New Year’s Resolutions – your last ones

What are your New Year’s resolutions? They’d better be good. These are your last ones. That’s right. 2012, the world is ending per the Hopi and the Mayans and Nicolas Cage. So I took the time to put together some resolutions to prepare yourself for the end of the world and to make the most of the last year that Earth will be the cool place to live.

1. Join a militia. Better yet start one. That way, you’ll be the leader and the other militiamen have to protect you and your domain.
2. Sell fake goods. Some sects out there are going to start stocking up on power generators and canned goods and other survival supplies. There is a market for this. Exploit it. So I put together a flashlight glued to a tank of lighter fluid and sold it online for $200 as a power generator. If the world doesn’t collapse in 2012, the buyer will never need it and never notice it’s worthless.
3. Remember how cool Y2K was!?!? Remember how on office space, the main character said he helped businesses prepare for Y2K? Totally start a consulting business telling companies you’ll help them prepare their computer systems for the 2012 end of the world. When it passes, you’ll look like a success.
4. Write a cool song for 2012. Prince knew was business savvy when he wrote “Party Like it’s 1999.” It was a commercial success and the theme song of 1999. Follow his lead and write a ditty for ’11. Rhymes with heaven, seven, Kevin. Should make for a promising mix.
5. Tell your staff to get all the audit workpapers done early. Tell them they have to wrap up the audit by 12/31/2011. When they tell you, they can't audit the books when they haven’t yet closed, tell them it’s only going to get harder to audit the books after the world slips into anarchy.
6. Start acclimating yourself to the taste of canned foods.
7. USD will become meaningless in an anarchist society. Therefore you need to project what will be the new currency and start stocking up on it. Probably snowglobes and abaci (the plural of abacus). The snowglobes to remind humans of how pretty the world was and abaci because you still want to be a respectable accountant in a world without currency and calculators.

Valentines Day Pick Up Lines - Auditors

Submitted in company newsletter

Top Ten Pick-up Lines

1. Your name is my Outlook password. I just add another number every ninety days when it makes me change it. I'm up to 27.
   
2. I knew you were the one when I saw your profile on D Street.
   
3. Your tickmarks are informative yet concise.
   
4. What’s your favorite footnote?
   
5. Your Schedulink profile is my start up page.
   
6. Maybe I could take you out for a nice dinner sometime… as long as it doesn’t exceed $12 combined and I have worked the requisite 12 hour day.
   
7. I noticed you don’t get out much, and it’s probably because you’re working so much, but I am going to pretend it’s because you’re waiting for me to show you around town.
   
8. Is your cell phone number 1-800 DELOITTE because you are just so knowledgeable.
   
9. You could be the sixth assertion. Existence, Completeness, Valuation, Presentation, Rights & Obligations, and Perfection.
   
10. If you were a section of the MD&A, you’d be Value at Risk, emphasis on the Value.
    

To Be Famous

This was for an article in the Company Newsletter.

I just watched the Oscars. I’d like to be famous. I think I’d look lovely in a vintage Oscar de la Renta. Have you heard me in a SOX walkthrough? I could easily bring home a Best Supporting Actress.

As I Google famous movie quotes this late Sunday evening, I reminisce over some of my career-defining quotes. While dressing as Braveheart’s William Wallace brought a sense of dignity and gravity to the meeting, my belting out “Freedom” mid-walkthrough proved more uncomfortable for the client than I had anticipated. And while, everyone loved my “Life is like a box of chocolates” quote at the weekly status meeting, they seemed rather grossed out when I arrived the next week with Darryl Hanna mermaid garb. Of course Splash was never critically acclaimed; I just wanted an excuse to for not washing my hair for a week and reeking of seaweed.

And so here I sit. Pondering – how can I reach the red carpet? How can I become famous? A couple initiatives I am working on:

I added TMZ to the speed dial at work. Whenever, I do something noteworthy, I have my first year report it to TMZ. “I just spotted Tara Hagan at 49th and Park on the 11th floor creating leadsheets.” “It looks like Tara Hagan was released from rehab, and the first thing she went back to was substantive analytical procedures. It looks like a relapse.” “She just shaved her head.”

