Asbestos? I have no idea what you are talking about!

Famous super villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld once again had his hopes of world domination thwarted when the underground missile launching site he built inside a volcano was visited by local inspectors and hit with code violations.

“It is so difficult being a maniacal villain nowadays” said the disappointed Blofeld.

Back in the day we just did it. We believed in something and we just did it. Hey, that’s a catchy slogan. Someone should use it. Anyway as I was saying we old-timers were men of action. We built a lair, killed a whole bunch of people and moved on. No one cared about whether the lair was up to code. And when we were finished we dynamited the place. But now?  There are so many regulations. It’s a wonder any of us can keep up with them.

Blofeld is referring to the “International Agreement on Standards and Practices for Super Villains” signed by Spectre, a 3000-page document outlining minimum wage for employees, healthcare coverage, sexual harassment policies and safety and code standards, among other topics.

3000 pages? What is this? A Russian novel? Who has time to read all that. So I gave it to my secretary and told him to deal with it. I haven’t even looked at it. What do I care about code violations? We at Spectre have a saying:  “I’m going to kill you and I don’t care about your HVAC system either.” Or at least that used to be the saying. The new Spectre leadership wants to dominate the world obviously but they also care about social justice. Some of them are always telling me how “woke” they are, whatever the hell that means. I guess I’m just old fashioned. A stick in the mud the younger folk tell me.

In keeping with Spectre’s new environmentally-friendly face, Blofeld was required to inform the local municipality once his top secret lair was finished so it could be inspected.

For starters I won’t even mention how stupid it is to build a top secret lair and then tell everyone to come visit. Sure the workers would get drunk at local bars after their shifts and blurt out where the lair was but I’d just have everyone killed. But to invite everyone in? Makes no sense. At least let me blindfold them or erase their memories or something. So I invite the inspectors over, a bunch of them, and they start poking around. Of course they are going to find code violations. That’s their game. One guys dings me for using asbestos and another one tells me I’m going to have to rip up the walls and replace the HVAC system.  “It’s not up to speed at all” he tells me. Do you know how much all this is going to cost? Yeah sure I want to dominate the world but I also have to worry about the profit margin. So I shut the whole damn thing down. Laid off the workers. Had to tell the home office that my plan to steal satellites in space was not going to happen.

This marks Blofeld’s 17th failure in a row to dominate the world.

“You can blame Bond all you like but the fact remains I’m not a success. With my track record of failure I should consider going into government.”

(95)