When the weather is grey and chilly outside and the world takes on a dull sameness from day to day you naturally yearn for a change of scenery. In the same way, when one has spent too long in the skin one was born/hatched in it makes a fair amount of sense to consider the colorful and fascinating practice of personal shapeshifting. Some evil folks of my acquaintance find the transformation process follows its own timing and rules, while others are able to achieve some slight amount of mastery over it. As a way of broadening one’s horizons, I’ve been told that there is nothing quite like passing a starlit desert night in the guise of a small dromedary. This also is, incidentally, one of the very best ways to hide out from fiendish pursuers.

Me, I’m just going to slither off somewhere where coworkers won’t be as likely to find me.

Veeper

People outside the profession sometimes ask us what kinds of diversions we prefer to pass the time between our dirty deeds — music, film, television, literature, or something else? It is a fair question, given the capacity ordinary mortals have of frittering away their years in pursuit of these kinds of purely trivial pastimes and others, to assume that the same might hold true for evil masterminds. After a not insignificant amount of consideration, however, I must pronounce that it is in fact not the case. I am a being who is wholly content to spend long stretches of time in the company of my own malignant musings without needing to call upon vain spectacle to rouse me from a reptilian sort of torpor, for the most satisfying bagatelles one can imagine in this line of work is the foul fruit of our labors themselves. Of course I know that there are those fiends with a passion for pathetic little ditties and those devoted to specialized fancies, others fascinated by amassing sheer bulk of stuff and nonsense, those wrapped up with playthings and children's games, not to mention those obsessed with chasing after their trophies. Given all that, however, it still seems to me that the truly great supervillains follow a path much more single-minded that leaves very little room for trifles. We in the upper echelons of the craft are spoiled by our oversize appetites and dissatisfied with anything less than our true goal: everything.

Grinning Skull (friendfeed)

If magic weapons have pressed sorely on my mind lately it is because of circumstances when we have had to deal with not one, not two, but fully three of the miserable things whilst on a trip lately. Above all I wanted to avoid bringing these back to our place so it was important to eradicate things with the materials we had at hand as thoroughly and scrupulously as supernaturally possible. Of course, that meant that compromises needed to be made, increasing the stress on the already overworked henchman retention staff, but I think that virtually everyone agrees that it would have been much worse to have these running lose in our main compound. Only one of the three turned out to be quite self-aware, fortunately, so the period of time we had to spend sequestered in tedious negotiations and whatnot could be substantially reduced, and we were able to call in a few favors from a vile lich-lord that I knew personally to help iron the major obstacles our team encountered. I cannot really complain, however, as these kinds of messy and draining chores is in my view just one of those facts of the way of life I have chosen for myself and my staff.

Grinning Skull (friendfeed)

We have received word from certain parties who are unhappy with the article about How to keep a giant spider because they insist that their particular megafauna receive a commensurate amount of coverage. It seems that we have stumbled into a long-standing rift between two major branches of the arachnid community by appearing to come out as advocates for giant spiders and remaining silent on the subject of giant scorpions. The scorpion partisans point out that their favored beasts have a number of advantages over spiders:

• In addition to having eight legs, they also feature two large pincers.
• The barbed tail arching over the thorax is a formidable weapon.
• Scorpions are among the few animals which fluoresce under ultraviolet light making them popular at parties.
• Since ancient times, an astronomical constellation (Scorpio) is devoted to the scorpion, whereas the spider has been judged unworthy of this distinction.
• They come from an culturally underappreciated family, in cinema, literature, and music.
• In the Marvel universe, the Scorpion is a fearsome supervillain, in contrast to the Spider-Man's (and The Tick's) regrettable tendencies toward heroism.

For these reasons and for many others, they argue, the husbandry of giant scorpions should rightly be considered an equal or superior part of the evildoer's arsenal. My acquaintances among the giant spider fanciers point out that the inability to produce silk or even to spin webs naturally places such creatures in an inferior position unworthy of much notice. As with any issue of interest to the evil community at large, we welcome advocates from both points of view to send in their comments, concerns, and personal attacks.

Grinning Skull (friendfeed)

There are times when a person has that gratifying sense that he or she has made a change in the world for certain, and such is the case for us when it comes to the article How to cause a flood which we put out there a little over a year ago. The prompt and creative action this has sparked on the part of multiple malefactors around the world is truly a wonder to behold, even jaded as we are at evilHow, and we must remark on how we do appreciate this validation of our educational mission. How energizing it is to see that our theoretical comments could be brought to full fruition in such a satisfying fashion.

Grinning Skull (friendfeed)