WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?

     "Why did the chicken cross the road?" has been a question most often used as an entre to a humorous answer in bits at the bottom of periodicals' pages, like in Reader's Digest. But my personal favorite collection - possibly because of my fling in exotic academe -  comes from a University of Oregon Philosophy Department Web page of some time ago. Here are the answers those philosophers, more than somewhat tongue-in-cheek, came up with:

Plato: "For the greater good."
Karl Marx: "It was a historical inevitability."
Nietzsche: "Because, if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you."
B.F.Skinner: "Because the external influences, which had pervaded its sensorium since 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."
Jean-Paul Sartre: "In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary  to cross the road."
Albert Einstein: "Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference."
Pyrrho the Skeptic: "What road?"
The Sphinx: "You tell me."
Buddha: "If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken nature."
Emily Dickinson: "Because it could not stop for death."
Ralph Waldo Emerson: "It didn't cross the road, it transcended it."
Mark Twain: "The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated."

     As a humor ploy, this question has become almost rhetorical - like a mere shilly-shally for  someone unable to make up his or her mind toward a problematic decision. But the above answer group does point up the theme for this blog entry - the humor in rhetorical questions. Some of my choicest finds have been:
 
Did God invent time to keep everything from happening at once?
Why are so many of today's economic problems yesterday's solutions?
Why is it that, when you run into a man with real enthusiasm for hard work, he turns out to be your boss?
Why is it that the whisper of temptation can be heard farther than the loudest call to duty?
If there is a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, what is at the beginning"
Why do we never hear father-in-law jokes?
How can banks charge a fee for "'insufficient funds'?"
Are children who act in R-rated movies allowed to see them?
How come Tarzan never had a beard?
Have you ever noticed that, on soap operas, they never watch soap operas?
How do they get "Keep off the grass" signs on the grass?
When Frenchmen swear do they say, "Pardon my English?"
Why isn't "palindrome" spelled the same way backwards?
Why isn't "phonetics" spelled the way it sounds?
Why is a package sent by land carrier called a shipment, while a package sent by ship is called cargo?
How do you write zero in Roman numerals?
Why do we say "TV set" when it's a single item?
Have you noticed that the things that come to those who wait are usually the things left by those who got there first?
Why do we call them "apartments" when they are attached to each other?
While astronauts are already weightless, how will a Slim-Fast diet affect them?
When dogs bark for hours on end, why don't they get hoarse?
When I walk my dog - considering he has twice as many legs as I do - is he getting twice as much exercise as I am or half as much?
Do fish ever sneeze?
What is the purpose of ear lobes, other than to hang things on?
In the extreme Northern and Southern Hemispheres, where it is light for half the year and dark for the other half, do roosters crow only once a year?