quote:The ant busts his butt in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.
The New Version...
quote:It starts out the same but when winter comes 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, and ABC show up and show pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to film of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can it be, in a country of such wealth that this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so? Then a representative of the NAGB (The National Association of Green Bugs) shows up on 'Nightline' and charges the ant with "Green Bias" and makes the case that the grasshopper is the victim of 30 million years of greenism. Kermit the frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when he sings "It's Not Easy Being Green."
The Democratic candidate for President makes a special guest appearance on the CBS evening news and tells a concerned Dan Rather That he will do everything he can for the grasshopper who has been denied the prosperity he deserves by those who benefited unfairly during the summer, or as he refers to it, the "Temperatures Of The 80's".
Finally the EEOC drafts the "Economic Equity and Anti-Greenism Act" RECTRO-ACTIVE 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 Retro-Active taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he's in....which just happens to be the ant's old house.... crumbles around him since he doesn't know how to maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow. And on the TV; which the grasshopper bought by selling most of the ant's food, the Democratic candidate is standing before a wildly applauding group of activists announcing that a new era of "Fairness" has dawned in America.
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
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posted
I think someone posted this before. We concluded that Kermit would eat the grasshopper.
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
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I read another version somewhere that ends happily for both species, but I forget where.
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
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-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
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posted
If you'll recall, in a post shortly after this was originally posted, Omega called Tahna (I think) a grasshopper. Tahna's response was a big "FUCK YOU" and a link to this post.
Of course, as with this story, this is the only way Conservatives can explain their partys' stance on issues to other Conservatives, since most Conservatives have brains the size of a grasshoppers'.
Hahahahahahahahahaha -- !
Of course, any political party that says its against "Big Government" and views national healthcare as a serious danger to their freedom while ignoring Ashcroft's actions are pretty stupid to begin with ...
posted
You know, the snide comments you guys keep throwing at one another were all a lot funnier during the last perihelion of Neptune.
[ February 09, 2002, 20:37: Message edited by: The_Tom ]
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
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-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
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posted
The Ant & The Grasshopper ... a new retelling.
quote:The ant busts his butt in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. Since he is the CEO of powerful company X, he puts in minimum time in the office and doesn't pay attention to what his subordinates are doing. The grasshopper laughs and dances and plays the summer away on the weekends, while putting in a 9-5 job at the same company, renting a 1-bedroom flat, and putting every dollar he can earn in his company's 401k and stock. Come winter the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has little money to spend on food, so he does lose some weight, but he's got a nice apartment and lots of stock options!
The ant quickly jumps in bed with the Republican roaches in D.C. to deregulate the industry. With less watchdog organizations keeping an eye on what he's doing, the ant and his co-executives quickly begin opening new "corporations" to hide the accounting problems in Company X. He meanwhile encourages his employees to continue buying stock.
The ant learns that the account problems are about to surface, and quickly sells off his stock. He collaborates with his other ants to make sure that their worker bugs -- grasshoppers and spiders, mostly -- aren't aware of the iminent collapse. When Company X is found out to be in the shape it is, the grasshopper loses all his hard earned money he had in his 401k, as well as what he had put in stocks!
The shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while his actions have led to others being cold and starving. CBS, NBC, and ABC show up and show pictures of the shivering grasshopper in his sparse flat, with repo men taking the possessions the grasshopper can't afford to pay because his net worth of one million dollars has evaporated, next to film of the ant (who sold his stock for $15 million) in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can it be, in this great nation, that Republicans could allow such fraud that makes insects suffer so? Then a representative of the NAGB (The National Association of Green Bugs) shows up on 'Nightline' and charges the ant with "Green Bias" and makes the case that the grasshopper is the victim of 30 million years of greenism. Kermit the frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when he sings "It's Not Easy Being Green."
The Democratic candidate for President makes a special guest appearance on the CBS evening news and tells a concerned Dan Rather That he will do everything he can for the grasshopper who has been denied the prosperity he deserves by those who benefited unfairly during the summer, or as he refers to it, the "Temperatures Of The 80's".
