I could not resist this:
Why did the chicken cross the road?
BARACK OBAMA: The chicken crossed the road because it was time for a change! The chicken wanted change!
JOHN MC CAIN: My friends, that chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the other side of the road.
HILLARY CLINTON: When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me uniquely qualified to ensure – right from Day One! – that every chicken in this country gets the chance it deserves to cross the road. But then, this really isn’t about me.
GEORGE W. BUSH: We don’t really care why the chicken crossed the road.. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. T he chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground here. DICK CHENEY: Where’s my gun?
COLIN POWELL: Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the satellite image of the chicken crossing the road.
BILL CLINTON: I did not cross the road with that chicken. What is your definition of chicken?
AL GORE: I invented the chicken.
JOHN KERRY: Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken’s intentions. I am not for it now, and will remain against it.
AL SHARPTON: Why are all the chickens white? We need some black chickens.
DR. PHIL: The problem we have here is that this chicken won’t realize that he must first deal with the problem on this side of the road before it goes after the problem on the other side of the road. What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he’s acting by not taking on his current problems before adding new problems.
OPRAH: Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross this road so bad. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I’m going to give this chicken a car so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN: We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed to have access to the other side of the road.
PAT BUCHANAN: To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.
MARTHA STEWART: No one called me to warn me which way that chicken was going. I had a standing order at the Farmer’s Market to sell my eggs when the price dropped to a certain level. No little bird gave me any insider information.
DR SEUSS: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I’ve not been told.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY: To die in the rain, alone.
JERRY FALWELL: Because the chicken was gay! Can’t you people see the plain truth? That’s why they call it the ‘other side.’ Yes, my friends, that chicken is gay. And if you eat that chicken, you will become gay, too. I say we boycott all chickens until we sort out this abomination that the liberal media whitewashes with seemingly harmless phrases like ‘the other side.’ That chicken should not be crossing the road. It’s as plain and as simple as that.
BARBARA WALTERS: Isn’t that interesting ? In a few moments, we will be listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart warming story of how it experienced a serious case of moulting, and went on to accomplish its lifelong dream of crossing the road.
ARISTOTLE: It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.
JOHN LENNON: Imagine all the chickens in the world crossing roads together, in peace.
BILL GATES: I have just released eChicken2008, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your check book. Internet Explorer is an integral part of eChicken2008. This new platform is much more stable and will never cra.#@&&^(C%……….reboot.
ALBERT EINSTEIN: Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?
COLONEL SANDERS: Did I miss one?
And someone added SARAH PALIN: I’m not really qualified to answer that question [wink], but I can assure Joe six-pack [wink] and all the hockey moms [wink] out there that I know what really matters to them [wink]. Incidentally [wink], I can see a road from my house, so I must be qualified to cross it…
Great, except since this is 2008 Bill Gates must have just released eChicken 2005.
GORDON BROWN: It was the right thing for the chicken to do. The chicken is well placed on the other side of the road and I agree that it was the right thing for hard working chickens to aspire to.
Imagine you’re a rooster,
It isn’t hard to do,
Wake up every mornin’,
All ya gotta do is crew.
Imagine all the chickens,
Layin’ all them eggs.
You may say I’m a dreamer….
STB.
JEREMIAH WRIGHT: The chickennnnnnn was going home to roooooooost.
I was not informed of any chickens crossing the road.
Jacqui Smith.
John Edwards:
The chicken knew there are two Americas, one on each side of the road.
CHRIS DODD: The chickens on the road are in sound positions. We need to help all chickens cross the road.
BEN BERNANKE: What we are seeing in the roads is a failure of free markets.
HANK PAULSON: The chickens have stopped crossing the road. We need $1000bn to get the chickens crossing the road again. Trust me.
JFK: that chicken was willing to pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, oppose any truck, in order to assure the successful crossing of the road
There are so many road kill armadillos in Oklahoma, they have their own version of this joke:
Why did the chicken cross the road? To prove to the armadillo that it could be done.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
I always thought it was to prove to its’ farmyard friends that it wasn’t a chicken!
And the winner is RAB.
JOE BIDEN: When FDR went on TV as the stock market crashed, to hold one of his Firesign chats, he said that that chicken had more nerve than a bum tooth.
