The Urban Elf

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George Carlin has died. This was the first thing I heard as my alarm clock broke the morning silence with radio news. I know many have already posted on this so I’m not going to go on at length. Oddly enough I’m still a little dazed. George Carlin has made me laugh, made me think, since my early adolescence. Carlin’s humor was one of the first things I shared with the younger and seemingly hipper adults in my life and that leveling of the generational landscape informed the development of my own sense of humor. It is strange to know that he is no longer out there in the broader world stirring up much needed trouble, taking authority to task, helping us laugh at ourselves. I can only hope that he will attain some sort of secular afterlife, that though he is gone his work will continue to live and to inspire others to look more closely at the world around them; see the folly, illogic, hypocrisy inherent in our culture and language and outraged, bemused or confounded, rant about it just a little bit.

George Carlin
1937 – 2008
“Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.” – G. Carlin