In the final analysis
by Ronald J Stone
[ fiction - august 09 ]
The way it began
On the night it all began, the New York and DC Bar Exams were three weeks behind me, the national Certified Public Accountant exam one week. With my newly minted joint MBA-LLB degree from Harvard, Summa Cum Laude, I possessed job offers galore. Luxuriating in opportunities, I reclined in my barcolounger, sipping VSOP cognac and, on a 96" flat screen HDTV, I watched the Mets blow a six run lead. The phone rang, my land line, emergencies only. I picked up quickly. A man, clearly Hispanic, was asking for Maria.
Wrong Number.
"No aquí," I answered. "Está con tu hermano, Carlos, su enamorado."
The guy cursed - and cursed - mostly in Spanish, but with the promise also clear in English, "I kill the puta. I kill the maricon."
I said, "It's a joke. You have the wrong number." The guy shouted on: "Kill! Kill! ¡Mátala!" I repeated myself; he continued his tirade. At last, he hung up.
The next day even The Times had the story.
When his wife came home from a movie, their five-year-old son in tow, my man was waiting, booze in his belly, machete in his hand. He swung the Machete. He sliced his wife's head clear off her body. His brother, Carlos, returned from the laundry room. My man righted his stance and took a back hand swing with the machete. He cut his brother's head clear off. All this time, my man's little son had been out of sight, his daddy wholly concentrating on severing his brother, Carlos's, head. With the head of Carlos still in mid-air, my man remained busy maintaining his down swing. He did not see that his five-year-old was directly in the down swing's path. Then he felt the contact as off came the kid's head. So now he knew. My man promptly slashed his own jugular.
The Times, the tabloids, the TV, radio and internet, they were certain on this one point: there had been no adulterous behavior.
For all the next day, I kept envisioning the scene: The body falls away. But blood remains to feed the brain. The eyes see. One minute. Even five. The mind knows: The two adults' heads and the one child's, all three flying about, my man Pablo beholding and then himself cascading into death, the blood surging from his neck. There had to be some seconds during which all four of them could see, could know. Eye contact must have been made. Who saw what? Who knew what? Head seeing head, no corporeal presences in sight! I was imagining that at some point, someone, perhaps all four, found the split shift in vision, was staring way beyond the others. Seeing what? Knowing...
That night, endlessly speculating, I could not sleep.
Surely, though, I did sleep, for in the morning I did wake up - done with all my speculations. I vowed never to drink, and from then to now, I never have.
The concept remains: events combining, purpose and accident burgeoning to catastrophe. I wondered:
Could it be made to happen again?
To repeat, perhaps, as farce?
I put the 'C' in CPA
Legal World USA Magazine's "Top 50 Lawyers Under 30 to Watch" placed me Number One. Clearly I was the most coveted young lawyer of my times: hands down! But that left at least 49 others who also sought the top, who also thought themselves the best out there. In Public Accounting, I stood alone on high. So I chose Accountancy; became certified in no time; accepted partnership in the Top One of the Big Eight firms: Junior for two years, Senior for the next two, Executive thereafter. I took accounts.
Certified public accountants certify. Earnings, values, what-have-you: they report. The CPA guarantees that what is reported - what he reports, himself, his firm! - is true fact indeed. It's there. I saw. Therefore, I being I that I was and am, WE saw. We put our licenses on the line, first me, then my firm, then all firms. What we say we saw, we saw, and because we say it, the observations are Financial Gospel, THE Word as quantified.
From the first, I found the work itself to be a lark. Dig around. Certify. " Offshore Trades in Onshore Values... Derivative Slippage Stop Loss... Bills in Anticipation of Attainder:" all of these exotics were worthless except that I certified otherwise.
Five years passed. As I progressed, the firm itself moved with me: from First among all the Big Eight to TOP ONE, none other to compare. Then that innate misanthropy which surfaces every time I perceive even a glancing mirror image of myself, in fact did surface. I saw myself. Within that same image, I saw the four severed heads, circling, seeing. And the idea came. I went from thought to action, no hesitation.
