I was totally taken off guard by the end of the modern ant and grasshopper story. I thought the grasshopper was going to lose all the ant's money, savings, value in his home, due to a very hard to understand derivatives trading operation, receive funds from the government because he is too big to fail, and pay himself a big bonus. Then, the ant, facing the reality that he will have to work to his dying day to make up for the loss of his carefully husbanded savings, and "underwater" on his mortgage due to a grasshopper induced housing bubble, loses his job which has been exported to a country without safety and health regulations, dying finally of a sinus infection which he cannot afford to have treated, due to lack of health insurance, because he doesn't have a job. Meanwhile Congress calls a special session to debate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Boy was I wrong! What a relief. I much prefer your version. Devon >From Agnes, the modern version of the Ant and the Grasshopper story 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. 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 stages 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. Agnes Boddington - Elloughton UK To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]. To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected].
