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George Carlin Dead of Heart Failure
ashamanq was one of many who noted that comedian
George Carlin has died of heart failure. Most famous for his "Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV" routine which resulted in a landmark supreme court ruling, he was a true voice against censorship, and also one of the funniest men ever. He was 71.
"Get 'on' the plane, get 'on' the plane..."
"Fuck you, I'm getting *IN* the plane."
I started listening to "Class Clown" in 3rd or 4th grade. I always liked his insight, even if he did seem to get quit bitter over the past few years. I always liked his take on growing up in Morningside Heights. He always said that saying you were from a place like Morningside Heights would get you beat up, so he liked to say he was from "White Harlem."
His routine on "Shell Shock vs. Post Traumatic Stress-Disorder" rings very true.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
I thought he was funny 20 years ago when he was topical. In his recent stuff, I just saw him as a bitter old hippy, taking cheap pot shots at the Republican establishment. I saw no humor or insight, just a bunch of cursing, whining, and hypocrisy. The early stuff, the routines that made his reputation, were outstandingly funny.
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
I had to convince my girlfriend a few weeks ago that we should get tickets because he's one person I would really like to see before he, ahmen, dies. So we spent ~$160 for great ticket to see him at the Chicago theater on Oct. 11. I have no more words for this.
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
Jeebus, though! Tim Russert is barely in the ground and then the greatest comedy legend of all time goes belly up! This is turning into a lousy month!
Carlin was certainly one of the best. I can remember seeing him at ODU back in the early 1990s ('93 or '94?). He was as funny then as his recent tours today. The world will be a different place without him. R.I.P., funnyman!
I admire Carlin's serious attitude toward the social power of comedy, but Lenny Bruce certainly broke more ground than Carlin, plus Bruce was funnier. And once we add Bill Hicks and subtract "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure," Carlin's historical balance is not looking so good. Of course, I am speaking only of him as a performer and artist.
Carlin's classic material tended to rant about things he hated, with the implication that he - and those who agree with him - are superior. I don't find that a particularly excellent trait for an artist. From Bruce and Hicks I get a much greater sense of social critique. I am prepared to defend the qualitative difference between the rants of Carlin and those of Hicks, but I should stay on topic.
Flame on ...
I'm tired of television announcers, hosts, newscaster, and commentators, nibbling away at the English language, making obvious and ignorant mistakes. If I were in charge of America's broadcast stations and networks, I would gather together all the people whose jobs include speaking to the public, and I would not let them out of the room until they had absorbed the following suggestions. I'm aware that media personalities are not selected on the basis of intelligence. I know that, and I try to make allowances for it. Believe me, I really try. But still ⦠There are some liberties taken with speech that I think require intervention, if only for my own sake. I won't feel right if this chance goes by, and I keep my silence.
The English word forte, meaning "specialty" or "strong point," is not pronounced "for-tay." Got that? It is pronounced "fort." The Italian word forte, used in music notation, is pronounced "for-tay," and it instructs the musician to play loud: "She plays the skin flute, and her forte [fort] is playing forte [for-tay]." Look it up. And don't give me that whiny shit, "For-tay is listed as the second preference." There's a reason it's second: because it's not first!
Irony deals with opposites; it has nothing to do with coincidence. If two baseball palyers from the same hometown, on different teams, receive the same uniform number, it is not ironic. It is a coincidence. If Barry Bonds attains lifetime statistics identical to his father's it will not be ironic. It will be a coincidence. Irony is "a state of affairs that is the reverse of what was to be expected; a result opposite to and in mockery of the appropriate result." For instance:
* If a diabetic, on his way to buy insulin, is killed by a runaway truck, he is the victim of an accident. If the truck was delivering sugar, he is the victim of an oddly poetic coincidence. But if the truck was delivering insulin, ah! Then he is the victim of an irony.
* If a Kurd, after surviving bloody battle with Saddam Hussein's army and a long, difficult escape through the mountains, is crushed and killed by a parachute drop of humanitarian aid, that, my friend, is irony writ large.
* Darryl Stingley, the pro football player, was paralyzed after a brutal hit by Jack Tatum. Now Darryl Stingley's son plays football, and if the son should become paralyzed while playing, it will not be ironic. It will be coincidental. If Darryl Stingley's son paralyzes someone else, that will be closer to ironic. If he paralyzes Jack Tatum's son that will be precisely ironic.
I'm tired of hearing prodigal being used to mean "wandering, given to running away or leaving and returning." The parable in the Book of Luke tells of a son who squanders his father's money. Prodigal means "recklessly wasteful or extravagant." And if you say popular usage has changed that, I say, fuck popular usage!
The phrase sour grapes does not refer to jealousy or envy. Nor is it related to being a sore loser. It deals with the rationalization of failure to attain a desired end. In the original fable by Aesop, "The Fox and the Grapes," when the fox realizes he cannot leap high enough to reach the grapes, he rationalizes that even if he had gotten them, they would probably have been sour anyway. Rationalization, that's all sour grapes means. It doesn't mean deal with jealousy or sore losing. Yeah, I know you say, "Well many people are using it that way, so the meaning is changing." And I say, "Well many people are really fuckin' stupid too, shall we just adopt all their standards?"