I start crazy dating rumors about myself and send them into the tabloids – Photoshop concoctions of me at my desk with Robert Downey Jr. hanging off my arm, me copying bank statements while Hugh Jackman lovingly admires my ability to collate, me reading the file check report over brunch at Per Se with Perfect Strangers’ Bronson Pinchot. It sounds far-fetched now, but when you’re reading it on Perez next month, you’ll be upset you didn’t think of it first.

I know these two tricks might not get me anywhere, but if you Google famous accountants, you’ll discover John Grisham and Kenny G. I figure, this column counts for writing; I just need to take up the sax, and I should be set on becoming the most famous accountant in the world. Watch yourselves, paparazzi. Consider my workpaper sign-offs autographs.

August Update

It's been a while since my last update.

By reading this email, you are acknowledging this message cannot be forwarded to:
Anyone at my work, especially if they are members of an Asian accounting society
Anyone affiliated with P.S. 243
Anyone on my roommate's tennis team

Saturday, August 16, 2008 – Asian Accounting Society Convention
Friday afternoon I receive an email from a manager at work asking for assistance putting together the slides for an accounting convention. I show up Saturday morning at the Grand Hyatt. Turns out it's an Asian Accounting Society Convention. Between the intermittent exchanges in foreign languages, I sense they are arguing back and forth. Awkward. So this is how I spend Saturday morning, surrounded by strangers speaking broken English, instructing me to type dates and such into Powerpoint slides and fake laughing at accounting jokes.

"I don't know if you want to order lunch at Cosi; did you see Footnote 7 in their 2005 10-K?"

I don't know, but the woman across from me isn't even Asian. I am thinking about making a motion to throw her out.

Thursday, August 21, 2008 – P.S. 243
New York has an annual community service day where flabby, pale cubicle dwellers attempt to paint a mural on the cafeteria wall of an underprivileged school, while wearing oversized t-shirts with their company logos emblazoned across the chest. This allows them to pat themselves on the back having painted the shape of a monkey green while dripping paint all over the gym floor.
I participated last year and had a good time and signed up again this year. I receive an invitation to an orientation on Thursday. Turns out, I inadvertently enrolled as a site captain. I'm scared. I have no clue what I am doing. So if anyone wants to show up on the day of and help me out, let me know. The event is on Saturday, October 18; the school is somewhere in Brooklyn. See you there.

Saturday, August 23, 2008 – I'll get your hair did.
Arthur Ashe Kids Day is one of the opening events for the U.S. Open. My roommate's tennis team volunteers every year. Sarah, co-habitant of 112 MacDougal, was selected at CBS to cover the National Conventions and had to leave for Denver – kinda like how I was selected to copy regulatory calculations at work and had to leave for the 4th floor but more prestigious. Therefore, I filled in for her at the event.

Saturday morning I find myself in Flushing Queens wearing a medium men's polo shirt. The team leader for the event, wouldn't let me tuck in the shirt because I "disregarded" her instructions and wore non-khaki colored shorts and I could "get her in trouble." So here I am supposed to greet kids and families looking like I am not wearing any pants.

They have face painting and hair braiding and other attractions at this Kids Day festival. The hair braiding booth was late; they didn't bring enough people. I was recruited. They taught me how to weave and bead hair. So I spent four hours Saturday morning in Flushing Queens, surrounded by a Caribbean family, weaving hot pink polyester hair and beads into strangers' hair, sans pants.

Let me know if you want your hair weaved. I do events, bat mitzvahs, weddings, etc.

Saturday, August 30, 2008 – America?
I am leaving for Peru. It says it's still in America, but I cannot find it anywhere on the map. I guess it's probably by Hawaii. It's my birthday present from myself. I'll send an email update while I'm down there.

Saturday, September 6, 2008 – Lots of Motion in Multiple Directions
I'll be back from Peru and want to go dancing. Please let me know if you can make it on the 6th and I'll email you more details.

It's been real. Hope you're all doing well.