Disclaimer: This article in no way seeks to diminish the profession of accountants and to elevate the profession of assassins. This is simply a tongue in cheek analysis of leather briefcases as used by accountants and assassins alike. (Remember, you must love your accountant lest you find yourself in trouble with the Internal Revenue Service and you need to love assassins lest you find yourself in trouble with the Bible's commandment about loving your enemy. Sad but true)

Professional Disparateness

Though you might think that assassins and accountants do the same thing - they can kill you, only in different means and methods - they are very distinct professions with equally distinct characteristics. Here are just two of them:

* Accountants deal with the paperwork and numbers. They lug around voluminous papers that threaten to drown anybody who dares decipher the codes embedded therein and they eat numbers for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And these same papers are miraculously stuffed into the slimmest of leather briefcases!

Assassins deal with the dirty work and revolvers. They lug around killing tools that can be hidden most conveniently inside their coats or the most elegant leather briefcases and they eat souls like the Devil incarnate. Or at least, that is what Hollywood wants us to believe; God forbid you ever cross path with an assassin out to terminate your existence.

* Accountants use the power of the pen and calculator to kill (okay, make that crunch) numbers. And lest you even dare think that you can actually make sense of financial statements without burning the midnight oil (and a few of your functioning brain cells while you are at it), think again. Accountants use them to confuse both you and the Internal Revenue Service. And these financial statements change as fast as you can count your fingers! Drat, there goes your profit reduced by depreciation yet again.

Assassins use the brute power of car bombs, sniper rifles, blades and other weapons

of destruction, plus a timer here and there, to kill numbers. If you cannot make sense of financial statements, you cannot make sense of the killings either.

Professional Similarities

Now, this is the more interesting part. How can two professions - one killing inanimate numbers, the other killing animate numbers - have similarities? If you think hard enough, you will get these:

* Both accountants and assassins have uncommon affinity for leather briefcases. It seems that leather briefcases serve the purpose of organizing files and ammunitions at the same time! Remember the movie "Wanted"?

* Both accountants and assassins must be licensed. The former by appropriate government agencies before they can practice their profession. On the other hand, assassins must be licensed to kill by anybody they like whether borne of their own demented minds, fanatical beliefs and monetary greed.

* And oh yes, both accountants and assassins can kill you. Accountants kill you by spiriting away your money to bogus corporations while assassins kill you by spiriting your soul, or whatever it is that makes us human.

In conclusion, if you suspect your accountant to be an assassin in disguise ready to make an ass out of you, then leather briefcases full of your financial documents could be on your next target, er, agenda.