Brain Droppings (10 page)

I often hear otherwise intelligent people complaining about drivers who slow down when driving past a traffic accident. They curse them and call them “rubberneckers.” I don’t understand this at all. I a111

I have a cable channel that shows old TV shows, but it shows them in different tenses from the originals. I don’t know how they do it. Here’s a sample:
Got Smart
Father Knew Best
It Was Left to Beaver
Daddy Had Had Room Made for Him
I Shall Have Been Loving Lucy
Car 54, Where Were You?
Had Gun, Would Have Traveled
What Had My Line Been?
I Have Had a Secret
That Had Been the Week That Had Been

GEORGE CARLIN

America has no now. We’re reluctant to acknowledge the % present. It’s too embarrassing.
Instead, we reach into the past. Our culture is composed of sequels, reruns, remakes, revivals, reissues, re-releases, recreations, re-enactments, adaptations, anniversaries, memoes rabilia, oldies radio, and nostalgia record collections. World War II has been refought on television so many times, the ^k Germans and Japanese are now drawing residuals.

Of course, being essentially full of shit, we sometimes feel the need to dress up this past-preoccupation, as with pathetic references to reruns as “encore presentations.”

Even instant replay is a form of token nostalgia: a brief visit to the immediate past for reexaminination, before slap-“; ping it onto a highlight video for further review and re-review on into the indefinite future.
Our “yestermania” includes fantasy baseball camps,
where aging sad sacks pay money to catch baseballs thrown
by men who were once their heroes. It is part of the fasci-
A* nation with sports memorabilia, a “memory industry” so
lucrative it has attracted counterfeiters.
In this, the Age of Hyphens, we are truly retro-Americans. And our television newscasts not only reflect this condition, they feed it. Everything they report is twisted into some fa reference to the past. If there’s to be a summit meeting, you’ll be told all about the last six summits; if there’s a big earthquake, they’ll do a story about big earthquakes of the

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past; if there’s a mine disaster, you will hear about every mine disaster since the inception of mining. They’re obsessed with looking back. I swear I actually heard this during a newscast, as the anchorman went to a commercial break: he said, “Still ahead, a look back.” Honest.

“A look back: Hurricane Hugo, one year later.” Why? The anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. For what reason? The anniversary of the Bay of Pigs, Pan Am Flight 103, the hostages in Iran, the fall of the Berlin Wall, V-J Day, V-E Day, Vietnam. Who gives a fuck?

Bugs Bunny’s 50th birthday, Lassie’s 55th, the Golden Jubilee of Gone With the Wind, the start of the Korean War, Barbie celebrates her 35th, the 25th anniversary of the New York blackout, Bambi turns 50. Shit, I didn’t even like Bambi when I was supposed to, how much do I care now?

There’s really no harm reviewing the past from time to time; knowing where you’ve been is part of knowing where you are, and all that happy horseshit. But the American media have an absolute fixation on this. They rob us of the present by insisting on the past. If they were able, I’m sure they would pay equal attention to the future. Trouble is, they don’t have any film on it.

And so, on television news there is, oddly, very little emphasis on the present; on today’s actual news. The present exists only in thirty-second stories built around eight-second sound bites. Remember, “sound bite” is their phrase. That’s what they give you. Just a bite. No chewing, no digestion, no nourishment. Malnutrition.

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Another way they avoid the present moment is to look ft ahead on their own schedules. The television news industry seems to revolve around what’s coming next. “Still to come,” “Just ahead,” “Up next,” “Coming up this half-hour,” “More to come,” “Stay with us,” “Still ahead,” “Also, later . . .” ^ They even preview what’s going to happen as little as one hour later: During the “Five O’Clock News”, the empty-. headed prick who does the “Five O’Clock News” will suddenly say, “Here’s a look at what’s coming up on the ‘Six O’Clock News.’” Then the empty-headed prick who does the “Six O’Clock News” will appear in shirtsleeves in the newsroom (to create the illusion of actual work) and tell you about several stories that the empty-headed prick who does ft the “Five O’Clock News” should already have told you about if he were really a newsman.

And so it goes, around the clock: On the “Five O’Clock News,” they tell you about the “Six O’Clock News”; at six O’Clock, they tell you about eleven; at eleven, they plug the morning news; the morning man promos the noontime lady, ” and, sure enough, a little after noon, here comes that empty-headed prick from the “Five O’Clock News” to tell you what he’s going to do … on the “Five O’Clock News.”

You know, if a guy were paranoid, he might not be k, blamed for thinking that the people who run things don’t want you dwelling too much on the present.

