The decision to pick an arch-nemesis is not one to take lightly. As you work to defeat them, you will study their knowledge and philosophy, and absorb their thinking into your psyche. It is how the “know your enemy” part of the “know your enemy, know yourself” portion of Sun Tzu’s Art of War military philosophy works. By the way, Sun Tzu would make a terrible arch-nemesis for anybody today, because Sun Tzu died around 500 years before Christ was born. You do not want to absorb the essence of a decaying corpse via an intimate arch-nemesis relationship, or you will end up like George Soros. His arch-nemesis is Machiavelli.

An arch-nemesis is not necessarily a reciprocal relationship. For example, Mark Cuban made Donald Trump his arch-nemesis, Scott Adams made Hillary Clinton his arch-nemesis, and Hillary Clinton made Pepe the Frog her arch-nemesis. You will have to see how things are going for each of these people on your duckduckgo machines. I am busy writing this post and have a lot of braining to do if I am going to defeat my soon-to-be-announced arch-nemesis.

Donald Trump is an interesting case. Every so often you get somebody so extraordinarily talented that a single individual just won’t serve. Thus,  Mr. Trump made the Democratic party, the establishment Republican party, and the mainstream press his arch-nemesis. It was incredibly risky, but the rewards are great if you can pull off victory. Oh, I meant to say President Elect Donald Trump. He earned it. Sorry about leaving that off .

I decided on Sunday that it was time for me to pick an arch-nemesis. I am writing this on Tuesday, so you can see it took quite a while to choose somebody appropriate for where I’m currently sitting in life. I will describe my process and considerations, in the hope that I can help you choose an appropriate arch-nemesis, assuming you are in the market.

At first I thought Vox Day (gab.ai/voxday) might be a good arch-nemesis. Vox Day would be a terrible choice, though. First, he is very smart and right about 98% of the time. Maddeningly so, actually, because you desperately don’t want him to be right about a lot of things, but the more you try to figure out why the more you conclude that he is, in fact, correct. The second reason is the people he surrounds himself with. Oh, the Ilk, Dread Ilk, and Vile Faceless Minions are scary, but the truly terrifying person is Spacebunny (gab.ai/spacebunny). If you don’t follow her on Gab.ai or [spitooie] Twitter, then you have no idea. When you catch them with their guard down, drunk on the tears of SJWs, the person every ilk with brains fears the most is Spacebunny. Even Vox himself says this.

The Day super-duo is deadly. Learn from the mistakes of others. Should the Supreme Dark Lord invite you to his house, you will see a pair of rabbit feet dangling at his front door. Spacebunny will greet you warmly sporting rabbit-fur-lined fingerless gloves, and they will serve you a coney-based lunch which will turn “even the toughest, stringiest rabbit into a gourmet meal” because the secret lies in the sauce. Or so I’ve been told.

I briefly considered John C. Wright for my arch-nemesis. John is a 2016 Dragon Award winning author, philosopher, Conservative, and fellow Christian. We don’t see Christianity in quite the same way (that pesky Catholic/Protestant divide) and our political philosophies don’t quite mesh. We share views on the big things, however. You want your arch-nemesis to have enough similarities that you don’t completely lose yourself during the ensuing fight. Mr. Wright is not really competing much in the areas I want to compete in, though. He writes books and I write comic strips and although we both write web articles they serve different purposes. John also has a sidekick: Jagi Lamplighter. Jagi is generally regarded as “the nicest lady in science fiction.” This puts any would-be arch-nemesis in an awkward position because it is difficult to be seen as anything but the villain if you are “attacking” super-nice people. The Wrights are exactly this, so he would not make a good arch-nemesis for me.

I thought about my pastor, Glyph’s English teacher, and Codex. Codex took the most consideration, but it would make for an extremely awkward arch-nemesis relationship. Making somebody you see frequently or work closely with your arch-nemesis is a mistake, because it is hard or impractical to keep up the “rivalry spirit” that an arch-nemesis relationship requires. As for the others, they lack gravitas. If you talk to someone and mention your arch-nemesis and they don’t know who that is, they tend to view you as “crazy” and not just “eccentric”. That’s bad.

