How to Take Over the World with An Army of Penguins, in Three Easy Steps

"And that," my friend told me recently, "is my how someone could try to take down the government in three simple steps."


It was a well-thought-out plan that came from someone in counter-terrorism who'd just concluded a "think-like-the-enemy" exercise. But aside from with being limited to the US, it was inferior to my competing plan in one critical way: it lacked an army of penguins.


World domination, should you ever need it, can be reached with an army of penguins and two other steps. Here's how:


Step One: Set up Your Own Dictatorship on Antarctica


Taking over Antarctica is the first, and easiest part of the plan. It's cold, so no one lives there. Just show up with a grimace on your face sufficiently menacing to scare away the two research scientists who are stuck on the continent, and that block of ice is pretty much yours. That shouldn't be too difficult, because those scientists are probably looking for an excuse to go back home and sit by the fire anyway.


Complete this easy task, and Antarctica is yours.


Of course, you're likely to succumb to frostbite within the first half hour, but this is a small price to pay for controlling 1/7th of the world.

Congratulations! You now own the only land on earth that no one else wants.


This leads us to:


Step Two: Train an Army of Attack Penguins


This one should be self explanatory. 


But as the success of the plan depends entirely on an elite army of attack penguins, I'll spell it out.


Upon your ascension to the throne of Antarctica (also known as a pile of snow), you'll need to enlist an army. Since there are no people there (those two researchers aren't much help, and they will have left by this point anyway) you'll need to use penguins.


This is ok. Penguins have several advantages over humans. They are better at marching, and more importantly, they are too cute for anyone to attack. I venture to say that this will be the case even when (inevitably) the penguins strike first.


In case you are wondering whether penguins can be trained to be an elite military unit, there is some favorable precedent. The Peabody Hotel in Memphis has a team of ducks that march ceremoniously back and forth from the elevator to the main lobby fountain twice a day. If a pack of ducks who quack with Southern accents can be trained for this, surely a pack (or whatever a group of penguins is called) of Emperor Penguins (who were bred to respect your newly created monarchy) are capable of even more. But in the worst case, you might have to hire that duck trainer from Memphis.


Maybe he'll even bring some barbecue.


The penguins should be quick studies. They won't actually know what's going on, but as long as they waddle forward and quack (or whatever ducks do) they will look intimidating enough to ensure immediate surrender.


Once the ducks are trained, you can strap weapons around them and stow them away until your next move. Although unless they are free-range penguins given luxurious accommodations, you might risk a mutiny if you arm them before the plan is ready, and they get to sit around and plot for too long.


Which leads us to:


Step Three: Threaten to Melt Antarctica


It's your continent, so it's your choice.


This act that is the central part to the plan.  If you blow up Antarctica, all that melted ice would flood the rest of the world.


Actually, I'm pretty sure this is the same method God used back in Noah's Day, except that in that case, the penguins were already on the ark. Perhaps they even commandeered it.


As to how to blow up Antarctica, assuming that you do not have access to large explosives (and if  are reading this blog, I certainly hope that you don't), I would suggest a large hair dryer. It might take a while, and you'll need a very large extension cord, but world domination wasn't meant to come easily. Alternatively, you could just wait until Al Gore's predictions of natural consequences come true, but no conservatives will bargain with you if you go that route.


Either way, so long as no one thinks to turn the power off from wherever your extension cord is plugged into, you'll have the world at your mercy eventually.


While you are running that cord, you can give the world a choice: surrender to your control, or you'll get all "Antarctic Blow Dryer" on their behinds. When all the world leaders inevitably surrender, you send the penguins in to clean up the last bit of guerrilla (and possibly gorilla) resistance.


The penguins can then return to their frigid rightful home, and assuming you haven't yet died of hypothermia, you can rule the world from a location of your choosing. Of course, your reign isn't likely to last long once the Resistance figures out that you are penguin-less, and that there are limits to the reach of your blow dryer. But the title of this post wasn't how to stay in control of the world, only how to take control of it to start.


Once you are overthrown, it's very possible you'll be exiled to Antarctica to live out your remaining days. But at least, from your make-shift igloo, you can start plotting your revenge. And when you do, you should have plenty of penguins at your disposal.

This Blog is Haunted

As of this posting, my blog has 16,666 all-time views, which signifies that it's clearly the work of the devil.


I guess that street preacher's warnings as to the direction of my life were right after all.


But more importantly for you, this means that if you read this blog, the ghost that's been haunting me for the past 36 years is likely to leave my side and end up on your doorstep. 


I sure hope so, because, honestly, Clarence is kind of a bore.


You might think having your very own haunted blog would be exciting. You couldn't be more wrong. The kind of ghost that could exist anywhere in time or space but chooses instead to haunt this blog is by definition pretty lame.


Or perhaps he only seems that way to me. After all, I've heard all his stories at this point, and he isn't much fun at parties. 


He doesn't like to get out much, but instead spends his time telling me not to waste time with this blog, when I could be doing more important things, such as watching wrestling or the latest episode of New Girl.


"That Zooey Deschanel sure is entertainingly quirky," Clarence says.


Clarence serves a vital purpose through his haunting of this blog: he tells me not to write stuff.  Every day that I haven't written something, was because the ghost that haunts this blog told me not to. Unless I was on vacation.


You see, when I try to write my weekly blog installment, Clarence tells me not to bother. He tells me that I'm tired and burnt out and that I don't have anything new to say or any good ideas.


Of course, he's often right on all counts.  But he's still annoying.


On the rare occasions when I do I have an idea for a blog post, Clarence suggests that I should Google myself instead. "After all, how many other people can say that they wrote the Alabama Elevator Code," he asks? "And it's just one quick search away! Besides, they could revise that sucker any day now and your legacy will be lost, so you might as well enjoy it now."


When his helpful ideas aren't sufficiently persuasive, sometimes he causes technical glitches. For instance, the time I got locked out of this site for a couple weeks and couldn't post anything was all Clarence's doing.


Sometimes he even sneaks in after I post stuff and creates typos that I woulds have nevre let slip by me. Other times he writes stuff under my name that just isn't any good. 


Clarence mostly sticks to haunting this blog, but occasionally, when he gets really bored, he tries to haunt the rest of my life too. He tells me not to work on that book because I gave myself a year, which means I have 364 days to do it later. He tells Directv to call me every week with an offer I can't refuse. He tells me to eat that Zebra cake and drink that diet coke, because it hasn't given me cancer yet, so I'm obviously immune.


He tells me not to go to the gym because I'm tired, and that I shouldn't reach out to old friends because I don't know where to start catching up; he tells me that the people close to me couldn't understand my problems, so I should just keep them to myself; he tells me to hit the snooze button again, and then to turn it off and go back to sleep, and then he tells me that I should write run-on sentences.


But alas, Clarence has been with me long enough. I'm hoping that by virtue of posting on this haunted occasion, Clarence will find someone new to haunt.


Maybe there's a go-getter out  there reading this who could use his laid-back influence as a means to bring balance to her life.  Maybe there's a lonely guy out there who just needs a friend, albeit one without physical form or audible means of communication.


Of course, I know what some of you are thinking: Clarence doesn't sound like a real ghost at all, only a figment of my imagination that I've made up as an excuse for my inability to think of a good idea for a column.


And if you're embedded in that kind of negative thinking, I'd say there's a very good chance that Clarence is speaking through you already.


Which means I'm finally rid of him.


Mission accomplished.