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Humour
Do you have A.A.A.D.D.?
Medical science (Ha!) has finally found
a diagnosis for this Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder…
This is how it goes: I decide to wash the car; I start toward the garage
and notice the mail on the table. Ok, I'm going to wash the car. But first
I'm going to go through the mail. I lay the car keys down on the desk,
discard the junk mail and I notice the trashcan is full. Ok, I'll just
put the bills on my desk and take the trashcan out, but since I'm going
to be near the mailbox anyway, I'll pay these few bills first. Now, where
is my checkbook? Oops, there's only one check left. My extra checks are
in my desk. Oh, there's the coke I was drinking. I'm going to look for
those checks. But first I need to put my coke further away from the computer,
oh maybe I'll pop it into the fridge to keep it cold for a while. I head
towards the kitchen and my flowers catch my eye, they need some water.
I set the coke on the counter and ooh oh! There are my glasses. I was
looking for them all morning! I'd better put them away first. I fill a
container with water and head for the flowerpots - - Aaaaaagh! Someone
left the TV remote in the kitchen. We'll never think to look in the kitchen
tonight when we want to watch television so I'd better put it back in
the family room where it belongs. I splash some water into the pots and
onto the floor, I throw the remote onto a soft cushion on the sofa and
I head back down the hall trying to figure out what it was I was going
to do.
End of Day: The car isn't washed, the
bills are unpaid, the coke is sitting on the kitchen counter, the flowers
are half watered, the checkbook still only has one check in it and I can't
seem to find my car keys! When I try to figure out how come nothing got
done today, I'm baffled because I KNOW I WAS BUSY ALL DAY LONG!!! I realize
this is a serious condition and I'll get help, BUT FIRST I think I'll
check my e-mail ...
ENRON CAPITALISM
Forwarded to us by Bill Dickerson
In case you were wondering how Enron
came into so much trouble, here is a simple explanation given by a Harvard
professor of economics.
Traditional American Capitalism
---
- You have two cows.
- You sell one and use the money to buy a bull.
- Your herd multiplies. The economy grows.
- You sell your herd and retire on the income.
Enron Capitalism ---
- You buy two cows. You sell three to your mother's publicly listed
company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law, Dick,
at the Swiss bank branch in Barstow.
- Then you quickly execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general
offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five
cows, and you work the arbitrage spread while denying insider information.
- The milk rights of the six cows are then transferred via an intermediary
to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by your Uncle Max who sells
the rights to the seven cows back to your listed company.
- The annual report states that your company now owns nine cows, with
an option on eighteen more. But now you need to buy a couple of bulls
to service all these cows so you borrow several million dollars from
your employee's 401K retirement fund, buy the bulls and give Dick, Max
and your mother a $20 million dollar accounting fee.
- Now the cows and everyone else are getting royally screwed so Uncle
Sam comes along and bails you out at taxpayer expense so you can go
out again and buy two cows.
We found the A.A.A.D.D. article and the Enron Capitalism piece in the
Monotony Breakers which our old friend Bill Dickerson puts out
to lighten up friends and colleagues. The Monotony Breakers are
a mixture of wisdom, humour and commentary which Bill culls from various
sources. If you have a great item send it to bdickerson@Exchange.FULLERTON.EDU
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