March 11, 2005

Inside the Villainschloss...

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader thought he was going mad. He thought he read a post on Eric's site that asked what was on the walls of the room where one blogged. Your Maximum Leader thought he read it, but then couldn't seem to find in on Eric's site. Then he looked again, and behold here it is.

Your Maximum Leader decided to pull a Jackie Kennedy and take you all on a one-view, one-room, tour of the Villainschloss. This is to say taht he'll let you get a low-res view of what his office looks like. Here it is.

The wall hangings are (l to r): Kitchener recruiting poster, Winston Churchill photo, linen wall-hanging showing the English Royal Succession from Alfred the Great to Elizabeth II (gift from your Maximum Leader's friend PH in Hotlanta, GA), Lord Nelson, and an interwar period Royal Navy poster (gift from your Maximum Leader's college roommate JW). You might also catch a glimse of the the corkboard on which are hung such items as a postcard of Elvis, some old Dilbert cartoons, a collection of drawings by the Villainettes, a Ronald Reagan calendar, Kilgore's original artwork entitled "Avoid Uncle Earl" (which alas must be partially covered as the Villainettes keep asking why you should avoid Uncle Earl), and a Korean fan (gift from the Big Hominid).

Above the corkboard (and largely unviewable in this photo) is a seal reading "United States of America, War Office." The seal used to hang in your Maximum Leader's grandfather's office in the Pentagon in the late 1940s. When the "War Department" became the "Department of Defense" he asked if he could have the old seal. He was told he could. And from 1949 until his passing in 2003 that seal hung in your Maximum Leader's grandfather's workshop bathroom.

In case you were wondering... The desk is Queen Anne Style (cherry). The chair is modern (black leather). The chair does not match the desk because your Maximum Leader requires comfort when blogging. There is a bust of Winston on the desk as well as some speakers and the docking port for the Kodak digital camera. The monitor is a NEC Multisync 2010. The table next to the chair (upon which rests the old HP printer and cable modem) is a desk from your Maximum Leader's alma mater. Yes, they used to have desks like that in every classroom.

Well... They had desks like that a little before your Maximum Leader's time. That desk was purchased by Longwood College around 1939. It was in regular use by students until 1959. That particular desk was rescued from a trash heap by a friend of your Maximum Leader's and used in her office on campus (under a tablecloth) to hold a large fern. She got new office furniture, and your Maximum Leader rescued the desk before it could be thrown onto the trash heap. The desk was in miserable shape. It had been painted and stripped a few times. It had a wretched wood-grain contact paper pasted all over it. And was generally falling apart. But your Maximum Leader kept it anyway. Years later, your Maximum Leader's sainted father-in-law decided he needed a new project. So he stripped down, repaired, sanded, and refinished the desk. It is better looking now than it was in 1939.

And now your Maximum Leader has written a long-ish post about almost nothing. Wow! How easy it was.

Carry on.

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