Approaching PERFECTION!

Everyone needs a nemesis. A proper nemesis falls into one of three categories: the successful, the nobody and the dear, dear friend. The successful is simply someone famous who has reached a level of social and monetary status in spite of his bankrupt nature and, most likely, homely appearance. The nobody is one not famous that you are forced to interact with be it in the workplace or neighborhood watering hole (fuck you Jerry!). And the dear, dear friend is pretty much all your friends because, well, fuck them anyway.

The nemesis fulfills a very important role in your life, namely to exist in order to fail so that you can feel better about yourself. In the case of the famous, since you have no real interaction with them, the best you can do is hope for their death or some kind of highly publicized not-cool sex scandal. Of course, such a destruction doesn’t happen every day and since you have no real role in bringing it about, it’s best to limit the number of these nemesis to under 50 or so. Personally, I pray every night that David Sedaris and Christopher Hitchens die of food poisoning at a dinner with Michel Houellebecq's and Houellbecq’s own brush with death experience causes him to convert to Christianity and start producing work along the lines of Bob Dylan in the 80’s. That would rule.

As for the nobody, you have many options at your disposal. Take my current profession as vending machine attendant for example. As a VMA I have to bend over countless rotating carousals and replenish their milk, candy bar, snack cup and ham sandwich supply. When I’m engaged in this activity it is not uncommon for some horrible and petty individual to approach me and make requests as to what should be placed in the vending machine. For example, today I was told I should bring more power bars and “the snack cups with M&Ms.” This, for obvious reasons, oversteps the bounds of decency and those two vending machine will see only the nasty power bars nobody likes and only snack cups without M&M for, oh, 2 weeks. In carrying out such an awesome plan, I defeat these nemeses with my vending machine power and thusly show them not only my superiority, but also my noble and refined spirit that they, as petty whiners, have no concept of.

Finally there is the close dear friend nemesis, the most evil and potentially harmful of all three. In order to figure out if a friend is really more of nemesis than a goodly chum they have to have something you want and can not currently obtain. In the past, I had many friend nemeses and lived a full and happy life venting my frustration through innocently placed questions about unrequited love or by putting sand in their scrambled eggs. There was however a time when I had no friend nemesis and was forced to face my self-hatred directly with my only recourse being luxury goods and bourbon. It’s important here to note that my temporary loss of friend nemeses was not so much due to my own objective success and grandeur, but almost entirely because of my ability to pick utter social and economic washes for chummery. Thus making near impossible not to be doing better than them. But the cruel fates of time have recently turned, and I’ve found myself fighting for a place at the hind tit once again while my cake eating friends sit around laughing at me.

What they don’t know though is their delicious cake eating only makes me stronger and happier and less of drinker, except on major holidays and weekends and Tuesdays.