the first ten songs I come across. You're job is to try to figure out what the songs and artists are. Since I've never really talked about music on here, this will be a good segue into a post about that for next time. Enjoy!

Random first lines of songs from my playlist:

1) "Love has got me down. A tear just hit the ground."

2) "I tried to kill the pain, but only brought more."

3) "I don't go to therapy to find out if I'm a freak."

4) "When the sleigh is heavy, and the timber wolves are getting bold..."

5) "I touch the fire and it freezes me."

6) "All the world just stopped now. So you say you don't want to stay together anymore."

7) "I come beatin' down the block and I bust the bedrock."

8) "If hello could only drop its 'O' and it stayed in the front doorway of your home, would you live there still?"

9) "My words are like a dagger with a jagged edge."

10) "The bats are in the belfry. The dew is on the moor."

Night of the Wimpy Dead

Great.

As if I didn't already have enough to do this weekend, now the zombies are invading.

For those of you not up on current events, today is the apocalypse. Or at least that's what it appears to be from here. As I write this my minions are engaged in fending off a zombie invasion of epic proportions. I honestly don't know what's causing this mass zombie swarm. All I know is that I didn't cause it, and that has me just a little p***ed off.

After all these years, plotting and scheming and building my army of evil minions, it seems that someone, somewhere has beaten me to the punch.

Well, we'll just see about that.

You see, the dungeon is well equipped for just such an eventuality as this. As I type, my goblins are breaking out the machetes and flamethrowers, while my larger minions man the machine gun turrets on the outer walls. Unfortunately, zombies don't appear to feel pain, so torturing them is out, but a good old fashioned bloodbath is still a go. And man, do they make festive party poppers when you stuff 'em with TNT.

You see, when it comes to the undead, your dear overlord doesn't f*** around. Plans are currently being laid to make a first wave assault against the undead menace, and as soon as the cave trolls finish work on the reinforced siding and neck-high, whirling saw-blades, I'll be taking my Deathmobile out for what promises to be a zany afternoon of flying zombie heads and other assorted carnage. Remember, kids, I'm a professional . Don't try this at home.

And as soon as I deal with the living dead I'm finding the guy responsible and showing him the true definition of pain. Much as I love mindless violence, I detest being the good guy. But now, thanks to this putz, whoever he or she is, I have to be the one to save the world, just so I can conquer it later.

I swear. Sometimes it just doesn't pay to get out of the coffin in the mornings.

But at least I can take solace in the fact that whoever caused this is not very good at the whole "World Domination" thing. I mean, Zombies? Really? First of all, they're slow. Second of all, they're stupid, and thirdly, you can apparently take them down with a waffle iron if you're quick enough. Of course, now I'll have to eat pancakes for breakfast until I can afford a new one.

Amateurs.

Anyway, my best advice to you, my little pets, is to seek shelter and let your dear overlord deal with the undead. And for the love of evil, don't open the door for any deceased relatives or friends. Just because it drools on itself and mumbles unintelligibly, doesn't mean it's your grandfather. In fact, just shoot anything that comes to the door, dead or alive. It's safer that way.

Well, for you at least.

And remember, if you see me or my minions coming down the street chopping off heads left and right, you might want to get out of the way.

After all, we're not going to stop and check your pulse first.

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Oh, and for those of you who have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. Here's a link.

No pain, No Gain

Blah.

Once again my legs feel like big blobs of tapioca. Biking to and from work and doing a full body dumbbell workout yesterday has left me a quivering blob of overworked muscle and raw nerve endings. And today I'm planning to head over to the University Rec Center after work to join Mrs. Overlord for water aerobics.

I have to admit, it is nice, though. I've lost fifty pounds or more since January, and I know I've put on at least a little muscle. It's nice to be able to get up and walk across the room without being out of breath, and now when I'm turning the giant crank on our dungeon's rack I find that my back no longer hurts.

And I find that I'm enjoying the actual exercise as well. Biking to work has given me a whole new perspective on my neighborhood, and weightlifting has become something of a personal challenge to me. As I get stronger, I find that I've begun actively trying to lift more instead of actively dreading lifting at all.

All in all, I'm a healthier, happier, and more active overlord than I was 6 months ago, and hopefully in another six months I'll be even further along.

After all, in the words of one of my personal heroes, "If you haven't got your health, you haven't got anything."

