Authors: George Carlin
“Listen, Caleb, we got a new religion. You wanna join?”
^ “Who started it?”
“Joe Smith.”
“See ya later.”
You can’t blame him. I wouldn’t follow a guy named Joe Smith halfway across a continent, either.
“C’mon, we’re goin’ to Utah.”
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“Why?”
“Joe Smith said that’s where we’re supposed to be.” “Well, I’m gonna finish this crossword. Why drop me a postcard.”
In ancient times, the rulers had magnificent names. Alexander the Great. Suppose he had been a less impt^w figure, do you think he would have been called Alex;m^er the Marginal? As it is, he had his detractors. You know, peo_ pie who called him Alexander the Scumbag.
History has given us other impressive names from si times: Edward the Fair, Charles the Bold, Catherine the These days, they would be Edward the Abuse Victim, Cnaries the Underachiever, and Catherine the Recovering Codepei^^
And let’s not forget the historical figures we never htar of. Tiberius the Wanker and Lucretius the Dog Fucker. Guys like ^at
And I’m sure history would not be the same if certajn names had been slightly different. For example, Worl^ II would have ended much more quickly if we had^ fighting a guy named Skip Hitler.
Suppose there had been a really outstanding eighteentn_ century composer who was better than Beethoven, Bacn an(j Mozart combined. But his name was Joey the Cocksucl^j. rj0 you think he would be famous today? “And now, fcugene Ormandy conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra as th&y per_ form the Requiem Mass in C-sharp Minor, composed fyy joev the Cocksucker.”
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Some names are embarrassing. We had a guy neighborhood, Michael Hunt, who called himself
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because the only alternative was Mike Hunt. Of course, some (j| other names are just plain dirty: “Hi, I’m Peter Ball, and this is Dick Cox. We’re friends of Randy Bush.”
Some people have funny names. They can’t help it, but
it’s hard to keep from laughing when a guy named Elmo
b Zipaloonie introduces you to his friend El Cunto Prickolini.
And if you want funny, you can’t beat farmers with names
k like Orville Pigdicker and Hooter Stumpfuck.
Speaking of funny names, do you realize Howdy Doody’s mother and father are known as the Doodys? And Bo Diddley’s parents are the Diddleys? How would you like to be at a party and have to introduce the Doodys to the Diddleys? And keep a straight face? “Mr. and Mrs. Doody, I’d like you to meet Mr. 6 and Mrs. Diddley. Mr. Doody, Mr. Diddley; Mrs. Diddley, Mrs. Doody. Mr. Doody, Mrs. Diddley; Mr. Diddley, Mrs. Doody. The Doodys, the Diddleys; the Diddleys, the Doodys.” Jesus!
Then, just as you Finish all of that, in walks Bo Diddley’s brother, Dudley Diddley, and his sisters, Dottie Diddley, Dodie Diddley, and Didi Diddley. And Howdy Doody’s sis-% ters, Judy Doody and Trudy Doody. I’d never get through it all. I’d be leanin’ over the punchbowl, thinkin’, “Please, God, don’t let Rootie Kazootie show up.”
In Hawaii, I once had the pleasure of meeting Don Ho (H and his lovely wife, Heidi. Plus his three brothers, Gung, Land, and Hy.
Hospitals often name a new facility after the person who makes the major donation. I grew up with a neighborhood guy who is now extremely wealthy, and I’m hoping someday
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Chestnut Street, but you
They have Walnut Street ^ ^ ^s wrong
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the thing never comes off, but it hurts to put it on, and you gotta pay the guy. Plus if you do wanna take it off, it hurts again, and you gotta pay the guy again.
Another reason not to get a tattoo is that a tattoo is positive identification. No one should ever do anything to help the police. In any way. Especially when you may be the object of their interest.
So I never got a tattoo. But I had some good ideas. I was gonna get dotted lines tattooed on all my joints, wherever I bend. With little instructions: “Fold here.” “Do not glue.”
I also thought about gettin’ a necklace of hickeys.
