Career Tips : Pollyanna's Postmodern Pointers

Photo from madebytess / Flickr.
Employment trends for a post-widget world

By Pollyanna O'Possum / The Rag Blog / December 1, 2009

AUSTIN, Texas -- Let’s face it, friends: the U.S. of A. is not going back to making widgets anytime soon.

Not even the deepening economic crisis has had any effect in moving us towards an economy that produces material goods for trade; if anything, it has demonstrated that in general, Americans would prefer to become subsistence farmers, or even roving hunter-gatherers, rather than go back to factory work.

So be it. In the Future, unique communitarian ecotribes will rule. Yum, yum, acorn meal!

But there seems likely to be a lengthy and bumpy transition period, and I worry about the welfare of those now between the ages of two and 20, who are most likely to experience the full transitional mood swings to come.

I like to help young folks, and I’ve come up with a short list of potentially rewarding near-term future careers. Kids, while you’re learning to pickle beets and/or raise milk goats, consider summer jobs or internships in the following growth areas:

1. Celebrity stalker. Pick of the crop, really; “it’s in the stars!” As the number of celebrities grows exponentially, so does the need for stalkers. Tasks include writing crazy love or hate messages, lurking around celebrities’ homes or hangouts, and making up bizarre alternate histories in which you and the celeb were married last year on Triton, or exchanged identities while in kindergarten. This position requires enthusiasm, spontaneity, a poor command of logic, and most of all, people skills.

Remuneration varies, and until a new national union of celebrity stalkers gets its legs under it, is likely to be spotty. Best bet so far: getting a lump sum settlement after having the crap beaten out of you by celebrity bodyguards.

2. Like outdoor work? Street riot tactician is bound to be an up-and-coming occupation as economic woes spread! Mobile combat paramedics and, for you more authoritarian kids, FBI informer, should also see continued growth. Tip: for best success in this fast-moving area, learn a second language well enough to appear to be an immigrant if that seems advisable. A theatrical flair is a big plus: you have to be able to project your voice to be a really good street commando!

3. Another outdoor job we're seeing a lot of these days is sale sign holder. It doesn't have to involve a costume anymore!!! No-credit-check cell phone companies, quick oil-and-lube shops, and retailers in trouble are resorting to person-with-a-sign-standing-on-the-curb advertising with surprising frequency. It may look good on your resume, but I'm not optimistic about the long-term outlook for this position -- after all, it depends on those small businesses being in business! Bottom line: summer job or moonlighter. And if you can handle the costume, tax season officially kicks off on the first of the year, aspiring "Uncle Sams" and "Statues of Liberty" should be out there now putting in applications. Note that this job actually pays, maybe in free tax return preparation; maybe in tacos, but it pays.

4. Speaking of tacos, the proliferation of fast-food trucks around town is leaving us wondering when we'll begin to see the first big-time, hip-fashionable reviewers of mobile fare -- you know, people whose tweets matter! This should be good for at least a few meals -- and say, can you tell me about the food truck sushi on Manor Road? Is it really fresh?

5. Finally, I'm going to suggest dusting off an oldie-but-goldie for the End Times Ahead: perpetual student. The return of Pell grants and continuing economic pressure for extended adolescence may portend a return to the carefree days of the mythic Sixties -- minus the free love, of course; again, sorry about that, kids! -- when one could change one's major six or seven times, getting ever-so-close to graduation each time, before being actually forced to choose a lifepath. Instead of overgrown state universities, look for community colleges and alternative institutions -- such as the new cannabis colleges sprouting in California, Michigan, and no doubt soon in a state near you -- to be venues for a new rash of prolonged educational detours. Study anything they'll pay you to study; little of it will prove useful once you leave school, but if you learn it well enough, you can teach.

Sharp-eyed readers will notice that I'm not recommending some of today's hottest employment choices, notably reality show contestant and porno actor/actress. The first field has gotten terribly overcrowded and is really the basis for the recommendation above to consider subsidiary fields, such as celebrity stalker. It's a choice that still leaves you well-positioned if the right show comes along! And porno movies, despite our aging population, are still really only good gigs for the young. Let's face it, you don't have to pay good money to see old people getting screwed!