Because, keep in mind, the news media are not independent; they are a sort of bulletin board and public relations firm for the ruling class—the people who run things. Those who

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decide what news you will or will not hear are paid by, and tolerated purely at the whim of, those who hold economic power. If the parent corporation doesn’t want you to know something, it won’t be on the news. Period. Or, at the very least, it will be slanted to suit them, and then barely followed up. Enjoy your snooze.

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assistant supervisor new tradition original copy plastic glass uninvited guest highly depressed live recording authentic reproduction partial cease-fire limited lifetime guarantee elevated subway dry lake true replica forward lateral standard options

I’m tired of television announcers, hosts, newscasters, 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.

And 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 “/or-tay.” Got that? It’s pronounced “fort.” The Italian word forte, used in music notation, is pronounced “/or-tay,” and it instructs the musician to play loud: “She plays the skin flute, and her forte [fort] is playing forte [/or-tay].” Look it up. And don’t give me that whiny shit, ‘Tor-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 players from the same hometown, on different teams, receive the same uniform number, it is not ironic. It is a coincidence. If Barry Bonds attains life-

GEORGE CARLIN
time statistics identical to his father’s, it will not be ironic. It h 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
b runaway truck, he is the victim of an accident. If the truck was delivering sugar, he is the victim of an oddly poetic
K coincidence. But if the truck was delivering insulin, ah! Then, he is the victim of an irony.

If a Kurd, after surviving a bloody battle with Saddam Hussein’s army and a long, difficult escape through th^ mountains, is crushed and killed by a parachute drop of humanitarian aid, that, my friend, is irony writ large.
4 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 origiinal

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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 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 conceived in the absence of sex. It means Mary was conceived without Original Sin. That’s all it has ever meant. And according to the tabloids, Mary is apparently the only one who can make such a claim. The Jesus thing is called virgin birth.

Proverbial is now being used to describe things that don’t appear in proverbs. For instance, “the proverbial drop in the bucket” is incorrect because “a drop in the bucket” is not a proverb, it’s a metaphor. You wouldn’t say, “as welcome as a turd in the proverbial punchbowl,” or “as cold as the proverbial nun’s box,” because neither refers to a proverb. The former is a metaphor, the latter is a simile.

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Momentarily means for a moment, not in a moment. The word for “in a moment” is presently. “I will be there presently, Dad, and then, after pausing momentarily, I will kick you in the nuts.”

No other option and no other alternative are redundant The words option and alternative already imply otherness. “I had no option, Mom, I got this huge erection because there was no alternative.” This rule is not optional; the alternative is to be wrong.

You should not use criteria when you mean criterion for the same reason that you should not use criterion when you mean criteria. These is my only criterions.

A light-year is a measurement of distance, not time. “It will take light years for young basketball players to catch up with the number of women Wilt Chamberlain has fucked,” is a scientific impossibility. Probably in more ways than one.
I An acronym is not just any set of initials. It applies only ‘ to those that are pronounced as words. MADD, DARE, NATO,
and UNICEF are acronyms. FBI, CIA, and KGB are not.
They’re just pricks.

I know I’m fighting a losing battle with this one, but I * refuse to surrender: Collapsing a building with explosives is not an implosion. An implosion is a very specific scientific phenomenon. The collapsing of a building with explosives is the collapsing of a building with explosives. The explosives explode, and the building collapses inwardly. That is not an

implosion. It is an inward collapsing of a building, following a series of smaller explosions designed to make it collapse inwardly. Period. Fuck you!

Here’s another pointless, thankless objection I’d like to register. I say it that way, because I know you people and your goddamn “popular usage” slammed the door on this one a long time ago. But here goes anyway:

A cop out is not an excuse, not even a weak one; it is an admission of guilt. When someone “cops a plea,” he admits guilt to some charge, in exchange for better treatment. He has “copped out.” When a guy says, “I didn’t get to fuck her because I reminded her of her little brother,” he is making an excuse. But if he says, “I didn’t get to fuck her because I’m an unattractive schmuck,” he is copping out. The trouble arises when an excuse contains a small amount of self-incriminating truth.

This one is directed to the sports people: You are destroying a perfectly good figure of speech: “Getting the monkey off one’s back” does not mean breaking a losing streak. It refers only to ending a dependency. That’s all. The monkey represents a strong yen. A losing streak does not compare even remotely. Not in a literary sense and not in real life.

Here’s one you hear from the truly dense: “The proof is in the pudding.” Well, the proof is not in the pudding; the rice and the raisins are in the pudding. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. In this case, proof means “test.” The same is true of “the exception that proves (tests) the rule.”

