The Modern Ant and Grasshopper . . .

There are 2 Versions - Read Both


TRADITIONAL 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 ant is warm and well fed. 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 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.'

Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama stage a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news

stations film the group singing, 'We shall overcome.' Jesse and Barack then have the group kneel

down to pray for the grasshopper's sake.

Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry & 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 and 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.

Hillary Clinton gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against

the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill Clinton appointed from

a list of single parent welfare recipients.

The ant loses the case.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's 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 work to 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 very, VERY careful how you vote in 2008

The REALISTIC version.

As it turned out, when the public finally opened their eyes and stopped listening to fairy tales in raptured wonder, the reality was drearier by far.

The innocent ant was found not to be such a diligent worker but a heartless queen of a million slaves who crawled through their day in utter ignorance of their thankless fate. Their brief joyless life was to be spent in servitude, gathering food and building a nice comfy home for the sole good of the Great Dictator.

It was found the the Great Dictator had accomplished in several part of the world: her cousin Atta sexdens was buisily defoliating vast patches of central american forests and crops condemning ecosistems and populations to famine and death. The notoruious mexican killer Eciton Burchelli swept the forests like wildfire, leaving nothing alive on his path. The African queen Oecophylla Longinoda was enclosing african forests in a web of mystery and death, and fiercely defending its territory like a military zone.
Formica Polyctena was found to secretly protect dangerous aphid criminals, gaining precious sugar exude from the unsavoury connection. Polyergus rufescens was leading mass murdering incursions in tribes of black ants to gather slaves to serve its own purposes.

As a matter of fact, it was found the whole ant family was a selfish, dangerous, devious cast of lying scoundrels.



This is a realistic description of ants not a political tale (or is it?)

the time of Fairy tales is over, kids.

And remember:

"If ants had nuclear weapons they wd destroy the world in a week"

Berthold K. Holldobler
Mirmecologist.

wow. I don't know whether to applaud more loudly snow's brilliant reply to the original post or her damn fine handle on the taxonony of the various ant species...

“Active Denial System” tested on mock protesters.

The Raw Story

The Pentagon has been developing a non-weapon, allegedly for use in Iraq, which can repel enemies by causing a burning sensation on the skin.

I found this interesting:

[The weapon was] demonstrated…by staging what CBS somewhat oddly called “a scenario soldiers might encounter in Iraq” — a handful of military volunteers, dressed as civilian protesters, who carried signs saying “peace not war” and threw objects at a small group of soldiers. A series of raygun blasts from half a mile away disrupted their chants and finally sent them running.

Civilian war protesters are something soldiers might encounter in Iraq? Hmmmm…really?

As of 2004, [the weapon] was being described as ready for use in Iraq within the next 12 months. This has still not occurred, and according to Secretary Payton, use of the weapon in Iraq is now “not politically tenable” because after Abu Ghraib “you don’t ever, ever, ever want a system like this to be thought of as a torture weapon.”

No, of course not. Especially when there are cameras about.

**irony alert**

In 2006, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne was quoted as saying that the device should be used first on Americans, because “if we’re not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation. … If I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press.”

Crowd control, ladies and gentlemen. This weapon hasn’t been shipped off to Iraq, because it wasn’t developed for use in Iraq. It was developed to control the un-washed masses HERE. They can use this weapon from a half mile away, and have any type of protestors scurrying away to find ice packs — war protesters, peace protesters, economy protestors, fuel price protestors, even people protesting something like…..election fraud committed against us.

Something to think about…

Awww, thats not bad, a little itchy.
For Y2K in the great north, there was a plan to dispurse crouds on the streets by getting out the fire trucks and "misting" the crowd. Think of how it would feel to be misted at minus 20 deg C. That is about zero Ferinheight for those down south.

They would go home and those that stayed could be chipped out in the morning. Happy New Year!

quote:

wow. I don't know whether to applaud more loudly snow's brilliant reply to the original post or her damn fine handle on the taxonony of the various ant species...

Lol, thanks, as a matter of fact I like ants (those with six legs mind well).