Even more tragic

I would like to apologize to my supporters for my lack of posts recently.  I have been very busy interviewing for membership in the GNU Public Dictatorship's Board of Dictators, and I think I'm doing pretty well.  I get to try the obstacle course pretty soon, and then I'll have a much better sense of my chances.  If I don't get added to the Board of Dictators I'll have to proceed with my original plans to make the world more what I want it to be, but it would be easier to work with my former enemies.  Some of you might ask why this post is labeled "even more tragic," and it would be reasonable to do so.  Apparently there are allegations floating around that I was responsible for the Yakima incident, and what's worse, the GPD is not clearing me of those allegations.  They claim I either botched the job or was framed, but I don't know which they actually believe.  I guess if I find piranhas in my water hazard during the obstacle course I'll know for sure.  I just think it's tragic that the GPD can't just let something like this go on my word.  Perhaps when I'm a member of the Board they'll listen to me.

Tragic

I'm in the middle of some very important operations and can't take much time to write, but I did want to say that I have received notice from the GPD's Board of Dictators that I am to be considered for the next round of evaluation.  I am pleased that I won't have to openly oppose them at this time, and I would like to say that it is tragic what happened to their office in Yakima yesterday.

The New "Gertrude"

Because of my meddling with the computer program they called "Gertrude" the New Company has appointed a new "Gertrude," this time a real person.  The GNU Public Dictatorship has accused me of making things worse, but we all know that chaos in a corporation, while it may be disruptive, almost never leads to more efficient solutions.  Instead, the higher-ups just blame the employees, and the employees blame the higher-ups.  Even switching a CEO generally has little effect on the day-to-day operations of a company, so I think that I have been helpful.  I don't know why the GPD seems intent on making my triumph seem like a problem, but I suspect it is that they aren't really as open as they claim to be.

Esperanto is so last month

I have been meaning to post for a while on this, but I kept holding off to make sure our plan was really and truly working before talking about it.  Most of you remember when we changed "Gertrude" so that she only gave instructions in Esperanto, and many of you responded with new ideas to disrupt communications at the New Company.  My wife and I considered the suggestions and came up with an awesome plan, which has now been implemented and running for at least a week.  The New Company was finally starting to understand the instructions in Esperanto, so we got our hackers to write a new module that would, like Hedy Lamarr's secret communication method, cause her to jump from language to language in a seemingly random way.  The New Company is falling behind on their translations as they don't have the key they need, and we think we will soon bring it to its figurative knees!  Thanks for your suggestions, and if you have more let me know.

I'm not twiddling my thumbs

Although twiddle has always been one of my favorite words, I would like to clarify that I am not currently simply twiddling my thumbs.  Some of my more ardent supporters seems to have cooled off after the drama of the US election, but I am making progress.  Our Esperanto project has kept the New Company from doing anything destructive, unless you count the denial of service attack they staged against the GPD offices, but that was more a stunt than an actual attack.  My operatives are keeping them on the defensive, which is good for the world, and even better for me.  If I can keep them from ruling the world I'll have a much better chance of doing it myself!

Sleep Number

Last week I made a momentous decision to choose to attempt to unite with my rivals and to rid the world of evil with their help, and I was a bit insulted when they responded by telling me I had given them an invalid sleep number.  I had, in fact, given them a sleep number I used to use: 104.  Unfortunately, since then, a new company has come up and decided that their sleep numbers will be between 0 and 100.  Much like those who argue for using the ridiculous Celsius temperature scale, they believe that people understand numbers between 0 and 100 better than they do other numbers, which is pretty silly.  Anyway, for the curious I did not let this insult deter me from my latest goal, and I have submitted my converted sleep number of 40.  I hope that makes them happy.

A decision

Ever since I declared my opposition to evil office products I have been working hard to garner the support I need to take over the world and keep everyone safe from the evils of the Parent Corporation, the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch, the New Company, and offshoots such as the Reformed Brotherhood of the Hole Punch.  I am no stranger to the damage these hole punches, brads, and evil stickers are responsible for, and what's more, I am no stranger to the tactics the purveyors of these evils use to trick unsuspecting people into becoming dependent on them.  I have, as yet, not aligned myself with any of the other anti-brad or anti-hole punch movements as I considered them imperfect.  As my wife and I have begun our own quest for world domination, however, we have realized that if we do not join forces against evil that evil will gain the upper hand before we can establish ourselves fully.  The solution we have come to, reluctantly, is to submit an application for membership in the GNU Public Dictatorship's Board of Dictators.

