DEMOCRATIC You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You feel guilty for being successful. Barbara Streisand sings for you.
REPUBLICANISM You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. So?
SOCIALIST You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor. You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.
COMMUNIST You have two cows. The government seizes both and provides you with milk. You wait in line for hours to get it. It is expensive and sour.
CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE You have two cows. You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.
BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE You have two cows. Under the new farm program the government pays you to shoot one, milk the other, and then pour the milk down the drain.
AMERICAN CORPORATION You have two cows. You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one. You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses. Your stock goes up.
FRENCH CORPORATION You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows. You go to lunch and drink wine. Life is good.
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. They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains. Most are at the top of their class at cow school.
GERMAN CORPORATION You have two cows. You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour. Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.
ITALIAN CORPORATION You have two cows but you don't know where they are. While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman. You break for lunch. Life is good.
RUSSIAN CORPORATION You have two cows. You have some vodka. You count them and learn you have five cows. You have some more vodka. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.
TALIBAN CORPORATION You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two. You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's private parts. You get a $40 million grant from the US government to find alternatives to milk production but use the money to buy weapons.
IRAQI CORPORATION You have two cows. They go into hiding. They send radio tapes of their mooing.
POLISH CORPORATION You have two bulls. Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.
BELGIAN CORPORATION You have one cow. The cow is schizophrenic. Sometimes the cow thinks she's French, other times she's Flemish. The Flemish cow won't share with the French cow. The French cow wants control of the Flemish cow's milk. The cow asks permission to be cut in half. The cow dies happy.
FLORIDA CORPORATION You have a black cow and a brown cow. Everyone votes for the best looking one. Some of the people who actually like the brown one best accidentally vote for the black one. Some people vote for both. Some people vote for neither. Some people can't figure out how to vote at all. Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which one you think is the best-looking cow.
CALIFORNIA CORPORATION You have millions of cows. They make real California cheese. Only five speak English. Most are illegals. Arnold likes the ones with the big udders.
Sweating to the Oldies
by Stephen Phillips
I’ve reached that period in life where the "six pack" that used to adorn my Adonis-like figure has now mysteriously transformed into a keg.
Those rippling muscles that were once admired by teenage girls are now the butt of jokes among my equally unhealthy friends and me:"Hey man, check it out. I can make my stomach shake like a Jell-O pudding!"
There was a time when I was quite the fitness fanatic. I used to run every day.I played rugby. I ate healthy food.I owned two pairs of sneakers.
These days, the only aerobic exercise I get regularly needs no fancy equipment, since it is of a personal nature (just me and the good lady).
I know there is no excuse not to exercise on a regular basis, and all the scientific evidence indicates that exercising regularly can improve one's quality of life.That's all well and good, but just what kind of exercise shall I pursue?
Should I shell out big bucks to join a trendy gym, work like a dog for thirty minutes on some astonishingly complicated piece of high-tech equipment, only to have the instructor tell me that I'm sitting on it backwards?
Maybe join a swimming club? No, I think not.I can just imagine the kids covering me in grease and trying to push me into the water, yelling "Be gone, Shamu!"
How about whipping out the onion-peel shorts and joining the jogging set? That would be fun:dodging traffic, cyclists, and pedestrians…oh, and little doggy presents.(I'm feeling fitter already.)
Then again, it might be more to my advantage to purchase one of those exercise machines that you always see being hawked on late night TV by the likes of Chuck Norris or Suzanne Sommers.Great stuff, with names that really inspire one to exercise:The Abdominizer…The Thigh Slapper…The Spine O-Matic.
“Wow, where's the credit card?” you think. “That fine-looking piece of equipment will make me the envy of all my friends.”But as we all know, in six months it will just be more stuff cluttering up your living room. (Look on the bright side:at least it will be somewhere to sling your jacket on your return from the pub.)
There is one piece of exercise equipment currently on the market that deserves special mention. I don't know the name of it offhand, but in essence it consists of little sticky pads that you apply to those "problem areas." (Okay, girls—hands up if you know where I'm talking about.) You plug it in, sit back in the comfort of your armchair, and (this is the good part) it sends small electrical charges coursing through your body, supposedly causing your muscles to contract, thereby giving you washboard abs.
