THE ORIGINAL VERSION...
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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.
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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 the 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. The media shows up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
Viewers are 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 20/20 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 the 60 Minutes with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when he sings "It's not easy being green."
Opra makes a special guest appearance to tell a concerned public that they must do everything they can for the grasshopper who has been denied the prosperity he deserves. A study is released by a think-tank which concludes the ant may have benefited unfairly during the Reagan/Thatcher summers and that it has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper. A political action committee is formed and they call for a program for equality to make the ant pay what is "fair".
In response to public pressure the "Economic Equity and Anti-Greenism Act," is signed into law, 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.
The grasshopper gets a law firm to represent his interests and files a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of judges appointed from a list of tired life-long "politicos" that never held a real job.
The ant loses.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while housed in the ant's old home, which crumbles around him since he doesn't know how to maintain it. The ant has disappeared into the snow. And on the TV, which the grasshopper bought by selling most of the ant's food, they are showing A BUG'S LIFE II: Return to the larva...
The Moral of the Story…
Always give one hundred percent:
23% on Tuesdays
40% on Wednesdays
20% on Thursdays
5% on Fridays
And remember...
When you're having a really bad day and it seems like people are trying to piss you off, it takes 42 muscles to frown and only 4 to extend your finger and flip them the bird.