HUGO CHAVEZ: The lights on the road prove that crossing it leads to a bright future.
VLADIMIR PUTIN: The chicken had finished building the road for my cronies, out of the goodness of his heart. It is a total coincidence, wink, that he got permission to build another road.
MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD: Da, the chicken must be wiped off the face of the Earth!
HERACLITUS: That road just isn’t the same.
ZENO: It seems impossible that that chicken could have crossed the road.
STALIN: If the chicken manages to cross the road anyway, shoot it.
RUTH BADER GINSBURG: The chicken is a living document, so it might as well be dead.
The Hemingway response is still the greatest of the lot.
However:
Feminist: It wasn’t a chicken, it was a hen; and it crossed the road because it was forced to do so by the rooster.
Proust: [Deleted: exceeeded 500,000-word limit]
Sartre: The chicken may be said to have crossed the road only if one cannot deny the road’s existence, or that of the chicken, or of the observer’s.
…and with all due humility:
Kim du Toit: Fucking chicken needs to be clubbed to death with a chair for causing all this agonizing “why did it cross the road?” existential bullshit.
Churchill: Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Chicken and all the odious apparatus of Poultry rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight on the far side of the road, we shall fight in the lanes and on the center line, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our side of the road, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight in the turn lanes, we shall fight on the verges, we shall fight on the pavements and in the gardens; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this side of the road or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the road, armed and guarded by the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the people beyond the motorway, with all their power and might, step forth to the rescue and the liberation on this side of the road.
ALEISTER CROWLEY: Since it was My Indomitable Will that I should cross the road, and the chicken was affixed to My Holy Lingham…
Samizdatians: The road was built by the evil statists and the chicken demonstrates its support of the statists by using it.
Invaded by the du Toits.
Excellent.
Ain’t no such thing! We are Samizdatistas!
HALF OF MY SHIFT: The chicken turned left against a red light. On contact, it could not produce any evidence of liability insurance. I then attempted to explain that its signature was not an admission of guilt but only a promise to appear in court. As it did not listen, I found it necessary to fry the chicken and serve it with Frank’s Red Hot Sauce.
THE OTHER HALF OF MY SHIFT: The chicken was standing with a group of other chickens, all wearing red clothing and making gestures towards other chickens which I recognized, based upon my knowledge, training, and experience, as being gang signs intended to intimidate non-chickens. I then took the chicken into custody, fried it, and served it with Frank’s Red Hot sauce.
MY SERGEANT: Sunfish, you managed to waste twenty minutes on HERDING CHICKENS????
BARNEY FRANK: We will need reform to overcome the failed policies of the last eight years. The Administration’s failure to regulate chickens has put us into this position and we will need large doses of Keynesianism to get us out. My sleeping with Colonel Sanders had nothing to do with it.
GLENN BECK: I don’t want to sound alarmist, but we’re in a lot of trouble, folks. This business of chickens crossing the road will spiral out of control. What’s happened to us, folks? We didn’t used to have chickens crossing the road!
HOMER SIMPSON: I gave my love a chicken, it had no bones….mmmm, chicken. (No credit, please. That one’s real.)
Samizdatistas? No habla espagnol, Señor.
This is an English (-language) website, so I will insist on using the English nomenclature.
Samizdatians you are.
To you maybe but everyone else has been calling ’em Samizdatistas for years.
Kim, the website is in English, but the term actually happens to be in Russian, so the purity of English line has been crossed long ago anyway:-)
But “Samizdata” has Russian origins…
Let’s kick around this meme some more.
KARL MARX: From the side of the road according to its abilities, to the side of the road according to its needs.
KEANU REEVES: There is no road.
MICK JAGGER:
Oh, a storm is threat’ning
That chicken’s life today
If he don’t cross for shelter
Oh yeah, he’s gonna fade away
DR. MCCOY: I’m a doctor, not a zoologist – why are you asking me?
ALFRED HITCHCOCK: That gives me an idea for a sequel to “The Birds”…
ACORN: We have 87 voter registration forms for each chicken that crosses the road.
