Important Checklist

Ahhh it is so interesting digging through your old bookmarks sometimes. Here is a gem I found a long time ago. It is (slightly editted) from Peter's Evil Overlord List, where he also has some additional items that did not make the top 100.
 
Without further ado, though, this is the checklist of the "Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord":
 
1. My Evil Minions 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 only 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.
 
21. I will hire a talented fashion designer to create original uniforms for my Evil Minions, as opposed to some cheap knock-offs that make them look like Nazi stormtroopers, Roman footsoldiers, or savage Mongol hordes. All were eventually defeated and I want my troops to have a more positive mind-set.
 
22. No matter how tempted I am with the prospect of unlimited power, I will not consume any energy field bigger than my head.
 
23. I will keep a special cache of low-tech weapons and train my troops in their use. That way - even if the heroes manage to neutralize my power generator and/or render the standard-issue energy weapons useless - my troops will not be overrun by a handful of savages armed with spears and rocks.
 
24. I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line "No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!" (After that, death is usually instantaneous.)
 
25. No matter how well it would perform, I will never construct any sort of machinery which is completely indestructible except for one small and virtually inaccessible vulnerable spot.
 
26. No matter how attractive certain members of the rebellion are, there is probably someone just as attractive who is not desperate to kill me. Therefore, I will think twice before ordering a prisoner sent to my bedchamber.
 
27. I will never build only one of anything important. All important systems will have redundant control panels and power supplies. For the same reason I will always carry at least two fully loaded weapons at all times.
 
28. My pet monster will be kept in a secure cage from which it cannot escape and into which I could not accidentally stumble.
 
29. I will dress in bright and cheery colors, and so throw my enemies into confusion.
 
30. All bumbling conjurers, clumsy squires, no-talent bards, and cowardly thieves in the land will be preemptively put to death. My foes will surely give up and abandon their quest if they have no source of comic relief.
 
31. All naive, busty tavern wenches in my realm will be replaced with surly, world-weary waitresses who will provide no unexpected reinforcement and/or romantic subplot for the hero or his sidekick.
 
32. I will not fly into a rage and kill a messenger who brings me bad news just to illustrate how evil I really am. Good messengers are hard to come by.
 
33. I won't require high-ranking female members of my organization to wear a stainless-steel bustier. Morale is better with a more casual dress-code. Similarly, outfits made entirely from black leather will be reserved for formal occasions.
 
34. I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.
 
35. I will not grow a goatee. In the old days they made you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a disaffected member of Gen-X.
 
36. I will not imprison members of the same party in the same cell block, let alone the same cell. If they are important prisoners, I will keep the only key to the cell door on my person instead of handing out copies to every bottom-rung guard in the prison.
 
37. If my trusted lieutenant tells me my Evil Minions are losing a battle, I will believe him. After all, he's my trusted lieutenant.
 
38. If an enemy I have just killed has a younger sibling or offspring anywhere, I will find them and have them killed immediately, instead of waiting for them to grow up harboring feelings of vengeance towards me in my old age.
 
39. If I absolutely must ride into battle, I will certainly not ride at the forefront of my Evil Minions, nor will I seek out my opposite number among his army.
 
40. I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I have an unstoppable superweapon, I will use it as early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve.
 
41. Once my power is secure, I will destroy all those pesky time-travel devices.
 
42. When I capture the hero, I will make sure I also get his dog, monkey, ferret, or whatever sickeningly cute little animal capable of untying ropes and filching keys happens to follow him around.
 
43. I will maintain a healthy amount of skepticism when I capture the beautiful rebel and she claims she is attracted to my power and good looks and will gladly betray her companions if I just let her in on my plans.
 
44. I will only employ bounty hunters who work for money. Those who work for the pleasure of the hunt tend to do dumb things like even the odds to give the other guy a sporting chance.
 
45. I will make sure I have a clear understanding of who is responsible for what in my organization. For example, if my general screws up I will not draw my weapon, point it at him, say "And here is the price for failure," then suddenly turn and kill some random underling.
 
46. If an advisor says to me "My liege, he is but one man. What can one man possibly do?", I will reply "This." and kill the advisor.
 
47. If I learn that a callow youth has begun a quest to destroy me, I will slay him while he is still a callow youth instead of waiting for him to mature.
 
48. I will treat any beast which I control through magic or technology with respect and kindness. Thus if the control is ever broken, it will not immediately come after me for revenge and a snack.
 
