Q: Why did the chicken cross the road? A: To get to the other side.
Was that joke EVER funny?
There are categories of jokes, the simple ones, that I cannot figure out why they’re still a part of civilized society. What is so funny about a chicken crossing the road? I mean, comedy comes out of an outcome that you never expected, but jokes like the one above don’t even do that. You’re asking why a chicken crossed the road, right? Well, normal expectations would be that he was crossing the road to either (a) escape evil farmers, (b) escape getting hit by a huge car or truck or (c) he’s a chicken with no brain, what do you expect! A funnier chicken joke could be:
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road? A: After deciding that the path through the woods was littered with sticker-bushes and poison oak, the chicken weighed his choices, “scratched up” a positive/negative list, and decided that the potential danger of crossing a busy street was still better than getting a rash.
See? Much better.
The chicken joke, of course, falls into the same category with the wonderful joke about “What’s black and blue and red all over?” A newspaper! Hahahahahahaha. Hold on. Oh my god… I-I’m so.. I can’t brea- I- I-… Hahahahaha.
Ahem.
I don’t know if these jokes are remnants of a time gone by, when jokes were less about surprising the receiver of the joke and just saying something random that one didn’t expect… Or if there were just bad joke tellers. I have no idea. But someone, somewhere, really needs to do something about it before our children and their children wonder aloud just how unfunny their ancestors were.
I, for one, hope we can fix this.
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