At any given time, there are some 130,000 active Certified Public Accountants in the United States, [1] 27,328 practice in New York State alone, 11,469 more N.Y. CPAs are certified in New York and practice elsewhere in the U.S., 225 N.Y. CPAs practice outside the country, total: 39,022. [2] Yearly, about 4,000 candidates sit for the New York certification examination (Pass-Fail); on average, 1,750 pass. In latter years, the test changed to multiple choice. For all the 20th and 21st Centuries before that, however, humans graded the exams. [3]
I took my eminence and volunteered to grade. Never before had a professional of such high standing - much less Highest Standing - done this. Praises rained; I shook them off in all modesty, asking only for "Minimum review of my gradings - that way I can pull my full share." I took it upon myself to grade 75 essay tests in all, 3 times the norm. Spot the problem. Find the issues. Discuss them in as close to every aspect as possible. Move on. Spot another problem. Do the same. Find enough, and say enough, and pass. I had a very high pass rate - 40 out of 75. ("Statistical anomaly," of course.) Ten of the forty were too good; I had no choice but to pass them. The other 30, I "passed" at random out of the bottom One-Third of exam results before me. For twenty-five (25) years I did this. Dross to Gold. Some 750 incompetent morons (CPAs all) loosed upon the world.
Was I nervous? Were there at least some trepidations?
Damn right on both counts! The first couple of times I feared being caught, did not particularly believe I risked loss of my license, but did worry a bit about public humiliation. From then on, though, for all the twenty-three years thereafter, first I mocked myself and my fears; then I simply made my own mock by grading away, fully relaxed at all times. I was perceiving the obvious: Certifications such as these, especially the CPA certification, exist to exclude. Maintain the correct number of "chosen," and none within the magic circle will ever object. Indeed, as the profession dumbed down, those very few CPAs with sufficient wit to sense some mischief, profited, charging Big Bucks, mining the silliness of others for billable hours.
I had set chance loose, wreaking mischief on and upon the Known World. Shorts and Longs; Derivatives; Stop Losses; Buy-Back Puts: Sell-To Co-opts; Open Play Hedge Funds; Contrarian Hedge Funds; Commodities Overall &/or Food Market Puts and Calls: a cornucopia of riches, all of them nonsense.
I, on my lonesome, took a profession polluted from the start, and by adding the worst to the bad, made of it one vast toxic waste dump.
Commerce turned to finance, and finance turned to nothing beyond paper passing to other paper. All over the world, recessions became the norm, as, all the while, I posited values where there were none. 4 Billion people cannot toil simply to benefit maybe 400 Thousand. However, since the 400 thousand thought otherwise, every time I figured some new way to certify fantasies into reality, I hypnotized the world: to believe in trickle down although nothing ever trickled - save for my certifying otherwise.
Always, though, I acknowledged a world beyond my world. I did not hide from strangers, rather was stealing glimpses of them, was bumping up against foreign human bodies, human kind walking in the midst of human kind. All this I saw to happen, and I also saw, also did, my own a temperate existence for sure, but nowise a monastic one. I slept with women, some not paid for. I frolicked - or, at the least, feigned as much: a concert, perhaps, a random movie, even theatre pieces.
Wealth came my way: and power, too, taking away anonymity. Naturally, publicity was as anathema to me as arsenic drunk "on the rocks," but I acknowledged it as no more avoidable than the trace arsenics in all the waters we drink, bottled included. I have, indeed, been seen: was twice publicly viewed in and around the Mighty, once entering the White House, once the Elysée Palace. Two women have been seen to grace my arm, females whom I, at least, found so desirable that I endured both their public company and private babble simply to bed them. I have supped off buffet tables set atop sodded lawns as finely woven as Afghan broadlooms: pâté de foie gras placed out to eat on the one side; on the other, "pure 'organics'" replicating that same fare over which toddlers battle in Darfur refugee camps. I travel on YOUR bridges in YOUR automobiles in order to (and I do) traverse oceans in YOUR airplanes. [4]
In my mind's eye, though, I see the follies of the world. Pride is a vice I know full well, and yet I am prideful that, deluding everyone else, I do not delude myself. YOUR bridges are neglected, crumbling, cars wasteful and unsafe. But the helicopters the famously rich use as substitutes merely to travel to airports present four to forty times the hazards of any cars, any trains. Private jets into and out of private air fields are death traps, on ground, in the air. I make my way around the world, hazarding the travels, the travails.