For longer term opportunities, think about preparing for work as a draft counselor (it's coming, dearies!), a Seventies re-enactment stunt person (disco will be played!), or applying for membership on your local death panel. The main thing to remember is that every generation has its own challenges, and for every disappearing job category -- such as, "employed" -- there's something new right around the corner. Re-use, re-train, re-volt!

The Rag Blog

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Garrison Keillor : No Time for Dithering

'In a month, the Republicans will convene a few blocks from my house and I'd like to stand across the street with a sign, but I can't come up with the right wording. "Bleaughhhh," maybe, or "Arghhhh."'
By Garrison Keillor / August 2, 2008

Another paradise day in our old river town and we linger over supper in the backyard and talk about the dry weather and bats (Do they eat 3,000 mosquitoes per night? No, says the family biologist) and cousin Bruce's truck farm besieged by suburban yards, and of course Barack Obama's audacious trip to Iraq and Europe. Meanwhile, the sun goes down and little candles come out and a fresh pot of green tea and nobody feels the urge to get up and go. We are taciturn people, but give us a paradise night, balmy, a slight breeze stirring, candles burning, and we are on the verge of vast intimate revelations - "I became a writer as a way of drawing attention to myself. I admit it. It had nothing to do with truth and beauty. It always was about me! Always!" - and I realize it's my duty as host to say, "Well...," and stand up and start clearing the table, otherwise we might stay too long and say too much

I talked more than usual since my wife and daughter, who do most of the talking around here, are gone gallivanting around Prague and Paris and I am starved for company. Nobody is bursting into the room in her wet swimsuit and throwing her arms around me. There is very little bursting or throwing going on, just tap-tap-tapping and the turning of pages.

I have been left behind to do some work and to water the flowers and also because I'm not a good traveler. My need to see great castles, churches and museums is at an all-time low. What I really want to see is Wyoming, and every morning I wake up with a strong urge to get in the car and go. Drive away from the rigmarole of business and find the high range and stand there amazed and gaze at the glittering stars, just like in the song.

I can't remember a summer I loved so much as this. This is a factor of age - time is more precious when there's less of it remaining - and partly it's anticipation that the dogs of war who slipped in the back door eight years ago will soon be gone. In a month, the Republicans will convene a few blocks from my house and I'd like to stand across the street with a sign, but I can't come up with the right wording. "Bleaughhhh," maybe, or "Arghhhh."

I stood watering the flowers this morning and then went upstairs and made my bed, two minimum-wage jobs that I am not well qualified for, apparently. But there is yet time to learn. As long as your mother is alive, you are still young, and mine is holding steady at 94, a tall tree shading us from mortality. Whenever I need to feel youthful again, I can trot out to Mother's and there is my high school graduation picture on the wall, the solemn self-important youth of the spring of 1960, who - so long as I stay away from mirrors - I maybe still am.

It's no surprise that John McCain likes to bring out his 96-year-old mother Roberta, I suppose. The problem is that she is a lot perkier than he. The gentleman has had a few bad weeks, thundering in a dithery way about America's enemies, looking vaguely purposeful campaigning up and down supermarket aisles as if he couldn't remember what kind of cheese he'd been sent to buy. He surely will hit his stride after the Republican convention, but at the moment he looks to be eight years too late. The brash Bull Moose independent of 2000 has made all sorts of accommodations since, abandoning common sense when necessary, and his unsteadiness over the past couple of weeks makes his age an unspoken issue: Anyone who remembers the Iran-contra years and the president who couldn't remember is not anxious to see a genial oldster dithering in the Oval Office. There is more to the job than flashing a big grin. You do need to make sense now and then.

And now I realize that in writing about Mr. McCain I have left the hose in the flower bed and may have drowned some geraniums. There is a pool of standing water in the bed. I have soaked up some of it with a sponge, but I may need to call in a geraniumologist. Talk to you later. Keep the faith. The truth is marching on.

Garrison Keillor is the creator and host of the nationally syndicated radio show "A Prairie Home Companion," broadcast on more than 500 public radio stations nationwide.

