A GERMAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You reengineer 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.

AN 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.

A SWISS CORPORATION: You have 5000 cows, none of which belong to you. You charge for storing them for others. If they give milk, you tell no one.

A POLISH CORPORATION: You have two bulls. Several people are killed while attempting to milk them.

A FLORIDA CORPORATION: You have a black cow and a brown cow. Everyone votes for the best looking one. Some of the people who like the brown one best 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 is the best looking one.

A NEW YORK CORPORATION: You have fifteen million cows. You have to choose which one will be the leader of the herd, so you pick some fat cow from Arkansas.

A TALIBAN CORPORATION: You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which is two. You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's private parts. At night when no one is looking, you milk both of them. Then you kill them and claim a US bomb blew them up while they were in the hospital.

ENRON VENTURE 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 an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option to own one more.

-- Loulou (aztec@packonline.com), January 30, 2002

Answers

Al Qaeda Capitalism: You have two cows. You run them into a building and they die. You call them martyrs, thank Allah that they are in cow paradise, and you America for their death.

Cuban Communism: You have two cows. Fidel tells you some undercover CIA agents have infected all of the cows in your region with a foreign disease that kills the cows. Since your cows are healthy, Fidel assumes they are CIA spies. Fidel takes your cows and imprisons them. They escape and sail to Miami. You have not seen cow's milk since 1985. Fidel Castro sends you a 483 page letter explaining your mistakes and detailing how lucky you are to have such a wonderful dictator.

French Capitalism: You have two cows. You put them in the barn next to a chicken. They think the chicken may be a Gestapo agent. They both surrender to the chicken.

Talibanism: You have two cows. The government makes them wear burkas and forbids them to read. You shoot them for disobeying your orders to pray 5 times a day. You blame America for their death.

Socialist Bureaucracy, Mao Style: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by 400 ex-attorneys. The attorneys can't stand the smell of the cows and never milk them. The attorneys gradually sell all the cows, buy imported sake and stay drunk all the time. The government praises the farm for exceeding quotas, maintaining full employment, and having no work-related injuries ever. When the cows are all gone, Mao declares milk is bourgeois and forbids anyone to drink it. The lawyers are moved to a chicken farm where they repeat the process.

-- Terence M. Doherty (tm_doherty@hotmail.com), April 05, 2002.

Canadian Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes half of your milk and gives you free health care. One of the cows is French. It is sick of contributing milk to inferior Anglophone cheeses such as cheddar, and would prefer its own separate field. The English cow laughs and makes frog jokes. When you bring a glass of milk into the USA it is suddenly only worth 2/3 of a glass.

-- Johnny (jpack_the_man@hotmail.com), April 09, 2002.

AUSTRALIA: You have two cows, and decide to base your economy around them. You find out the best way to milk them, then find out that everyone else is giving away milk for free.

NEW ZEALAND: You have two sheep.

ZIMBABWE: You have two black-and-white cows. You decide that you don't like the white parts, so decide to hack them off with a knife. You then wonder why the cows seem to be dying. You blame the white cow in the next paddock for the whole thing.

-- Jock (jockreby2000@hotmail.com), July 06, 2002.

Anarchistic: You have 2 cows. The state offers to pasteurize the milk, while keeping some of it. You refuse. The state demands.

You hide out with your cows, and are eventually caught.

You die defending your c'ow'se, the state audits them.

-- - (gaiaskeeper@hotmail.com), October 07, 2002.