KEITH OLBERMANN: Chickens crossed the road in countless numbers, in fear for their very lives, because they were fed lies about the existence of Weapons of Mass Deep-Frying. You, Mr. Bush, and your tragically know-it-all minions, threw out every piece of intelligence that suggested there were no such deep fryers. When somebody asks you, sir, about the cooked books and faked threats you foisted on a sincere and frightened poultry…this advice, Mr. Bush: Shut the hell up!
(segments lifted from this source)
ROSIE O’DONNELL: It’s all a setup! No chicken has ever crossed a road; it’s impossible. GOOGLE IT!!
ANDREW DICE CLAY: The chicken crossed the road to eat me.
JOE BIDEN: Are you kidding me? Why did the chicken cross the road – three simple words: the chicken believes in a government of the people, by the people and for the people because we have nothing to fear but fear itself. I can say that because I am the smartest person and the luckiest person on the face of the earth and I might have been given a bad break, but I’ve got an awful lot to live for. Why I was hanging out in the Hechinger’s* just the other day and I said to Rosie: “Do you remember when we watched FDR on the color TV when we were kids? Why don’t they make presidents like that anymore?” But when Barak becomes President, gird your loins, that chicken will be tested. And if you don’t believe me, I’ll shove my rosary down your throat.
JOE the PLUMBER: Because the farmer said he was going to share the wealth and he didn’t mean eggs – he was holding an axe.
The MEDIA: So it could join our choruses of praise for Barack the Chosen One.
*Hechinger’s was a large hardware store/lumber yard – similar to Home Depot – which operated in the mid-Atlantic area until it went out of business about 10-15 years ago.
SEAN HANNITY: That chicken has a God-given, inalienable right to cross the road. Why do you hate America?
Hillary at first claimed that the chicken actually crossed the road to avoid sniper fire in Tuzla.
MICHELLE OBAMA: For the first time in my life, I’m really proud of a chicken.
BARACK OBAMA: I’ll just sit on the sidelines while the media breathlessly reports what great leadership I’m exhibiting during this “chicken and road” crisis.
Brilliant. Bravo!
Fred Thompson: Well, the chicken, see: he read the Constitution, and knew that Federalism and a good cigar were to be had. Just a little old-fashioned stroll across the road was needed.
Ron Paul: The chicken knew that the only way to escape the grip of the Federal Reserve was to cross the road, and enter the Promised Land of the gold standard.
Pace Alisa, shouldn’t it be “samizdatniki”?
ROBERT HEINLEIN: A real chicken should be able to cross the road, hatch an egg, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch guano, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and run around with its head cut off. Specialization is for chicken feed.
Rush Limbaugh: The chicken is just another long-haired maggot infested plastic banana good time rock and roll hippy chicken. We don’t want it in our party.
Mr. O’Brian,
My life has never been characterized by an adherence to groupthink.
Alisa,
Yes, I know the language has already been compromised: but we have to draw the line somewhere.
;=)
Sir Not To Be Named: It was the chicken’s own particular idom.
To stand next to the red, rain-glazed, wheel barrow. I asked them to do it for a project I was working on, a lot depended on it.
RICHARD NIXON: Let me make one thing perfectly clear – I am NOT a chicken.
LYNDON JOHNSON: Do chickens have ears? I was about to find out but the damned thing ran away. Put a wire tap on ‘im…..
RONALD REAGAN:My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw chickens forever. We begin frying in five minutes.
HERBERT HOOVER: A car in every garage and chicken in every – hey HEY grab it – too late…….
BOY GEORGE: Here chickie chickie, say cheese….. you been messing with my harddrive……?
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN: Just what do you mean by “road”? And chicken in what sense?
J.R.R. TOLKIEN: The road goes ever on and on…… that’s going to be one worn out chicken…..hey….. this isn’t meant to be allegorical is it…..?
And so the ever independent du Toit calls chairs ‘blops’, seagulls ‘woogs’ and pigs ‘gacks’, to hell with what anyone else calls them. Devil take the the tyranny of shared common terminology and language 🙂
Glenn Reynolds: THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE REELECTED, even the most harmless members of society would have their every move intrusively subjected to careful scrutiny. And they were right!
Rhett Butler: My dear, I don’t give a damn.
