The crap that flys around the internet...

This one really irked me. Mostly because it's really bad but also their metaphors are so easy to turn back upon themselves...

My comment and version are below.

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THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER

This one is a little different....
Two Different Versions!
Two Different Morals!


OLD 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 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 h ike 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 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.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2010

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While it is true that many of our poorer citizans abuse the system and need a kick in the rear to get to doing something productive, I’ve always belived that it is better to have millions of poor people abuseing the system than a hand full of corporations abuseing the system by disinformation campaigns, no-bid contracts, bail outs, tax breaks, etc...

Here is my version of the story.

REALITY BASED VERSION:

The worker ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his Queen Ant’s house and laying up supplies for the winter. Supported by no-bid government contracts, won by eliminating competitive bidders through a public relations disinformation campaign, the worker ants march in lock step while blindly saluting their Queen. The Queen gets richer and fatter as the summer continues. She consumes hundreds of times more natural resources than her worker ants. She cares not when hundreds of worker ants die without healthcare as her own health is secured.

The grasshopper thinks the worker ant is a fool to slave away his life for the corporate Ant Queen and laughs, dances and plays the summer away. Enjoying life to its fullest and not hating others for being different the grasshopper goes about her natural life cycle, of six to nine months, laying eggs for future generations.

Come winter the worker ants are all dead since they do not have adequate healthcare and as they only live a few months anyway. The Queen Ant can live several years, thanks to the best healthcare money can buy. She lives on to hatch out a new brood of lock step worker ants to do her bidding and disinformation campaigns another year.

Safe from the winter elements the grasshopper’s eggs will guarantee the next generation to enjoy life to its fullest and not hating others for being different.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Stop listing to everybody else and use your own damn brain.

great quotes

You can take energy and make anything, but you can't take anything and make energy.

Fossil Fuels + Man's ingenuity = Man on the Moon
Man's ingenuity - Fossil Fuels = Man on stationary bicyle pumping water out of the ground for his garden and family.

One of the things I often hear is, “What do I do for fun?” Meaning, how do I spend my leisure time. There is no leisure time. At the same time it is all leisure time because I am doing what I want.


it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it - Upton Sinclair

Given abundant energy, minerals can be refined from seawater if necessary. But in the absence of energy even the richest mineral deposits are inaccessible.

Growth. Yeah, right...

Many of my critics say that I am against Growth, and they’d be correct. Growth, even at 0.1%, is physically not sustainable. One of the best quotes I’ve heard in years is “Are humans smarter than yeast?” That is based on the classic biology experiment of observing bacteria growth in a petri dish. In observing the industrialized world, I might answer that question, “No.”

Growth is NOT sustainable. NOT desirable. Growth, is destructive. Reaganomics, industrialization, green collar economy, socialism, nationalism whatever brand you smoke they are all dead wrong if the word Growth is used. Man's endless desire for profit and greed, the “more - more - more” generation, is Growth we can not sustain.

To me Growth is a bad word unless I am using it in regard to say - my garden. Or, children. Trees. Topsoil. These things and many, many more - grow, live, die, and become part of the earth again. This allows subsequent generations to follow suit. That is what we call sustainable. Climate change aside.

Even the most brilliant and noble of “green” endeavors to “save us” still use that term. “Growth in the alternative fuels industry is spurring new discoveries and raising Energy Return on Energy Investment (EROEI) to amazing levels. Now EROEI ratios of nearly 1.3:1 are possible! I think we’ll see electric and biofuel cars in every driveway within a decade.” - brilliant and noble green industries grant recipient.

Growth. Yeah, right...

I was walking in my woods last week checking fallen trees to see which were suitable for firewood and which were best left to rot and become new topsoil when it dawned on me. Growth really is “grow, live, die, and become part of the earth again” even when it’s the economy. 

We’ve seen the “grow” part and some Madoff (I mean, made off) with billions. During the “live” part many more tried only to discover they were the pansies. And now we are seeing the “die” part, slow and painful as it is. The industrial economies of the world are realizing that they are not very profitable, especially in large complex scale, beyond the short run and absolutely not sustainable at all in the long run. 

Although I haven’t quite figured out how miles and miles of toxic, abandoned, industrial infrastructure and strip malls will “become part of the earth again” it is pretty obvious what we are experiencing.

I don’t have all the answers. I’m sure my critics will read in what they will and yell their opinions in ALL CAPS that “GROWTH IS GOOD” and “WE CAN GO ON EXPANDING FOREVER.” And, all I want to do is “FORCE EVERYONE TO GO BACK TO THE STONE AGE.”

It seems there never is an end to the Growth of opinion and you’ve just read mine.