Why?
Why not?
I take in the breath of life, and I exhale (I spew out) accountings. As I write - N0W! - those still alive out of my 750-odd Idiot CPAs are spread throughout the profession. Intelligent CPAs - the few remaining - have dumbed themselves down, for the money is too good, too much. Idiots certify idiocies, and if, as written, this reads like absurd blather, fuck it! What is, is, and I am that I am.
Believe it!
The emperor not only has no clothes, there is no emperor.
Abbie Hoffman and two bricks
And yet, when all is said and done (and all IS said and done), I have liked one person, enjoyed his company, even now - especially now - reflect fondly upon him.
Eminence encompasses Academia, indeed requires it. With little choice otherwise (choosing still to remain I) I accepted one endowed Guest Lectureship at Columbia, another such at NYU. Now and then, I went on one campus or the other and lectured pieties. Early on, hurrying Uptown to Columbia from NYU, I ran into Abbie Hoffman. He singled me out, shouting the names of both my endowed lectureships, asking "Hey, Prof, Your Eminence, Sir, what's your con?"
I responded, "You get no answer until you're back on your lithium, thorazine and elavil."
"My man!" he said. "You'll talk if I take?"
"Why not?"
Afterwards, every now and then he'd take his meds; we'd talk. From the first, he recognized: "You're running a con of cons." Later on: "You're out to run the world. That's it. Your con. Wow!"
"When you're off your Meds, you do 'hippie.' When on them, you do near catatonia. Hell of a choice - no choice at all."
"My man!" said Abbie Hoffman. "And you?"
"We'll talk of things already known."
And we did. We kept in touch. In effect, I monitored the maintenance of his walking around sanity. He kept score on my run to game the world. It was nice to have a score keeper. It was nice to talk to him. Abbie Hoffman was nice, a nice guy. Then the dumb ass drug-possession-with-intent-to-sell bullshit charge came down, catching me by surprise, Abbie suddenly in custody en route to federal prison. I did get word to him, "I'm around." But that was that: I recalled his more recent mutterings, belatedly realizing that Abbie had been self medicating with Crack-Cocaine, recalling words I'd heard but did not register. "They got free base down to 'crack:' fuck I'm going to sniff around for Uppers; they got this shit?" It had seemed babble to my ears. It was, and, alas, it wasn't. I failed to listen.
The man was wrapping himself in an American flag, naked beneath it. He was flashing his dick at the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the Senate's on Special Investigations. I can't imagine it took more than one staffer, more than one phone call. One day the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was on to him; the next, a veritable riot squad came by the basement of his loft, saw his kilo of Crack Cocaine, his pound of Mary Jane. The US Attorney, Southern District, made of Abbie a "major trafficker," dumping him into Leavenworth for Fifteen Years.
Employing some stoner buddies of his, bribing officials, I forced his way out of Leavenworth into the hands of his buddies and their hiding places. Once outside, Abbie tripped for three months, cycling Crack Cocaine to Quaaludes to Crack Cocaine, on and on. I was keeping tabs, but, dealing with a fugitive as I was, this was not easy. Goons on steroids (my hires) came on by; they were nothing much but were the best I could find. They removed the contraband and forcefed licit psychotropics to Abbie.
Within a month of his escape, I arranged to see the man himself. Those few moments he was not purely catatonic, the poor fellow was traipsing outer space. No matter how greatly I desired it (and greatly I desired it), there was no more of Abbie keeping score, no more his making any sense at all.
Three months later, I saw him again. I spoke.
