Aesop's Fable - The Ant and the GrasshopperThe 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 UPDATED 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 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.' Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, 'We shall overcome.' Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper’s sake.Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry & 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 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 payhis 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 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.MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2008.
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"ATM Correction"
My father began teaching business classes at the local prison through a community college. On his first night of class, he started a chapter on banking. During the course of his lecture, the subject of ATMs came up, and he mentioned that, on average, most machines contain only about $1500 at a given time.
Just then a man in the back raised his hand. "I'm not trying to argue," he told my father, "but the machine I robbed had about $3,000 in it."
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CleanQuote
"Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands and then eat just one piece."
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Illustration - "Forgiveness" Featured Illustration items are well suited for introducing or illuminating a point in a sermon, speech, or devotional. Funny, moving, or perhaps even graphic, the point of them is the point you make with them.
Two men were talking. The first says, "My wife has the worst memory I ever heard of."
The second man replies, "Forgets everything, eh?"
"No, she remembers everything."
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RETARDED GRANDPARENTS (this was actually reported by a teacher) After Christmas, a teacher asked her young pupils how they spent their holiday away from school. One child wrote the following... We always used to spend the holidays with Grandma and Grandpa. They used to live in a big brick house but Grandpa got retarded and they moved to Florida . Now they live in a tin box and have rocks painted green to look like grass. They ride around on their bicycles and wear name tags because they don't know who they are anymore. They go to a building called a wrecked center, but they must have got it fixed because it is all okay now, and do exercises there, but they don't do them very well. There is a swimming pool too, but in it, they all jump up and down with hats on. At their gate, there is a doll house with a little old man sitting in it. He watches all day so nobody can escape. Sometimes they sneak out. They go cruising in their golf carts! Nobody there cooks, they just eat out. And, they eat the same thing every night --- early birds. Some of the people can't get out past the man in the doll house. The ones who do get out, bring food back to the wrecked centre for pot luck. My Grandma says that Grandpa worked all his life to earn his retardment and says I should work hard so I can be retarded someday too. When I earn my retardment, I want to be the man in the doll house. Then I will let people out so they can visit their grandchildren. PRICELESS
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Car TroublesTwo guys left the bar after a long night of drinking, jumped in the car and started it up.After a couple of minutes, an old man appeared in the passenger window and tapped lightly.The passenger screamed, "Look at the window. There's an old ghost's face there!"The driver sped up, but the old man's face stayed in the window.The passenger rolled his window down part way and, scared out of his wits, said, "What do you want?"The old man softly replied, "You got any tobacco?"The passenger handed the old man a cigarette and yelled, "Step on it," to the driver, rolling up the window in terror.A few minutes later they calmed down and started laughing again.The driver said, "I don't know what happened, but don't worry; the speedometer says we're doing 80 now."All of a sudden there was a light tapping on the window and the old man reappeared."There he is again," the passenger yelled.He rolled down the window and shakily said, "Yes?""Do you have a light?" the old man quietly asked.The passenger threw a lighter out the window saying, "Step on it!"They were driving about 100 miles an hour, trying to forget what they had just seen and heard, when all of a sudden there came some more tapping."He's back!"The passenger rolled down the window and screamed in stark terror, "WHAT NOW?"The old man gently replied, "You want some help getting out of the mud?"
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"The lady at the bank asked, 'What do you want on your checks,
wildlife, scenery?' I said, 'I want a picture of a big, thick-
necked guy on my checks. A bouncer - that's what my checks are
going to be.'" -Bob Kubota
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"No matter how much money you make, you always need an extra
$40 a week. I'm sure it was Einstein who first stated: Exp-
ense equals salary plus forty bucks." -Jeffrey Jena
***
"I fell in love once, and I thought she fell in love with me
too. Are you familiar with the situation? I sat with an en-
gagement ring, waiting for an answer. I was a single guy with
an engagement ring. It was like having a loaded gun laying
around the house. I was frightened I'd marry somebody by ac-
cident." -Jake Johannsen
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A very elderly gentleman, well dressed, hair well groomed,
great-looking suit, flower in his lapel, smelling slightly
of after-shave, presenting a well-looked-after image, walks
into an upscale cocktail lounge.
To his delight, seated at the bar is an elderly looking
lady. The gentleman walks over, sits along side of her,
orders a drink, takes a sip, turns to her, and says, "So
tell me, do I come here often?"