Nobody Daily – 6/20/08

Nobody Asked Me But:

OF CHICKENS AND FRUSTRATION

FRUSTRATION FIRST

When I was a boy I loved Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Child’s Garden of Verses.” I memorized many of them. Here is one of my favorites, which I have always thought misnamed. Stevenson called it “Bed In Summer.” I prefer “A Child’s Frustration,” or just “Frustration.”

IN winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people’s feet
Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?

And now for the chickens, or more specifically answers to one of the great philosophical questions of all time – why does a chicken cross the road?

PAT BUCHANAN: “To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.”

HILLARY CLINTON: “When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me uniquely qualified to ensure -- right from Day One! -- that every chicken in this country gets the chance it deserves to cross the road. But then, this really isn't about me.”

BILL CLINTON: “I did not cross the road with THAT chicken. What is your definition of chicken?”

GRANDPA Jim: “In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough.”

DICK CHENEY: “Where's my gun?”