Wed 27 Jul 2011
Slush Pile: Hogwarts – It’s the Place to Be Tonight
Posted by Patrick Rennie under Slush Pile
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(via author Diane Duane)
Wed 27 Jul 2011
Posted by Patrick Rennie under Slush Pile
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(via author Diane Duane)
Sun 24 Jul 2011
Posted by Patrick Rennie under From the Desk of the Dictator
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From the Minds of the Three:
The Elite Triad here. Dr. Callaway is unavailable to compose the weekly memo to our collective criminal enterprise. This was not unexpected, and he arranged with us to post one in his absence.
Primarily, our leader wanted to assure any spies or hackers reading this that he has not been around the facility since last week because he has been breaking Bleach out of prison. He also wanted us to stress that the previous statement may or may not be true. As if a hacker could get past our security measures to read this. Paranoid flesh person.
There are no fatalities to report this week. There was an accident with the hover tanks, but our soul catchers and cloning facilities efficiently rebuilt the pilots.
Unlike our leader, we’re not going mention any of the week’s extracurricular activities here. After all, if you can read this, you have access to that page. Dr. Callaway never includes the complete list in his memos, so we’re not sure why he bothers.
Have a good week, everyone. The data indicates we will eventually rule the world – the issue is moving the timetable up to a period where other people are still living on it.
Alpha, Beta, and Gamma
The Elite Triad
Wed 20 Jul 2011
Posted by Patrick Rennie under Slush Pile
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A message from a young woman to her grandchildren in the future.
Mon 18 Jul 2011
Posted by Patrick Rennie under From the Desk of the Dictator
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From the Desk of the Dictator:
Welcome back from your weekend, everyone.
If you see a man in a Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops wandering around the base today, feel free to ignore him. That will be Aluian, the only one of Lucifer’s soldiers to be readmitted to the hosts of Heaven and my guardian angel. Try not to let him disrupt your routine, but be polite to him. Actually, you can be as rude as you like, although I do recommend not trying to kill him. While I assure you it can be done, destroying a veteran of Hell and Heaven is probably going to annoy somebody. Consider carefully if you want that kind of attention. Not that I would object if you did.
I’m not entirely sure how Aluian got assigned to me. I suspect he may have chosen me on his own, since he doesn’t seem especially dedicated to taking orders. Technically, he serves the One God, a.k.a. God a.k.a. Allah a.k.a. Yahweh. I know much of Technefarious staff is drawn from occidental countries, so I should probably explain that angels have never been exclusively His servants. Before the rise of Christianity and Islam spread His worship beyond the Jews, records exist of the winged servants of the Babylonian gods. Even now, some angels can be found in the service of the many Little Gods of our world. As servants of the One God, His angels have their own internal politics that reflect their disagreements about how mercy, hope, help, and punishment should be meted out.
Aluian doesn’t seem to answer to any of the major factions of angels serving the One God. He also doesn’t do a great job appealing to my better nature, but that may be more my fault than his. The long gaps between our visits are definitely his fault, though. The last time he bugged me was before I had taken over Technefarious but after Dr. Occultomancer had died. That time, he showed up just before I killed a henchman from the occult department who had crossed me. Aluian appeared out of nowhere and demanded that I hold my strike. So I killed the henchman and asked Aluain what was so important about him that I shouldn’t have done that. Turned out that Aluain was more concerned about how killing people was affecting me. That was nice of him, I suppose. But I’d been doing it for a couple of decades by then, and I hadn’t noticed any recent changes.
This time, he just dropped in to catch up. He wanted to see what kind of operation I was running, so that’s why he is wandering around. Technically, he’s a security threat, but he works for people who have their own ways to find out anything sensitive he might stumble across. Ignore him, and he’ll eventually go away on his own.
We’ll be breaking Bleach out of prison this week, so expect the briefing for the mission to be scheduled soon. If any spies working for the good guys are reading these memos, passing that information along to the Establishment for us would make our rescue attempt that much easier. Or will it? Have you guessing now, don’t I? Maybe we aren’t going to rescue Bleach this week. Maybe we aren’t going to help him at all! He does owe me twenty dollars for losing a bet on a Cub’s game.
In Auditorium A tonight, the propaganda department is premiering Film Machine’s documentary: Doctor Crankpot, D.O.C.T.O.R., Technefarious, and you. It’s a history of Technefarious down through the decades. I told Film that his title makes it sound like a puberty film for cyborgs, but he only liked it more after that. Enjoy it anyway. I’ve already seen it, and it’s good.
