Minutiæ

It is I, Dr. Cyclone, beam­ing off my pri­vate Sovi­et satel­lite from deep with­in the tun­dra of Ser­bia. This, sad­ly, might be my last mes­sage if things don’t pick up soon. For you see, even the most sin­is­ter of all super vil­lains is still affect­ed by the eco­nom­ic meltdown.

You may won­der, as some­one who is no stranger to theft or heist, the glob­al finan­cial could neg­a­tive­ly affect Dr. Cyclone, the most reviled vil­lain of the UN? The mate­ri­als for my many dooms­day devices or the high­ly reflec­tive cloth for my hench­man are pro­duced on a very grand scale. When peo­ple are laid off from their jobs, it means they are spend­ing less, thus few­er goods are made and few­er parts are pro­duced. Bot­tom line being I can’t get any damn tran­sis­tors any­more, and damn it if the cost of clean­ing agents for the pool that hous­es hyper-intel­li­gent death-dol­phins went up three thou­sand per­cent. Three thou­sand per­cent! That’s insan­i­ty. It makes me want to kill even more!

Air trav­el has also tak­en a huge hit in the past decade and it’s all cul­mi­nat­ing now. I can’t send my right hand man Reg­gie “Fist Twist” Yorko­va to drug any super spies any­more through­out Europe. I miss the 90s when I could snap my fin­gers at din­ner and have a CIA agent lay­ing under a laser beam the next morn­ing. Now it costs an arm and a leg just to check a bag, and Jesus if Fist Twist can get more than three ounces of ether through secu­ri­ty any­more. I mean, yeah, he can buy it in Croa­t­ia, but I might as well flush mon­ey down the toi­let. We’ve got noth­ing to do.

I’m evil, but I’m not a dick. Let me be clear: I’ve had to let go half my work­force off and I feel ter­ri­ble about it. They were alright peo­ple, and now I look like a jack­ass mak­ing my own cof­fee in the morn­ing. I tru­ly resem­ble a god­damn jack­ass sit­ting in the break room with a needs-to-be-dry-cleaned black vel­vet cape wait­ing for some damn Foldgers to brew. A god­damn jack­ass. These cut backs are killing me. I have an image to maintain.

On top of all this, it is cost­ing me a for­tune to main­tain this high­ly reflec­tive dome lair. I used to have a few guys in here every morn­ing to pol­ish and dust, but now I’ve got some dumpy woman com­ing in a few days a week, maybe, incom­pe­tent­ly leav­ing marks every­where. I mean, for Christ’s sake, I’ve had to mon­i­tor my elec­tric­i­ty usage, and you know the first thing to suf­fer are the rows of insane­ly fast spin­ning razors that slow­ly inch clos­er to my ene­mies as I care­ful­ly reveal my moti­va­tions. You know how threat­en­ing it is to see Dr. Cyclone in mit­tens because Dr. Cyclone can’t afford his god­damn sub­ter­ranean Siber­ian heat­ing bill? Not very. There is no fuck­ing insu­la­tion in this under­ground dome. It’s like we built right under a pock­et of fuck­ing nothing!

Though, not every­thing is bad. Usu­al­ly, I’m stuck with some bot­tom-feed­ers for hench­men, but with all of these high lev­el man­agers get­ting laid off, I have a for­mer CEO of Wachovia Bank in charge of secu­ri­ty hold­ings and acid appli­ca­tion. And I do appre­ci­ate actu­al­ly get­ting my hands dirty again. I had for­got­ten why I got into this super vil­lain busi­ness to begin with. I’m writ­ing my own before-death rants again and it feels great, and you can tell that the old school guys, like secret ops, they real­ly appre­ci­ate that hand made touch.

Last­ly — ah, damn it, this satel­lite is cost­ing me like 30 bucks a minute. Nev­er mind. ♦