Sunday, July 24, 2011

Trimming the Hedges

So I'm out trimming my hedge, the one that runs along the left side of my yard and has an apartment building on the other side. I'm buzzing away with this electric hedge-trimmer, when all of a sudden one of my neighbors wanders up and starts talking to me. He says "What're you doing?" and I say "Well, sir, I'm trimming this here hedge." He says "Well do you live here?" and I say "Yes, I do, I live in the brick and stucco house right behind us." He says "Well, I'm sorry to bother you like this, but could you please stop trimming? I was actually going to make a sculpture out of that hedge."

The hedge in question.
Well, nobody has ever made a sculpture out of this huge thicket we politely call a hedge before, so I'm a bit surprised. I say "Oh yeah?" and he says "Yeah, I hired a professional to come in and do it for me. He said he could make something very avant-garde out of it, very socially derivative." I say "Well, that's an interesting idea, but how are you going to pay for it?" He says "Well, this professional does things in a very particular way. He has me deposit the money into a special account for him, and then he can draw upon it as he needs while he's trimming the hedge." I say "So you're setting up a fund for him? So he can't use too much money at once?" He says "That's right." I say "I assume you're going to be watching him while he does all this work", and he says "Yeah, I'm right overhead and two stories up, so I can see everything that he does while he's on the job". And I say "I hope so, mister. If you don't have sufficient oversight over the hedge fund's derivatives, you could wind up in financial crisis."

(Inspired by true events.)

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