too fucked up for words

1937-2008

I am gonna miss you like crazy. You were and ALWAYS will be one of the biggest influences on my life, my brain and my use of the English language.

I fucking love you, you wonderful Irish fucker.


My first exposure (beyond the early t.v. clips I saw as a child--and didn't "get"...yet) to Carlin’s wit was through my high school sociology teacher. How fitting. He was one of the coolest teachers I ever had (obviously) and he actually read passages of Carlin’s book, “Brain Droppings” aloud in class. How fucking cool is that? After that, it was all over for me. I was addicted. I bought and obsessively listened to “You Are All Diseased,” and made my friends listen to it my freshman year of college.

It was his rants on religion ("The biggest bullshit story of all time.") were, of course, the words I treasured most. Articulate, funny-as-fuck-all, and TRUE. There was nothing like it, I had never heard all my (non)beliefs uttered so elequantly...and to a responsive--no, make that ERUPTIVE audience to boot! could it be? others also thought religion was a laughable, destructive crock of shit?

It was downright enlightening.

I was lucky enough to have seen him with my dad my freshman year, in 1999 and just a couple years ago with my man Fitzy.

Some good quotes from the obits today:

Sums it up well: “It’s his lifelong affection for language and passion for truth that continue to fuel his performances,” a critic observed of the
comedian when he was in his mid-60s.

And

Although some criticized parts of his later work as too contentious, Mr. Carlin defended the
material, insisting that his comedy had always been driven by an intolerance for the shortcomings of humanity and society. “Scratch any cynic,” he said, “and you’ll find a disappointed idealist.”

Still, when pushed to explain the
pessimism and overt spleen that had crept into his act, he quickly reaffirmed the zeal that inspired his lists of complaints and grievances. “I don’t have pet
peeves,” he said, correcting the interviewer. And with a mischievous glint in his eyes, he added, “I have major, psychotic hatreds.”

And, most potent:

"The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things — bad language and whatever — it's all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition," Carlin told the AP in a 2004 interview. "There's an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. ... It's reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have."