Heh, heh...
When you are preparing yourself to enter the real world after a lifetime of education, you will have to consider a variety of options depending on the skills you acquired over the years. Would you like to work in the banking industry, if you are good at math? Do you think you could inspire young people much as you were by your teachers? Is the sewage plant up the road hiring? Better yet, will your Aerosmith cover band ever take off?
In the pantheon of potential careers, all it takes is boundless energy and imagination to achieve your goals at whatever profession you set your mind to. Be warned, however, that there is at least one occupation that you might want to steer clear of when looking to your future. Because it's guarenteed to cut that future short at the hands of a dashing Englishman who sometimes has a Scottish accent, sometimes not.
If you decide that you want to enact a scheme for world domination once that cushy position at your uncle's tire store falls through, you will inevitably run afoul of James Bond, 007, a British superspy who can kill with ease (and come up with groan-inducing puns to comment on said killind as well). Do not be discourgaed, however; you would be joining a long line of distinguished, if prematurely expired, villains and bad men.
Take Ernst Bloefeld, for instance; over the years, he pestered Bond with all sorts of schemes designed to hold the world in his grasp through his activities with SMERSH. But in the end, he still had to go home at night to a lonely one-bedroom apartment in his secret lair located thousands of feet below the surface of whatever country he was hiding out at. Do you really want to rule the world, but at the expense of a personal and fulfilling life?
Max Zorn, while noted for his brilliant plan to sink the California computer industry under gallons of water, was an alcoholic whose best conquest outside the boardroom was Grace Jones. And when your evil father is responsible for blowing up your own special blimp to observe all the destruction, you suddenly find yourself all alone in the world. That is, if you survive the plunge into icey San Francisco Bay.
The fact is, you might be able to be happy as a Bond villain for a little while, but at some point you will lose that essential zest for life that got you interested in the profession in the first place. Take the case of Elliot Carver, a media mogul who just happened to be married to a hottie that Bond had previously had a romantic relationship with. Under normal circumstances, he might have sought couples therapy to work out their marital issues. But in the world of a Bond villain, talk is cheap, and actions speak louder than; before you could say "what a waste", said hottie is drugged up and left in Bond's hotel room in a rather weak attempt to pass it off on the super-secret agent's watch. Now that's no way to handle marital problems, is it?
When you enter the world of a Bond villain, be prepared for a lonely existence where your underlings are only as trustworthy as you can afford. A villain known only as "the man with the golden gun" is betrayed by his life companion, a diminuative henchman who ends up turning traitor for the promise of bedding Mr. Bond's most recent sexual conquest (a promise that is cruelly denied him). You will have to make lessons of these underlings to prevent such deception, but that is a double-edged sword: a good goon is hard to find, and the more "examples" you make the less likely you will be able to keep a full staff on hand to resist Mr. Bond's attempts at piercing your secret layer deep in the bowels of a dormant volcano. Besides, imagine the high cost of health insurance when you have to take into account random drops from staircases into vats of acid, crocodile-infested pools, or from the cabin of your personal blimp. The payouts to their families alone would leave you in debt and unable to afford that pricey space ship you need to manipulate satillite systems and attack the former Soviet Union, setting off a worldwide war.
But can happiness really be so elusive for the typical bad guy? Sure, there can be side benefits, like the young, stunning women you will have to hire to lure Bond to a meticulously-planned but easily-escapable scheme at killing him off. And this could set up situations for potential romances with said sirens, even if you will have to dispatch them when they fail in their stated goals. But considering the fragile nature of most marriages in this day and age, you get out with the best parts of a relationship without the toll that several years can take on your love life.
So, to be sure there are benefits to the life of a Bond villain. Take the chance of your plot actually succeeding, for once. But the odds are against you, because Bond himself is a willy opponent who seems to get younger every year (even as you yourself are beset by the declines of age, if you manage to live past your latest madcap scheme). It's virtually a given that you will meet your end in a steaming pit of crude oil or shot out of a shuttle into the wilds of space. Or perhaps you will simply be run over by a huge engine. Or sucked out of a narrow window on a plane headed back to Washington, DC. Or you could simply retire into old age, then fall over of a heart attack brought on by stress at the age of forty-five. The fact is, being a Bond villain is not a good use of your natural talents.
But on the bright side, it's not as bad as you might think. Mr. Bond will always need villains to easily foil. And who knows? You may finally be the one to achieve the "double whammy" of killing him off *and* ruling the world.
At the very least, keep your options open before you commit your life to a career of crime capers that require little effort on 007's part to derail. The life of a Bond villain is terminally short, bereft with turnover of employees, and likely to end badly. Then again, the same could be said of several medical professions or working in the television industry. The fact is, though, if you are downsized from your job at the docks you will still be alive and able to seek other gainful employment. The same cannot be said if you are a crazy scientist bent on holding the world hostage with scrapped Soviet nuclear technology.
So try your best at other professions before you embark on the path of a Bond villain. The last thing you need is to have your life's work reduced to a cliched comment by a cheeky British killer. And just try getting a loan from the bank when your credit record is littered with losses on lasers, secret fortresses, and failed attempts at woodworking shops to serve as fronts for your nefarious schemes. The world may not be enough for you, but if you can find your own happy little corner of fulfilment, you will never hear a accented secret agent ask you the following question:
"Just what is your plan, you crazy bastard?"