This time around, Abbie recognized my words; he recognized me. He pledged to foreswear the Crack Cocaine. "You need me, man, you need your score keeper. But, man, it hurts." We agreed on both counts, and I agreed I'd find him a shrink who was willing, periodically, to write scrip for amphetamines. A year went by, time enough that the federal police made finding him a bit of a priority. Given the possible hazards - to Abbie, not really to me - we did not meet again; we did not speak again. Of course, I paid watchers, both strangers and some who were dear, near and there. From them, the word was Abbie drugged just this side of consciousness, certainly insufficient consciousness (I believed) for him once more to be my score keeper. He was alive, though; I was keeping him alive. So long as there was life in him, who knew - certainly not I. He was out there, could maybe be revived, could again keep score when I wished to know the score.
I like to think that there are only two rules to live by:
Assume nothing.
Don't be afraid to ask stupid questions.
Abbie died because I assumed he was maintaining, therefore did not question the half dozen (by me) paid watchers monitoring his drugs: "Out-of-Sight was Out-of-Mind," no less a truism for me than for anyone else. When Angel Dust first hit the street, it required some curiosity to come to know it; my watchers had none whereas Abbie had an overload. He found the "Dust." He snorted once; he snorted twice. Abbie lost his mind, never to be found again, and Abbie was smart enough to realize that no one, not even he, comes back from the Dust.
He killed himself. I went to the funeral, the only suit there. (His father and brother did wear jacket and tie.) I mourned. No one took notice of me, and even if one or two did, none dared approach, vaguely familiar as I was, certainly familiar to the one or two who did notice. I was excellently dressed for any occasion, and for this one I was dressed beyond approach. I held myself that way throughout. I departed the funeral.
Some time during his exile, Abbie wrote Steal This Book. First a major house bought it. Then one of its editors actually read it. Steal This Book contained detailed instructions on how to steal books, the one particular Steal This Book first and foremost.
That was that for major publication. However, a minor pamphleteer did publish. I read the book: all kind of schemes for freebies and minor mayhems, most of them flawed, all but one far more likely to bring police than reward. But Abbie did have the one valid idea. THAT IS: take an unsolicited offer of credit and its "Return Postage Paid First Class" label; box up two or more bricks; put on plain United States Postal Service-Approved wrapping paper; paste the label on to the box; mail. The addressee must pay. [5]
Why I do not know, but I did as Abbie wrote, indulging myself in whimsy, sending an appropriate package, Pre-paid First Class, to MASTERCARD / VISA (5 World Trade Center, NYC 10048).
The 41-year-old "mail boy" saw the package, said aloud to whom I do not know: "More 'Hoffman' bricks," and he opened up. The inevitable inevitably followed. In the trash can into which the brick was thrown, lay four grams of pickled sardines, flown in Iceland that very morning, tin-foil-wrapped in liquid nitrogen, allegedly fresh fish but in truth spoiled. There was some trace Hydrogenic Nitroglycerin on the foil. The brick and its still adhering wrapping landed hard on the sardine residue. The contact struck a spark. It, in turn, ignited phosphate from the brick, congealing hydrogen from the the Nitro traces, all of which, in turn, ignited the now Heavy Water Hydrogenic Nitroglycerin remnant adhering to everything sardine. The flame led to the whole concoction's reaching critical mass: an imminent explosion of 245 CPSU Power Force.
Even so, there remained time for someone to smother the pile with sand upon sand. But only CO2 extinguishers hung nearby, and the same "genius" who recognized the Hoffman Touch, was, naturally, stoned. He emptied both extinguishers on to the pile. As the FBI spokesperson put it: "Synergistically engendering an enhanced Nucular Like Fission which, had it not been muffled by the mass of the 120 story building in the process of destroying all Beneath-Ground-Level floors of that same building, would have gone on to 'take out' the better part of 'Downtown.' [1] 476 humans died, probably instantaneously, 1,345 were injured, 576 critically. The official cause: "Boilers explosions cracking heating pipings sparking electric plug-ins, all in all leading to fire and then to Beneath-Ground-Level explosions."