49. If I learn the whereabouts of the one artifact which can destroy me, I will not send all my troops out to seize it. Instead I will send them out to seize something else and quietly put a Want-Ad in the local paper.
 
50. My main computers will have their own special operating system that will be completely incompatible with any standard laptops and Macintosh powerbooks.
 
51. If one of my dungeon guards begins expressing concern over the conditions in the beautiful princess' cell, I will immediately transfer him to a less people-oriented position.
 
52. I will hire a team of board-certified architects and surveyors to examine my castle and inform me of any secret passages and abandoned tunnels that I might not know about.
 
53. If the beautiful princess that I capture says "I'll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!", I will say "Oh well" and kill her.
 
54. I will not strike a bargain with a demonic being then attempt to double-cross it simply because I feel like being contrary.
 
55. The deformed mutants and odd-ball psychotics will have their place among my Evil Minions. However before I send them out on important covert missions that require tact and subtlety, I will first see if there is anyone else equally qualified who would attract less attention.
 
56. My Evil Minions will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at 10 metres will be used for target practice.
 
57. Before employing any captured artifacts or machinery, I will carefully read the owner's manual.
 
58. If it becomes necessary to escape, I will never stop to pose dramatically and toss off a one-liner.
 
59. I will never build a sentient computer smarter than I am.
 
60. My five-year-old child advisor will also be asked to decipher any code I am thinking of using. If he breaks the code in under 30 seconds, it will not be used. Note: this also applies to passwords.
 
61. If my advisors ask "Why are you risking everything on such a mad scheme?", I will not proceed until I have a response that satisfies them.
 
62. I will design fortress hallways with no alcoves or protruding structural supports which intruders could use for cover in a firefight.
 
63. Bulk trash will be disposed of in incinerators, not compactors. And they will be kept hot, with none of that nonsense about flames going through accessible tunnels at predictable intervals.
 
64. I will see a competent psychiatrist and get cured of all extremely unusual phobias and bizarre compulsive habits which could prove to be a disadvantage.
 
65. If I must have computer systems with publically available terminals, the maps they display of my complex will have a room clearly marked as the Main Control Room. That room will be the Execution Chamber. The actual main control room will be marked as Sewage Overflow Containment.
 
66. My security keypad will actually be a fingerprint scanner. Anyone who watches someone press a sequence of buttons or dusts the pad for fingerprints then subsequently tries to enter by repeating that sequence will trigger the alarm system.
 
67. No matter how many shorts we have in the system, my guards will be instructed to treat every surveillance camera malfunction as a full-scale emergency.
 
68. I will spare someone who saved my life sometime in the past. This is only reasonable as it encourages others to do so. However, the offer is good one time only. If they want me to spare them again, they'd better save my life again.
 
69. All midwives will be banned from the realm. All babies will be delivered at state-approved hospitals. Orphans will be placed in foster-homes, not abandoned in the woods to be raised by creatures of the wild.
 
70. When my guards split up to search for intruders, they will always travel in groups of at least two. They will be trained so that if one of them disappears mysteriously while on patrol, the other will immediately initiate an alert and call for backup, instead of quizzically peering around a corner.
 
71. If I decide to test a lieutenant's loyalty and see if he/she should be made a trusted lieutenant, I will have a crack squad of marksmen standing by in case the answer is "No".
 
72. If all the heroes are standing together around a strange device and begin to taunt me, I will pull out a conventional weapon instead of using my unstoppable superweapon on them.
 
73. I will not agree to let the heroes go free if they win a rigged contest, even though my advisors assure me it is impossible for them to win.
 
74. When I create a multimedia presentation of my plan designed so that my five-year-old advisor can easily understand the details, I will not label the disk "Project Overlord" and leave it lying on top of my desk.
 
75. I will instruct my Evil Minions to attack the hero en masse, instead of standing around waiting while members break off and attack one or two at a time.
 
76. If the hero runs up to my roof, I will not run up after him and struggle with him in an attempt to push him over the edge. I will also not engage him at the edge of a cliff. (In the middle of a rope-bridge over a river of molten lava is not even worth considering.)
 
77. If I have a fit of temporary insanity and decide to give the hero the chance to reject a job as my trusted lieutentant, I will retain enough sanity to wait until my current trusted lieutenant is out of earshot before making the offer.
 
