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Why Chicken
james burton (jhburton@FACSTAFF.WISC.EDU)
Thu, 11 May 1995 08:31:04 -0500
<<<borrowed from Lena Rotenberg, who attributes a "Brazilian' source:>>>
WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?
Plato: For the greater good.
Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.
Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as
a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the
road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to
contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is
the princely chicken's dominion maintained.
Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its
pancreas.
Jacques Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be
discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and
each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can
never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!
Thomas de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll
find out.
Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the
Establishment would let it take.
Douglas Adams: Forty-two.
Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road
gazes also across you.
B.F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded
its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion
that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these
actions to be of its own free will.
Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt
necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this
historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such
occurrences into being.
Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to
itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.
Ludwig Wittgenstein: The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into
the objects "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being
which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.
Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road
crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.
Aristotle: To actualize its potential.
Buddha: If you meet the chicken on the road, kill it.
Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most
astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic,
unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an
herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians
is truly a remarkable occurence
Salvador Dali: The Fish.
Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the
trees.
Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.
Epicurus: For fun.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.
Johann Friedrich von Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do
it.
Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.
Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the
chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.
David Hume: Out of custom and habit.
Jack Nicholson: 'Cause it (censored) wanted to. That's the
(censored) reason.
Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?
The Sphinx: You tell me.
Mr. T: If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too!
Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the
marrow out of life.
Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.
Molly Yard: It was a hen!
Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.
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