While it is certainly not our first choice, and we have had many disagreements with the GPD, "Natasha" and I have come to the conclusion that we can do more to change the world with their resources than we have been able to do alone.  While it means that the purity of my movement will be adulterated, if it means that evil is disadvantaged and that I am closer to my goal of world domination I am willing to take the chance.  They say they would gladly accept me if I were to join with them, so we'll see how sincere they really are!

Our first successful mission (at least that we can talk about)

It is with great pleasure that I announce that "Natasha" and I have successfully executed our first mission (that we can talk about) to keep the New Company from succeeding in its bid to force evil office products on the masses.  We introduced a computer virus into the computer running "Gertrude" which caused "her" to create all of her memos in Esperanto.  As "she" could not communicate "her" ideas, "her" staff became panicked, and until they learn Esperanto they will have to either sit on their hands and do nothing or guess what "Gertrude" wants them to do.  We figure it will take them a couple weeks to learn the new language, so we have earned 14 days * 7 billion people = 98 billion person days free from the New Company's influence!

Evil office products

While researching the best ways to get people to swear allegiance to me and give up their own ambitions in order to achieve my goals I ran across an post on my former enemy's blog about how, if I truly despise evil office products, I should be doing more to crush the New Company and my former employer, the Parent Corporation.

I want to make it very clear:  I despise evil office products and will never use them again, nor will I support their design, manufacture, distribution, or use among the general population.  My comments in previous posts were not meant to indicate that I had relapsed into approving of them, but to illustrate my point that it is much more difficult than I had thought to get people to unite behind me when their judgment is not impaired by dependence on these tools of evil.  It took me a while to come to this realization, but now that I have accepted it and changed my tactics I am once again having great success.

There has also been one incident at one of my field offices where a naive campaign worker used hole punches while distributing campaign literature, but she has been reprimanded and now my wife and I are training our new recruits on the dangers of brads and hole punches, how to recognize evil stickers, and how to talk to people who don't think there is anything wrong with evil office products.  We are also getting ready to launch campaigns against the New Company and its evil designs.  Just because I haven't have the manpower to launch attacks against them doesn't mean I won't be doing so in the very near future!

Progress

I am pleased to announce that after a remarkably slow start, my bid to rule the world is finally taking off.  I must admit that I was starting to wonder whether I had made a mistake in giving up such a useful tool as evil office products, but my wife reminded me of the sad situation we found ourselves in earlier this year and I realized that she is right.  After my conversations with my not-so-evil twin I made some adjustments to my methods, and I have begun recruiting campaign workers.  It's remarkably easy to find people disillusioned with the current state of politics, especially in the current political climate in the United States.  I just used some of the money I got from my churro sales to buy campaign posters and put them up all over, and suddenly campaign volunteers started flocking to me.  It just goes to show that when people understand their alternatives they aren't so stupid after all.

"Natasha" has cautioned me not to get my hopes up too much, and that perhaps the volunteers that are flocking to me are just considering me a better option than the major US political parties.  I can't believe that anyone wouldn't be a better option than the major political parties here in the US, so I think my wife is being overly pessimistic, but my recent disappointments have let me know that people aren't so quick to recognize the greatness in me as I would expect, so I am letting them bask in my glow for a while and then I am sure they will be loyal and mindless followers!

I would like to thank all of those who have joined me so far, and would like to extend an invitation to everyone else: either join me or you'll be sorry!  I'm finally starting to have enough infrastructure in place that I can start manipulating world events in my favor, so you'll want to be aligned with me to avoid any... um... discomfort!

Looking up

Last week I had a conversation with my twin brother, who, unfortunately, works for one of my competitors in the race for world domination.  I haven't spoken with him for some time; in fact, I haven't talked with him much since I imprisoned him in the reality simulator to take his place at the GNU Public Dictatorship to find out what they already knew about Jacob Gehris.  Those were the days.  As you all know well, Jacob was the purported inventor of the brad, even though he just popularized the modern manufacturing methods.  For years the Parent Corporation led people to believe that he was an unfortunate individual caught in the middle of a conspiracy of secret societies, but we knew better.  We knew he was as evil as they come and his motivations were not for the benefit of society.  But I digress... those days are behind me as I have sworn off evil office products.  It was just fun to relive the glory days, even if I was on the wrong side.