Here’s one I almost went through with. I was gonna get my nipples tattooed as radio dials: “volume” and “tuning.” And the hair in the middle of my chest was gonna be the speaker. For stereo, I’d raise my arms. Armpit speakers!
I guess the most popular tattoo of all time is MOM. A lot of guys get MOM. No one ever gets POP. You know why? Cause you can’t read POP in the mirror. In a mirror, MOM comes out MOM. POP comes out “909.” What the fuck is that?
If you guys want to get a MOM tattoo and save a little money, just get two letters done. Get about a one-inch capital M tattooed on each cheek of your ass in pink and brown ink. Then when you bend over, it says “Mom.” Also, later on if you’re havin’ sex with your girlfriend, and her parents are in the next room, when you finish up you can just lie on your back, draw your legs up to your chest and silently say, “Wow!”
Here’s another good one for guys: at the top of your inner thigh, next to your groin, you put, “In case of emergency, pull handle.” Or get your penis tattooed to resemble a candy
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cane. Great for Christmas blow jobs. But be very careful not to let the tattoo guy bend your penis into a J shape.
Get the words, “tote bag” tattooed on your scrotum. Or “Bloomingdale’s” might be good. “Cartier” would be more appropriate; a little hairy pouch for your precious jewels.
How about a tattoo of the Three Stooges peering into your asshole? Or a serpent coming out? Or a nice tattoo of Madonna with her hand up your ass? Here’s a good one for right next to your asshole: “No gerbils!” Or, “Gerbils welcome.” Depending on what puts a smile on your face.
Here would be a great tattoo for right in the middle of your forehead: “I have colored ink in my skin!” Or, “Your message here. Fifty cents.” How about, “Yeah, it’s a tattoo, you miserable prick! Right in the middle of my forehead. If you don’t like it, suck my dick!” This will really keep you from having to deal with that bothersome job market.
And here’s a solution to an age old tattoo problem. If your girlfriend’s name, say, “Suzie,” is tattooed on your arm, and you break up with her, don’t have the tattoo removed. Just have the tattoo reworked so it says, “Fuck Suzie.”
By the way, you don’t actually have to do all these things; they’re just suggestions. Think them over first. Sit down, have six or seven vodkas, and give them a few seconds thought.
Besides, you wanna know something? Tattoos are passe. They’re yesterday’s thing. I’m lookin’ for the next big thing in body decoration. And I think I may have it.
Everyone’s skin has imperfections. It’s unavoidable. Pockmarks, wrinkles, bullet holes, scars, blotches, stab wounds, cysts, warts, needle holes, acne pits, enlarged pores.
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I think people should see these imperfections and disfigure-h ments as positive things. Flaws and defects can actually be forms of decoration.
Take moles, God’s punctuation marks. Moles are great, and they can be useful if you want a really interesting look.
b The only problem is they’re usually randomly placed; they don’t represent anything. I think plastic surgeons should
\ offer a new service: rearranging people’s moles. Think of your moles as fashion accessories. “God, look at all the moles that guy has!” “Yes, and aren’t they nicely arranged?” There are lots of things you can do with moles: make the double helix, do a happy Hitler face, spell out the name of your bowling team. And how about moles with velcro, so you
4 could change your look every day? Here’s something novel. Choose a good size mole on your arm, and tattoo little legs sticking out of the sides. People will constantly be trying to shoo the “bug” off your arm. It’s great for picking up girls.
b
Next, body-piercing. Now, the piercing movement is off to a good start, and I like the idea behind it: self-esteem through self-mutiliation. I’ve always said, when in doubt, punch a hole in yourself. That’s fine, but I think the piercing people are missing a good bet. Vital organs. I mean, skin is one thing. That’s easy. But how about getting your lungs or kidneys
K pierced? Why not some lovely diamond studs all over the surface of your liver? Or a couple of nice 18-karat gold rings hanging from your thyroid gland?
But, you know, stuff like this might not be dangerous enough for today’s happenin’ people. What’s really gonna be great is when the ozone layer is completely gone, and
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everyone has melanomas. Then you’ll start to see “fashion skin cancer.” It’ll probably start in Malibu. People will use their skin cancers to form little designs. Since it’s Malibu, a lot of them will do their zodiac sign. Of course, if your sign is Cancer, you’ll be in real good shape.
