SeanK

I know 3 couples in the midst of divorces. Hmm… More food for thought.

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!

New 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. All the networks 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 a talk show with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing, “It’s Not Easy Being Green.”

A political activist stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, “We shall overcome.” He then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper’s sake.

Politicians exclaim in an interview on a different talk show 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 pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.

A senator gets their 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 the President 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.

Because of a weird twist of fate, my new computer did not come with any software to burn CDs or DVDs even though it has a burner. Last night, at 12:30am, I really needed to burn a CD before going to bed. I tried Microsoft’s built in CD burner, but it failed. Actually it never started. I couldn’t seem to convince it that I had actually inserted a blank CD. So I hit the internet trail and came across an outstanding open source CD/DVD burnning application called InfraRecorder. In the span of 15 mintues this application has earned a place in my short list of must install applications for Windows PCs.

Each year our family looks forward to going to Hope Lodge up on Steven’s Pass to spend a weekend with 5-6 families composed of several dozen children. This year one of older boys brough his camcorder and put together this video. Aside from a hike on the Iron Goat trail (I didn’t check this website until after got home) What you see in the video is pretty much all we did all day long.

I came across a fun word game on the internet today.

Rules:

• Take a word and remove the first letter.
• Now make up a definition for your new word.

Examples:

FAMISHED

Hungering for a simpler way of life.

SHAMPOO

Soap for washing a pig.

SHAREHOLDER

Investor in a company that makes magician’s hats.

CHIPMUNK

Squirrel that digs jazz.

DIARRHEA

Running on about oneself.

PICKPOCKET

A place to put used Kleenex.

FRISKIES

Cat food made in China.

SUNRISE

Going back to bed in the morning.

FRANTIC

Desperately raving.

SOFTWARE

A program you use a lot.

TABLEWARE

Crockery that really does the job.

BLACKLIST

All the stuff you don’t have.

A friend mentioned this video playlist on YouTube. I have been pondering the ramifications ever since. As the author states, I never learned about this in school either. It certainly is a lot to think about.

This morning, Micah was holding Miriam while doing his reading assignment. Later he was asked in his English assignment to write a descriptiive paragraph and here is what he wrote.

A young child makes time go backwards. When you hold her, warmth bursts into your body. She is a rainbow, and her eyes are always watching. She removes your frowns and gives smiles to the world.

Saturday morning at a timely 5:59am, we welcomed our newest daughter. She showed up 3 weeks early weighing 6 pounds 12 ounces and was 18 inches long. This has probably been the most difficult pregnancy that Lisa has had and so this conclusion has been a bittersweet blessing.