Bovine Philosophies of Economics and Government

This is another of my favorites, especially the entries on surrealism and counter-culture. /jb


PURE COMMUNISM: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.

COMMUNISM: You have two cows. The government seizes both and provides you with sour, soy milk.

RUSSIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

PURE SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else’s cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.

SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.

TOTALITARIANISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.

PURE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

BRITISH DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. You feed them sheeps’ brains and they go mad. The government doesn’t do anything.

DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which was a gift from your government.

DEMOCRAT (U.S.A): You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You feel guilty for being successful. You vote people into office who tax your cows, forcing you to sell one to raise money to pay the tax. The people you voted for then take the tax money and buy, at five times the true price, a cow, and give it to your neighbor. You feel righteous.

REPUBLICAN (U.S.A.): You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. So what?

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: The government promises to give you two cows if you vote for it. After the election, the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures. The press dubs the affair “Cowgate”.

SINGAPOREAN DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. The government fines you for keeping two unlicensed farm animals in an apartment.

DICTATORSHIP: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.

FASCISM: You have two cows. The government seizes both and sells you the milk.

BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. After that it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you for the milk, then pours the milk down the drain.

BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else’s cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and as many eggs as the regulations say you should need.

FEUDALISM: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

ENVIRONMENTALISM: You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them.

FEMINISM: You have two cows. They get married and adopt a veal calf.

AMERICAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when the cow drops dead.

BRAZILIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You enter into a Partnership with an American corporation. Soon you have 1000 cows and the American corporation declares bankruptcy.

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.

CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

FRENCH CORPORATION: You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows.

GERMAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You reengineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

HONG KONG CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly - listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother - in - law at the bank, then execute a debt / equity swap with associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax deduction for keeping five cows. The milk rights of six cows are transferred via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Islands company secretly owned by the majority shareholder, who sells the rights to all seven cows’ milk back to the listed company. The annual report says that the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Meanwhile, you kill the two cows because the fung shue is bad.

INDIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You worship them.

ITALIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows but you don't know where they are. You break for lunch.

JAPANESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.

RUSSIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 12 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

SWISS CORPORATION: You have 5000 cows, none of which belong to you. You charge for storing them for others.

CHRISTIAN: You have two cows. You keep one and give one to your neighbor.

MILITARIANISM: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.

ANARCHY: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to kill you and take the cows.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: You are associated with (the concept of “ownership” is a symbol of the phallo - centric, war - mongering, intolerant past) two differently - aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non - specified gender.

COUNTER CULTURE: Wow, dude, there’s like... these two cows, man. You got to have some of this milk.

SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

Many Ways to Say "Stupid"

NOTE: At the end of this is an absolutely true story that goes along with all of these sayings.

Comparative:
Bright as Alaska in December
Not the sharpest knife in the drawer
So dense that light bends around him

Objective:
Has a room temperature IQ
Takes him 1-1/2 hours to watch “60 Minutes.”
Fell out of the family tree
Was left on the Tilt-a-Whirl a bit too long as a baby
One-celled organisms out-score him in IQ tests
Donated his body to science before he was done using it
He has two brains...one lost and the other loose

Speculative:
If you stand close enough to him, you can hear the ocean
If you give him a penny for his thoughts, you’d get change back
Probably got into the gene pool while the lifeguard wasn’t watching
If brains were taxed, he’d get a rebate
Some drink from the fountain of knowledge, he probably gargled

Metaphoric:
Gates are down, lights are flashing, but the train isn’t coming
Elevator does not go to the top
Wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead
Lights are on but nobody is home
Full 6-pack, but nothing holding them together
Doesn’t have both oars in the water
Train of thought is still boarding at the station
A sandwich short of a picnic
A brick shy of a load
Not firing on all thrusters (or, pistons)

OK, this is a true story:
When I was working in another department at a local university, we had this guy who was in charge of taking care of all of our computers. He was ... well, let’s just say that he seemed to lack any social skills (and was probably so dense that light bent around him because he didn’t keep the job for very long). One day this guy was working on some computers in faculty offices, and I was in the main office joking with one of the graduate assistants about how dense this guy was. Pretty soon, she and I were trading little quips like, “A sandwich shy of a picnic” and “Elevator doesn’t go to the top floor.” After a while, this guy came back into the main office. He needed 50 cents to get a can of pop from the vending machine, but he didn't have enough money.

Honest-to-God, this guy asks us, “Have you got any change? I’m a dime short of a pop.”

Starting Over

Well, it's probably a good thing that the original Z Street News blog ended up being deleted. It's nice to get rid of the past like that. God knows, there were a lot of days in there I just didn't want to relive even by merely reading about them.

I'll be starting a new blog eventually to track my progress toward losing the extra 95 lbs I'm carrying around. I've got The Gospel of Dr. Phil in my hands and it's looking like a very good guide for the behavioral changes I need to make in order to obtain and manage my goal weight.

Well, gotta run yet again. My days are full yet again; unfortunately, they are not full of anything interesting to write about!

Hanging On

It's not so bad, really. Things have been busy this week, but not impossible. Today I actually will NOT go into the stationery shop to do any work. Yesterday was one crisis after another, and I was ready to kill the calligraphy printing bed, but we got through it.

And I've actually gotten a bit of knitting done this week, too!

"It Can't Get Worse"

That's what Keith in my office just said. He and another guy were talking about the road conditions in their rural areas this morning.

I used to work with a guy whose philosophy was, "Tomorrow will be different. It might be worse, but it will be different." Yeah. I get that.

Last night I was talking with my husband about free will and determinism. (Yes, we really do have discussions about things like that.) He believes that everything happens for a reason (a kind of hybrid of those two philosophies). I believe that things just happen and that God gives you the ability to get through them. If you pay attention, you can probably learn something useful from the experience. So, rather than going through it with a "poor me" attitude (which, by the way, buys into the whole, helpless determinism philosophy), you can just get through it with an attitude of learning.

I also don't believe that God has a plan for my life. I think God has some basic ideas about why He created life, but after that it's up to us to use it well and to keep learning. See, the first gift that God gave to Adam and Eve (well, after the gift of life and a gift of a fun place to live) was freedom to choose. If God really didn't want them to eat from the tree of knowledge, then God would have put up a huge fence around it with razor wire and armed guards and whatnot. God allows us to choose. We don't always choose wisely, but we can always learn to made better choices.

Yes, it can get worse. But we'll get through it, no matter what it is.

Oh Crap!

I was trying to get the original "Z Street News" to ftp to my web site, but somehow a setting got all screwed up and it ended up that I couldn't post anything. So, I just deleted the old one and started in anew. Sorry, folks! I'll post news when I have it.