Thursday, September 27, 2007

Inductee Into Fraudster's Hall of Fame

I just love a good fraud.

Remember Azia Kim, the teen who pretended to be a Stanford student for a good 9 months or so? Love her.

Remember the quiet unassuming bureaucrat who was actually a Russian spy for 20 odd years? Loved that.


And now there's Tania Head, a woman who claims to be a 9/11 survivor but who's story has never been verified. Read the gripping account here.

You know how I know she's probably guilty of fraud? She lawyered up. Her lawyer/mouthpiece tells reporters: “With regard to the veracity of my client’s story, neither my client, nor I, have any comment.”

No comment. There's a telltale sign if there ever was one.

I don't know why I love frauds and fraudsters. Maybe it's their ballsiness, that they dare tell a baldface lie to everyone they meet. Maybe it's morbid curiosity about the depths of treachery that everyday people are capable of. Maybe it's simple shadenfreude.

And maybe, just maybe, it's the mystery that fraudsters imbue to even the most mundane events of our lives: going to school, picking up mail, etc.

Who knows? Who knows whether your friendly neighborhood CPA is actually a huge Ponzi schemer? A mass murderer? A sociopathic spy? It just makes life a little more interesting for the rest of us.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

That old familiar feeling

Lately I've been walking around in a daze,
thinking about everything and nothing,
contemplating my navel and my gut,
and getting nowhere it seems.

I have way too much unstructured time on my hands.

Last time this happened, I decided to go to lawschool.
And the time before that, seminary.
And the time before that, to be a classical languages major.

This time...
it's not like I can run off and start a new venture now, since the jaws of death (i.e., working for a law firm) is waiting for me right around the corner.

But in the few remaining months, I have just enough time to drive myself crazy thinking about where my life is going and not enough time to do anything about it.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

The End of Student-hood

It's slowly dawning on me that this is my last year here. In law school. On the East Coast. As a student.

From here on out, if everything goes according to plan, I will be a working stiff, a homebody, and never again, a formal student.

This year should be the last year of two decades of schooling. (Wow, that's a lot of debt!)

And how do I feel about it?

Quite relieved actually. I've never liked formal education. From here on out, I can study what I want and ignore what I don't care about. I will only write what I feel and not care about the page limit. I will learn for the sake of learning and not for that cursed grade, that ever threatening and ominous shadow that sucks the life and joy out of the naturally invigorating experience of learning!

But of course, without the whip and lash of the grade, I may never actually try to learn again, lazy mind that I am.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Prisoner and Warden

At some point I realized that I never gave myself permission to do things that I wanted to do.

Sure I could do small things, like buy an extravagant purse, or spend a day goofing off, or even a week.

But lifelong commitments of significant time and cost were off-limits.

How liberating it is then to realize you have completely no motivation to do anything that you think you should do, and the only thing you can muster up the energy to do is the only thing you want to do.

God, save me from myself.

Monday, September 10, 2007