Carlin Dead at 71.

I’ve been busy with this whole work thing so I’ve been unable to really keep y’all up to your eyebrows in goofing-off-at-work content. For this, I am sorry. But I’d rather not get fired since I sort of like my job. Actually, I really like my job. And I especially like getting paid and my nice Uptown apartment. So drafting that will comes before drafting a blog post.

Though I do appreciate when y’all ask if I’m dead or not. While I am not dead, George Carlin is.

I take my stand-up comedy very seriously, and George Carlin is one of the undeniable greats. He had an impeccable understanding of language and fought his entire life against euphemisms, as they are an assault on truth and honesty. His bit on how the term “shell-shock” became “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” isn’t one of his most famous, but it is one of my favorites. He hated how we stripped the words of all of their meaning to make ourselves more comfortable. PTSD sounds like another BS disorder a shrink has invented to justify their rates. Shell shock sounds exactly like what it is.

His greatness didn’t just lie in funny observations, but he attached meaning to those observations. David Cross has a comment in which he dismissed most comedians as “funny in a who gives a shit kind of way.” Carlin’s comedy meant something. He used it to barely mask his outrage at the way those in power brazenly lie to us through the manipulation of language. It was a losing battle, but most fights worth having are.