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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.
Now how am I ever going to watch Thomas The Tank Engine without a tear in my eye??
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
I mean, I know most /.ers wouldn't read Playboy (ha ha), but in 2005, he said that he "looked forward to an afterlife where he could watch the decline of civilization on a 'heavenly CNN.'"
Mod George Carlin down.
It has been a nervous year, with people beginning to feel like Christian Scientists with appendicitis.
I really enjoyed Carlin's schtick for the most part, but his "preachiness" was in its way just as annoying as that of the "christians" he spent time and effort criticizing.
N.B. I happen to think Carlin's REAL legacy will be the millions of email jokes with his name erroneously attached as the source.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
I can't tell if you're joking, so I'm going to call you a fucking idiot just in case (better safe than sorry, y'know). Carlin was as strong an atheist as it's possible to be.
ResidntGeek
It's the US - we don't care when black people die
Excepting for the fact that he would have called you a fucking moron for even suggesting that there is an "up there".
Parent quote is from recent "It's Bad For Ya" tour and HBO special.Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
...meaning you should not have been modded "5, Insightful" since the joke went over your head :)
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
...you should read this interview.
AVC: Just like you changed your comic style in the late '60s and early '70s, some have contended that you changed again in the '80s, becoming a little bit angrier. Would you agree with that?
GC: No, it's not so much anger. People read it that way, and that's the convenient word to go to. I understand that. Here's why it seems that way. There is a certain amount of righteous indignation I hold for this culture, because to get back to the real root of it, to get broader about it, my opinion that is my speciesâ"and my culture in America specificallyâ"have let me down and betrayed me. I think this species had great, great promise, with this great upper brain that we have, and I think we squandered it on God and Mammon. And I think this culture of ours has such promise, with the promise of real, true freedom, and then everyone has been shackled by ownership and possessions and acquisition and status and power.
And perhaps it's just a human weakness and an inevitable human story that these things happen. But there's disillusionment and some discontent in me about it. I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist. But I understand the word "cynic" has more than one meaning, and I see how I could be seen as cynical. "George, you're cynical." Well, you know, they say if you scratch a cynic you find a disappointed idealist. And perhaps the flame still flickers a little, you know?
And so, there's a part of me that is angry. Not in the sense of, "Gee, George is an angry guy!" I mean, anyone who's been with me five minutes, five years, whatever, they would tell you they've rarely seen me in a moment of anger. Yes, I can become highly irritated in a line that's moving slowly, or with a clerk who's incompetent. But I don't yell. I don't get rude. I am clear about what I expect. In a store, my mother always told me, "Ask for the manager immediately. It changes the tone of the conversation." [Laughs.]
So I am not a difficult man by any stretch, and I'm saying that with a full and honest inventory going on. I'm not. And I'm not angry on stage. There is a heightening. There is an intensification of the feelings on stage in order to let them carry the room. There is a theatricality about it. The whole thing is oratory, so there's persuasion involved. There's the art of rhetoric involved. And so, with hyperbole and with the desire to really punch the thing home, some of it reads a little more angry.
Now, it's true that the direction of the material changed, at least in part. Because I had always featured language stuff that was fairly simple and innocent and honest and even sweet and childlike, and other things like, "Oh, did you ever notice between your toes, you have these things." I still did all that stuff. But I began to tap into that other part of me that would've been a great protest singer. I just began to let that part of me grow and live. It was a natural thing, and it just went from one level to another. And there's a lot of that social criticism in the shows now, because what I'm really trying to say to people is, "Don't you see what the fuck you're doing here? What you've done to yourselves? Can't you see what you're letting them do to you?" I mean, that's sort of the subtext. "Aren't you aware of what the fuck is going on, you folks?" That's kind of what I'm thinking in my heart.
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
The only reason Russert got talked up so much is because the media loves itself above all other subjects.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.