Finally the EEOC drafts the "Economic Equity and Anti-Greenism Act" RECTRO-ACTIVE to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to practice good accounting, and failing to warn his employees the true nature of Company X's accounting problems. He is also jailed for ten years (but is sadly eaten in jail by a really mean spider). His home is confiscated by the government.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he's in....which just happens to be the ant's old house.... sells for twice the Grasshopper's lost stock! And on the TV, the Democratic candidate is standing before a wildly applauding group of activists announcing that a new era of "Fairness" has dawned in America.
Of course, as the grasshopper watches, it occurs to him that Robert and Stephen will not think this is very accurate, but as two people who claim to have brains (but have yet to provide evidence of such), they would have to agree that this is as accurate as the version Rob posted, and if he doesn't like it, he might want to reconsider posting stuff that makes him look like a smelly asshole.
posted
Of course, the fatal flaw in Snay's story, and the one that REALLY makes him look like a stuck-up sticky beak is:
NOT ALL ANTS ARE CEO'S.
quote:while putting in a 9-5 job at the same company, renting a 1-bedroom flat, and putting every dollar he can earn in his company's 401k and stock.
Actually, the grasshopper in Snay's story IS an ant... the above quote makes that so... 9he works and saves) he just doesn't know it. He's been told he's a grasshopper for so long, he believes it. And he's been fooled into believing that all grasshoppers are just like him.
[ February 11, 2002, 12:29: Message edited by: First of Two ]
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
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posted
Do you really believe that the main difference between a Democrat and a Republican is how much they put into their savings account?
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posted
Of course he does. He also thinks he can tell cute fables and hope people forget about Enron. Sorry, Rob. Try again. Then again, he also completely ignores all the time Reagan gave China illegal tech, so it's not like he's willing to listen to anything even remotely resembling "reality."
quote:NOT ALL ANTS ARE CEO'S.
DUH, Robert! In the story, I mention one ant in PARTICULAR. Singular ant. Only one. I know you're all about generalizing people and what not, but you're supposed to be a librarian! Didn't you at least READ what I edited? No, you just switched on the "I'm going to generalize everything" switch and did so.
If it makes you happy, replace the grasshopper with the ant and vice-versa. MY story still proves that pro-deregulation Republicans (in this case, Republioaches) are EVIL EVIL EVIL SPIDERFUCKERS!
Of course, the whole point of my story was that generalizations are bad and a fable isn't really good except to make stupid Republicans feel good about themselves, so you should really be feeling good about yourself, Rob.
Me? I'm feeling kind of dirty for stooping to your level.
posted
Snay, that was what didn't make any sense about your example. You took a story about generalities (which everyone but you seems to already take as a given are inherently flawed, which is why I said I found it "funny" and I didn't say "true"), and tried to rationalize a specificty from it. Any storyteller can tell you that can't work.
I don't believe the story actually was talking about the Democrats and the Republicans, except to the extent that 'political correctness' as portrayed (and taken to extremes)in the story is primarily the pervue of the Democrats.
Of course, in the final analysis, the grasshopper is a symbol of the 'entitlement' mentality ... you can decide for yourselves who represents that side more often ... whereas the ant is a symbol of those of us who do not believe we are 'entitled' to anything, and who simply go out and do the best we can with what we have, whether we're liberal or conservative.
It's simply a coincidence that if you see someone supporting the 'entitlement' concept, 7 times out of 10 they're also a Democrat (Since the Socialist and Communist parties have such small memberships in the US), and of course, there are exceptions to that, too... certain Super-Right-Wing groups support a sort of 'entitlement' concept of their own... but just for their own.
Still, as a general rule, while there is not always a huge gulf between Democrats and Republicans, there IS one between those who follow the 'entitlement' concept and those who do not.
quote:Do you really believe that the main difference between a Democrat and a Republican is how much they put into their savings account?
Of course not. The main difference between a Republican and a Democrat is how much of your savings account they think belongs to you, vs. how much of it they think belongs to 'the people.'
[ February 12, 2002, 12:11: Message edited by: First of Two ]
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
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quote:Of course not. The main difference between a Republican and a Democrat is how much of your savings account they think belongs to you, vs. how much of it they think belongs to 'the people.'
By the time your paycheck gets to you, Rob, taxes have already been taken out. They're not taken from your savings account.
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