Divination

We're off to the Craven Concert Series in New Bern. I'm a little worried about doing our usual show (bulgarian and mariachi plus russian, english, polish, french canadian, klezmer, and "Love Potion #9") but the time for second thoughts was a couple decades ago. Anyway, there's only time to share a joke beloved by my friend Sharon. It's from my favorite era, the out-moded one. I can only hope you heard it so long ago you've forgotten it.

A shepherdess was herding her flocks in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand new Jeep Cherokee advanced out of a dust cloud towards her.

The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and a YSL tie leaned out of the window and asked our shepherdess: "If I can tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?"

The shepherdess looks at the yuppie, then at her peacefully grazing flock and calmly answers "Sure!"

The yuppie parks the car, whips out his notebook, connects it to a cell-phone, surfs to a NASA page on the Internet where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system, scans the area, opens up a database and some 60 Excel spreadsheets with complex formulas. Finally he prints out a 150 page report on his hi-tech miniaturized printer, turns round to our shepherdess and says: "You have exactly 1586 sheep!"

"This is correct,," replies the shepherdess, "and, as agreed, you can take one of the sheep," She watches the young man make a selection and bundle it into his Cherokee.

Then she asks the yuppie, "If I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me my sheep back?"

"Okay, why not," the young man replies.

"You are a consultant," says the shepherdess. [FYI consultant pic is Mr. Joe.]

"That is correct," says the yuppie, in amazement, "How did you guess that?"

"Easy," answers the shepherdess. "You turn up here although nobody called you; you want to be paid for the answer to a question I already knew the answer to; and you don't know anything about my business because you took my dog."

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