THE ORIGINAL 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 AMERICAN 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 are cold and starving.
CBS, NBC, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can it be that, in a country of such wealth, 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."
Bill and Hillary Clinton make a special guest appearance on the CBS Evening News to tell a concerned Dan Rather that they will do everything they can for the grasshopper who has been denied the prosperity he deserves by those who benefited unfairly during the Reagan summers.
Richard Gephardt 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-Greenism Act," retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of greenbugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.
Hillary 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 hearing officers that Bill appointed from a list of single-parent welfare moms who can only hear cases on Thursday's between 1:30 and 3 PM. 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'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 CNN they are showing Bill Clinton standing before a wildly applauding group of Democrats announcing that a new era of "fairness" has dawned in America.

"Quotes the Raven"
(and others)

"When the sounds of music changes, the walls of a city shake"

-Plato-

"Why is it that when we talk to God we're said to be praying, but when God talks to us we're schizophrenic?"

-Lily Tomlin-

"Never raise your hands to your kids. It leaves your groin unprotected".

-Red Buttons-

"To accept everything without question is to deny yourself the right to think".

-Bryson-
1957

"Did you ever notice when you blow in a dog's face he gets mad at you? But when you take him in a car he sticks his head out the window".

-Steve Bluestone-

"Have you ever noticed? Anybody going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac".

-George Carlin-

"I'm not into working out. My philosophy: No pain, no pain".

-Carol Leifer-

"The reason most people play golf is to wear clothes they would not be caught dead in otherwise".

-Roger Simon-

"I never get lost while driving, just change my destination".

-BRYSON-
1967

"I'm desperately trying to figure out why kamikaze pilots wore helmets".

-Dave Edison-

"Anytime four New Yorkers get into a cab together without arguing, a bank robbery has just taken place".

-Johnny Carson-

"I voted for the Democrats because I didn't like the way the Republicans were running the country. Which is turning out to be like shooting yourself in the head to stop your headache".

-Jack Mayberry-

"I have six locks on my door all in a row. When I go out, I lock every other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three".

-Elayne Boosler-

"Ever wonder if illiterate people get the full effect of alphabet soup?"

-John Mendoza-

"I had a linguistics professor who said that it's man's ability to use language that makes him the dominant species on the planet. That may be. But I think there's one other thing that separates us from animals. We aren't afraid of vacuum cleaners".

-Jeff Stilson-

"The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they are okay, then it's you".

-Rita Mae Brown-

"Now they show you how detergents take out bloodstains, a pretty violent image there. I think if you've got a T-shirt with a bloodstain all over it, maybe laundry isn't your biggest problem. Maybe you should get rid of the body before you do the wash."

-Jerry Seinfeld-

"I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific".

-Lily Tomlin-

"Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant? I'm halfway through my fishburger and I realize, Oh my God....I could be eating a slow learner".

-Lynda Montgomery-

"A person continues to live only for as long as he is remembered"

-BRYSON-
5:49 AM
1 Sep 1998

"I believe that more people would be alive today if there were a death penalty."

-Nancy Reagan-

"Marriage is the alliance of two people, one of whom never remembers birthdays and the other never forgets them."

-Ogden Nash-

"I'm terribly sorry, but would you mind if my wife and I butted in? The thing is, I've got to go and see the queen at 6 o'clock."
(said to other parents waiting on line for parent-teacher meetings at the London Oratory school, which two of his children attend).

-British Prime Minister Tony Blair-

"To move a file to another place always use cut and paste".

(poetic puter passage)
-John Lawrence Winslow-

"The speed of light might be fast but in the world of computers, what one learns today is often obsolete before he/she can use the knowledge".

-BRYSON-

"What is food to one man is bitter poison to others."

-Lucretius-

"Don't forget your coat. How's anybody supposed to recognize you without your disguise"

-Clint Eastwood-
(in the Eiger Sanction)

"Education is often-in one year, out the other, with nothing in between"

-BRYSON-

"The only time a woman really succeeds in changing a man is when he's a baby".

-Natalie Wood-

"Friendships = friends who join on a ship of enjoyment with each other. Traveling down life's often rough rapids, holding onto each other mentally to aid each from being swept overbord into unforgiving waters of sorrow. Yet often gliding peacfully on smooth as glass waves of happiness, sharing the pleasures of having a true friend."

-BRYSON-
4:45 AM
13 August 1998

"I was going to have cosmetic surgery until I noticed that the doctor's office was full of portraits by Picasso."

-Rita Rudner-

"Even is you are completely wrong, you will always be half right".

-BRYSON-

"God gave women intuition and femininity. Used properly, the combination easily jumbles the brain of any man I've ever met."

-Farrah Fawcett-

"The more you know, the more you know you don't know."

-John Lawrence Winslow-

"He knows I know, I know he knows, therefore we know, we are still learning".

-BRYSON-

"A person who's mind is full, is often full of themselves"

-BRYSON-

"Some folks are college bread, after a four year loaf"

-John Lawrence Winslow-

"I like people, it's just so hard to weave thru the stupid ones"

Becker (TV show)
14 Dec 1998

"I may not be as good as I once was, but Iam better once than I ever was"

-Joe Dominguez-
TV show Nash Bridges

"Care to chat? We might leave with something one of us did not have before, perhaps a differant point of view".

-BRYSON-

"Knowledge is power, to people who were powerless."

-BRYSON-

"If only our mind would expand, as easily as our waist".

-BRYSON-

"Mental awarness = increased Knowledge"

-BRYSON-

"Bill Gates is so rich, each of his sperm has it's oun jet ski".

-BRYSON-
5:17 AM
18 Aug 1998

"When you put your hand into a bunch of goo that a moment before was your best friends face, you'll know what to do"

-General George S. Patton-

"Approched with an open mind, many thoughts are of unexpected value".

-BRYSON-
17 July 1954

---

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the world-famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, was not above telling tales about himself in which he was the laughing-stock. Here is one of those stories.

As he tells it, he was waiting at a taxi stand outside the railway station in Paris. When a taxi pulled up. He put his suitcase in it and got in himself. As he was about to tell the taxi-driver where he wanted to go, the driver asked him: "Where can I take you, Mr. Doyle?"

Doyle was flabbergasted. He asked the driver whether he knew him by sight. The driver said: "No Sir, I have never seen you before." The puzzled Doyle asked him what made him think that he was Conan Doyle.

The driver replied: "This morning's paper had a story about you being on vacation in Marseilles. This is the taxi-stand where people who return from Marseilles always come to. Your skin color tells me you have been on vacation. The ink-spot on your right index finger suggests to me that you are a writer. Your clothing is very English, not French. Adding up all those pieces of information, I deduced that you are Sir Arthur Conan Doyle."

Doyle said: "This is truly amazing. You are a real-life counter-part to my fictional creation, Sherlock Holmes."

"There is one other thing," the driver said. "What is that?" "Your name is on the front of your suitcase."

---

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