For myself:
The mind's eye chiaroscuro takes in the fresco of that Hispanic family of the phone call "prank," the Mom, the Pop, the Brother, the Kid whom I'd caused to die, their own body parts (in my mind's eye), toes to heads, joined to the heads and guts and limbs flying pall-mall around the fast gutting insides of the Tall Tower, every surviving bit and piece randomly spewing from whole bodies then body parts but none so randomly that each severed head failed to see - no doubt, to know, comprehending the incomprehensible - each other severed head in that then dusty darkness visible within the inside of that one Tall Tower. The unintended consequences of a pure prank: I'd created a whole new category of disaster. It may well be that its creation - Set-Up on through End - had become my whole life. So be it. [7]
And so he rested for awhile
The first month I slept: no substances, pills or otherwise - and God Be Blessed: no dreams! The second month, I slept thanks be to physician prescribed pills. There were dreams, but no nightmares. Then came the horrors: carnage without, flying heads over and above everything. By the third month, I was manipulating MD prescriptions: was chasing downers with alcohol, lots and lots. I allowed (commanded) the Visiting Nurse Society to come calling, then added on one RN at my bedside at all times. I was not particularly suicidal, rather sought oblivion within. The nurses kept me safely alive: never awake, never asleep - alive.
After some three more months, one - two - three - partners called. Word of my absences must have floated throughout the profession. Six more weeks passed. By now, every CPA with sufficient consciousness to appreciate his own negligible status compared to mine was wet-dreaming about being the second to kick me when I was down. (In a profession of thousands, there were still many hundreds lined up for "seconds".) At last, the Audit Committee of CPA International issued its ultimatum: if I did not return to certify my own firm's accounts, for-hire outside auditors would. I knew these last would prove bothersome: mandated phone conversations, one-on-one colloquies escalating all the way to conference calls, finally even to command personal appearances.
I made a deal: to appear as ordered but only from my home via Closed Circuit TV. And so I did, and so it went.
Time passed. My firm prospered inordinately. I gave the business half a mind; my glancing attentions were sufficient to insure "sound professional practices" on every account, nothing the least imaginative. Again (ad infinitum ad nauseam): Accountants certify; we provide audits sufficient to prove assets correlative to every representation, profits and losses as claimed - paper trails evidencing everything. Back then, I stirred a bit. I took the lead in creating yet another gimmick. Within my firm, I formed a "consultancy:" recruited, "trained" and hired out "consultants." The consultancies themselves meant (and did) nothing save that whatever my accounting firm consultant said could be done, if actually done, would be certified correct by my very same CPA Accounting firm, following which I sold (and sold) my consultants to do the acts that we said could be done. In this way, bits of paper supposedly collateralized by solid performances and/or products became Documentations certain in themselves, collateralizing performances and/or products left unseen yet always assumed. Naturally, every CPA firm of any size or kind quite naturally followed suit.
Shit became shinola, that is.
I saw, yes. I created, then allowed to happen. But I did not encourage. I asked nothing of life save the breath of life. The dreams came, nonetheless. I saw Carlos and his kin. I missed Abbie. I saw the infinite horrors I'd wrought by thinking to play my Steal This Book prank. The severed heads flew. I saw through the eyes of severed, flying heads seeing other severed, flying heads.
In time, I devised an optimum style of minimal living.
One nurse fitted my frame into a customized barcolounger. I moved; the chair moved. I changed positions; the chair accommodated. The chair kept absolute pace and shape with my every act. Food became a bother. A nurse plugged me in intravenously to liquid nutrients, balanced nutrition. I did not want to leave the chair at the same time that I wanted my muscles and musculature fit and ready to rise up and romp. Another nurse, this one quite comely, worked my body, one part against the other, all stresses necessary to maintain the physical self (myself) at optimum levels. Also, not least, that nurse (a couple of others, too) allowed no prostate back-ups: fellatio to intercourse by them on me and myself corporeally never outside the confines of my magic barcolounger. Ah, those lovely tits! Those fine asses! Those washboard abs!
