Why did the Chicken cross the Road?

Extracts from the Eggthology Symposium

by Simon BJ (Envoi to Beatles, by Zap)


H P LOVECRAFT - because of the festering abyss that yawned behind it, that hidden portal of which all chickens are aware. For is it not written: "It is not dead which behind the road lies, cross quick with chickens then or curse your eyes!"

RAYMOND CHANDLER - it was a road that a chicken had to cross, who could not himself be crossed, a double-crossed chicken who knew that when your partner was dead you had to go to the other side of that mean road, alone.

JANE AUSTEN - It is a well known fact a chicken of moderate income and personable in appearance who crosses a road, must be in search of a hen.

MELVILLE - It was a great white chicken that crossed the road, and I alone return to tell of it. Call me Chickspyall.

KENNETH ROBINSON - Why the chicken had crossed the road to the towering midtown skyscraper that housed Doc Bantam’s headquarters no one could tell. They couldn’t tell because the chicken had died with an expression of hideous unfowl-like terror on its beak while pressing the button on the hidden express elevator that lead straight to the 86th floor. So began the case of The Scarecrow Doom.

SAX ROHMER - Nayland Smith turned the body of the chicken over with his toe. 'Good God Petrie, to think I was too late', he gritted. 'If I had only guessed the cursed riddle of the Chinese Road of Death before the expiry of the Council of Seven's 3rd Notice, this chicken would not have been lured into the noose of one of Fu-Manchu's Burmese stranglers.'

ISAAC ASIMOV - Seldon spoke slowly. 'Psychohistory predicted that given the increasing chicken population on Terminus one would, at this time (to within a non-significant sigma-variation at this stage of the Plan) cross the road.'

E E DOC SMITH - Gharlan of Edore snarled, why were his chickens in such disarray on Tellus crossing roads whose chaotic cloverleaf he had planned expressly to curb and break their migratory instincts, was some hidden enemy involved? Perhaps one of the Innermost Circle? If Gharlan had been a less paranoid thinker in short not a Eddoran he might from one chicken had deduced in toto the existance of the forces of Arisan and forstalled the way of the Lens.

DICKENS - Mr Charcken outstretched his plump hand and waved it, plumply, across the plump old table. "If this was a road now," he said, 'why I'd cross it, and damn the man who dare say I would not.' 'That you would,' his wife piped in her thin treble tones,' a regular man for road crossing he is Mr Charcken. Day in day out.' 'Wife hold your tongue,' Mr Charcken snapped crossly, 'you have as much sense as a roadsweeper in August.' And satisfied with the plumpness of his remark he took snuff up each plump nostril.

AGATHA CHRISTIE - To poison the soup.

MEATLOAF - 'Cause chickens in the rear-view mirror may be faster than they appear.

ASSORTED - To get its kicks on Route 66.

ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER –
Seeking, what the chicken was seeking /
In its heart a call speaking /
and then leading it on /
take the first step /
the step that leads on its way /
from the farmyard into day!

BUDDHA - If you see the chicken on the road, remember a crossing of a thousand miles begins with one step.

ELVIS -
Rockin' Rooster on its way,
Rockin' Rooster here to stay,
that bird's a coxcomb on a spree,
but I warned that bird off my chickadee.
I said Rockin' Rooster this is a bad hard road.
Rockin' Rooster I'm gunning to explode,
if you try to cross my babies' road.
You're a Rockin' Rooster stay off my heart's highway.

BRAHMA (after EMERSON) (after ANDREW LANG) -

If some lost chicken thinks it crossed
Or it the road thinks that it rolled
They know not poor misguided souls
They too will perish unconsoled
I am the roadsign, and the path,
I am the chicken stutting tall
The car that honks, the wheels that smash,
The KFC franchise and all!

T S ELIOT

The crossing of chicks is a puzzling matter
It isn't just one of your sordid affairs
In fact it would puzzle the whole alma mater
Was it chased by a Dalek that could go upstairs?

OGDEN NASH -

A Chick on the run
Can be plenty of fun
A Chick on the highway
is goin' my way.

PATRICK BARRINGTON

I had a chicken for a pet who sauntered with insouciance
But its lack of common road-sense soon became an awful nuisance
I had to trail it everywhere and interdict its rambles
For fear its lack of green-cross code would end up in a shambles.
It did not look to right or left, it did not stop and pause,
And trying my patience oft I cried "o tempora o mores"
Until it met its destined fate, on a roundabout in Purley
Crushed beneath a juganaut through crossing much to early.

BEATLES [WELL RUTLES] -

Goin'ta write a song, have you heard the word
It's a freaky story of a beaky bird
Don't know why it had to but it had to cross
If you ask its motive then I'm at a loss
I'm a hack songwriter. (Hack songwriter)

Sling some words together like you want me too
We'll be frying omlettes for a week or two
'Cause to make an omlette gotta break an egg
And to stop that chicken gotta break a leg
Like amateur actor. (Amateur Actor!)

It's a metaphor, metonomy, or simile,
’cos that freaky chickens quite a lot like me
Don't know where I'm going, or if I'll be great
Arrive in a limo, or just with a crate
Like a late milkman (Late Milkman!)

Envoi

I've got something to say that might cause you pain
I saw you crossing that road again
I'm gonna let down, and leave you flat


LEONARD COHEN –

The road has a splinter, the chick has distemper,
the flame of its longing has burnt to an ember,
it may shake its feathers, it may stop to preen,
but the roots of its life are not green.

It stopped in the ash-pit, to pick for a worm,
and if it found one it was not my concern,
to save it
caught in the early bird's mouth,
in that slow wind from the south,
that never blows tears,
from the eyes, from the eyes of my fears....

[Some years ago some friends and I tried to solve this
most intractable of philosophical problems. These were
my contributions...]