Soca Warriors Online Discussion Forum

General => Jokes => Topic started by: Tallman on December 26, 2005, 07:54:09 AM

Title: The Ant and the Grasshopper
Post by: Tallman on December 26, 2005, 07:54:09 AM
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 shivering
grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
 
THE TRINIDADIAN VERSION:    The ant works hard in the withering heat
all day long, building his house and laying up supplies for the rainy
season.  The grasshopper thinks he's a fool, dances at fetes and plays
Carnival.  Eventually, the ant is warm and well fed.  The now homeless
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
like him are homeless and starving.

CCN (Caribbean Communications Network) shows up to provide live coverage
of the homeless grasshopper, with cuts to a video of the ant in his
comfortable warm home with a table filled with food.  Trinidadians
are stunned that in a country of such oil wealth, this poor grasshopper
is allowed to suffer so, while others have plenty.

The NATUC, the CWU and the Coalition against Poverty demonstrate in
front of the ant's house.  CCN, interrupts the Point Fortin cultural
festival special with breaking news, broadcasts them singing "We Shall
Overcome." Cro Cro rants in an interview with Elizabeth Solomon
that the ant has gotten rich off the backs of grasshoppers, and calls for an
immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share."
In response to polls, the Government drafts the Economic Equity and
Grasshopper Anti-Discrimination Act, retroactive to the beginning of the
August. The ant's taxes are reassessed and he is also fined for
failing to hire grasshoppers as helpers.  Without enough money to pay
both the fine and his newly imposed retroactive taxes, his home is
confiscated by the government. The ant moves to the United States and
starts a successful agribiz company. CCN later shows the now fat grasshopper
finishing up the last 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 hadn't
maintained it.  Inadequate government funding is blamed, Hudson-Phillips
is appointed to head a commission of enquiry that will cost $10,000,000.
 
The grasshopper is soon dead of a drug overdose. The TnT Mirror blames it on
obvious failure of government to address the root causes of despair arising
from social inequity.  The abandoned house is taken over by a gang of small
island spiders, praised by the government for enriching Trinidad's multi cultural
diversity, who promptly terrorize the community.
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