Nemesis

About once a day I scream at my pencil sharpener, rip out its innards (which you can see in this picture) and proceed to angrily pound them onto the window sill, scattering wood chips and pigments over the surface.

We're at odds, that sharpener and me. Theoretically it should be the trusty companion of my workday, my dutiful little helper, but it keeps letting me down. It lures me in with the promise of aiding me in my quest for the perfect tip, yet ever so often it fails to deliver.

I can't even remember how many of these things I've been through, one more disappointing than the next. This one I've had for almost two years now and it is the best by far, but it's far from perfect.

It's an indispensable, yet notoriously unreliable tool and when it lets me down it feels like a personal assault. Perhaps that's the wrong word. It more feels like a passive aggressive attack. Which is why I don't understand that in German it has a male article ('Der Anspitzer').
The erratic denial of service or the seemingly purposeful failure to carry out its advertised function are subtle and devious acts of aggression that seem to be deserving of a female article. There's clearly too much planning going on here for this thing to be male.