Thus, I lived in and for the barcolounger and the female ministrations attendant to such a life - my life, such as was, sometimes sparely interrupted by the slight motions required of me by my firm. I watched TV - 96", largest Possible Highest Definition. Throughout the day, never any commercial breaks, I watched Law and Order in chronological order, ER, too; House M.D. when in need of fillers. I lived the great Amerikan TV life.
I did "work," yes. I worked toward the end of life, human life. TV brought me as much, sometimes too much, of living humans as I wished to bear. I sought the death of everyone and thing.
The Twin Towers fell. "Genocides" became such commonplaces as to be accounted mere "Skirmishes." Deaths were not death were "collateral damage." The world's markets crashed, all of them. Lacking currencies for conversion, gold became useless.
I stood alone in the world.
Plotting and scheming, yes, but doing nothing more, "living" solely in my barcolounger, I became the last one left, I alone untainted in the setting of "values." Such "accountants" as remained in the known world either worked for me (one way or the other) or did not work at all.
Suddenly, I was again living actively, the inevitable consequence of my own primacy. Walking. Talking. (And no more of the magic barcolounger; oh, how I missed that chair.) I missed the TV. After forcing down a few solid meals, I even missed the intravenous feed: mastication, digestion, the whole package more trouble than they were worth. As for fucking, the least libidinal effort (even down to the mere copping of a "feel"): Because I could not replicate outside the chair what I had known inside it, I did nothing.
My God, but I missed the pleasures I'd had, forced to live now, as I was, with the certain knowledge that there were no pleasures to be had in life save whatever few I manufactured for myself. And I could come up with none.
Once, upon the chair, all hooked up, I'd possessed a life as should be lived.
Now I was outside, part of that world alleged real and true. I certified, therefore I worked. I was I, traveling all over: luxuriously and privately to be sure, nonetheless hateful to bear for truly sure. My life outside my barcolounger wasn't even shit; I had no life at all.
I'd be face to face, or close to it, seeing this human or other all the way down to the pores of his or her skin, smelling the person. To be in another's presence invariably brought bile to my throat and into my taste, the puke gurgling, just barely contained within my lips. Humans were disgusting: obese or over exercised. Even if perfectly formed and spoken, they still disgusted. Yes, I'd received lovely ministrations in my barcolounger, and in that way, yes, had known others of the species up close and personal. That was then. Now, outside in the world real and true, seeing humans plain, quickly I saw how craftily rendered to my tastes had been my female caregivers: secondary sex characteristics shaved away, the least blemish cosmetically concealed, the scents of them all newly applied (no human scents therefore). No Madam, no manager, presided over the libidinous workings of my life in the Chair. But once outside in the world, I saw how totally my life had been managed.
I lived my life counting the Seconds-Hand on clocks. I'd see the clock at half past the hour, would go on to endure what I was certain was the passing of at lest one hour, would look up: I'd see the clock at 35 minutes past the same hour. And all the while I'd be unable to avoid seeing the mess which is the human being, which is the human life.
Every once in awhile my dick would stir; a sense or scent would bring some pleasure. When that happened, immediately I realized anew that the biggest human mess of all was myself, the sentient human, I. My dick withdrew from play (and sight), only enough left of it to piss without spillover onto the scrotum.
There was no choice, is none. I must end human life on Earth - easy enough to entertain the thought; even easier to do. We are all dying; I am dying.
I set the plan early on: drug resistant tuberculosis. [8]
The world ends with the elimination of a minuscule line in the budget of New York City. Mayor Giuliani didn't like Black people to start with (his first wife, the cousin, left him for a Black man [9]. He wanted to sell off the Municipal Hospitals serving Blacks, employing them, too: $350 million in debit gone in one fell swoop. He could not get that done [10]. But he did create an independent hospitals corporation, and it took on the red ink. I myself recommended (strongly) that the City turn over out patient services, too. Giuliani listened and shifted $25 million more from the budget. He laid off the TB monitors, the ten men and one woman who roamed the City, checking on recalcitrant TB patients, making sure they took their meds. With the end of monitoring, the erstwhile patients nodded off to street drugs and away from anti-virals and/or antibiotics. The TB microbes evolved, ever resistant to medications, old AND new. The afflicted increased exponentially. Travelers took away from New York City these new Super-TB microbes.
