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Humanising Language Teaching
Year 1; Issue 3; May 1999

Jokes


Why did the chicken cross the road?

By Mike Lavery, co-author of VIDEO, OUP

For those brought up in an English speaking culture, this may have been the stimulus for their first ever joke. The logical answer is, "To get to the other side." A little cleverer, "For some foul reason." Or, for people with Hollywood knowledge, "To see Gregory Peck."

How might some well known people respond?

Letīs start with the editor. Mario might say, "To join a small group of chickens and engage in a meanigful dialogue on a subject chosen by the learners."

Now, as a classroom exercise, we can speculate on what Lena might say, something typical of her, based on your observation and perception during learning activities. Choose, say, four people from the group and supply perceived responses to the chicken question. Or ask another learner how he or she feels you would respond. The answer may tell you something about how others see you.

The following is a list of possible responses by well known people to the question, "Why did the chicken cross the road?"

Plato: For the greater good.

Aristotle: It is the nature of chicken to cross the road.

Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.

Ronald Reagan: I forget.

Richard Nixon: The chicken did not cross the road. I repeat the chicken did NOT cross the road.

Bill Clinton: I did NOT have sex with that chicken.

Captain James T. Kirk: To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.

Hippocrates: Because of an excess of phlegm in its pancreas.

Martin Luther King Jr.: I envisage a world where all chickens will be free to cross roads without having their motives called into question.

Moses: And God came down from the Heavens, and He said unto the chicken, "Thou shalt cross the road." And the chicken crossed the road, and there was much rejoicing.

Machiavelli: The point is that the chicken crossed the road. Who cares why? The end of crossing the road justifies whatever motive there was.

Freud: The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken crossed the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.

Darwin: Chickens, over great periods of time, have been naturally selected in such a way that they are now genetically disposed to cross roads.

Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road moved beneath the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.

Buddha: Asking this question denies your own chicken nature.

Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.

Andersen Consulting: Deregulation of the chickenīs side of the road was threatening its dominant market position. The chicken was faced with significant challenges to create and develop the competencies required for the newly competitive market. Andersen Consulting, in a partnering relationship with the client, helped the chicken by rethinking its physical distribution strategy and implementation processes.

Using the Poultry Integration Model (PIM), Andersen helped the chicken use its skills, methodologies, knowledge, capital and experience to align the chickenīs people, processes and technology in support of its overall strategy within a Program Management framework. Andersen Consulting convened a diverse cross-spectrum of road analysts and best chickens along with Andersen consultants with deep skills in the transportation industry to engage in a two-day itinerary of meetings in order to leverage their personal knowledge capital, both tacit and explicit, and to enable them to synergize with each other in order to achieve the implicit goals of delivering and successfully architecting and implementing an enterprise-wide value framework across the continuum of poultry cross-median processes.

The meeting was held in a park-like setting, enabling and creating an impactful environment which was strategically based, industry focused, and built upon a consistent, clear and unified market message and aligned with the chickenīs mission, vision and core values. This was conducive towards the creation of a total business integration solution. Andersen Consulting helped the chicken change to become more successful.

Bill Gates: I have just released the new Chicken 2000, which will not only cross roads but will lay eggs, file your important documents and write the next edition of HLT.

This month's jokes:

Two Jokes that Italian sociologists tell:

Please send us jokes that belong to your culture, to your region, to regions that tell jokes about yours, to the culture of professions you know; there plenty of jokes the police and doctors and teachers tell about the rest of the world.


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