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.