Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

Asked by Mike Ellis

Dear Mike!
If it’s a joke, its not funny. If it’s a riddle, its not perplexing. That means its something we back in the old country like to call anti-humor, which is, of course, the blasphemous antagonist to humor. As the prophesy goes, soon the world will call that which is humorous “lame” and that which is not humorous a “hoot-and-a-half”. So called anti-humor will be at the forefront of this sign of the end with “humorists” not so much telling jokes as they are simply stating facts in place of traditional punchlines. Here are some examples:
“Where did the kittens go for a class field trip? Nowhere. Kittens generally are not enrolled in educational institutions.”
“How did dinosaurs decorate their bedrooms? Dinosaurs did not have bedrooms and therefore did not engage in aesthetic room design.”
“What did the fork say to the spoon? Nothing. Eating utensils are not sentient beings and are in fact inanimate objects, therefore said items lack the intelligence and physical capabilities to engage in speech. There is, however, a such thing as a tuning fork and it is possible to play the spoons as a musical instrument but both sounds made by these implements do not constitute as speech and require human manipulation to occur with the exception of one instance where a bear had been taught how to play to the spoons but, in truth, the bear would not likely have attempted such a task of his own recognizance without the encouragement of human counterparts. In deed because of the timing and tonal scales involved, it is rare that any animal could be said to be willfully creating music as most humans would define it just as forks and spoons are incapable of speech.”
You see? Anti-humor. It still makes you laugh, just in the opposite direction.

The chicken question has little history behind it other than first being printed in The Knickerbocker in 1847. Also many philosophical minds have used the question as a starting point toward a bunch of half-witted hoo-ha that bears no more pertinence to the human plight than this very article. Please, read on! It will change your life.
Some argue that this question is invalid because chickens have no concept of a road and has simply moved from point A to point B just as I fail to acknowledge certain pieces of furniture, namley, folding tables and chairs. To ask why I walked strait through the cafeteria, leaving a trail of redirected chairs and upended tables in my wake is completely pointless. At that moment the only thing in existence is meatloaf… cuz it’s Thursday.

So let’s take a look at this chicken. Why is it a chicken? We can easily assume the chicken’s parents were also chickens. That point has never been contested. To say that the chicken is a chicken because both of this chicken’s parents were chickens is a great example of anti-humor. It’s also really stupid to assume they weren’t chickens so let’s move on.
Let’s break the fourth wall a bit and ask why the creator of this incessantly beaten dead horse of a joke chose a chicken as the subject. We might be able to assume a few things not simply because of the lack of history but FROM the lack of history. Commonly known idioms such as these tend to exist without much record because they were perpetuated by word of mouth. Word of mouth colloquialisms frequently are not in recorded history because they spawned out of circumstance among an uneducated but street smart working class who had neither the time nor inclination to write every stupid thing they thought of on a piece of paper. I on the other hand I have loads of education AND stationery.

Consider these proverbs: The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. An apple a day keeps the doctor wondering whats wrong with your urinary tract.
These are just a few examples of wisdom spread primarily by spoken word. Do you notice anything they have in common? Grass? Chickens? Apples? Urine? FARMER! These are all things farmers deal with all the time. Naturally they’re going to apply their labors to bigger issues. How many of us have trudged through work at the fast food joint and thought to ourselves, “Some days I feel like the man flipping the burger and other days I feel like the burger is flipping me.” This is a wonderful modern day proverb that could inspire many to not smoke quite so much marijuana before going to work.
“Only pack me half a bowl today, Jerry. I don’t want anyone thinking I’m a hamburger.”

I should probably point out right now, before the points of order start coming in, that I maintain absolute sovereignty in regards all my answers despite how mind-numbingly wrong I may be. That having been said, this next train of thought is purely conjecture and I happily admit I have no idea what I am talking about but see no point in further research.
I see the situation as follows: A farmer and his son sit on the porch after a long day’s work. The cows are milked, the eggs collected, the field is hoed. Mom is in the kitchen microwaving mini-pizzas. The chickens are in the bread pan picking at dough. All of a sudden one of the chickens high tales it across the road. Seeing this, the farmer’s mind is consumed by a multitude of explanations as to why this chicken behaved in this manner. Unable to detect any obvious cause he asks the son.
“Elvis boy, why you s’pose that thar Gallus gallus domesticus jus’ up an took off cross that thar road?”
“Don’t raghtly know, Pa.” responds little Ronnie Howard, unfettered by the confines of logic. “I s’pose she just wanted to get t’other side right quickly like!”
This of course resulted in uproarious laughter from Pa and after informing the boy he was dummer’na hickory stump his next merry jaunt was solely for the purpose of spreading the tale of the boy’s ignorance over the whole county. Sometimes Andy Griffith was a real tool.

So I guess, supposing this is how it went, the answer to why the subject of this tired piece of Americana (<—–Chicken humor) is a chicken is because that’s what it was and that’s that. If it had been a rooster or a frog the anti-joke would be different but it was a chicken. Deal with it. It reminds me of a tale from my father’s childhood. As he and his own father sat and watched a particularly long train pass by, my father said, “Wow, that train is never ending!”
To which my grandfather replied, “Yup, someone must’ve cut the end off.”
Years from now one of your descendants will likely ask, “In the anti-joke about someone cutting the end off the train to make it a never ending train, why was it a train and not a time traveling DeLorean or something?”
No one will have an answer because no one will remember what trains are and menial tasks such as cutting things will be done by robots.

Personally, I can easily tell you why the chicken crossed the road and why it was a chicken all at the same time… It’s because it’s Friday. Chicken Pot Pie Night.

I’m not sure what I love about Chicken Pot Pie the most, the chicken, the pot, or the pie. I guess I’ll have to try one at a time.- Professor Popinjay