Strictly speaking, celibate does not mean not having sex, it means not being married. No wedding. The practice of refraining from sex is called chastity or sexual abstinence. No fucking. Priests don't take a vow of celibacy, they take a vow of chastity. Sometimes referred to as the "no-nookie clause."
And speaking of sex, the Immaculate Conception does not mean Jesus was concieved in the
Hey, you can sat fuck on tv in some countries. OK, sometimes only after 21:00.
The other 6 words are also often allowed. In many countries after 21:00 nudity is even allowed and I have seen it before 21:00 when it was a preview.
So apart from the very funny man, we will not miss his insight, because many people outside the USofA don't need it.
That said, many will still be interested, so thanks for the links.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Earlier this morning I was thinking about how with as much media as we have these days, and the so many types of "celebrity" that exist, soon we're quickly approaching a future where someone famous is going to be dying pretty much constantly. The cnn.com homepage will become just a slideshow of who died today, while real news websites will decide that it's not worth the trouble and maybe just move those sorts of stories to a little sidebar somewhere.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
RIP George, now you really are a fucking legend
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I hope they put that on his tombstone.
Don't get me wrong, I loved Carlin all my life, but one of the things that was pissing him off lately was the fact that people weren't questioning government or religion as much as they used to be, and by all measure, things are getting worse.
Maybe this shock will wake up some people. Maybe the inevitable memorials will spark a renewal of the rebellious spirit.
I only hope so.
As a fellow atheist, I have come to accept that people only live on as the effect they've had on the world. For a relatively brief time in history, the world had a great jester and poet, lets all take time to remember him in or lives.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that."
That's actually a quote from Robert Anton Wilson (see: the Secret ov power), borrowed by George Carlin. Not surprising though since the two were friends and Wilson frequently referred to Carlin as his favorite comedian and Carlin referred to Wilson as his favorite author.
While not in the same league as Carlin or Stewart, I tend to find the spoken word performances of Henry Rollins to be funny and he has a tendency to point out everyone's bullshit.
Brought to you by Team SPAM! where we believe: "Information in the noise!"
Isn't that the funniest thing about this guy? His comedy routine is quite vulgar, and not anything for children to see, yet he did some time playing Mr. Conductor on the Thomas the Tank Engine show. It's really weird when you think about it. Also reminds me of Bob Saget. His actual stand up comedy routine stuff is quite a far stretch from his Full House and America's Funniest Home Videos stuff.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
> ... and also one of the funniest men ever.
Not in the last 20 years he wasn't - just an angry old misanthrope.
I used to play his (cleaner) bits on-air at the college radio station I worked at in the late 70's - usually right before off-air time at midnight.
Frankly, I miss that guy, not the one who just died.
Ex-KNTU-FM
You don't see the difference between mere words and physical violence?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Of course it was.
Last time someone tried to physically dominate me, I saw them clearly, I rejected them clearly, I got my face broken, I broke their nose and their arm and their ribs, and I went to the hospital happy.
When I'm confronted with manipulators, and I watch helplessly as they twist words and turn my fellow men into blind idiots, it ruins my whole day and causes me to get into stupid arguments with my girlfriend.
I value integrity far more than safety, any day of the week.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Well, your point is that how people react to words depends on how they are said. It's also true that what a word means depends on how you say it. Some ways of using a word don't require assigning any meaning to it.
The German language has words like "doch" or "mal" which play a kind of grammatical function but don't mean anything specific. The word "fuck" is used by many people in English much the same way. Using "fuck" is not, objectively, any morally less worthy than "doch". It's just that using "fuck" as a kind of rhythmic grammatical filler is not an educated style of speech, whereas those peculiar German words are part of the mainstream dialect. Because it is an uneducated style of speech, "fuck" filled language is often found traveling in the company with stupid, mindless, and ignorant speech. Still, it is neither here nor there in itself.
Things get interesting when "fuck" is used as a curse. "Bad" language is called "cursing", but it almost never is cursing. "Fuck you" is the rare example of an actual curse. Its emotionally powerful because the sexual connotations of the word give the curse humiliating overtones. "Suck" is sometimes used in "you suck" the same way.
"Fuck" as a word can only be called automatically offensive if you define "offensiveness" so vaguely it amounts to "anything that bothers me." Some people do think this way. But for me, it's the placing of mindless humiliation on another person that's offensive. Not all uses of the word "fuck" amount to this; not even all uses of the word in a curse do. The use of language to degrade another human being could be the very definition of offensiveness.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I just want to be there when they blow up his body. That was how he wanted to go: gather all his friends and just blow him up. "Look at him go!" "What a guy" This is what the man said. ...but he may have been joking.
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Realisant mon espoir, je me lance vers la gloire