A shepherd was tending his flock in a remote
pasture when
suddenly a brand-new Jeep Cherokee
appeared out of a dust cloud,
advanced toward him and stopped.
The driver, a 20-year-old young
man wearing a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes,
Ray Ban sunglasses and a YSL tie,
leaned out of the window
and asked our shepherd,
"If I
can tell you exactly
how many sheep you
have in your flock,
will you give me one?"
The shepherd looked at the young guy,
then at his
peacefully grazing flock, and calmly answered,
"Sure."
The young man parked his car,
whipped out his notebook
computer, connected it to a cell phone,
surfed to a NASA page on
the Internet where he called up a
GPS satellite navigation system,
scanned the area, then opened up
a database and some Excel
spreadsheets with complex formulas.
He finally printed out a 150-page
report on his hi-tech miniaturized
printer, turned around to our
shepherd and said,
"You have here exactly 1,586 sheep!"
"Amazing!
That's correct! Like I agreed,
you can take one
of my sheep," said the shepherd.
He watched the young guy make
a selection and bundle it
into his Cherokee.
When he was
finished the sheepherder said,
"If I can tell you exactly what your
political persuasion is, where you're
from and who you work for,
will you give me my sheep back?"
"Okay, why not," answered the young man.
"You're a Democrat from Palm Beach
and you're working for
Jesse Jackson," said the shepherd.
"That's correct," said the young man.
"How did you guess that?"
"Easy", answered the shepherd.
"Nobody called you, but
you showed up here anyway.
You want to be paid for the solution to a
question I already knew the answer to.
And, you don't know beans
about my business
because you just took my dog."