Grasshopper

So apparently the word ‘grasshopper’ is racially discriminatory, so says Big Brother on my workplace instant messenger:

“The instant message that you are trying to send matches the "Racial discrimination" rule. IM Security took the "Replace all" action.”

Great. Thank you for replacing the word ‘grasshopper’ with who-knows-what. I wouldn’t want anyone thinking I’m into racial discrimination or up on the newest fads for racially discriminatory words in today’s society. Good, …good.

And to make sure that the system was crazy, in addition to sending the word ‘grasshopper’ by itself (thinking that perhaps the system thinks a one-word use of ‘grasshopper’ could be a derogatory statement), I typed the following statement: I saw a grasshopper on the trail today during my walk.

Sure enough, that’s racial discrimination… somehow.

Yet, the word ‘retarded’ is allowed… … …

So I conducted highly scientific research on the internet to to the bottom of this. What did I find? Racial discrimination causes breast cancer, something about an ant and a grasshopper in India, and a grasshopper has its own tale. Here are my search results.

What? Nothing about ‘grasshopper’ being racially discriminatory? Oh. Okay then.

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