78. I will not tell my Evil Minions "And he must be taken alive!" The command will be "And try to take him alive if it is reasonably practical."
 
79. If my doomsday device happens to come with a reverse switch, as soon as it has been employed it will be melted down and made into limited-edition commemorative coins.
 
80. If my weakest troops fail to eliminate a hero, I will send out my best troops instead of wasting time with progressively stronger ones as he gets closer and closer to my fortress.
 
81. If I am fighting with the hero atop a moving platform, have disarmed him, and am about to finish him off and he glances behind me and drops flat, I too will drop flat instead of quizzically turning around to find out what he saw.
 
82. I will not shoot at any of my enemies if they are standing in front of the crucial support beam to a heavy, dangerous, unbalanced structure.
 
83. If I'm eating dinner with the hero, put poison in his goblet, then have to leave the table for any reason, I will order new drinks for both of us instead of trying to decide whether or not to switch with him.
 
84. I will not have captives of one sex guarded by members of the opposite sex.
 
85. I will not use any plan in which the final step is horribly complicated, e.g. "Align the 12 Stones of Power on the sacred altar then activate the medallion at the moment of total eclipse." Instead it will be more along the lines of "Pull the lever."
 
86. I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.
 
87. My vats of hazardous chemicals will be covered when not in use. Also, I will not construct walkways above them.
 
88. If a group of henchmen fail miserably at a task, I will not berate them for incompetence then send the same group out to try the task again.
 
89. After I capture the hero's superweapon, I will not immediately disband my legions and relax my guard because I believe whoever holds the weapon is unstoppable. After all, the hero held the weapon and I took it from him.
 
90. I will not design my Main Control Room so that every workstation is facing away from the door.
 
91. I will not ignore the messenger that stumbles in exhausted and obviously agitated until my personal grooming or current entertainment is finished. It might actually be important.
 
92. If I ever talk to the hero on the phone, I will not taunt him. Instead I will say this his dogged perseverance has given me new insight on the futility of my evil ways and that if he leaves me alone for a few months of quiet contemplation I will likely return to the path of righteousness. (Heroes are incredibly gullible in this regard.)
 
93. If I decide to hold a double execution of the hero and an underling who failed or betrayed me, I will see to it that the hero is scheduled to go first.
 
94. When arresting prisoners, my guards will not allow them to stop and grab a useless trinket of purely sentimental value.
 
95. My dungeon will have its own qualified medical staff complete with bodyguards. That way if a prisoner becomes sick and his cellmate tells the guard it's an emergency, the guard will fetch a trauma team instead of opening up the cell for a look.
 
96. My door mechanisms will be designed so that blasting the control panel on the outside seals the door and blasting the control panel on the inside opens the door, not vice versa.
 
97. My dungeon cells will not be furnished with objects that contain reflective surfaces, anything flammable or any item that can be unravelled.
 
98. If an attractive young couple enters my realm, I will carefully monitor their activities. If I find they are happy and affectionate, I will ignore them. However if circumstance have forced them together against their will and they spend all their time bickering and criticizing each other except during the intermittent occasions when they are saving each others' lives at which point there are hints of sexual tension, I will immediately order their execution.
 
99. Any data file of crucial importance will be padded to 1.45Mb in size.
 
100. Finally, to keep my subjects permanently locked in a mindless trance, I will provide each of them with free unlimited broadband Internet access.

Say WHO?

It has been ages since I wrote on here. I've just been so tired and what little energy I have had left has been consumed by other things. For a lot of people that wouldn't leave them worn out, but for me it means I have just been soooo busy it isn't even funny, given that I am normally functional well under 11 hours out of 24 on a good day.
 
So busy, in fact, that although there are only about 8 TV shows in a week that I will definitively reserve time for, I've mostly had to record them or get them from torrents after they aired. Sometimes I wish we had TiVO but... half the time it would probably fill up with stuff I would never get around to watching.
 
However, there are some shows I will always make time for: those being Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica and the 2 Stargate series. All have been on hiatus and all but Doctor Who are not available on regular television in Canada until far after they have been broadcast in other places. That means that almost universally I have to get torrents of them and watch them in bed with my laptop. And that's where we stand right now, that's what all this preamble has led to: I JUST finished watching Doctor Who: The Christmas Invasion, and it was SO DAMN GOOD I had to write about it NOW. Now, because it airs on CBC tonight at 8pm and if anyone keeps up with my blog at all I don't want them to miss it.
 