I believe skin cancer will eventually become part of every American’s fashion arsenal. “That’s a lovely growth, i Bambi. Twenty millimeters and right between your eyes. God, I’m so jealous!”
Before I leave this subject, I have two more ideas for the truly avant garde: How about living small, live mammals medically grafted onto your skin? Wouldn’t you like to have a prairie dog living in the middle of your chest, sharing your blood supply? How about an adult male Norwegian rat sewn onto the top of your head, keeping an eye on everything?
b
I think we also might take a page from Africa’s book and get into deliberate scarring. Not ritual scars that form coherent designs. Random scarring! Let a bunch of drunks with swords inflict hundreds of small, deep cuts on your skin. Or have a friend throw boiling grease all over you, then sit back and see what develops.
I don’t believe the body-decorating trend has reached its peak yet, and as it does, I shall try to be at the forefront, always pointing America toward the hot new look.
m glad sunscreen has been shown to be associated with more skin :r rather than less. It’s not in the mainstream media yet, but the st jump in skin cancer has occurred since the advent of sunscreens, kind of thing makes me happy. The fact that people, in pursuit of a ?ficial look of health, give themselves a fatal disease. I love it when oning” human beings think they have figured out how to beat thing and it comes right back and kicks them in the nuts. God bless aw of unintended consequences. And the irony is impressive: :hy people, trying to look healthier, make themselves sick. Good!
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And then when you get there, no one cares at all. No one even tries to read the writing. And all the other guys turn out to be dorks who will wear any piece of shit that’s handed to them. Like “Property of Alcatraz,” “No Fear,” “Gold’s Gym,” and “Life Is a Beach.” What a letdown.
Personally I haven’t worn T-shirts with writing on them for about ten years, but I do own what I consider to be the coolest T-shirt in the world. It’s plain white, and inside a kind of faded maroon circle, in an odd, feminine sort of print, it says, “Fuck the Cows.” But it’s about two sizes too small. Ain’t that always the way?
finally escaped what I think of as the “Coolest T-shirt Trap.” I real-that no matter how cool I think my T-shirt is, no one else is gonna i so, because everybody thinks they have the coolest T-shirt, rhere are times when you take fifteen minutes to pick out which
to wear, because you’re going to a place where there’ll be a :h of guys you’ve never met; guys you might even secretly want apress. So you settle on that special black, limited-edition num-that your brother brought back from the Middle East. The one
shows Saddam Hussein peeking out of a garbage can, flashing niddle finger and saying, “Ha ha, Mister Bush, you missed me. I
here at home all the time.” And you think, “No one has ever . a shirt like this; this will make them jealous. They’ll all want it wonder where I got it. I’ll definitely have the coolest T-shirt.”
You know how sometimes, at a busy cocktail party, when you’re telling a group of people a story, a few of them may become distracted, and you lose their attention? So you concentrate a little harder on the ones who are still listening? You know that feeling? And then, because it’s a lively party, a few more of them drift away? And as your audience slowly peels off one by one, after a while you wind up addressing any person you can find who’s willing look at you. Even the busboy. And then you realize the busboy doesn’t understand English. Isn’t that awful?
Sometimes, a person some distance away from you will say something you can’t quite understand, so you ask them to repeat it, and you still can’t make it out. You try two or three more times without any luck, and by then you’re getting embarrassed, so you pretend to understand, and just say, “Yeah!” so you can be done with it. Later, it turns out they said, “We’re coming over tonight to remove your wife’s ovaries. Will that be all right?”
EORGE C A R L I N
MTRKAU
One recent morning there was something I couldn’t remember. \ rt of knew what it was related to, but I couldn’t quite bring it i0 ind. It seemed like the letter m was involved. Then, suddenly, it car^ me. That was in the morning. Then, later that afternoon, evun ough I was able to recall my experience that morning of not beiw >le to remember something, I could no longer remember what t’fle ing was, what it was related to, or what letter of the alphabet ha(j >en involved. But what’s strange to me is that that morning, the fiySf me I couldn’t remember it, the thing did eventually come back to nie-iter that afternoon, however, in spite of my earlier success, I dreT/y a )mplete blank. I still don’t know what it was, and the nice thing js lat a month from now I will have no memory of the incident )ever. Unless, of course, something reminds me of it.