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An eye for an eye is not a call for revenge, it is an gu Q: ment for fairness. In the time of the Bible, it was standard to take a life in exchange for an eye. But the Bible said, No, the punishment should fit the crime. Only an eye for an eye nothing more. It is not vindictive, it is mitigatory.
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Don’t make the same mistake twice seems to indicate three mistakes, doesn’t it? First you make the mistake. Then you make the same mistake. Then you make the same mistake twice. If you simply say, “Don’t make the same mistake,” you’ll avoid the first mistake.
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Unique needs no modifier. Very unique, quite unique, more unique, real unique, fairly unique, and extremely unique are wrong, and they mark you as dumb. Although certainly not unique.

Healthy does not mean “healthful.” Healthy is a condition, healthful is a property. Vegetables aren’t healthy, they’re dead. No food is healthy. Unless you have an eggplant that’s doing push-ups. Push-ups are healthful.

There is no such thing or word as kudo. Kudos is a singular noun meaning praise, and it is pronounced fcyoo-dose. There is also a plural form, spelled the same, but pronounced feyoo-doze. Please stop telling me, “So-and-so picked up another kudo today.”

Race, creed, or color is wrong. Race and color, as used in this phrase, describe the same property. And “creed” is a stilted, outmoded way of saying “religion.” Leave this tired
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phrase alone; it has lost its usefulness. Besides, it reeks of insincerity no matter who uses it.

As of yet is simply stupid. As yet, I’ve seen no progress on this one, but of course I’m speaking as of now.

Here’s one you can win money on in a bar if you’re within reach of the right reference book: Chomping at the bit and old stomping ground are incorrect. Some Saturday afternoon when you’re gettin’ bombed on your old stamping ground, you’ll be champing at the bit to use this one.

Sorry to sound so picky, folks, but I listen to a lot of radio and TV, and these things have bothered me for a long time.
VIEWERS, BEWARE!

Television newscasters often warn viewers that something they’re going to show might upset people: “Be warned that this next film clip is very graphic, and contains explicit language, so you might want to consider if you want to see it, or if it is suitable for your children.” Imagine! Explicit and graphic! Here are the definitions of those words according to Webster’s Third New International Dictionary;

Characterized by full, clear expression; being without vagueness or ambiguity.
UlflpillC. Marked by clear and lively description or striking imaginative power. Sharply outlined or delineated.

So what is the problem here? Why do they feel it necessary to warn people against the possibility of seeing something clear, sharply outlined, unambiguous, and with striking imaginative power?

GEORGE CAR LIN
IHETRE-’EPIDEnit

Preboard, prescreen, prerecord, pretaped, preexisting, preorder, preheat, preplan, pretest, precondition, preregister. In nearly ai\ of ^les cases you can drop the “pre” and not change the meaning of the word
“The suicide film was not prescreened by the school.” No, of
course not. It was screened.

“You can call and prequalify for a loan over the phorie. Your loan is preapproved.” Well, if my loan is approved before I call then no approval is necessary. The loan is simply available.
mim

The words Fire Department make it sound like they’re the ones who are starting the fires, doesn’t it? It should be called the “Extinguishing Department.” We don’t call the police the “Crime Department.” Also, the “Bomb Squad” sounds like a terrorist gang. The same is true of wrinkle cream. Doesn’t it sound like it causes wrinkles? And why would a doctor prescribe pain pills? I already have pain! I need relief pills!
mandatory options mutual differences nondairy creamer open secret resident alien

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silent alarm
sports sedan
wireless cable
mercy killing
lethal assistance (Contra aid)
business ethics
friendly fire
genuine veneer
full-time day care
death benefits
holy war
SUPER-CELEB KICKS BUCKET

I dread the deaths of certain super-celebrities. Not because I care about them, but because of all the shit I have to endure on television when one of them dies. All those tributes and retrospectives. And the bigger the personality, the worse it is.

For instance, imagine the crap we’ll have to endure on TV when Bob Hope dies. First of all, they’ll show clips from all his old road movies with Bing Crosby, and you can bet that some news anchor asshole will turn to the pile of clothing next to him and say, “Well, Tami, 1 imagine Bob’s on the Road to Heaven now.”

Then there’ll be clips of all those funny costumes he wore on his TV sPecials, including the hippie sketch, where they’ll show him saying,

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“Far out, man, far out!” They’ll show him golfing with dead presidents kissing blonde bombshells, and entertaining troops in every war since we beat the shit out of the Peloponnesians. And at some point, a seventy-year-old veteran will choke up, and say, “I just missed seein’ him at Iwo, ’cause I got my legs blowed off. He’s quite a guy.”