Of course, I’ve been using the word “defeat” to describe the ultimate purpose and hopefully favorable resolution in an arch-nemesis relationship. This really isn’t the right word. It is not necessary to “defeat” your arch-nemesis, in the sense you wish them harm or seek to destroy their success. It is really about building yourself up and surpassing their accomplishments. I am using a technique that fellow cartoonist and blog author Scott Adams calls “pacing and leading” to stretch your taffy-like brains around a nuanced meaning of an existing concept.

Therefore, I’m thrilled to announce that Scott Adams is my new arch-nemesis. Scott is the wildly successful cartoonist behind Dilbert. I hope to absorb his “cartoonyness” into my existing essence and recreate the success of Dilbert with Tempest in a Teardrop.

There are a lot of specific reasons why Scott Adams is my arch-nemesis. I could be jealous of his fame or his influence or his money or his drawing or cartooning skills. I could have an unhealthy fascination with his book sales or his success philosophy or his master hypnotism skills or amazing persuasive abilities. Frankly, it doesn’t matter, because according to my arch-nemesis Scott Adams I’ve made up my mind and will only justify it after the fact anyway.

Did you see that? I just used persuasive jujitsu to completely avoid giving too much information about this decision on the internet. When taking on a master persuader, it is wise to withhold your innermost fears and feelings. It is just the opening salvo of what I’m sure will be an epic struggle. He’ll point out that his “moist robot brain and we’re all part of a simulation” ideology explains advertising, stupidity, and doesn’t necessarily conflict with Christian philosophy. I’ll point out that universal morals still apply regardless, and my beliefs play better at funerals. Yep. Epicness is coming.

I hope one day that Scott Adams will make me his arch-nemesis. I see this happening in a movie with five distinct acts.

Act 1 is like the opening of a James Bond movie, where Bond is nearly killed while minding his own business trying to assassinate a foreign agent. He squints fiercely as his enemy escapes. You know he’ll exact his revenge using exploding lithium batteries and hot babes later in the show, and his enemy will deserve it. Maybe don’t think of the opening sequence of the last couple of feminized Bond movies for this act. Think of the good ones before that. Then the opening credits roll. That’s where we are with this post. I’m squinting and sizing up Codex for a hot mushroom-sized bathing suit.

Act II will be a volley of moves where we make Tempest in a Teardrop extremely much better and I continue to demonstrate my own persuasion abilities and hypnosis techniques in clever blog posts. Maybe we’ll even make a book, because I am learning from my arch-nemesis Scott Adams, who has many of those. Scott Adams will say, “Who?” a lot if someone wants a comment about this “Quizzer” character. When this happens, I want it on record that I predicted it.

Act III will bring a grudging acceptance that I am, in fact, a worthy arch-nemesis. You’ll know this because I’ll include subtle curled ties and a carrot with frizzy triangle hair, and Scott will include scenes of Dilbert camping and dropping his spork in a fire, or the Boss teasing a hair tuft with a fork-spoon hybrid utensil. Our relationship status will attract a lot of outside attention. It will culminate with a segment about the “dueling cartoonists” on that E! television show.

Act IV will bring some kind of renewal to our arch-nemesis status. I don’t know what that will be, because usually by this part of the movie I have to excuse myself to the restroom. At my age, that can take longer than you’d think.

Act V will bring the final, touching resolution. Scott Adams will lie in his bed practicing for his final, sad exhale. I will dress up in a suit, curly tie, and thick, nerdy glasses and sneak past the robot guards who enforce restraining orders. I will stand at his side, and whisper into Scott’s ear, “Your fate awaits us all, my friend.” My arch-nemesis Scott Adams will look up at me and whisper one last time, “Who are you?” and then he will pass on at a ripe old age having lived himself to death. I will look mournfully into the camera, and then take the Cartoonist King Ring from Scott’s bedside table. It is the ring Bill Watterson passed to Scott after Scott made Bill his arch-nemesis, and then proved worthy of the relationship when Bill ended Calvin & Hobbes in 1995. I know Scott will have wanted me to have it because if he didn’t he shouldn’t have died and he really shouldn’t have left it unguarded.

So there you have it. Scott Adams is now my arch-nemesis. If you are trying to decide whether choosing an arch-nemesis is right for you, or who might be a good choice, feel free to ask in the comments.

If you think making Scott Adams my arch-nemesis was a silly thing to do, you will certainly enjoy Scott’s book.

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The Spork Speaks — Tempest in a Teardrop — tempestinateardrop.com