Source / Baltimore Sun

Thanks to CommonDreams / The Rag Blog

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FILM : Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young and the Protest Song

'CSNY: Déjà Vu': A Political Concert Documentary
By Jennifer Maerz / July 30, 2008

Bob Dylan's "John Brown" is one of the most moving antiwar songs ever recorded. The track avoids sloganeering, resonating an anti–Vietnam War sentiment with a straightforward, human, and very sad story: A mother proudly sends her son off to war, only to receive home a young man missing his hand and an understanding of what he'd been fighting for. Taking on the voice of the soldier, Dylan sings, "And I could not help but think, through the...stink, that I was just a puppet in a play." The song works so well because the storytelling is subtle; the political message, dagger-sharp.

Of course Dylan wasn't the only songwriter to give the early antiwar movement a poignant chorus. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young stood on those same frontlines, writing songs like 1970's "Ohio" that put a protest against the Kent State massacre on commercial radio. This week, as the Neil Young–directed political concert documentary CSNY: Déjà Vu hits theaters, we see this '70s supergroup attempt again to turn the political into the personal, and the personal into a four-part-harmony pop song. But like the response the band has received to this ambitious outing, the film's results are mixed.

The documentary works when it uses CSNY's catalog as an excuse to explore personal war stories or concertgoers' feelings about the place of performers with strong political beliefs. But when Young's storytelling gets lost in the reductive sermons of a song like "Let's Impeach the President"—played often throughout the film—it's hard to see CSNY: Déjà Vu as having any more impact than a giant bumper sticker.

Which raises the question: Who are the best leaders for a war protest? Soldiers, with their battlefield experience, or famous singers, with their public exposure? It's a tough question to figure out, and, to Young's credit, CSNY: Déjà Vu doesn't make the answers very easy. Instead he attempts to bring a chorus of opinions into one movie, a tactic that both empowers and distracts from his vision.

The movie, which Young directed under the name Bernard Shakey, focuses on the 2006 CSNY Freedom of Speech Tour. The band hit the road during midterm elections to perform their classic hits alongside Young's new protest songs from his Living With War disc. Along with footage of live concerts and recording sessions, the documentary involves the work of television news producer Mike Cerre, who was "embedded" on the tour as he had been with troops in Iraq. Cerre captured the reactions to CSNY's anti-Bush message from fans, radio DJs, and war veterans, among others. Among the most interesting responses are those of the red-state audiences. You'd think any CSNY fan willing to see the band live would also embrace its peace anthems, but surprisingly the group's audience includes a very vocal conservative contingent. At one Atlanta show, fans protested with boos, middle fingers, and quips that "Neil Young can stick it up his ass" when CSNY sang Living With War's didactic impeachment anthem. The song is grating, yes, but it's shocking that people would walk out in droves, especially during a tour called "Freedom of Speech."

While the extreme reactions of music fans, critics, and radio personalities are entertaining, the film picks up momentum when it moves beyond CSNY. The fallen-soldier story that worked in the lyrics to Dylan's "John Brown" works 10 times more powerfully on a movie screen. Young includes thoughtful interviews with the troops, from a deserter who had been hiding out in Canada to musician and former Marine Josh Hisle, who jams with Young in a hotel room. The movie also plays up the déjà-vu theme often, best exemplified in scenes from the Vets 4 Vets support group's meetings with men and women who had served in Vietnam and Iraq.

No one could accuse Neil Young of jumping on a protest bandwagon for attention, regardless of the cringe factor of some of his recent lyrics. The peace signs on the 62-year-old's guitar strap are more than just nostalgic symbols. He runs a massive "Living With War" Web site, designed to look like a cross between CNN and USA Today, which catalogs articles about the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, hosts protest songs and videos sent in by the public, and counts down the number of days until Bush is out of office. It also streams, at top volume, "Let's Impeach the President" (part of the reason it's hard to remain on the site for very long).

After watching Young's documentary and poking around his site, I admire the musician's stamina in supporting soldiers, and at the same time promoting a genuine antiwar belief system. At this point in his career, Young doesn't even try to disentangle the personal from the political, but he also doesn't do it with Bono's ego.