For whom the school bell tolls

I'm going to grad school!

I finally got word from the University that the scholarship I applied for is going through and I'll be going to grad school basically for free. Now all that's left is for me to start class in late August.

Which is good, because that's the only type of grad school I can afford right now. You'd think that between pillaging innocent villages, robbing maidens in distress, and holding the world to ransom, that Overlording would be a lucrative and rewarding career choice. But that's only the public face of the overlord. No one sees the enormous amounts of time and money that goes into designing hi-tech super weapons, training and outfitting minions, bribing key officials to obtain permits for the gigantic death lasers, and just generally keeping the forces of evil up to date. So after all is said and done I'm lucky to have enough money left over to buy a case of chicken and entrails flavored Ramen noodles for the week, much less go back to school.

So thank you, Overlord University for coming through when I needed you most and allowing me to further my career and promote evil to newer and higher levels. You've done the world a great disservice. You should be proud.

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Things to Read While You Suffer update:

Flaky Pastry: This genre bending strip is a cute and funny story about a mechanically inclined goblin girl, a bookish catgirl, and a dangerously psychotic elf girl sharing an apartment at a University. Don't expect any epic storylines or tear-jerking drama here, but if you like good artwork and ridiculous situations against a backdrop of classic gamer fandom, then this may be the strip for you. Definitely worth a read.

Love is a Battlefield

Riddle me this...

Who would win in a fight between a dragon and a T-rex?

Could a squad of ninjas take out a giant hunter/killer robot with a well placed shuriken?

What would happen if a squad of World War II era paratroopers, machine guns a-blazing, charged downhill into the massed phalanx of a roman legion while a group of elven archers provided cover fire?

As an evil overlord, I have to ask myself these and other difficult questions all the time as I lay out my intricate battle plans leading up to global domination. If you also find a pressing need to know whether or not a group of wandering samurai could take down a hill giant (hint: the answer is "Not in a million years"), or if you just enjoy playing well-made miniatures games, then Heroscape, produced by Hasbro, may well be the game for you.

Some of the features that make Heroscape so awesome are an easy-to-learn rule system, incredibly well made interlocking terrain pieces that can be built into virtually any configuration, and well-painted figures representing characters pulled from many different settings, genres and historical periods, all brought together in a giant Valhalla-like setting.

It also helps that Heroscape is affordable. The basic game costs about $30 at Toys R Us, Walmart, or Target, and comes with everything you need to play it right out of the box. Expansion sets cost between $10 and $30 and come with additional terrain pieces, landscape features, figures, and optional rules and scenarios, and they help to keep the game interesting for a long, long time. Basically, you can invest as much money into it as you feel comfortable with.

Anyway, the reason I'm plugging this amazing game is because after a year or two of looking for someone who would play this incredible game with me, I finally found a group of people to game with on Sundays, which I'm really excited about. After all, it does get wearisome (and a bit pathetic) playing a combat simulation game against myself.

So until I raise the capital to produce my army of ninjas and dinosaurs (you wouldn't believe how much a stegosaurus goes for these days. I blame the price of gas.), I'll continue to amuse myself sending wave after wave of plastic figures to their doom on a battlefield of brightly painted hexes.

Because after all, practice makes perfect.

Calling in sick

Okay, so first of all an apology is in order, which isn't something Overlord's do easily so don't get used to it. Friday I was feeling a bit under the weather so I stayed home. You see, being an overlord is a dangerous job with many easy pitfalls to fall into. With treacherous rivals trying to backstab me, interfering heroes trying to vanquish me, and ambitious minions trying to overthrow me, all on a daily basis, it is utterly imperative that I not show even the slightest sign of weakness at work. One little slip and I could find myself strapped to my own rack with some second rate overlord looming over me ready to exact vengeance for years of making their life a living hell.

Bearing all that in mind, you can easily see why I chose to stay home while sick on Friday. So, you ask, why didn't I update from home? Why would I leave you loyal readers swaying in the breeze without a precious update when a few simple lines of text would make your entire day and allow you to sleep well at night, no longer concerned for my precious well being?

Duh. Evil. Hello.

Anyway, I'm back now and feeling better than ever, so you can stop showering me with get well cards and replacement-body-part baskets. Not that they weren't appreciated, but really, there's only so many kidneys I can keep in the fridge before I run out of room for last week's tuna casserole.

