Harrolds.Blogspot.com
From: burdick Sent: Saturday, August 22, 2009
There is a lesson to be learned in the moral of this story.
THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER
This one is a little different...
Two Different Versions! ................. Two Different Morals!
Two Different Versions! ................. Two Different Morals!
OLD VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!
MODERN VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.
CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.'
Acorn, Jessee Jackson, and Al Sharpton stage a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, 'We shall overcome.'
Rev. Jeremiah Wright then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.
Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ants food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2010 so maybe you still can in 2012.
"In God We Trust"
The way I heard it was like this:
ReplyDeleteThe ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his
house and laying up supplies for winter.
But then a terrible drought came. Food became scarce and many insects
lost their homes.
The ant became afraid. The ant knew he had work hard in the withering
heat all summer, so in the ant's mind it could not be possible that he
would not enjoy the fruits of all his labor. The ant decided that someone
must be stealing his food and making plans to take his house too.
Since the ant didn't know who cause the drought, he decided the problem
must be the grasshoppers. The grasshoppers were not like the ants.
Whenever the ant saw grasshoppers, they were making their work lighter
by signing strange grasshopper songs. The grasshoppers were green, not
red or black like ants. Most of all, the ant was insulted when other insects
were concerned with the suffering of the happy grasshoppers. No one
showed concern for the ant's suffering, no matter how much he screamed
and yelled at them.
The ant decided to protest these racist grasshoppers and their terrible
plans to steal his food and take his home. He went to the local insect
community emergency drought meeting and shouted down the katydid
that was speaking about a nearby river. The ant bellowed about the shifty
grasshoppers were stealing his food. He screeched that the grasshoppers
were tying to take his home. He sneered at the katydid, saying the river
was only a plot to drown his grandmother. No matter how loud he
shouted, none of the other insects would listen to his message about the
terrible, lazy grasshoppers.
This made the ant even more angry and afraid. It must have been the the
grasshoppers who made everyone else not listen to the ant. Or maybe it
was those lazy honey bees. Never trust anyone who looks beeish, thought
the ant.
The ant painted pictures of the grasshoppers. He painted pictures of
grasshoppers with white paint on their faces. He painted pictures of Nazi
grasshoppers. He painted pictures of grasshoppers with bones through
their noses.
"HooHoo! HeeHee", said the ant. "The other insects will listen to me now that I have these pictures." So the ant ran all over town, waving his
painted pictures and shouting at the top of his lungs.
But no one was there to listen to the ant or see his painted pictures. All of
the other insects - the bees, the katydids and the grasshoppers - had all
gone to the river where they could build their lives together, leaving the
ant all alone and afraid.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Scream and shout. It's how to get exactly
what you want.