Brain Droppings (21 page)

Now, these teachers who go back to school obviously have to be taught by “teacher teachers.” And if one of these teacher teachers were also taking a few courses on the side, that would make her a “student teacher teacher.” And if she were just beginning that process, just learning to be a “student teacher teacher” wouldn’t that make her a “student teacher teacher student”? I think it would.
CHAn6inO THE SUBJECTS

Talk about wrong priorities. We live in a country that has a National Spelling Bee. We actually give prizes for spelling! But when’s the last time you heard about a thinking bee? Or a reasoning bee? Maybe an ethics bee? Never. Did you know the only people in our culture who are taught ethics are a handful of college students? Then they graduate and go to work for large corporations. So much for ethics training. Ethics and values should be taught early in grade school, not in college when the child has already been spiritually warped and perverted by his parents, friends, religion, and television set.

And while we’re at it, why don’t we teach courses in how to be responsible, or how to be married, or how to be a good parent, or, at the very least, how to be a reasonably honorable human being? Unfortunately, such courses will never be taught, because the information gleaned would have no application in real life.

brain droppings
“KIDS TODAY!”

I know this sounds like old-fart talk, but I think today’s kids are too soft. They have to wear plastic helmets for every outdoor activity but jacking off. Toy safety, car seats, fire-resistant pajamas. Shit! Soft, baby boomer parents, with their cult of the child, are raising a crop of soft, fruity kids.

Here’s another example of how adults are training children to be weak. Did you ever notice that every time some guy with an AK-47 shows up in a schoolyard and kills three or four students and a couple of teachers, the next day the school is overrun with psychologists, psychiatrists, grief counselors, and trauma therapists trying to help the children cope? Shit! When I was a kid, if somebody came to our school and killed three or four of us, we went right on with our work. We finished the arithmetic. “Thirty-five classmates, minus four equals thirty-one!” We were tough! I say if a kid can handle the violence in his home, he oughta be able to handle the violence in school.

What bothers me is all this mindless, middlebrow bullshit about children being “our future.” So, what’s new? Children have always, technically, represented our future. But what does that mean? What is so important about knowing that children are our future? Life as it is right now—today’s reality in this country—the people lying on the streets and park benches, living in the dysfunctional homes, the prisons, and the mental institutions, the addicts and drunks and neurotic shoppers, these people were all once children described as “our future.” So, this is it, folks. This is what the system produces. The adults you see today are what kids become. Is anything really going to make it any different? To me, they’re just another crop of kids

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GEORGE CARLIN

b r a

d r o p p i n g s

waiting to become wage slaves and good little consumers. You know what I see when I look at today’s kids? Tomorrow’s fucked-up adults.

honor student.” Or, let’s get real: “Our son was a teen suicide because of unrealistic expectations by his father.” I think it’s time we abandon sentimental, emotional kitsch as a prime means of public expression.

What is all this nonsense about parental guidance, parental control, and parental advisories? The whole reason people in this country are as fucked up as they are and make such ignorant decisions on public policy; is that they listened too closely to their parents in the first place. This is an authoritarian country with too many laws, rules, controls, and restrictions. “Do this! Don’t do that! Shut up! Sit still! No talking! Stand up straight!” No wonder kids are so fucked up; traditional authoritarian values. It starts in kindergarten: They give you a coloring book and some crayons, and tell you, “Be creative … but don’t go outside the lines.” Fuck parents!

One of the more embarrassing strains of American thought is the liberal-humanist, touchy-feely, warm and fuzzy, New Age, environmental-friendly pseudo-wisdom that appears on bumper stickers: “Have you hugged your kid today?” “Think Globally, Act Locally,” and most embarrassing, “Practice Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty.” Isn’t that precious? You know, if kindness and beauty require public reminders, maybe it’s time we just throw in the jock. Here’s another middlebrow abomination: “Our son is an honor student at Franklin School.” I’m waiting for a bumper sticker that says, “We have a son in public school who hasn’t been shot yet. And he sells drugs to your fuckin’

THinOS 00 BETTER

I can identify my periods of heavy cocaine use by the years in which I have no idea who was in the World Series or the Superbowl. Bliss.

I remember one Saturday morning when I know I must have been high, because I found myself profoundly moved by Elmer Fudd and Petunia Pig who were appearing in something I took to be a drama.

There was another time when my right nostril was all plugged up, so I spent a whole night snorting in just my left nostril. The weird part is that only my left eye was dilated.

Late one evening, after scraping all the white powder and dust off my dresser top and making two lines out of it, I realized I was actually snorting some Desenex and my own dandruff.

Sometimes I’d get so wired I would do anything to come down a little. You ever chugalug a magnum of children’s Tylenol?

Eventually, alas, I realized the main purpose of buying cocaine is to run out of it.

But long after I gave it up I was still self-conscious when I blew my nose in front of other people. And if I had to leave a group of people to go to the bathroom more than once, I was sure everyone thought I was going to do some blow. I used to say, “No, really! I have diarrhea! C’mon! I’ll show you.”

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EORCE CARLIN
&

I’ve always believed people get the diseases they ask for and deserve. The same is true of countries.

