As I lounge here in the Crazy 8 Press Secret Headquarters, located in an inactive volcano, I am moved to write on the minions who make our lives so much easier. The lackeys, hunchbacks, and flunkies. You know– the little people.

Yes, I know I’m 6’6 and that makes almost everybody a little person to me. Well, of course. You can’t sit in a high back leather chair, swirling a snifter of cognac, stroking my cat and laughing maniacally without a healthy dose of megalomania.

And so, I raise my glass to the toadies who make my existence bearable.

There’s Alyosha, who keeps the shark tank scrubbed and stocked with chum. Or former chums. (My cat is meowing loudly again. Perhaps I should drop him in the shark tank. It might be the only way to get a decent night’s sleep around here.)

There’s Serena… ah, lovely Serena. She keeps the paperwork going. Actually, she doesn’t do much more than sharpen pencils and pick up paper clips, but she looks so fetching when she bends over to do it.

And then there’s Roquefort, who claims to be very important because he says he makes sure the volcano stays dormant, but I haven’t heard a single rumble all the time I’ve been here. I think he’s goldbricking. I also think he’s next into the tank. We can always find new henchmen to serve in our plans to take over the world– or at least get the place cleaned up here for the monthly game of Risk we play with real armies.

But that’s my point. People claim it’s always tough to find decent help, but that simply hasn’t been true in my experience. There’s always a certain class of people who want to be ruled, and there are others who want to be run roughshod over, and there are… hmm. The volcano warning is going off.

But that’s impossible! Roquefort is supposed to be taking care of these– damn. His voicemail just told me he’s taking his first vacation in ten years. And he’s taking the asbestos suits with him.

Ah well. Perhaps we need a better class of stooge around here. I’ll have to look into that after I get out of the burn ward.