A Defender of Language Freedom Coagulates

George Carlin died Sunday, June 22, 2008, at age 71.

A brilliant observer of human nature and an unblinking realist, Carlin's humor cut through all the bullshit that we humans like to believe about ourselves and reminded us that, at base, we are just more dust in a very dusty universe. His insistence on the right to say anything, anytime, anywhere, took his work all the way to the Supreme Court, who judged the noises he made as "indecent." How wonderful that he lived long enough to deliver those glorious, unfettered cable performances with way more than seven "dirty words"!

And how lucky we all are to have his many records and performance to study. A person could learn an awful lot about general semantics from this man who established, unequivocally that "the word is not the thing" (in all senses of the word! ;-)

From George himself, this epitaph: "Weather forecast for tonight: dark. Continued dark overnight, with widely scattered light by morning."

Morning light will be a little harder to come by for a while.

Goodbye, GC.