• The members of the board of directors have changed—from local citizens to three from Zaire, two from the United Arab Emirates and one from skid row downtown.
• The bank president turned in his Lexus for a Humvee.
• They keep giving you change in shekels.
• They used to give you a free toaster when you started an account. Now they give you Publisher’s Clearing House contest entry forms.
• The friendly old security guard at the door has been replaced by Rambo.
• You pass through airport-type of screening devices when you go in or out the door.
• The electric meter reader went down to the vault area and he has not been seen from since they put a tiger down there.
• All of the teller positions have been outsourced online to India.
• The branches that have closed permanently refer you to another branch that has closed permanently.
• You see Ben Bernacke, Henry Paulson and Martha Stewart closing their accounts.

A week later, he gets a letter in the mail, telling him that he is being taken to court by the park service. Arriving at court, he explains to the judge what happened, and the judge comes to a decision.

"As you didn’t kill this protected species intentionally, I don’t intend to send you to prison", the judge says. "However, it is still a serious error on your part, and I intend to deal with you by way of a fine, based upon the body weight of the animal".

"For every one pound of body weight, you will be fined $10". Consulting his records, the judge finds the weight of the bear, as recorded by the park services, and calls for a calculator. After a minute of two, he calls the hunter to the bench, and gives his judgement; a fine of $9,000.

The representative of the park services jumps to his feet, and approaches the judge. "Your Honour", he says, "With the greatest respect, I believe you’ve made a mistake in your calculations".

"We weighed the animal shortly after it was shot, and it weighed a total of 1000 pounds". "Surely, based on that measurement, the fine should be $10,000".

The judge looks at the ranger, and says, "I made a calculation, taking into consideration, the animals’ weight, minus its two front paws". Looking rather confused, the ranger asks, "but why did you not include the front paws in your calculation?"

1. I will have a cup of coffee in the morning and read my PAPER newspaper like I used to, before the Web.
2. I will eat breakfast with a knife and fork and not with one hand typing.
3. I will get dressed before noon.
4. I will make an attempt to clean the house, wash clothes, and plan dinner before even thinking of the Web.
5. I will sit down and write a letter to those unfortunate few friends and family that are Web-deprived.
6. I will call someone on the phone who I cannot contact via the Web.
7. I will read a book... if I still remember how.
8. I will listen to those around me about their needs and stop telling them to turn the TV down so I can hear the music on the Web.
9. I will not be tempted during TV commercials to check for email.
10. I will try and get out of the house at least once a week, if it is necessary or not.
11. I will remember that my bank is not forgiving if I forget to balance my checkbook because I was too busy on the Web.
12. Last, but not least, I will remember that I must go to bed sometime... and the Web will always be there tomorrow!

The villagers seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest, and started catching them. The man bought thousands at $10 and as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort.

He further announced that he would now buy at $20. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.

Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms.

The offer increased to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so little that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch it!

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on behalf of him.

In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers. 'Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.' The villagers rounded up with all their savings and bought all the monkeys.

Then they never saw the man nor his assistant, only monkeys everywhere!

Now you have a better understanding of how the stock market works.