ethnic jokes jokes

THE ORIGINAL 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 grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.

MODERN CANADIAN 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 CBC shows up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. Canadians 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 The National 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 Nature of Things with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when he sings "It's not easy being green.

"Jean Chretien makes a special guest appearance on the CBC Evening News to tell a concerned public that they will do everything they can for the grasshopper who has been denied the prosperity he deserves by those who benefited unfairly during the Reagan/Thatcher summers. Sheila Copps exclaims in an interview with Peter Mansbridge that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share."

Finally, the Liberals draft the "Economic Equity and Anti-Greenism 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. John Turner gets his law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal hearing officers that Chretien appointed from a list of single-parent welfare moms who can only hear cases on Thursday's between 1:30 and 3 PM.

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's in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him since he doesn't know how to maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow.

And on the TV, which the grasshopper bought by selling most of the ant's food, they are showing Jean Chretien standing before a wildly applauding group of liberals announcing that a new era of "fairness" has dawned in Canada.

Saddam Hussein is sitting at home when the phone rings. He picks it up and says "Hello". The voice at the end of the phone says "Hello Mr. Hussein, it's Paddy here. I'm just ringing to let you know that we've declared war on your country." SH smiles to himself, "Come on Paddy", he says, "there's no point you declaring war on us, you wouldn't stand a chance." Paddy replies, "No, no, we've had ourselves a meeting, and we've decided to declare war on you."

So SH says, "OK Paddy, now listen, I've got an air force of over a thousand planes, what kind of air force have you got to match that? It'd be over in no time." So Paddy says, "Well my lad's got himself a hot-air balloon, and my brother used to work at an airport." Hussein laughs, "Oh come on, you've not got a hope". "Hold on a sec, Mr. Hussein, ", Paddy says, "we'll just have a quick meeting." So off he goes and has a quick meeting. "Are you still there Mr. Hussein? Yes, well we've had our meeting, and we've decided that we're still going to declare war."

So SH says, "Right then Paddy, well you know, as well as the air force, we've also got about a thousand tanks. How are you going to match that." "Well," Paddy says, "I've got an old austin, and my cousin down the road has got a tractor." "Get real, " says SH, "that's no match at all." So

Paddy says, "Hold on, I'll just go and have another meeting." "Are you still there Mr. Hussein? Yes, well we've had our meeting, and we've decided that we're still going to declare war."

SH thinks this is just amazing, "Well how many soldiers have you got Paddy?". "Well," says Paddy, "there's me, my kid, me 4 cousins, and they all had sons, and there's Bill down the road.... I reckon I could get together about 30." Laughing openly now SH replies, "Come on Paddy, I've got 10,000 highly trained fighting men at my disposal. I think you'd better go and have another meeting." "I will", says Paddy, "I will."

"Are you still there Mr. Hussein? Yes, well we've had our meeting, and we've decided that we're not going to declare war on you after all." "At last, " replies SH, "What made you change your mind?" "Well, it's those 10 thousand soldiers you see. We can't declare war on you because we've not got the facilities to keep all those prisoners!"

A cop pulled up two Irish drunks, and asked to the first, "What's your name and address?"

"I'm Paddy O'Day, of no fixed address." The cop turned to the second drunk, and asked the same question. "I'm Seamus O'Toole, and I live in the flat above Paddy."

Cracking an international market is a goal of most growing corporations. It shouldn't be that hard, yet even the big multi-nationals run into trouble because of language and cultural differences. For example, observe the following examples below.

The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-kou-ke-la. Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after thousands of signs had been printed that the phrase means "bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax" depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 Chinese characters and found a close phonetic equivalent, "ko-kou-ko-le," which can be loosely translated as "happiness in the mouth."

In Taiwan, the translation of the Pepsi slogan "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" came out as "Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead."

Also in Chinese, the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan "finger-lickin' good" came out as "eat your fingers off."

The American slogan for Salem cigarettes, "Salem - Feeling Free," got translated in the Japanese market into "When smoking Salem, you feel so refreshed that your mind seems to be free and empty."

When General Motors introduced the Chevy Nova in South America, it was apparently unaware that "no va" means "it won't go." After the company figured out why it wasn't selling any cars, it renamed the car in its Spanish markets to the Caribe.

When Parker Pen marketed a ballpoint pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to say "It won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you." However, the company mistakenly thought the spanish word "embarazar" meant embarrass. Instead the ads said that "It wont leak in your pocket and make you pregnant."

An American t-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the spanish market which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of the desired "I Saw the Pope" in Spanish, the shirts proclaimed "I Saw the Potato."

Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porno magazine.

In Italy, a campaign for Schweppes Tonic Water translated the name into Schweppes Toilet Water.