A classic story and the updated version...

[daveleau]

Got this via email. Thought it was absolutely the picture perfect idea of the nation today. Absolutely hilarious!!!




CLASSIC 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 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.





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 he's 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 less fortunate are cold and starving.

CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN and MSNBC 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 stages a demonstration in front of
the ant's house, where the news stations film the
group singing "We Shall Overcome."

Al Gore exclaims in an interview with Peter
Jennings that the ant has gotten rich off the
back of the grasshopper, and calls 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 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.

And the moral of the story is....










Don't build a house in the US!

Cheers
Mick the proud Australian home owner.

[Redwolf]

Moral of the story is take Public speaking

[Warthog]

lol dave, nice story

In the perfect world (as seen in Disney/cartoon version as a kid....)

Ant ultimately invites the grasshopper in for food and dancing...

[and my added part]
...grasshopper learns his lesson and tells all his friends so it doesn't happen again...
*cough yeah right cough*

redwolf - did that this year...helped a lot

Warthog

[Theophylact]

I heard a version of that story, too, Daveleau. It went like this:

MODERN VERSION:

The ant works hard in his cubicle all summer long, building his pension and laying up his 401(k) for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks he's a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away at his mansion, bought with an interest-free loan from his company, thanks to a board of diredctors whose own fat checks depend on the goodwill of the gasshopper.

Come winter, the grasshopper announces an "unexpected charge against earnings", the company tanks, and he retires (having already cashed in his stock options before the announcement). The ant and his co-workers are sacked and left to freeze with their worthless pensions, while the grasshopper's wife goes on TV and weeps about how sad it is that they're down to their last six mansions.

The President of the United Insects, who previously was only too happy to call the grasshopper "Greeny-Boy", and who was involved in some shady dealings in a former pupal stage, now can't seem to remember his name.

Finally, the SEC announces that it's going to get tough on other grasshoppers who do the same thing, but only after Congress, which depends on HopPAC for election campaign money, writes some laws to make sure that no one will actually be subject to them.

[Agent_Embryo]

The lesson is "Stay in school and don't do drugs"...right?

[Cruez]

Then the Ant buys a plethora of weapons and takes out 35 people in a hostage situation before turning it on himself.......really. Because he was tired of all the BS!

[daveleau]

Theo:
The President of the United Insects did no such thing. He was cleared by the SEC before trying to make his deal on Insect stock. Be careful because little insects can be mislead when the INN (Insect News Network) wants you to stand up against the President of the United Insects. They tend to leave stuff like his SEC clearing out of stories....