America. Chronic fatigue and anorexia. This is what we’ve
become. “I’m tired!” and, “I don’t wanna eat!” How plain. How
pathetic. Years ago, a nice, horrifying, fatal consumptive dis-
ease would come along and completely eat your fuckin’ organs
away. Now it’s, “I’m tired” and “I don’t wanna eat.” Christ!
b Here’s another one: “I’m depressed.” Well, shit, look
around! Of course you’re depressed; you live in a neon sewer. You’ve earned it. There are supposed to be eleven million clinically depressed Americans. And those are just the ones they know about. I’m sure there are millions more nodding off in closets and attics all across the country. You wanna know why? Because it’s one big fuckin’ garbage can. At least those people with agoraphobia have found a good solution: “I’m not going out. I don’t like it outside.”

You say there’s rampant cancer? How appropriate. We worship growth; everyone wants growth. Well, we got it. A Exuberant cell growth. Lots of big cancers, lots of different kinds and plenty of ‘em to go around. All part of who we are. Breast cancer? Who has a more distorted titty hang-up? Epidemic prostate cancer in a nation brimming with assholes? How unusual. Skin cancer? Vanity, thy name is tan. uf And how ’bout them lungs? The ones that suck up all that fine stuff we belch into the air. We got a cancer for everything. So don’t worry, folks, if it’s growin’ on you, it’s a part of the American dream.

brain droppings
Then we have the eating disorders. Is it really a surprise
h that with all our pathological feeding habits Americans have
eating disorders? Who makes worse dietary decisions? Who
?:;- wastes more food? And not just the ordinary waste of uncaring gluttons; that’s easy. I’m talking about those grotesque,
M all-American food stunts the television news shows find so amusing: hands-behind-the-back pie-eating contests, the
k largest pizza in the world, the block-long omelet, the biggest banana split ever, the who-can-eat-the-most-hot-peppers-in-fvfteen-minutes competition, and the swimming pool full of cherry Jell-0 all schlocked up with bad fruit cocktail. And don’t forget the wiener-eating contests, where the wieners are actually dipped in water so they’ll slide down whole,
4 eliminating all that bothersome chewing. Such healthy attitudes toward food!

And all of this conspicuous, deliberate waste takes place in the midst of global malnutrition and starvation. No wonder fucked-up teenage girls don’t want to eat.
. Here’s another wonderful irony: with all our supposed
superiority in food production, we provide our people with far higher rates of stroke, heart attack, colon cancer, and other diet diseases than most “inferior” Third-World food economies do. But don’t you worry, those folks are catching
^ up; social pathologies are our biggest export. And so, in a curious way, cancer turns out to be catching, after all.

Please note my restraint in ignoring “shopping disorders.”

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GEORGE

C A R U I N

b r a i n d r o

S…PJ n

9 s

conf tssions of A nAOMmE-

l lieved when I see a
nf tssions of A nAOMmE

I’m always relieved when I see a magazine article I don’t have to read, like “How to Turn Prison Rape into a Spiritual Quest.” Or “Quesadillas for Quadraplegics.” I’m practically giddy when I see an article about a disease I know I’ll never get. I laugh heartily as I race past page after page of “Five Hundred Early Warning Signs of Cancer of the Labia.” It’s such a time-saver.

And I notice as I get older, the magazine articles that catch my eye have begun to change. For instance, in my early twenties, “Ten Career Choices that Lead to Suicide” was a must read. And “Achieving a Six-Hour Orgasm Without a Date” was duly clipped and laminated. But these days I find my interest caught by such titles as “Test Yourself for Alzheimer’s,” “Ten Tips on Surviving a Nursing Home Fire,” and “How to Rid Yourself of Old-Person Smell.” I guess the article I really need is “How to Extend Your Magazine Subscriptions Posthumously.”

There was a young man from St. Maarten
Who saved all his odors from faartin.
If it passed through his crack
It went straight in a sack
And mistakes were all kept in a caarton.
A Jewess who lived in St. Croix
Fell in love with a handsome young goix.
Her parents forbade
She should marry the lad
So instead she eloped with the boix.

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A flatulent actor named Barton
Had a lifestyle exceedingly spartan.
Till a playwright one day
Wrote a well-received play
With a part in which Barton could fart in.

CEORCE CARLIN

It goes without saying I’m not the only person who has noticed this, but I never got to spell it out my way before.

Comedy’s nature has two sides. Everybody wants a good time and a couple of laughs, and of course, the comic wants to be known as a real funny guy. But the language of comedy is fairly grim and violent. It’s filled with punchlines, gags, and slapstick. After all, what does a comic worry most about? Dying! He doesn’t want to die.

“Jeez, I was dyin’. It was like death out there. Like a morgue. I really bombed.”

Comics don’t want to die, and they don’t want to bomb. They want to go over with a bang. And be a real smash. And if everything works out, if they’re successful and they make you laugh, they can say, “I killed ‘em. I slaughtered those people, I knocked them dead.”

And what phrases do we use when we talk about the comic? “He’s
a riot.” “A real scream.” “A rib-splitting knee-slapper.” “My sides
hurt.” “My cheeks ache.” “He broke me up, cracked me up, slayed me,
fractured me, and had me in stitches.” “I busted a gut.” “I get a real
kick out of that guy.” .;.’??.,… : ., ? >
“Laugh? I thought I’d die.”
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