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My house was recently remodeled, and I am disappointed. To make matters worse, my disappointment is causing me to question my goals and dreams.
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Me, standing in the wreckage of my dreams...
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My disappointment has nothing to do with the work that was done. The construction company that did the work – North State Residential Development – did a great job.
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Rob - God of Electricity and other stuff
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The work was performed on time and on budget. North State more or less built me a new home in five months. No one in my neighborhood believed it was possible. But these guys worked on weekends, in the dark and even in the rain to get the job done.
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The men responsible for my bitter disappointment.
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But every time I look at my new home I cannot put behind me the hopes I had when I originally decided to remodel my home. You see, I am an evil genius, and that means I have always wanted a secret lair. Allow me to explain.
There are lots of evil geniuses in the world – but they are not all created equal.Sure, there are high profile evil geniuses sitting around in big chairs, stroking persian cats and using their genius to plan and execute diabolical plans to threaten the world with the goal of getting rich.
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My role model - Ernst Stavro Blofeld
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Despite these few “stars” most evil geniuses live very humble lives. We have families. We go to church on Sundays.

Secretly evil.
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But we live secret lives where we dream of threatening humanity with extinction in order to become enormously wealthy.
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I am that kind of evil genius. My extreme evil and my uncanny genius are well established. How else do you explain my otherwise unexplainable success? I’ve spent my life crafting a respectable persona that hides my secret evil identity – Professor Iniquitous. Over the years I have hatched countless ingenious plans for taking over the world – none of which I have been able to execute.
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There is one primary reason why I haven’t taken over the world yet. It isn’t the lack of sufficient evil. If the editors over at Merriam Webster knew about me, the word “evil” in their dictionary would have my picture next to it. And I do not lack for genius. I am always the smartest guy in the room and I know all of the answers to questions asked on television quiz shows. Nevertheless, I lack the one thing that all successful evil geniuses possess: membership in the Amalgamation of Evil Geniuses (AEG).
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The AEG is an international labor union that more or less controls all evil genius activity on this planet. You can’t really be an evil genius without belonging to AEG. And to join AEG you must have a secret lair – a private place to conduct your evil experiments and hatch your evil plans.
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So when my wife and I talked about remodeling our home, I was very excited about the possibilities of including a secret lair in the project.With a secret lair, I finally had a chance of joining AEG – and after that happened, it was only a matter of time before the world would be mine.
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The contractor at North State loved the idea.I talked to their architect, who drew up the plans and even made a 3D computer simulation of what my secret lair would look like after it was built.I sat there in the architect’s office as he showed me my underground secret lair – my future laboratory, my control room, my nuclear missile silo, my shark tank and the kitchen where my evil minions could microwave hot pocket snacks.It was a dream come true.
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Then I saw the price. Underground lairs are very, very expensive. So we began to reduce the project. The shark tank was the first thing to go. I really didn’t need a shark tank.I could use other means to dispose of the secret agents sent to stop me.
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Then I gave up the missile silo.Nuclear weapons were old fashioned. I could eventually replace the nuclear missile with a much less expensive death ray.
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Even with these sacrifices, the costs associated with a secret lair were just too high to afford. More and more of what I wanted was cut away until eventually I was left with what amounts to a secret closet in the garage.
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Don’t get me wrong:the closet is very secret. Unless you knew what to look for you wouldn’t really notice it. But it is still a closet. I can stand in it, but that’s about it. I really cannot use it to menace the world.
And that is exactly what AEG told me when I sent them a picture of my secret closet attached to my membership application.They wrote and told me
The AEG New Member Selection Committee has decided to hold onto your application until such time that you improve upon your secret lair to meet or exceed AEG’s secret lair standards as described in the AEG publication “So You Think You Have a Secret Lair…” a copy of which is enclosed for your convenience.
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So I guess my plans for world domination are going to have to wait. Maybe I should reconsider this whole evil genius thing.In the meantime, I am using my secret closet to store some gardening supplies…
Wait! That gives me an idea – a beautifully evil idea! I can infect seemingly ordinary gardening supplies to spread bacteria genetically engineered to transform people from home gardeners into an army of zombie slaves! Mooohahahahah!!
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I am back, baby!
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