Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 07:41:43 -0500 (EST) Subject: Joke from the LINGUIST mailing list From: alan harris Subject: the more philosophic approach to a question. . . >From William F EADIE thanks to Bill Eadie: (forwarded by Lawrence Rosenfeld) ) 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. ) Oliver North: ) National Security was at stake. ) 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 ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature. ) 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. ) Saddam Hussein: ) This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite ) justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it. ) Jack Nicholson: ) 'Cause it (censored) wanted to. That's the (censored) reason. ) Pyrrho the Skeptic: ) What road? ) Ronald Reagan: ) I forget. ) John Sununu: ) The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, ) so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the ) opportunity. ) The Sphinx: ) You tell me. ) 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.