I've seen CSNY: Déjà Vu twice, and in the end it's the personal stories that are hard to shake. If there's one thing the Vietnam War protest anthems taught us, it's that you can ignore news feeds and statistics; real insight into bloodshed and the loss of a loved one is the strongest message of all.

Source / Seattle Weekly

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Another One Bites the Dust

George Carlin: American Radical
By John Nichols / June 23, 2008

I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately. -- George Carlin.

The last vote that George Carlin said he cast in a presidential race was for George McGovern in 1972.

When Richard Nixon, who Carlin described as a member of a sub-species of humanity, overwhelmingly defeated McGovern, the comedian gave up on the political process.

"Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians," he explained in a routine that challenged all the premises of today's half-a-loaf reformers. "Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here… like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: "The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope."

Needless to say, George Carlin was not on message for 2008's "change we can believe in" election season.

His was a darker and more serious take on the crisis--and the change of consciousness, sweeping in scope and revolutionary in character, that was required to address it.

Carlin may have stopped voting in 1972. But America's most consistently savage social commentator for the best part of a half century, who has died at age 71, did not give up on politics.

In recent years, in front of audiences that were not always liberal, he tore apart the neo-conservative assault on liberty with a clarity rarely evidenced in the popular culture.

Recalling George Bush's ranting about how the endless "war on terror" is a battle for freedom, Carlin echoed James Madison's thinking with a simple question: "Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?"

Carlin gave the Christian right--and the Christian left--no quarter. "I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State," Carlin said. "My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death."

Carlin's take on the Ronald Reagan administration is the best antidote to the counterfactual romanticization of the former president--in which even Barack Obama has engaged--remains the single finest assessment of Reagan and his inner circle. While Carlin did not complain much about politicians, he made an exception with regard to the great communicator. Recorded in 1988 at the Park Theater in Union City, New Jersey, and later released as an album--What Am I Doing in New Jersey?--his savage recollection of the then-concluding Reagan-Bush years opened with the line: "I really haven't seen this many people in one place since they took the group photograph of all the criminals and lawbreakers in the Ronald Reagan administration."

But there was no nostalgia for past fights, no resting on laurels, for this topical comedian. He read the papers, he followed the news, he asked questions--the interviews I did with Carlin over the years were more conversations than traditional Q & A's--and he turned it all into a running commentary that focused not so much on politics as on the ugly intersection of power and economics.

No one, not Obama, not Hillary Clinton and certainly not John McCain, caught the zeitgeist of the vanishing American dream so well as Carlin. "The owners of this country know the truth: It's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."

Not just aware of but steeped in the traditions of American populism--more William Jennings Bryan and Eugene Victor Debs than Bill Clinton or John Kerry--Carlin preached against the consolidation of wealth and power with a fire-and-brimstone rage that betrayed a deep moral sense that could never quite be cloaked with four-letter words.

"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying--lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else," ranted the comedian whose routines were studied in graduate schools.

"But I'll tell you what they don't want," Carlin continued. "They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. You know what they want? Obedient workers--people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club."

Carlin did not want Americans to get involved with the system.

He wanted citizens to get angry enough to remake the system.

Carlin was a leveler of the old, old school. And no one who had so public a platform--as the first host of NBC's "Saturday Night Live," a regular on broadcast and cable televisions shows, a best-selling author and a favorite character actor in films (he was even the narrator of the American version of he provided the narrative voice for the American version of the children's show "Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends")--did more to challenge accepted wisdom regarding our political economy.

"Let's suppose we all just materialized on Earth and there was a bunch of potatoes on the ground, okay? There's just six of us. Only six humans. We come into a clearing and there's potatoes on the ground. Now, my instinct would be, let's everybody get some potatoes. "Everybody got a potato? Joey didn't get a potato! He's small, he can't hold as many potatoes. Give Joey some of your potatoes." "No, these are my potatoes!" That's the Republicans. "I collected more of them, I got a bigger pile of potatoes, they're mine. If you want some of them, you're going to have to give me something." "But look at Joey, he's only got a couple, they won't last two days." That's the fuckin' difference! And I'm more inclined to want to share and even out," he explained in an interview several years ago with the Onion.

