The Secret Lair

There was some speculation¹ that Overlord Miller  and myself had both been transported in the dead of night to a covert, maximum-security containment facility somewhere in the southwestern United States and were either (a) being subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques involving continual exposure to the collected works of Andrew Lloyd Webber or (b) killed while trying to escape. I can assure you that this is untrue on multiple levels. For starters, Overlord Miller is still very much frozen in carbonite;² he remains alive and in perfect hibernation. Additionally, there are no covert, maximum-security containment facilities in the southwestern United States; they’re all in Maine.³

The reason you haven’t heard from me in the past three weeks is that I have developed a sinusa ailment. Not the fun, Mad Science kind of “developed,” either. No, this is a malady, an ailment, a viral affliction that might well be of extraterrestrial origin. I won’t go into gruesome details, but last week I heard a minion refer to me as “The Snot Faucet.” That minion has since “volunteered” to be used as a test subject for our carbonite unfreezing process, but the characterization was unfortunately accurate.

So, the Overlords are both alive and (relatively) well. Minister Lynn and I will be recording a new episode of the podcast in the near future and we continue in our diligent efforts to free Overlord Miller from his carbonite prison as soon as is humanly possible. And if that’s not until after we’ve perfected our memory modification array…well, so much the better.

1. Unconfirmed. [↩]
2. Not to mention a huge ALW fan. [↩]
3. Little known fact: Aroostook County is the Covert Maximum-Security Containment Facility capital of the Western hemisphere. [↩]

There are bad guys and then there are bad guys. In fiction, the villains we love to hate (Cigarette Smoking Man, Magneto, Hannibal Lecter, Darth Vader) help keep the story interesting and engaging. A well-crafted villain keeps us coming back for more because he or she is a good match for the hero(es). Every once in a while, though, we encounter a bad guy that crosses one line or another and we just want them to die. We hate them so much that no other fate will be satisfactory; they must get their comeuppance in the most horrible, painful and fatal manner possible. Redemption? No thanks. Returning in the sequel? Don’t even think about it. Eaten by a shark, run over by a train, squashed by a woolly mammoth or sucked into the cold, unforgiving vacuum of space? Yes, please! Death isn’t too good for these fictional jackholes; it’s just right.

Here is a handful of such characters, none of whom have (yet) received their just deserts.

• Dolores Umbridge (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) — The Ministry of Magic High Inquisitor who taught Defense Against the Dark Arts in Harry Potter’s fifth year at Hogwarts is vile from head to toe: not only does she abuse her position to impose draconian rules on the students, she is willfully ignorant in regards to the return of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named to the point that she submits The Boy Who Lived to some truly cruel and unusual punishments. Umbridge’s only redeeming quality is that her sheer vileness inspires Fred and George Weasley to revolt by means of some truly brilliant pranks. Dolores Umbridge eventually receives her comeuppance, earning a sentence in the wizard prison, Azkaban, which some might consider a fate worse than death.
• Joffrey Baratheon (A Song of Ice and Fire)  — Never mind that he is an illegitimate heir to the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, the product of the queen’s incestuous relationship with her twin brother; Joff could hardly be blamed for what his mother and uncle were up to behind King Robert Baratheon’s back. And if the Prince is somewhat spoiled, well, that’s largely his mother’s doing, too—though, as role models go, his “father” the king left much to be desired. Joffrey has many qualities one might expect in a spoiled, adolescent boy: he is self-indulgent, quick-tempered, mean-spirited and his pride is easily bruised. One quality Joffrey does not possess is self-restraint, and after the untimely death of his “father,” the young monarch finds that—unlike most boys his age—he has the power to see his every sadistic whim become a reality and is not at all sparing in its exercise. Author George R. R. Martin is currently writing the fifth book (of seven) of A Song of Ice and Fire, so Joffrey’s uppance may still be some time in coming.
• George Hearst (Deadwood) — George Hearst is not a fictional character, but he’s included here because the HBO series Deadwood is known to have taken certain liberties where matters of historical accuracy are concerned. Hearst was portrayed (by Gerald McRaney) as a repulsive sociopath for whom nothing—not even cold-blooded murder—is out of bounds when it comes to satisfying his bottomless greed. As casino-owner and former Hearst-confederate Cy Tolliver (Powers Boothe) watches a triumphant Hearst ride out of Deadwood at the end of the series—having fixed the local election for sheriff and successfully acquired a lucrative mine by way of murder and intimidation—the sense of impotent rage is palpable; the smirking bastard is leaving a swath of destruction in his wake and as much as Tolliver—gun in hand—wants to pull the trigger and wipe the smile off Hearst’s face with brutal finality, there’s nothing he can do.
• The Joker (Batman) — Since the early 1970s, the Clown Prince of Crime has been on a decades-long killing spree that has claims hundreds (if not thousands) of lives, interrupted only briefly by occasional (and always temporary) incarceration in Arkham Asylum. Escaping from that institution is roughly as routine as walking out to the curb to retrieve the Sunday paper; as Forrest Gump might say, “And then I escaped from Arkham Asylum…again.” The Batman consistently refuses to kill The Joker on the grounds that he would (a) become just as bad as the criminal and (b) it’s exactly what The Joker wants him to do. Were Arkham Asylum anything resembling an effective means to separate The Joker from the rest of humanity one might forgive the former reason; the latter—being an unwillingness to allow The Joker to “win”—is just sheer hubris on The Batman’s part.