17 December 2009

Know Thine Enemy



You measure a man by the quality of his friends.

Yeah, sure. But, that’s quite an anodyne test. I mean, your mother loves you… and she’s wrong.

No, I measure him by the quality of his enemies. Now, there’s a real window into a person’s soul. Who has he bothered to piss off? Who has he taken the effort to wind up? Who is it he’s willing to throw the conventions of polite society out the window for? Who really gets up him sideways with an arm full of deckchairs, enough for him to declare, “Right. You are now my enemy?”

When I was a kid, I was going to have the best nemesis. My nemesis was going to be Darth Vader, a Cyberman and Moriarty all rolled into one. (My nemesis always had a touch of Servalan from Blake's 7 thrown in, as well.*)

The brainy, violent, universe spanning, hyper-sexy battle that I was going to be involved in was going to be the stuff of legend.

As it turns out… my nemesis is a slightly overweight, balding, 60 year old cafeteria lady who just cannot seem to remember me and can turn the instruction, “Two bits of bread, nothing on them, with two rashes of bacon between them, please,” into a Kafkaesque nightmare.

*Servalan and Avon were my first introduction to a proper, sexually charged ’love/hate’ relationship. This was later complicated by me being unable to tell Servalan and Marc Almond from Soft Cell, apart.

2 comments:

  1. Yeah, Franz is okay, it just depends on who's interprated the work. Take 'The Castle' for instance. Whilst I thought the movie was cute. I think working dog took a few liberties. It was almost as off the mark as 'The Lawnmowerman'.

    ReplyDelete