"I understand the marketplace, but government is supposed to be here to redress the inequities of the marketplace," Carlin continued. "That's one of its functions. Not just to protect the nation, secure our security and all that shit. And not just to take care of great problems that are trans-state problems, that are national, but also to make sure that the inequalities of the marketplace are redressed by the acts of government. That's what welfare was about. There are people who really just don't have the tools, for whatever reason. Yes, there are lazy people. Yes, there are slackers. Yes, there's all of that. But there are also people who can't cut it, for any given reason, whether it's racism, or an educational opportunity, or poverty, or a fuckin' horrible home life, or a history of a horrible family life going back three generations, or whatever it is. They're crippled and they can't make it, and they deserve to rest at the commonweal. That's where my fuckin' passion lies."

Like the radicals of the early years of the 20th century, whose politics he knew and respected, Carlin understood that free-speech fights had to come first. And always pushed the limit--happily choosing an offensive word when a more polite one might have sufficed. By 1972, the year he won the first of four Grammys for best comedy album, he had developed his most famous routine: "Seven Words (You Can't Say on Television)."

That summer, at a huge outdoor show in Milwaukee, he uttered all seven of them in public – and was promptly arrested for disturbing the peace.

When a version of the routine was aired in 1973 on WBAI, the Pacifica Foundation radio station in New York,. Pacifica received a citation from the FCC. Pacifica was ordered to pay a fine for violating federal regulations prohibiting the broadcast of "obscene" language. The ensuing free-speech fight made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which rile 5-4 against the First Amendment to the Constitution, Pacifica and Carlin.

Amusingly, especially to the comedian, a full transcript of the routine ended up in court documents associated with the case, F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978).

"So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of," recalled Carlin. Proud enough that you can find the court records on the comedian's website: www.georgecarlin.com.

There will, of course, be those who dismiss Carlin as a remnant of the sixties who introduced obscenity to the public discourse--just as there will be those who misread his critique of the American political and economic systems as little more than verbal nihilism. In fact, George Carlin was, like the radicals of an earlier age, an idealist--and a patriot--of a deeper sort than is encountered very often these days.

Carlin explained himself best in one of his last interviews. "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 species--and my culture in America specifically--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," he said. "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.

Source. / The Nation

Also see A Littany for George Carlin in Seven Words / The Rag Blog / June 23, 2008

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A Litany for George Carlin in Seven Words

George Carlin, who died of heart failure Sunday at 71, leaves behind not only a series of memorable routines, but a legal legacy: His most celebrated monologue, a frantic, informed riff on those infamous seven words, led to a Supreme Court decision on broadcasting offensive language. -- Associated Press / June 24, 2008

The Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV
by George Carlin

I love words. I thank you for hearing my words.

I want to tell you something about words that I think is important.

They're my work, they're my play, they're my passion.

Words are all we have, really. We have thoughts but thoughts are fluid.

Then we assign a word to a thought and we're stuck with that word for that thought, so be careful with words. I like to think that the same words that hurt can heal, it is a matter of how you pick them.

There are some people that are not into all the words.

There are some that would have you not use certain words.

There are 400,000 words in the English language and there are seven of them you can't say on television. What a ratio that is.

399,993 to seven. They must really be bad. They'd have to be outrageous to be seperated from a group that large. All of you over here, you seven, Bad Words. That's what they told us they were, remember?

"That's a bad word!" No bad words. Bad thoughts, bad intentions... and words. You know the seven, don't you, that you can't say on television?

"Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, CockSucker, MotherFucker, and Tits"

Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that'll infect your soul, curve your spine, and keep the country from winning the war.

"Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, CockSucker, MotherFucker, and Tits" Wow! ...and Tits doesn't even belong on the list. That is such a friendly sounding word. It sounds like a nickname, right? "Hey, Tits, come here, man. Hey Tits, meet Toots. Toots, Tits. Tits, Toots." It sounds like a snack, doesn't it? Yes, I know, it is a snack. I don't mean your sexist snack. I mean new Nabisco Tits!, and new Cheese Tits, Corn Tits, Pizza Tits, Sesame Tits, Onion Tits, Tater Tits. "Betcha Can't Eat Just One."