And now that I'm back on the job It's time to hit the ground running. After my absence there's lots to do here. People to torture, minions to abuse, microfilms to digitize... yes, evil doesn't happen by itself, you know, and it all piles up when you're gone. So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get out there and make the world a worser place.

Just as soon as I finish checking my webcomics.

It's alive!!! It's alive!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!

Frankenbike is back up and running again, thanks to a quick change of... well... everything. I had to take the wheels, seat, pedals, brakes, and seat bar of one bike and combine them with the frame, gears, and handlebars of another bike to finally come up with a working combination, but now he's back and better than ever, although at some point I may have to replace the back inner tube because it always seems to be just a little low on air.

So once again I am able to zoom into work in style instead of having to take the university shuttle bus with the rest of the lowly masses. Some of the people on those busses creep even me out.

And it's a good thing that I can get back to working out on my bike, because The library has once again seen fit to throw temptation in my path by holding a pizza party for my department today, and this time I don't think I'll be able to resist. The pizza... she calls to me...

So I've decided that I'm willing to forgive myself for one momentary dietary lapse. After all, if Ultimate Evil can't surrender to temptation and then rationalize it away afterwards, who can?

Minions, Version 2.0

Well, it's that time of year again. The time when hiring for the semester is just about complete and the brand-spanking new minions are beginning to appear at the desks, fresh-eyed and eager to begin their new career of slavery and torture. It always warms my heart to see them gleefully coming to work on their first day full of joy and hope, only to have their spirits broken and their tiny dreams crushed to death by the monotonous drudgery of customer service and office work.

I think we hired somewhere on the order of twelve new student workers this semester, which is a lot for us. Typically we have about 50-60 student workers at any given time. Of these we tend to lose about 5-10 per semester to graduation, internships, and of course, the occasional giant panda attack.

Of course, the worst part of this time of year is trying to learn the names of all the new student workers. I have a really bad memory for names and faces, and it doesn't help when we have three Britneys or two Chrises, or half a dozen Gorgoth, Devourer of Soulses. I've heard that it helps to try to use mnemonic devices to associate names with facial features or outstanding physical characteristics, but that's hard to do when you never know which bits are going to be hacked off at the next bi-monthly morale building meeting.

Well, in the end I suppose that I'll eventually grow to love this new batch of gremlins and imps just like I have in the past. These things can't be rushed, after all. A true Overlord-Minion relationship takes time, effort, and trust to develop.

Well, that and a big d**n vat of boiling oil.

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Things to Read While You Suffer update:

Circle Versus Square: This is circle. Circle is level headed and patient, and is content to let life come to him at it's own pace. This is square. Square is hot headed and impulsive, and creates complex schemes to get what he wants. Circle hates square. Square hates circle. Everybody hates triangle.

This is a hilarious webcomic about a group of shapes that argue, fight, and try to one-up each other in ridiculously amusing ways. The fact that there's no real art to speak of forces the comic to rely on it's wit, humor, and intelligence to succeed; and it does so beautifully. If you're into some of the more outlandish and intelligent minimalist comics on the web like XKCD or Bonobo Conspiracy, you should probably give this one a try. It only started this past January, so there's not much archive to peruse, but it updates tri-weekly, and it promises to be a good comic to keep an eye on.

Like a thief in the night...

Someone's been stealing my banana peppers.

I have a very small yard out behind our evil homestead, and most of it is the exclusive domain of our faithful hellhound Hastur. This area serves as his playground, exercise room, and outhouse, all in one.

Of the remaining yard, most of it is taken up by either the concrete walkway to the back gate, or the small patio area with a wrought iron table and chairs that Grammammy overlord gave us as patio furniture for a wedding gift.

This leaves about a measly ten square feet of bare ground (which was originally supposed to be a flower bed) bordering the patio area in an L-shape which serves as my makeshift garden. For those of you who don't garden, ten square feet is not very much space for growing stuff. The most I've been able to fit in it so far is one tomato plant, one ginormous dill plant (the thing is literally as tall as I am. There must be some weird runoff from the toxic waste pit in the basement that's making it grow or something), one sickly bunch of chives, a small rosemary plant, and five healthy banana pepper plants.