Hi! How are ya? You got your stuff with you? I’ll bet you do. Guys have stuff in their pockets; women have stuff jn their purses. Of course, some women have pockets, and some guys have purses. That’s okay. There’s all different ways; of carryin’ your stuff.
Then there’s all the stuff you have in your car. You ;got ^ stuff in the trunk. Lotta different stuff: spare tire, jack, to
And you’ve got other stuff in your car. In the glove b,0X-K Stuff you might need in a hurry: flashlight, map, sunglasises>
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automatic weapon. You know. Just in case you wind up barefoot on the highway some night.
So stuff is important. You gotta take care of your stuff. You gotta have a place for your stuff. Everybody’s gotta have a place for their stuff. That’s what life is all about, tryin’ to find a place for your stuff! That’s all your house is: a place to keep your stuff. If you didn’t have so much stuff, you wouldn’t need a house. You could just walk around all the time.
A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see that when you’re taking off in an airplane. You look down and see all the little piles of stuff. Everybody’s got his own little pile of stuff. And they lock it up! That’s right! When you leave your house, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn’t want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. ‘Cause they always take the good stuff! They don’t bother with that crap you’re saving. Ain’t nobody interested in your fourth-grade arithmetic papers. National Geographies, commemorative plates, your prize collection of Navajo underwear; they’re not interested. They just want the good stuff; the shiny stuff; the electronic stuff.
So when you get right down to it, your house is nothing more than a place to keep your stuff. . . while you go out and get . . . more stuff. ‘Cause that’s what this country is all about. Tryin’ to get more stuff. Stuff you don’t want, stuff you don’t need, stuff that’s poorly made, stuff that’s overpriced. Even stuff you can’t afford! Gotta keep on gettin’ more stuff. Otherwise someone else might wind up with more stuff. Can’t let that happen. Gotta have the most stuff.
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So you keep gettin’ more and more stuff, and puttin’ it in
(y different places. In the closets, in the attic, in the basement, in the garage. And there might even be some stuff you left at your parents’ house: baseball cards, comic books, photographs, souvenirs. Actually, your parents threw that stuff out long ago.
^ So now you got a houseful of stuff. And, even though
you might like your house, you gotta move. Gotta get a big-
\ ger house. Why? Too much stuff! And that means you gotta move all your stuff. Or maybe, put some of your stuff in storage. Storage! Imagine that. There’s a whole industry based on keepin’ an eye on other people’s stuff.
Or maybe you could sell some of your stuff. Have a yard sale, have a garage sale! Some people drive around all week-
0′ end just lookin’ for garage sales. They don’t have enough of their own stuff, they wanna buy other people’s stuff.
Or you could take your stuff to the swap meet, the flea market, the rummage sale, or the auction. There’s a lotta ways to get rid of stuff. You can even give your stuff away.
. The Salvation Army and Goodwill will actually come to your house and pick up your stuff and give it to people who don’t have much stuff. It’s part of what economists call the Redistribution of Stuff.
OK, enough about your stuff. Let’s talk about other people’s
^ stuff. Have you ever noticed when you visit someone else’s house, you never quite feel at home? You know why? No room for your stuff! Somebody else’s stuff is all over the place. And what crummy stuff it is! “God! Where’d they get this stuff?”
And you know how sometimes when you’re visiting someone, you unexpectedly have to stay overnight? It gets
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real late, and you decide to stay over? So they put you in a bedroom they don’t use too often . . . because Grandma died in it eleven years ago! And they haven’t moved any of her stuff? Not even the vaporizer?
Or whatever room they put you in, there’s usually a dresser or a nightstand, and there’s never any room on it for your stuff. Someone else’s shit is on the dresser! Have you noticed that their stuff is shit, and your shit is stuff? “Get this shit off of here, so I can put my stuff down!” Crap is also a form of stuff. Crap is the stuff that belongs to the person you just broke up with. “When are you comin’ over here to pick up the rest of your crap?”