This sounds all well and good, but the only drawback is that after continued use, you will have built up enough electric charge in your body to light a small town. (Oh, and don't go out in the rain, as you'll probably electrocute anyone within a five foot radius.)
Exercising is big business these days, and people are shelling out major bucks to try to have a body that looks like Michelangelo’s "David" rather than the Bob's Big Boy statue.But why is it that with all the resources available to give us that perfect body, the majority of the population would more easily qualify for entry into a Michelin Man look-alike contest?
I'll tell you why. Because essentially we are lazy, apathetic, fast food junkies whose days of actually walking anywhere, thereby getting exercise, are long gone.
If you’re truly fired up about getting that perfect physique, I would recommend getting the "Thai Bo" fitness tapes endorsed by Billy Blanks, that musclebound hero of Hollywood types. That way, at least when you get fed up with it, you can use what you've learned to kick ten bells of crap out of the rowing machine cluttering up your living room:"Can you feel the burn, baby?"
(c) COPYRIGHT 2002 STEPHEN PHILLIPS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
To Your Health? What's Good..What's Bad...Who Cares?
by Stephen Phillips
It seems that just about every day there's another report warning about the dangers of something that we previously believed wasn't causing us any harm. All of a sudden it's bad!And not just bad, but so hideously terrible that if we don't stop using it immediately (i.e., yesterday), we are destined for an agonizing, horrible, slow death.
Well, you know what?I really don't care.
“Why does he have this cavalier attitude?” you may ask yourself.Why indeed, dear reader? Okay, I'll tell you. First we are conceived. Then comes the delight of birth, the angst of youth, our “prime time” years, and old age. Then we die. It's pretty simple, really. Everybody does it. And it's a foregone conclusion that at some time or other, we are all destined to meet our Maker, no matter how we conduct our lives.
Now, I'm not disputing the fact that what we ingest into our bodies has a direct impact on our longevity. But why is it that The Experts feel it necessary to first pump us up about the potential benefits of various products, and then in the next breath, warn us of the inherent dangers of the selfsame products?
A great example of this is coffee—or more specifically, the caffeine it contains. Remember the dire warnings?"Do NOT drink coffee. It contains large amounts of a dangerous substance, caffeine, which in laboratory experiments has been shown to cause nervousness and increased blood pressure, put undue strain on the heart, decrease the libido, blah, blah, blah."
To be honest with you, I'm not surprised.If I were a lab rat and had ingested the equivalent of 30 cups of espresso, my heart would be pounding, too.
What did we do?Like good little automatons, we switched to decaf, as instructed. But hold on a minute before you order that double-tall decaf latte:what's this?
It's another report--put out by the same bunch of experts---warning us about the dangers of drinking decaffeinated coffee. It seems the chemicals involved in the decaffeination process have been found to be equally dangerous.
Well, that's just marvelous. What the hell am I supposed to drink now?
I suppose I could always go back to tea.
--Oh no, can't do that.Tea contains more caffeine than coffee.And don't forget that tea also contains tannin, which is just bad as caffeine, if not worse. So no matter which way you look at it, you're well and truly up the creek without a paddle.
What I've decided to do is just throw caution to the wind, and continue to enjoy my chosen beverage.(I was contemplating taking a sixpack to work instead of a flask of tea, but I thought that might not go down too well with management.)
Mind you, though, beverages containing caffeine are merely the tip of the iceberg. There have been equally dire warnings about milk--whole or skimmed, low fat, full fat, no fat, even stuff that contains only trace elements of milk. "Don't drink that, dear. Government scientists have said that it will make hair sprout on the palms of your hands."
Okay, then, if I can't drink anything containing caffeine, and milk will cause me to break out in spots, and soda is out of the question, how about water?
Well, yes, maybe that's okay. But don't forget that it has to be bottled water, because water out of the faucet contains too much calcium.
--Now, hold on a minute! I thought we needed calcium in our diet to stop our bones from getting brittle as we age.
Ah, yes, that's true.But too much of that is bad for you as well.
We have thus ascertained that no matter what we drink to quench our thirst, it has to come with some kind of government health warning.
Maybe what the experts should do is just put a warning label on all consumer products."DANGER: No matter what you ingest into your body, it is going to be really, really bad for you."
Sometimes you just can't win.
(c) COPYRIGHT 2002 STEPHEN PHILLIPS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