Lou Dobbs: WHEN is SOMEONE in the GOVERNMENT going to notice that the chicken has not just crossed the road but is crossing it and crossing it and crossing it, every hour of everyday of every…
Heidegger: The roadness of the road calls to the mittance (or sending) of the chicken and this “vocation” is gathered within the horizon of chicken-being as a being-towards-crossing.
Lou Dobbs: WHEN is SOMEONE in the GOVERNMENT going to notice that the chicken has not just crossed the road but is crossing it and crossing it and crossing it, every hour of everyday of every…
Heidegger: The roadness of the road calls to the mittance (or sending) of the chicken and this “vocation” is gathered within the horizon of chicken-being as a being-towards-crossing.
I can’t tell if the chicken crossed the road. But I know how fast he was going.
Because my cat, you know…
From Monty Python’s Life of Brian:
GIRL:
Follow the Gourd! The Holy Gourd of Jerusalem!
FOLLOWER:
The Gourd!
HARRY:
Hold up the sandal, as He has commanded us!
ARTHUR:
It is a shoe! It is a shoe!
CHICKEN WATCHER:
No! Follow the Chicken!
OZZY OSBOURNE: Chickens?? I’m Ozzy Osbourne, the Prince of fookin’ Darkness! I bite the heads off bats, not fookin’ chickens…Sharronnnnnnnn!!
The real Sara Palin: I don’t know why the chicken crossed the road but when it did it walked right into my crosshairs and that’s why we’re having Fried chicken for dinner tonight.
Al Bundy- The chicken that crossed the road? Oh, You mean Marcy…….
The road- Ridiculous! This is a busiest chicken thoroughfare in Chicago. Nobody crosses El Capon.
Dwight Eisenhower: I have ascertained that the chicken crossed the road too quickly. I therefore am signing the Defense Highways Act to slow the chicken down.
Tom Tancredo:There are a lot of issues beyond chickens that I want to deal with
Why did the psychic chicken NOT cross the road?
It was already in touch with the OTHER SIDE!
DAILY KOS: The chicken was crossing the road on orders from Karl Rove.
KARL ROVE: Shhh!
KEANU REEVES: The chicken’s crossing the road. Whoa!
ANDREW SULLIVAN: Here’s a photo taken of the chicken before she crossed the road. She wasn’t ready to lay an egg. But look at this photo of the same chicken on the other side with an egg. The egg couldn’t possibly be the chicken’s. We need DNA evidence to close the matter.
Groucho Marx: Cross the road on a chicken and you’ll find out why a duck!
Emo Philips: To lay it on the line….
Dr. Chiyome Fukino: I have personally seen and verified that the Hawai’i State Department of Health has a record for the chicken and the road. State law (Hawai’i Revised Statutes §338-18) prohibits the release of road crossing documents to persons who do not have a tangible interest in the vital record
If you want to play chicken with the Russian language, there are lots of samizdat- possibilities. There’s the -anin/-an suffix typically used for nationalities; plural samizdatan would line up with a latinate singular both in appearance and in meaning. There are possessive adjectives that also show up substantively in surnames (-ov/-ovy, -in/-iny). There are diminutives and augmentatives of various flavors, from hypocoristic to disparaging. There are scads of adjectival forms that could be used substantively. There are acronyms and stump compounds; do not try this latter for “Samizdata Writer.”
So, why did that chickenka (-YAWN-kuh) cross the road? It wanted to show some bipartisan initiative by laying the blame on the innocent, carrying water for the guilty, and giving the incompetent wings.
ANDREW JACKSON: Don’t shoot until you see the whites of its eggs.
TEDDY ROOSEVELT: Take the hill on the other side!
DWIGHT EISENHOWER: It was D-day, H-hour, and it strove mightily to take back the military-industrial complex.
RICHARD NIXON: The road was straight, so the chicken crossed it while announcing that there was not a crook in the road.
BTW, when Ron Paul was first elected, IIRC his campaign showed a TV commercial with a chicken running back and forth (across a road?) , unable to make up its mind.
Mr. De Havilland,
The proper term for seagulls is “wooges”, as any fule kno.
How did the Chechen freedom fighter cross the road?
SLOWLY- he’s not russian (rushing/Russian get it?)