Anyway, my brother and I discussed many things and I discovered that he is still loyal to family, and that now that I am clean he is willing to help me as long as it doesn't violate his non-compete clause in his employment contract at the GPD.  He used his influence to get the US government to recognize my patented churros, and he has used the GPD's resources to encourage people to stop making bootleg churros, at least where mine are being sold.  With a bit more revenue from my churros I'll be able to do more to get ready to rule the world!  Additionally I have received more correspondence than I cared to open expressing support and solidarity for me and my pinkilessness, and I have decided that my pinkilessness is not going to keep me from ruling the world.  It may mean that I have to rid the world of some vocal anti-pinkiless hooligans, but I won't have to destroy the whole world!  "Natasha" assures me that this is better, as I will be able to impress the world by stamping out anti-pinkilessness without rendering the world incapable of joining me afterwards!  Things are definitely looking up! 

Adjusting my expectations

My wife has been trying to convince me since I posted last week that the implicit threat at the end (that if you don't unite behind me I may have to destroy you) was poorly chosen, and that I should not have mentioned it at all, even if it was my intent.  Moreover, she has finally convinced me that instead of growing morose and plotting to destroy the world I should adjust my expectations.

I had expected that as soon as I provided myself as an option that people around the world would flock to me and beg me to rule them.  As it turns out, however, an obscure low-budget film that insults a popular world religion can apparently incite more passion than can a well-constructed and witty blog about me.  Perhaps it has to do with my pinkilessness, but I hate to revel in my disability.  I only mention it because so many of the things I have tried to do to improve the world by having me control it seem to be taking longer than I imagine that it would take a similar-but-not-pinkiless version of me.  If only I could convince my twin brother to abandon the GNU Public Dictatorship and attempt to rule the world himself I would have an experiment that could confirm or contradict my assumptions, but he seems to buy into the ridiculous model of the GPD.  I had also expected to make more money off sales of my patented churros, but I suspect that someone has been creating bootleg churros and flooding the market with these knock-off versions of mine.  I have filed a lawsuit to get them to stop, but I suspect that the judge found out about my pinkilessness and won't even use government resources to investigate my claims that someone is making churros similar to my patented ones.  He had the nerve to suggest in his ruling that since I had "no proof" that these knock-off churros exist and since the US government does not recognize my patent he could do nothing to help me.  I guess this is just one more reason to rule the world.

Anyway, I have adjusted my expectations.  I no longer expect the US government to support my bid for world domination, and I no longer expect you to unite behind me without me doing something to impress you.  I know I have made it clear that I won't count votes, but if any of you have any suggestions as to what would impress you, please don't hesitate to contact me and let me know.  "Natasha" tells me that destroying you might impress you but that it would leave you unable to support me, so I'm looking for other methods of impressing you.

It's not moving so quickly as I had hoped

When I declared my intent to rule the world I figured it might take a few days for everyone to line up behind me, but, to my dismay, it has now been more than a month.  It has been a week since I created this blog, but still the world has yet to anoint me their fearless leader.  Maybe it is because I am pinkiless.  Discrimination against the pinkiless has long been the way of the world, and even though the situation has improved somewhat since the campaigns against anti-pinkilessness spearheaded by the GPD, but society does not yet appear to truly accept those of us without pinkies.  As the story of how I became pinkiless is closely tied with my past transgressions, I will share a bit of it now, in the hopes that future generations won't have to be pinkiless and endure the mental anguish associated with it.

Several years ago I was working my way up the ladder of success in the Parent Corporation, whose long term goal is to rule the world but whose methods involve the use of office products that are habit-forming and dangerous to the users thereof.  They figure that if they can get people addicted to these products that the people will be easier to manipulate and rule over.  In my pursuit of greatness I bought into this method of world domination, and worked hard not just to disseminate mildly-dangerous office products, but to create newer and more sinister varieties thereof.  I had been assigned to make a brad more evil than the standard one, and had been working very long hours.  After what they tell me was a week without sleep I was ready to test my latest version of the brad and I engaged the testing machine.  Unfortunately, my hands were still on the testing table and were punctured many times by my version of the brad.  Due to a quirk of the shape of the table and of the design of the test, the punctures all occurred on my pinky fingers.  My assistants found me the next morning, asleep and still bleeding.  They feared that I was dead and got emergency medical assistance.  Because of the delay in treatment the doctors were unable to save my pinky fingers and I have been pinkiless since then.  The irony of the situation was that we never succeeded in making a brad more evil than it already was, and that the test machine was not even loaded with my experimental brads, but with the standard off-the-shelf variety.

In retrospect I should have given up on evil office products right then and there, but the Parent Corporation promoted me and gave me a proxy to attend public functions for me (so that my pinkilessness would not be apparent) and I used the proxy.  I grew so fearful of exposing my pinkilessness that I became a recluse and began using evil office products on my own.  The vicious cycle repeated itself until earlier this year when I met my wife, at which point I decided that I was coming out of the pinkiless closet and that I was going to clean up.

