An Eclectic Mind

Political Philosophies Explained in Simple “Two Cow” Terms

I got this from my friend, Ray, who got it from someone else. (You know how it is.) During my attempt to track down an author, I stumbled upon a Wikipedia entry for Two Cows. Amusing all around.

Enjoy.

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

Communism: You have two cows. The government takes them both and provides you with milk.

Fascism: You have two cows. The government takes them and sells you the milk.

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

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

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

Corporate: You have two cows. You sell one, force the other to produce the milk of four cows, and then act surprised when it drops dead.

Democracy: You have two cows. The government taxes you to the point that you must sell them both in order to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow which was a gift from your government.

Keep this in mind the next time you go camping.

I got this from my friend Tom a while back and stumbled upon it today while I was clearing out old e-mail. As usual, if anyone knows the author of this piece, I’d be more than happy to give him or her credit and/or a link.

Enjoy.

The Lone Ranger and Tonto went camping in the desert. After they got their tent all set up, both men fell sound asleep.

Some hours later, Tonto wakes the Lone Ranger and says, “Kemo Sabe, look toward sky, what you see?”

The Lone Ranger replies, “I see millions of stars.”

“What that tell You?” asked Tonto.

The Lone Ranger ponders for a minute then says, “Astronomically speaking, It tells me there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, it tells me that Saturn is in Leo. Time wise, it appears to be approximately a quarter past three in the morning. Theologically, the Lord is all-powerful and we are small and insignificant. Meteorologically, it seems we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What’s it tell you, Tonto?”

“You dumber than buffalo shit. It mean someone steal tent.”

Some humor forwarded by my friend, Tom.

If anyone knows the source of this, please let me know so I can properly credit it.

On his trip to Great Britain, George Bush had a meeting with Queen Elizabeth.

He asked her, “How does one manage to run a country so well and so effortlessly?

“That’s easy,” she replied, “You surround yourself with intelligent ministers and advisors.”

“But how can I tell whether they are intelligent or not?” he inquired.

“You ask them a riddle,” she replied, and with that she pressed a button and said, “Would you please send Tony Blair in.”

When Blair arrived, the Queen said, “I have a riddle for you to answer for me. Your parents had a child and it was not your sister and it was not your brother. Who was this child ?”

Blair replied, “That’s easy. The child was me.”

“Very good,” said the Queen, “You may go now.”

So President Bush went back to Washington and called in his chief of staff, Karl Rove. He said to him, “I have a riddle for you, and the answer is very important. Your parents had a child and it was not your sister and it was not your brother. Who was this child?”

Rove replied, “Yes, it is clearly very important that we determine the answer, as no child must be left behind. Can I deliberate on this for a while?”

“Yes,” said Bush, “I’ll give you four hours to come up with the answer.”

So Rove went and called a meeting of the White House Staff, and asked them the riddle. But after much discussion and many suggestions, none of them had a satisfactory answer. So he was quite upset, not knowing what he would tell the President.

As Rove was walking back to the Oval Office, he saw former Secretary of State Colin Powell approaching him. So he said, “Mr. Secretary, can you answer this riddle for me? Your parents had a child and it was not your sister and it was not your brother. Who was the child?”

“That’s easy,” said Powell, “The child was me.”

“Oh thank you,” said Rove, “You may just have saved me my job!”

So Rove went in to the Oval Office and said to President Bush, “I think I know the answer to your riddle. The child was Colin Powell!”

“No, you idiot!” shouted Bush, “The child was Tony Blair!”

Oh, so true.

I just got these from my brother-in-law. If anyone out there knows the original source of these pearls of wisdom, please pass that information along so I can properly credit him/her.

My favorite: the first one.

Murphy’s Lesser-Known Laws

1. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
2. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
3. Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don’t.
4. Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.
5. The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there’s a 90% probability you’ll get it wrong.
6. If you lined up all the cars in the world end to end, someone would be stupid enough to try to pass them, five or six at a time, on a hill, in the fog.
7. The things that come to those who wait will be the scraggly junk left by those who got there first.
8. The shin bone is a device for finding furniture in a dark room.
9. A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.
10. When you go into court, you are putting yourself into the hands of 12 people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.

A mysterious image file found on my computer’s hard disk.

Ever download something and forget all about it? I must have done that with the following image, which I just found on my PowerBook’s hard disk, in my “Desktop Junk” folder. (The Desktop Junk folder is where I throw all the files on my desktop when I need to make it look neat. It has a lot of files in it and I was in the process of cleaning it out when I found this.)

I don’t remember downloading this at all. But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t put on my computer by someone else, since I’m the only one who has access to this laptop.

The image file’s timestamp is December 19, 2005.