BOOKS AND BANGALORE

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Cock A Doodle Doo


”Why did the chicken cross the road?” so asked a mademoiselle trying hard to get humorous while she was nibbling a leg like there is no tomorrow. Some people are never done with chicken, food or joke in either way. To balance them there are some devoted vegans who cannot bear both. My reply to her was quite impulsive actually” To get to your plate my dear, sad that it met with an accident in the process, perfect oral autopsy by the way!” is all what I said. Little did she know that I belong to the latter category, the sulk on her face was for the records.

There is no end to the list of ignored and unanswered questions in this world. We humans are in an eternal quest of knowing how, what, who, where, when and why. Have you noticed this, we have this tendency of using humour as one of our last resorts when the answers to our questions are beyond our capacities of comprehension. Chicken like every animal and bird else has unfortunately been our victim;-)'Just joke away, eat it anyway' is what we believe.

Picture Courtesy

Yes, I seriously do! If there is one question about the chicken for which I would like to know the answer, it is this- What about the chicken makes it ‘finger lickin' good’, is the murder worth the eat?” Do let me know if you know, well I am just being curious;-) Meanwhile read Chicken Philosophy, this is what the great men had to say in answer to this thought provoking question:

WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD???

Plato:  For the greater good.

Aristotle:  To fulfill its nature on the other side.

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 Wolfgang 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:  Well,...................

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.

Mishima:   For the beauty of it. The chicken's extension of its
sinuous legs sent shivers of a dark despair into the souls not only of
the silently watching hens but also the roosters, who felt a sudden
sexual desire for their exquisite comrade.  The dark courage of the
chicken was as beautiful as drops of dew upon jade at midnight, struck
by a partial moon, its light filtered through clouds. One of the
deeply aroused roosters could stand the intensity of the moment no
more and bit off the head of the beautiful, courageous chicken-hero,
whose wine blood was deliciously drunken by the road, and he died.

Johnny Cochran:  The chicken didn't cross the road. Some
chicken-hating, genocidal, lying public official moved the road right
under the chicken's feet while he was practicing his golf swing and
thinking about his family.

Camus:  The chicken's mother had just died.  But this did not really
upset him, as any number of witnesses can attest.  In fact, he
crossed just because the sun got in his eyes.

John Sununu (again):  I would argue that the chicken never crossed the
road at all.  That it is a story concocted by the Clinton
Administration to distract attention from their failed agriculture
policy. Where is the evidence that the chicken crossed the road?
Where, Michael?

Michael Kinsley:  Oh, John, come on!  Everybody knows the chicken
crossed the road.  What evidence do you need?  It's obvious that the
chicken crossed the road.  Your whole argument is just a smoke and
mirror tactic to distract us from the fact that most chickens polled
now back the Democratic Party.  You ought to be ashamed of yourself,
John.

Siskel:  I don't know why it crossed the road, but I loved it.  Thumbs
up!

Ebert:  I disagree.  The whole thing left the audience wondering; the
chicken's crossing the road was never clearly explained and the
chicken didn't emote very well.  It couldn't even speak English!
Thumbs down.

Michael Kinsley:  But you both agree it did cross the road, right?
See, John.  I'm right as usual.


Disclaimer: This post was written out of an inquisitiveness to know what makes one's flesh the other's food.The intentions are to make the carnivores think, not to hurt. Do think and let the world know you are opinion if you are one.

Good day
-R.



4 comments:

Life Unordinary said...

what a great idea for a blogpost, pose a question and provide answers from some great thinkers!

Harish said...

Well, I recommend that you experience it yourself... There might be n no. of thoughts on that but the best would be one that is self experienced....
claimer: I assure that full support will be given to u if u want to experience it :)

Anonymous said...

here's the thing...if eating flesh was a sin, then even before humans learnt how to farm, we'd have been extinct...food is the basic function of all animals..and in most cases its other animals..if consuming other animals were to be stopped, entire eco systems would be destroyed...i'm sorry but i do not think eating animals is a sin..its just a method of survival..

Let me put it this way..its not wrong of tiger to hunt,kill and eat a deer for its survival...but if it killed deer for fun or for sheer wastage then it'd be wrong...that is what is happening today i guess..humans always live beyond their means...

Nivi Ravindra said...

Raksha, very well put. Now all the non veggies will start with the- "how can you eat plants, aren't they also living beings?" whine.