This is possibly the best Doctor Who episode EVER made. I know, "The Christmas Invasion" brings up images in everyone's mind of some hokey lame-ass Star Wars Christmas Special idea. Come on, you know when you were 10 years old that show seemed good for 5 minutes but then it sunk in that, like that smell emanating from Kentucky Fried Chicken, you were drawn in by the "Star Wars" - but when you actually tasted it, you realised - THIS FUCKING SUCKS. ON top of that is the sometimes-campy aspect that Doctor Who has shown in the past causing you to think this might be just one big joke. I even saw a post on an IMDB message board making that exact statement: "The Christmas Invasion? Is that a JOKE?" NOTHING could be further from the truth. The Christmas Invasion is exceptional: brilliant, quirky, and hilarious.
 
The Christmas aspect isn't pounded into the story like a tree graft, it is merged into it seamlessly. Although there are fun bits like a killer brass band of Santas and a malevolent and destructive Christmas tree, it is merged into the early part of the story with humour and that borderline horror aspect of delicious good-things-gone-horribly wrong irony. You want to laugh but if you have any investment in the characters at all, you are also terrified by what is happening to them. Even those who have not watched the new Who, or perhaps never watched the Doctor's adventures at all, will find it entertaining.
 
After the dark turn of Christopher Eccleston - which although I enjoyed immensely, didn't feel like the same confident Doctor of the past - David Tennant brings back the old aspects of the Doctor. You feel like there is some Pertwee, Troughton, Davison and McCoy in there now. You can also feel the Eccleston Doctor's influence in that there is clearly a darker side to the Doctor, but he seems more balanced in Tennant. Time will tell.
 
Of course, that previous paragraph is only going to be understood by long-term Who fans. What we get in this show is an episode that allows you to step into the Doctor's Universe without having watched all the old incarnations of the Doctor. If you came into this with only a passing interest and little knowledge of Doctor Who, you can still enjoy this special. Amazingly, the writing has taken a slightly Whedonesque turn as well, and I certainly mean that in the best way possible. The subtle pop-culture references are there including a throwaway comment by the Doctor about Arthur Dent. The story has the pacing and structure of some of the best action type feature films of recent years. It is a worthy debut for our new Doctor, and a brilliant portrayal of what happens to the Doctor's companion when he regenerates. Rose shows all the inecurities that a real person would: will I like the new person? What happened to MY Doctor? Billie Piper shows great acting skills in passing along that sense of grief and loss that the Doctor that she knew and loved IS DEAD and she has no idea where Rose will be without him.
 
When the Doctor recovers to save the day, which of course, he always does (I wouldn't consider it much of a spoiler to say it) - it is in the truest action-hero style the Doctor has ever shown. He also shows that he is still a guardian of the Universe and not Earth alone in how he addresses Prime Minister Harriet Jones in the post-attack scene. The closing Christmas dinner scenes are paced just right so as not to drag the whole thing down from being overloaded with red and green paint. It all makes nice, balanced sense. The Doctor (& the TARDIS), ailing from a complicated and difficult regeneration, brings home Rose in time for Christmas only to stumble into a planetary crisis, a crisis which is accellerated by the Doctor's presence on Earth in an incapacitated state. It could have happened any time since this is a time-travel show, but it just happened to occur at Christmas. No further ridiculous plot explanations necessary.
 
The story is a fun romp with great pacing, emotional upheaval (which for followers of the series is gut-wrenching, tear-inducing stuff), great effects and lots of humour. It even respects the continuity of the series in some nice, subtle ways like seeing Big Ben/The Westminster Palace clock tower still under repair from the damage suffered in "The Alien Invasion" in a wide shot of London's cityscape. Then, at the end of the show were the tantalizing previews of the upcoming new series of Who episodes, including Giles (Tony Stew Head) of the Buffyverse and Sarah Jane Smith of the old Who.
 
Seriously, see it on CBC tonight if you have access to it, or download a torrent and grab it with BitComet or some other bittorrent client. You won't be sorry. Unless, of course, you are a Scrooge.

Should you worship God at the Kingdom Hall with Jehovah's Witnesses?

In honour of the Holiday Season, here is a little something to think about. Ever thought that Christmas and all this stuff was too much? How about becoming a Jehovah's Witness? They don't do all this holiday foolishness. So, should you worship God at the Kingdom Hall with Jehovah's Witnesses?