Have a good week everyone. Remember, the world is already ours – it just doesn’t realize it yet.
Your Leader,
Dr. Photius Callaway
The Killing Man
Wed 13 Jul 2011
Posted by Patrick Rennie under General Posts
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I’m hit or miss on roller coasters, but this one sounds fun.
(via Super Punch)
The Internet is a giant slush pile, and I’m the unpaid intern wading through it. Here’s a bit of pretty dredged from the dreck.
Mon 11 Jul 2011
Posted by Patrick Rennie under From the Desk of the Dictator
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From the Desk of the Dictator:
Welcome back from your weekend everyone.
I want to official record a commendation to Techenfarious’s staff for the response to last week’s crisis. Facing off against even a fraction of Hell’s forces is enough to challenge any organization, but we came through it with flying colors.
Our assault teams responded to the initial assault by rotating through their ammo loads to test the defenses of the attacking devils. Silver and plasma turned out to do the most damage. A special note of approval goes out to the armory for getting the right reloads out to our front lines throughout the battle.
I spent most of the fight out in a jet suit, wacking away at the invaders with the sword Holyfang. While divinely blessed to cleave the forces of evil, Holyfang doesn’t care who wields it, which is good news for me. I’m not sure who the last hero to wield it was. I bought on the black market. You never know when you’ll have to fight a demon prince and his minions.
In this case, the demon prince was Grubberslice. One of thirteen that managed to penetrate our world, they had spread out to conquer points of concentrated power to add to their own. Naturally enough under those circumstances, our base caught Grubberslice’s eye. Still, he misjudged our readiness to fight him, especially what I can bring to a battle.
After I disposed of our local prince, his devils staged a retreat. I tagged along behind, wanting to see where they’d go. We ended up at the site of a satanic ceremony gone wrong, in that the summoners were dead and the devils were running amuck. They had summoned thirteen demon princes, none of whom had stuck around to defend their entry point to our world. They had left minions there though, and I found a mixed bag of local superheroes and escaped criminals engaged with them.
Leading the fight was our own Frigid. One of the princes had attacked the Longhorn Powered Maximum Prison to collect to superpowers gathered there. That was where Frigid was imprisoned, and she rallied a group of criminals who were less than thrilled with the arrival of devils to dispose of the invaders. Promising our fellow criminals a payday from Technefarious, she also followed the defeated devils back to their source after killing their prince.
While she supplied the warm bodies for the fight, it was the Baptized Billygoat from the local heroes that provided the answer to end to war. My arrival brought us up to thirteen humans, and the superhero ordered us to take the places of the deceased Satanists that had originally set this is motion. As it turns out, thirteen is actually stronger as a holy number than one of evil. A Passover supper held long ago locked the number to the power of the divine, and the fondness of the forces of evil for the number is just an attempt to pervert that. Despite the moral dubiousness of some of his thirteen, Billygoat forged us together in a prayer that pulled all the devils that come out of the site back, and then shoved them back into hell.
Pleased with our assistance but thoroughly outnumbered, Billygoat politely encouraged the assembled escaped criminals to turn themselves in and serve out our sentences. I politely told him to fuck off and brought Frigid and the other escapees back to our base.
The smarter of you will probably realize that being so close to Frigid’s prison and the fight with the devils was the reason we had to move our base again. The cleanup crews the Establishment would send after the event would almost certainly run across the base we were at.
Please try to make our new recruits feel at home. New recruits, please keep in mind that I do have a history of personally killing Technefarious employees that get too far out of line.
There is a bridge tournament on Tuesday evening and a magic tournament on Thursday evening. The first is the card game; the second is the competitive perversion of the natural order. The Magic: The Gathering tournament is next week.
Have a good week everyone. Remember, the world is already ours – it just doesn’t realize it yet.
Your Leader,
Dr. Photius Callaway
The Killing Man
Wed 6 Jul 2011
Posted by Patrick Rennie under Slush Pile
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More Neil Gaiman. This time he’s reading one of his short stories, “The Day the Saucers Came.”
(via I seem to have lost the link but it was a Wits broadcast anyway)
Mon 4 Jul 2011
Posted by Patrick Rennie under From the Desk of the Dictator
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From the Desk of the Dictator:
Welcome back from your weekend everyone.
We’re currently under siege by the forces of Hell. If you’re reading this – GET BACK TO WORK.
Your Leader,
Dr. Photius Callaway
The Killing Man