ethnic jokes jokes

There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins were not invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies, while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square, and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write, but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce, and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So, one moose, 2 meese? One index, two indices? Is cheese the plural of choose?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

In what language do people recite at a play, and play at a recital?

Ship by truck, and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? Park on driveways and drive on parkways? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? How can the weather be hot as hell one day and cold as hell another?

When a house burns up, it burns down. You fill in a form by filling it out, and an alarm clock goes off by going on.

When the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible. And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay, I end it.

There were three Aggies; one crane operator, one pole climber, one guide. The guide tied the crane to the end of a pole. The crane operator would then pick the pole up on end. The climber climbed to the top and dropped a tape measure which the guide promptly read and noted the measurement. The crane operator then lowered the pole to the ground and repsitioned to pick up another pole. This went on several times when the foreman came over and asked why they couldn't measure the poles while they were laying on the ground? The Aggies replied, "we need to know how tall the poles are, not how long".

When young Jose, newly arrived in the United States, made his first trip to Yankee Stadium, there were no tickets left for sale. Touched by his disappointment, a friendly ticket salesman found him a perch near the American flag. Later, Jose wrote home enthusiastically about his experience. "And the Americans, they are so friendly!" he concluded. "Before the game started, they all stood up and looked at me and sang, .... 'Jose, can you see?'"

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.