Monday, June 23, 2008

On Carlin

Another one of my favorite humans died today, and I never got to meet him.
George Carlin was like a great golden god of free thought and dirty jokes, and now he's worm food. Unless he's cremated. Or shot out of a cannon into space, in which case he is spaceworm food and will one day be spice.
(He's probably just regular worm food though, meaning he'll one day be poop, I guess, until something else eats that. Like a plant. Or a German porn star.)
He died on the same day I learned all about FISA and just how freakin' weird politics really is. Which is a shame, because I'd love to hear his thoughts on how the president (any president, by the way, not just the current one) gets a "break all the Fourth Amendment you want" card while I get a $60 ticket for driving without wearing a seat belt in a state that doesn't even have a damn helmet law for motorcycles or, while I'm at it, a decent pulled pork sandwich.
There, I said it - the barbecue in this state sucks.
I did at least get to see him in Seattle last year while he was honing material for his latest (or last, I guess) HBO special, and he was amazing. More than I could have asked for. He was just so unique, and smart, and real - his perspective was often labeled "twisted" by the kind of boring people who read Cosmo and think oral sex is kinky, but he always made perfect sense to me. And more importantly, he made me laugh until tears rolled down my face while he did it.
You know he coined that whole drive-on-the-parkway-and-park-on-the-driveway bit? Or at least he was the first to say it onstage, according to his obit. And that's what I always loved about him, he was just so relatable. Like how you do the Japanese hooker on the kitchen table, but then you eat sushi off her stomach?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Meh, it sounded better in my head.
Anyway, he will be missed, and there really is no one who could take his place. Not for me, anyway.

Also, I saw this on the Internet today:

http://view.break.com/524970 - Watch more free videos

And knew right away that it had to be fake. You know why? Too good.
Too awesome, actually. Like the so called "security cam" footage of a guy suddenly freaking out and destroying an office, or the 1969 moon landing, which, as we all know now, was nothing more than an elaborate marketing campaign for Tang.
These things fall into a particularly slimy category of whoresmanship called "viral marketing" and they are yet another reason to hate "teh Internets," as people call it moments before I punch them in the face.
Now, I am no "newb" to be "pwned" by these tactics, so it's not the possibility that I'll be somehow tricked into buying an Audi dealership after seeing a crash test dummy eat a baby (or something) that worries me.
No, it's the fact that I can't look at anything cool anymore without immediately going: "Pfft. No way that wasn't staged." If aliens landed tomorrow, I'd still probably think it was an ad for the Charles Atlas Home Gym until I saw the smoking craters of at least two U.S. cities with my own eyes.
There's no suspension of disbelief anymore, Internet. You've spent your credibility. And for what? Aqua Teen Hunger Force DVDs and Gatorade? Great. Now I can't even be sure Mama Cass liked ham sandwiches. Who's to say her death wasn't just a genius campaign orchestrated by Butterball because turkey sales were down that year? And Turkey acquiring nuclear weapons? That's right - the response campaign from Hatfield.
But you don't need to do this to people, Internet ad wizards. Your domain is already populated by the kind of people who think The Jews have all the money in a secret vault in the middle of the earth anyway, or that Mountain Dew is palatable. There's no reason to turn normal people like me into yet another group of unnecessarily skeptical jerks.
The ultimate irony here, though, is that because I've discussed it - even to denounce it - I have become a part of their dastardly plan!
Why, if Carlin were here, I'm sure he'd have a thing or two to say about it.
But he's not. And now, he never will be.
Sigh.
Well, I'm off to the bar to toast him. Maybe I'll plant rhino eggs along the way as a campaign for this blog. Probably not though.


(Rhinos are mammals.)

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

He will be missed - I cant even fathom no more Carlin HBO specials. Like you though, I am lucky I got to see him when I did. Irreplaceable. He will be missed.

You may not be able to get good barbecue there but you can get all the cheesy goodness any one person can handle and thats saying something.

Damn shame that video wasn't the real deal - I mean come on that would have been great to be like HA look what a girl can do and you cant! *SIGH* But I was duped. And you weren't. Sucks.

Maybe you ARE better or at least smarter than me in the long run.

Maybe.....

June 24, 2008 at 10:48 PM 
Blogger The Ayatollah of Rock N Rollah said...

OH MY GOD A COMMENT!

June 25, 2008 at 4:20 AM 

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