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The Balloonist

The Balloonist

A balloonist is flying over a field when he realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man standing on the ground below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts:

“Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?”

The man below says, “Yes. You’re in a hot air balloon, hovering approximately 30 feet above this field.”

“You must be an engineer,” yells the balloonist.

“I am,” replies the man. “How did you know?”

The balloonist shouts, “Well, everything you have told me is technically correct, but it’s of absolutely no use to anyone.”

The man below replies, “You must be in upper management.”

“I am,” shouts the balloonist. “How did you know?”

“Simple,” says the man. “You have no idea where you are, you don’t know where you’re going, and yet you expect me to be able to help. You’re in the same position you were before we met, but now it’s my fault.”

1 comment… add one
  • jaced.com June 25, 2007, 11:24 am

    A variation:

    A Montana cowboy was watching his herd in a remote mountainous pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him.

    The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, “If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?”

    The cowboy looked at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looked at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answered,”Sure, Why not?”

    The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany.

    Within seconds, he receives an e-mail on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

    Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, “You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.”

    “That’s right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,” says the cowboy.

    He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

    Then the cowboy says to the young man, “Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?”

    The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, “Okay, why not?”

    “You’re a Congressman for the U.S. Government”, says the cowboy.

    “Wow! That’s correct,” says the yuppie, “but how did you guess that?”

    “No guessing required.” answered the cowboy. “You showed up here even though nobody called you, you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don’t know a thing about cows. This is a herd of sheep. Now give me back my dog.”

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