As a fundamentally fairly serious villain, I have not often spent much effort in playing mind games with my enemies, but now and then the opportunity has presented itself to introduce a little humiliation, an extra twist of the rusty spork, while still accomplishing the original intent to dominate. For as one who has delved at great length to tease out the secrets of existence itself, I have the credentials to testify that it is scarcely life worth the name unless one can laugh uproariously at those one hates now and then.

This is unfortunately not the place to discuss openly the sorts of stunts I have carried out in a covert manner, nor, obviously, those which are still waiting to be sprung when the time is right. But as for my record, I can only say that it has been an unblemished succession of devilry, each one bringing a brand new sort of agony to the hapless mark.

Grinning Skull (friendfeed)

It is finally something like Spring around the lair, so I have been engaged with dragooning some of the layabouts to do a little tidying up, and in the process have amassed a large heap of things to be burned, deParticlized, or thrown out. Passing the rubbish bin one day, my eye lit upon an artifact which chilled me to the very marrow: a flashlight. For I recalled that was in fact the current vessel for a powerful Djinn, a sorceror who had mastered How to inhabit inanimate objects, many times over. What if the old Maglite® had fallen into an enemy's hands where it could be turned against me, harboring that unhappy spirit, remembering how it had been dumped unceremoniously? Thus did I retrieve it and put it in a safe place. Of honor.

The public at large it seems does not appreciate just how many things in everyday life are actually inhabited by spirits, invariably evil. (Forces of good somehow never go in for this sort of thing, why is that?) On my way to the post office, for example, I can think of a large grey boulder, a bronze grave marker, a tiki mug in a shop window, and a 1987 K-car, all imbued with malevolent intelligence and a couple of them seething with hatred. Some of them are relatively content with the state of affairs while others are figuratively kicking themselves, trapped in a place they would rather not be all due to faulty planning.

Grinning Skull (friendfeed)

You know who's a poster child for How to look frighteningly deranged? GrinningSkull, no duh, especially after a hard night where his smiling mug suddenly looming out round some corner when you have barely pried your eyes open, which is like several stages beyond sobering, if you know what I mean. Sometimes it is a useful thing to have around (mostly when solicitors show up at our door) but mostly it is just something that you kind of grow used to, if you're lucky. The funny thing is that looking crazy is contagious, like a yawn, so before you know it you find yourself smirking and twitching and dressing with wacky mismatched patterns too. One time I suddenly caught sight of myself in a full-length mirror and felt like I was going to die of embarrassment.

Lots of evil supervillains go for that foaming-at-the-mouth look though, which makes for quite a sight whenever those bats get together for their conventions. The thing is, you don't always know how much of that is real crackpottery and how much is an act for show, and things being what they are, you don't usually want to investigate too closely to figure out which it is. In any case, it's usually a good thing if you can avoid eating over at their place, and since you probably are working up a pretty good hysterical shtick of your own, it mostly all works out anyway, as they are not so keen on coming over to your place either.

Capella

The naive conqueror of territory imagines that once the shooting is over and the land has been overrun, the booty automatically flows to the victor in a simple mop-up operation. Au contraire, the extraction of material goods, though perhaps not as thrilling as the actual fighting, is an operation that requires a good deal of careful planning of its own in order to get the most out of the investment in munitions, soldiers, and propaganda, thus motivating the latest article here on the site: How to pillage a city. It pains me to think back on the numerous occasions where some delicious bauble has been there for me for the taking, and in the flush of victory has gone astray whether due to the malice and greed of underlings (who have in fact all received their rightful rewards at this time) or to simple inattention. There is no reason for anyone to fall into the same mistakes as past despoilers, so we have listed a few of the most common tips and pitfalls that can ruin what can and should be a triumphant Bacchanalian debauch that one has worked so very hard to achieve.

Grinning Skull (friendfeed)

I don't think I've mentioned it here before, for some reason, but I really enjoy playing bagpipes in our little band The Beelzebub Primary, rocking out on a set of pipes with crimson cinnabar chanter and drones, and I got my girlfriend to put my name on the front of the blood-red bag using a Bedazzler and a whole bunch of rhinestones. My girlfriend Gladys (who used to be called Gladys Juanita Torres, but she goes by one name now to be badass) plays the tubular bells, and Louisa (who used to be a girl, then became a dude, and now is back to being a girl) runs the drum machine when we practice. We also played one gig at this sort of nice place that my nephew Rooge rented one night for his wedding reception I think and I think we were so good we stunned the place into silence after our first set. Whenever I tell people about this sideline, which actually occupies my time at least once a month (I just nuke a roadkill casserole that night), it seems to me that people are not in tune with the fact that many evildoers are awfully musical in nature. I know some who come to villainy from music and others who come to music from villainy. The thing they have in common I think is the exposure to many years of cruel lessons as a kid, ugh.

Capella