Asleep on top of the grates alongside the towers housing the mighty: the untreated TB carriers hawk their phlegm. You and I, high or low, mighty or pitiful: we breath in TB. Some time along the line, each one of us contracts it. There are no public health services whatsoever. You and I, we die. The mighty and the rich and the people - men like me! - have no trouble paying for intravenous anti-viral and/or antibiotic feeds. But there are no medications worth a damn to feed upon. We die slowly, no Keats among us, no words to grace our dying, solely the coughing and the spitting. We are beggars, hawking phlegm: here, there and everywhere. No longer is there any particular need to save the Earth. We spit out the end of ourselves. [11]
I walk among you, and in seeing you die, I see myself. You exhale. I breathe. We die. It's what I wanted. I am living what I want, as I live your deaths, mine; I am content. I will depart this shit eating world secure in the knowledge that the species is dying; we all are.
Yes, I still locate my physical self among humans. Beautiful to misshapen: they're all the same. He or she is dying; I am dying. The dying once walked among us. Now they rampage. I exhilarate in the company of dying or dead flesh.
I exult!
There remains only the coup de grace, and it is in place, indeed has been struck.
My latest Global Accountancy Edict returns the World of Accountings to Calendar Year reckonings - and, allegedly to facilitate the transition, it suspends the first reckoning for One (1) Calendar Year.
As I write, there are Twenty (20) months to these First and Final Accounting Certifications. Comes the time, there will be nothing left to certify. We will all stand revealed as having continued to live on hope alone: no currencies, no markets: in all, no more bought or bartered pleasures. And then, the hope shall be gone. And we, all of us, will exist simply to breath in TB, to await our dyings, our deaths. I welcome that day, and I welcome my death; the end of humans is well worth the end of me.
I am that I am, and I have certified. [12]
Notes
1 "American Institute of Certified Public Accountants" (original source material) [Back]
2 New York State Education Department, Office of the Professions, Public Accountancy. [Back]
3 For overview, see: The Uniform CPA Examination "ALERT," December-January 2005. [Back]
4 Doubt not. I buy Coach. I travel First Class on Firm Member Frequent Flier miles. It is a gimmick. To be known, as I am, is not to disdain gimmicks. Of course, in itself, this claim of mine is a gimmick. [Back]
5 But that was then, and now is now, and now, for however many of you remain to read, be warned: No United States Postal Service office, such as is, accepts, unopened, packages weighing over 13 ounces. [Back]
6 Obviously: all this is bogus hokum, but now that I'm old—especially now that I'm old—I'm too old to go to prison. And some (very)few penitentiaries do still remain. [Back]
7 There is this one "true 'fact,'" however; I will not refrain from mentioning it, whatever the "Homeland Security" consequences. What you are reading is the Uncensored-Real-Fact-True-to-Life Straight-Stuff on the alleged 1993 WTC Ryder Truck bombing. And I recount it, quoting verbatim, as purloined straight from the Mayoral Bunker. [Back]
8 Laurie Garrett, The Coming Plague, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994. [Back]
9 He'd married a First Cousin, and after she ran off, he went to the Vatican for an annulment, claiming he had married without knowing of the blood relationship. He got his annulment. You come from a big, extended Italian family, and you attend its many family functions. You and this one female call the same woman "Grandma." How can you not know the relationship? [Back]
10 See Steven Lee Myers, "GIULIANI SEEKS TO SELL 3 HOSPITALS AND SHRINK PUBLIC HEALTH SYSTEM," The New York Times, Feb. 24, 1995, p. A1. [Back]
11 Laurie Garrett, Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health, New York, Hyperion, c2000. [Back]
12 Not to belabor the obvious, but then again, there may still be some readers remaining on Planet Earth. And, besides, I wish to gloat. The Twenty (20) months mean that every company or person whose books need cooking will have time to cook. But nothing is nothing, and will be nothing Twenty (20) months from now. [Back]
