the marque by which we judge modern globalisation and its stereotypes

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.

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 (or sister) 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 on one more. Sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release. The public buys your bull.

AN 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.

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

A 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. You then create clever cow cartoon images called Cowkimon and market them World-Wide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows. You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows. Both are mad.

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

A 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.

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

A HINDU CORPORATION
You have two cows. You worship them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim full employment, high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported the numbers.

AN ISRAELI CORPORATION
So, there are these two Jewish cows, right? They open a milk factory, an ice cream store, and then sell the movie rights. They send their calves to Harvard to become doctors. Oi vey, who needs people?

some sort of murphy's law corollary

Its come to my attention that I haven't been updating this journal nearly enough lately, I'm not overly sure why exactly this should be, its definitely not for a lack of things to write in it.
I've been doing a lot of stuff lately, but nothing geeky enough (besides actually ordering a wang-fu t-shirt, which hasn't arrived yet, and in fact I am beginning to despair of it ever getting here, even though its more than likely going to take a couple of weeks).
I hate the way that most of the updates so far in this thing are more a "look at me!" request rather than some sort of signal I can broadcast to the world simply using the internet as a medium; 'cause lord knows nothing gets attention like an abject plea for charitable attention.
What I really need, is an adoring fanbase. :)
I'd need to get a heck of a lot better at drawing though, since as far as I can see sitting in the corner of a darkened room and churning out 100's of pictures while trying to bite anyone who comes near me isn't going to be that productive. Well, in terms of generating an adoring base of fans who will worship me, peel my grapes and fan me with palm fronds whilst I labour to make new stuff.
In other news, learning to do swaps with club-juggling is really difficult, and I've managed to break off lots of parts of various nails, bruise my hands a ridiculous amount, and even drop a club on my toe, which produced quite a nice... swelling.
Although its really not a scratch on the rollerblading accident I had last weekend where I managed to hit the ground at speed and hurt pretty much all of me, especially my shoulder and hip. All good though, I'm sensible and was wearing all the recommended padding. *heh*
I'm starting to think that I should perhaps take a break from juggling and twirling because at the moment I've got collections of bruises and cuts and scrapes and much pain which just isn't either going away or healing properly, becasue I keep hurting myself in the same places becasue I keep doing the things which hurt me.
It'd be good if muscle memory actually worked in a way which prevented me from burning myself 1/2 to death as well, I'm scared of doing that if I start playing with fire again.
I figure its about all I can ask for though, since if I'm not going to participate in extreme sports, then my hobbies might not require so much hanging on for dear life, but should ideally include some sort of danger like breaking my nose and disfiguring myself with burning kevlar impacts and deforming juggling balls into my eye sockets.
With that I shall leave you with today's IRC gem:

You haven't seen Billy Madison? S'wrong wi' yooo?
Ah, well you see I had parents and a regular childhood, rather than a retarded upbringing via television.