Ex-presidents (including the dead ones) will line up four abreast to tell us what a great American he was; show-business perennials will desert golf courses from Palm Springs to O.J.’s lawn to lament sadly as how this time, “Bob hooked one into the woods”; and, regard-ing his talent, a short comedian in a checkered hat will speak reverently about “Hope’s incredible timing.”

And this stuff will be on every single newscast day and night for a week. There’ll be special one-hour salutes on “Good Morning America,” the “Today” show, and “CBS This Morning.” Ted Koppel will ask Henry Kissinger if it’s true Bob Hope actually shortened some of our wars by telling jokes close to the frontlines. CNN will do a series of expanded “Show Biz Todays.” One of the cable channels will do a one-week marathon of his movies. And it goes without saying that NBC will put together a three-hour, prime-time special called “Thanks for the Memories,” but at the last minute they’ll realize Bob Hope’s audience skews older, and sell it to CBS.

Then there’ll be the funeral, carried live on the Dead Celebrity Channel, with thousands of grotesque acne-ridden fans seeking autographs from all the show-business clowns who dug out their best black golfing outfits to attend “one of the hottest burials to hit this town in decades”—Variety.

And all this shit will go on for weeks and weeks and weeks. Until Milton Berle dies. And then it will start all over again. I dare not even contemplate Frank Sinatra and Ronald Reagan.

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KEEP IT—WE DOnT WAnT IT

Don’t you get tired of celebrities who explain their charity work by aying they feel they have to”give something back.” I don’t feel that way. I didn’t take nothin’. You can search my house; I didn’t take a thing. Everything I got, I worked for, and it was given to me freely. I also paid taxes on it. Late! I paid late. But I paid. You celebrity people wanna give something back? How about giving back half the money? Or a couple of those houses? And you dickwads who collect cars? How about giving back 50 or 60 of them? Or maybe, if you people really want to give something back, you could let go of a little of that arrogance.

For my part, I like to work quietly in the background, helping my preferred charities raise money. If you’d like to help too, here are just a few you might consider.
X St. Anthony’s Shelter for the Recently All Right
X The Christian Haven for the Chronically Feisty
X The Committee to Keep Something-or-Other from Taking Place
X The Center for Research into the Heebie Jeebies
X Free Hats for Fat People
X The Task Force for Better Pancakes
X The Home for the Visually Unpleasant
X The State Hospital for Those Who Felt All Right About a Year Ago

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X The Committee to Challenge the Height Requirements of Mailmen
X The Beverly Hills Chamber of Poor Taste
X The Alliance of People Who Don’t Know What’s Next
X The Downtown Mission for the Permanently Disheveled
X The Malibu Home for the Unimportant
X The Nook for Needy Nuns
X Children of Parents with Bad Teeth
X The Rochester Home for Soreheads
X The League of People Who Should Know Better
X Hors d’Oeuvres for Bangladesh
X The Brotherhood of Real Creeps
X The Committee to Remove the “Bah” from “Sis Boom Bah”
X A stranger on the train who wants to tell me about his bowel
movements.
X People who whistle cowboy songs during a funeral. X Anyone who refers to Charles Manson as “Chuck.” X A tall man with a Slavic accent wearing a bow tie of human flesh-
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X Any couple who owns “his and hers” rectal thermometers.
^t A girl whose wallet contains nude photos of Sam Donaldson or Yassir Arafat.
X A man with a tattoo that shows Joey Buttafuco dancing the Lambada with Leona Helmsley.
X Any man who can ingest a quart of vegetable soup through his nose in one long suck.
X A priest with an eye patch and a limp who’s selling pieces of the cross.
X Any guy named Dogmeat whose body has over six square feet of scar tissue.
X Anyone who takes off work on Ted Bundy’s birthday.
X A man with gold front teeth who wants to play stud poker on the floor of the bus station men’s room.
X A crying woman with a harpoon gun entering a sports bar.
X Anyone who gets plastic surgery in an attempt to look more intelligent.
X A man with one cloven hoof who wants to give my daughter a hysterectomy.
X A seventy-year-old man wearing gag underpants that say “We visited the Grassy Knoll.”
X Any man with a birthmark shaped like a hypodermic needle. X Any woman who repeatedly gives me a high five during sex.
X A cross-eyed man in a New Year’s hat reciting “Casey at the Bat” in Latin.

- ?**&.? ?

GEORGE CARL1N

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Anyone who receives e-mail from Willard Scott.

A man who plunges a bone-handled carving fork through hi neck in order to get my attention.

Anyone with three nostrils.

A bag lady wearing over 200 garments, including nine separate hats