I'm not proud of my involvement with evil office products, and I'm not proud of my pinkilessness, but it is part of who I am, and if the world isn't ready to accept me as I am then I do not want to rule it.  Who would want to rule over a world that doesn't accept me for who I am?  Perhaps I'll have to change my plans and destroy it...

What this is all about

While I know that most of the world already knows me, I thought I would take a minute to explain to a few of you who I am and why I started this blog.  I have had a number of questions since I declared my intent to rule the world, so I will respond to the more common ones here with both a short answer and a long answer:

Q. Who are you?
Short A. "Edgar"
Long A.  I was born Cornelius Quisling III, and my twin brother and I were expected from a very young age to do great things.  My brother Count went into public service, I went into business.  My parents disowned me when I began to direct a company bent on world domination through the enslavement of the human race by addictions to evil office products such as brads, hole punches, and evil stickers, but I continued my work anyway.  I became addicted to these evil products and did many things of which I am deeply embarrassed, but I realized the error of my ways when I met my true love, who was then going by the name of "Kathryn", but who now prefers her earlier pseudonym "Natasha".  Her birth name, for the curious, was Jennifer Ferguson, but she is not the one running for congress in the state of Washington.  "Natasha" and I overcame our addictions to evil office products, forswore them, got married, and are now working together full time.
Q.  Why would I want to be ruled by you?
Short A. Because you don't want to take the time to rule yourself, do you?
Long A.  Let me list the top 29 reasons:

1. "Edgar" is a family man.
2. "Edgar" is smarter than you.
3. "Edgar" has your best interests at heart
4. "Edgar" and "Natasha" are well-traveled in the world of aspiring world leaders and know how to avoid many of the pitfalls
5. "Edgar" and "Natasha" will not require you to vote, but you can if you want to.  It won't make a difference, though, since votes will not be counted.
6. "Edgar" and "Natasha" will do the right thing regardless of what everyone says they should do
7. "Edgar" and "Natasha" have a blog.
8. "Edgar" is a cooler pseudonym than yours.
9. "Edgar" is experienced in the business world.
10. "Edgar" believes everything that you do, only better than you do.
11. "Edgar" will eliminate brads.
12. "Edgar" will eliminate hand-held hole punches.
13. "Edgar" will eliminate evil stickers.
14. "Edgar" is good at making lists
15. "Edgar" has four PhD's, only two of which were from fake universities.  How many of your favorite aspiring world leaders can make that claim?
16. "Edgar" has a twin brother.
17. "Edgar" is pinkiless, and it would be discrimination for you to not let him rule over you.
18. "Edgar" has a proven track record, even if it is for an evil organization he now despises.
19. "Edgar" won't tell you what you want to hear, unless you want to hear what he has to say.
20. "Edgar" drives a fast car.
21. "Edgar" does not ever exceed the speed limit by more than 10 km/h.
22. "Edgar" is more awesome than you.
23. "Edgar" expects nothing from you except to not oppose him.
24. "Edgar" is an amateur painter.
25. "Edgar" is blunt; he won't mince words.
26. "Edgar" loves Spirograph.
27. "Edgar" has so many reasons you should let him rule over you.  Quantity is important, after all.
28. "Edgar" has lived all over the world and knows how to rule it.
29. "Edgar" is not part of the 1%.  His corporate earnings were forfeited when he resigned from the Parent Corporation, and he now lives entirely off sales of his patented churros.

Q. Will you be responsive to the "will of the people"
Short A. No.
Long A. No.  The "will of the people" is often wrong and can be swayed too easily by passing trends.  A government based on Rule By "Edgar" will be infinitely more efficient than democracies and will align with my own views 100% of the time.  No other form of government can make that sort of claim.
Q.  What about other alternatives?
Short A.  There are no other good alternatives.  It's Rule By "Edgar" or chaos.
Long A.  The few alternatives out there are not desirable.  You could throw your support behind the evil organization that "Edgar" resigned from or one of its offshoots, or you could pin your hopes on that ridiculous GNU Public Dictatorship and its Board of Dictators, but you might as well be hoping that the US Congress will get its act together and improve the world.
Q.  How do I help?
Short A.  Tell everyone about me and my vision.
Long A.  Tell everyone about me and my vision and my churros.  The more churros I sell the more resources I will have at my disposal to combat evil and install myself as ruler of the world!

I hope that this FAQ has helped you get to know me better.  Feel free to ask me any questions that might occur to you, and I will try to update you periodically on my progress.  Here's to the future and Rule By "Edgar!"