That's true. I usually switch off. But I mean, that word does not belong on the list. Actually none of the words belong on the list, but you can understand why some of them are there. I'm not completely insensetive to people's feelings. I can understand why some of those words got on the list, like CockSucker and MotherFucker. Those are heavyweight words. There is a lot going on there. Besides the literal translation and the emotional feeling.

I mean, they're just busy words. There's a lot of syllables to contend with. And those Ks, those are agressive sounds. They just jump out at you like "coCKsuCKer, motherfuCKer. coCKsuCKer, motherfuCKer."

It's like an assualt on you. We mentioned Shit earlier, and two of the other 4-letter Anglo-Saxon words are Piss and Cunt, which go together of course. A little accidental humor there. The reason that Piss and Cunt are on the list is because a long time ago, there were certain ladies that said "Those are the two I am not going to say. I don't mind Fuck and Shit but 'P' and 'C' are out.", which led to such
stupid sentences as "Okay you fuckers, I'm going to tinkle now."

And, of course, the word Fuck. I don't really, well that's more accidental humor, I don't wanna get into that now because I think it takes to long. But I do mean that. I think the word Fuck is a very imprortant word. It is the beginning of life, yet it is a word we use to hurt one another quite often. People much wiser than I am said,
"I'd rather have my son watch a film with two people making love than two people trying to kill one another. I, of course, can agree. It is a great sentence. I wish I knew who said it first. I agree with that but I like to take it a step further.

I'd like to substitute the word Fuck for the word Kill in all of those movie cliches we grew up with. "Okay, Sherrif, we're gonna Fuck you now, but we're gonna Fuck you slow."

So maybe next year I'll have a whole fuckin' ramp on the N word. I hope so. Those are the seven you can never say on television, under any circumstanses. You just cannot say them ever ever ever. Not even clinically. You cannot weave them in on the panel with Doc, and Ed, and Johnny. I mean, it is just impossible. Forget tHose seven. They're out.

But there are some two-way words, those double-meaning words.

Remember the ones you giggled at in sixth grade? "...And the cock CROWED three times" "Hey, tha cock CROWED three times. Ha ha ha ha. Hey, it's in the bible. Ha ha ha ha. There are some two-way words, like it is okay for Curt Gowdy to say "Roberto Clemente has two balls on him.", but he can't say "I think he hurt his balls on that play, Tony. Don't you? He's holding them. He must've hurt them, by God." and the other two-way word that goes with that one is Prick. It's okay if it happens to your finger. You can prick your finger but don't finger your prick. No,no.

Source. / LyricsBox

Quite a wordsmith, he was. A scholar of the language. I note that he and I are the same age...I had the pleasure of his company one evening in about 1973. He was playing at the Marin Civic Center, around the corner from where I lived.

The Sons of Champlin opened the show. They rented a space across the court from my space and rehearsed, hung out there. We were all good friends. When George approached one of them about perhaps scoring some cocaine, they called me. I happened to have some and proceeded quickly over to the Center not knowing who my customer was. I was ushered in to his dressing room which was cleared of all company as we went through the score procedure. He immediately went to work on the new purchase and the two of us had a short time together, flying in the zone of the leaf.

He got so ready that he went out on stage before the roadies were finished, found a live mike and started his show. No introduction, just started rapping. Needless to say he was hilarious and did a great show. I really enjoyed being around him and became a lifelong fan. He was a genuine wizard.

Gerry / The Rag Blog / June 23, 2008

George Carlin, 71, Irreverent Standup Comedian, Is Dead / by Mel Watkins / New York Times / March 24, 2008

George Carlin Reads More Blogs Than You Do / Interview by Rachel Sklar / March 1, 2008 / The Huffington Post

Religion is Bullshit Video / The Rag Blog

Video highlights from George Carlin's Career / The Huffington Post

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