Now, let’s talk about traveling. Sometimes you go on vacation, and you gotta take some of your stuff. Mostly stuff to wear. But which stuff should you take? Can’t take all your stuff. Just the stuff you really like; the stuff that fits you well that month. In effect, on vacation, you take a smaller, “second version” of your stuff.
Let’s say you go to Honolulu for two weeks. You gotta take two big suitcases of stuff. Two weeks, two big suitcases. That’s the stuff you check onto the plane. But you also got your carry-on stuff, plus the stuff you bought in the airport. So now you’re all set to go. You got stuff in the overhead rack, stuff under the seat, stuff in the seat pocket, and stuff in your lap. And let’s not forget the stuff you’re gonna steal from the airline: silverware, soap, blanket, toilet paper, salt and pepper shakers. Too bad those headsets won’t work at home.
And so you fly to Honolulu, and you claim your stuff— if the airline didn’t drop it in the ocean—and you go to the
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hotel, and the first thing you do is put away your stuff.
Q There’s lots of places in a hotel to put your stuff.
“I’ll put some stuff in here, you put some stuff in there. Hey, don’t put your stuff in therel That’s my stuff! Here’s another place! Put some stuff in here. And there’s another
0 place! Hey, you know what? We’ve got more places than we’ve got stuff! We’re gonna hafta go out and buy . . . more stuff.!!”
\ Finally you put away all your stuff, but you don’t quite
feel at ease, because you’re a long way from home. Still, you sense that you must be OK, because you do have some of your stuff with you. And so you relax in Honolulu on that basis. That’s when your friend from Maui calls and says, “Hey, why don’t you come over to Maui for the weekend and
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Oh no! Now whaddya bring? Can’t bring all this stuff. You
gotta bring an even smaller version of your stuff. Just enough
stuff for a weekend on Maui. The “third version” of your stuff.
And, as you’re flyin’ over to Maui, you realize that you’re
. really spread out now: You’ve got stuff all over the world!!
Stuff at home, stuff in the garage, stuff at your parents’ house
(maybe), stuff in storage, stuff in Honolulu, and stuff on the
plane. Supply lines are getting longer and harder to maintain!
Finally you get to your friends’ place on Maui, and they
^ give you a little room to sleep in, and there’s a nightstand. Not much room on it for your stuff, but it’s OK because you don’t have much stuff now. You got your 8 x 10 autographed picture of Drew Carey, a large can of gorgonzola-flavored Cheez Whiz, a small, unopened packet of brown confetti, a relief map of Corsica, and a family-size jar of peppermint-
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flavored, petrified egg whites. And you know that even though you’re a long way from home, you must be OK because you do have a good supply of peppermint-flavored, petrified egg whites. And so you begin to relax in Maui on that basis. That’s when your friend says, “Hey, I think tonight we’ll go over to the other side of the island and visit my sister. Maybe spend the night over there.”
Oh no! Now whaddya bring? Right! You gotta bring an even smaller version. The “fourth version” of your stuff. Just the stuff you know you’re gonna need: Money, keys, comb, wallet, lighter, hankie, pen, cigarettes, contraceptives, Vaseline, whips, chains, whistles, dildos, and a book. Just the stuff you hope you’re gonna need. Actually, your friend’s sister probably has her own dildos.
By the way, if you go to the beach while you’re visiting the sister, you’re gonna have to bring—that’s right—an even smaller version of your stuff: the “fifth version.” Cigarettes and wallet. That’s it. You can always borrow someone’s suntan lotion. And then suppose, while you’re there on the beach, you decide to walk over to the refreshment stand to get a hot dog? That’s right, my friend! Number six! The most important version of your stuff: your wallet! Your wallet contains the only stuff you really can’t do without.
Well, by the time you get home you’re pretty fed up with your stuff and all the problems it creates. And so about a week later, you clean out the closet, the attic, the basement, the garage, the storage locker, and all the other places you keep your stuff, and you get things down to manageable proportions. Just the right amount of stuff to lead a simple