For the last two months I've watered, tended, and occasionally weeded my tiny little garden in the hopes of some day soon having enough banana peppers to harvest and pickle so that I could use them on sandwiches and pizzas and the like. Long have I suffered and toiled under the blazing hot sun so that one day I could reap the fruits of my own labor, earned through my own blood, sweat and tears

And now someone's been stealing my g**-d**ned banana peppers!!!!!!

I'm pretty sure it's not Hastur, because he doesn't like vegetables as a rule, and at least one of them has disappeared while he was at the park with us.

My best guess is that it's some sort of small sneaky animal like a squirrel or raccoon or maybe even a cat of some sort.

So now my choices are either stay out all night with thermoscopic goggles and a .30-.30, waiting for the creature to show itself so that I can engage it in mortal kombat; or else go back to eating store bought banana peppers.

I love when things boil down to a win-win situation.



Oh, and as a completely random side note, we just recently hit our 666th page view here at the dungeon. The lucky blog surfer who became our 666th victim will receive a coupon for 25% off their next thumb screws, iron maiden, or hot poker session.*

*Offer void where prohibited. Offer cannot be combined with any other coupons or promotions. Coupon value 1/666 of a cent. No substitutions, exchanges, or refunds.

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"Things to Read While You Suffer" update:

Khaos Komix - I just discovered this amazing comic yesterday and I've already blazed through the entire archive. This is the story of a group of friends in high school who are discovering who they are and what they want from life. Featuring extremely realistic characters and great artwork, this comic explores very complex issuess about identity and sexual orientation and deals with some of the questions facing the modern gay community. In an interesting twist, the comic is divided into chapters, each of which tells the story from the perspective of a different character, slowly exposing a complex web of relationships and viewpoints. This one is not for the faint hearted or easily offended, but anyone who is interested in LGBT issues or gender studies in general should probably give it a chance. Warning: This comic contains very adult situations and artwork. It's on your own head if you decide to access this one at work, or anywhere else for that matter.

More Movie Madness

Well, I went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull this weekend, and I have to say, it wasn't as bad as I expected. Of course, it wasn't as good as I'd hoped either, so it kind of evens out.

My hunch about Harrison Ford being too old to kick ass and chew bubble gum like he used to turned out to be an accurate one. In several scenes he seems to be obviously struggling with the high physical demands of an action movie. However, the screenwriters did use this to their advantage a good portion of the time, purposely casting Indy in an older and wiser role, and leaving a good bit of the physical work to 'Mutt', his surprisingly interesting and worthwhile sidekick played by Shia LeBeouf.

Shia is really the standout of this movie as far as I'm concerned, and after his similarly surprising performance in Transformers, he's pretty much cemented his place on my list of "Young actors to keep an eye on". Going into the movie I thought his role was going to be a lame ripoff of Indy with little depth or interest, but he ran with the character and made it work as a completely separate entity that is interesting in its own right. I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but if Lucas and Spielberg do decide to spin this character off into his own film, and rumor has it they will, they may actually be able to produce a worthwhile picture.

The ever-hot Cate Blanchett did a good job working with what she was given as the film's bad guy, but in the final analysis the character came off as underdeveloped and a little bit cliche. Unlike the previous Indiana Jones villains, she really doesn't stand on her own as a character. A little more exposition by the scriptwriters might have helped here.

All in all, I'd say that the new movie is probably worth the cost of a matinee admission ticket, if only to revel in the nostalgia that the Indiana Jones franchise is loaded with at this point.

In the end I give it 7 out of ten lashings.

Now, just for the sake of switching gears without a clutch, I also watched another movie this weekend that very few of you have probably heard of called Psycho Beach Party.

Now, for those of you who don't know, I have a distinct masochistic streak that manifests itself as an intense desire to punish myself with horrible, horrible B-movies. This film is a pretty funny send up to the B-movies of the 50s and 60s, especially the psychedelic beach teenager movies of the era that almost invariable featured scantily clad (for that time) teenagers running around on the beach surfing and getting killed off in strange ways.

Anyway, the main draw of this movie other than the purposely campy atmosphere and ridiculously cheesy dialogue is that those of you who, like me, are fans of Buffy and Angel will recognize Zander (Nicholas Brendan) playing the main romantic lead as a beach bum psychology major named Starcat.

Those of you who are interested in this sort of spoof will find this one entertaining, and there are plenty of cringe-worthy bits of over-the-top acting and hackneyed phrases to keep any B-movie fan laughing.