Brain Droppings

orrosiTE-sAHE-orrosiTE

Sometimes the same words mean opposite things. Sometimes the opposite is true. Shock absorbers are called shocks. Slow down and slow up are interchangeable. Bad taste is tasteless. Sports ifans say “turf” when they mean artificial turf. Something invaluable is; very valuable. I’ll bet you could care less. Or maybe you couldn’t care ieSs. Same difference. By the way, is it “from here on in” or “from he:re on out”?

X Palsable celery X The Arionese Syberation Limby X Footday Night Monball X Daise Don’t Please the Eatsies X A knocknical techout X The New Bork Yockerknickers X Beach the Combda

GEORGE CARL I N WHAT’S nr norivATion? <

What’s all this stuff about motivation? I say, if you need motivation, you probably need more than motivation. You probably need chemical intervention or brain surgery. Actually, if you ask me, this country could do with a little less motivation. The people who are causing all the trouble seem highly motivated to me. Serial killers stock swindlers, drug dealers, Christian Republicans. I’m not sure motivation is always a good thing. You show me a lazy prick who’s lying in bed all day, watching TV, only occasionally getting up to piss, and I’ll show you a guy who’s not causing any trouble. HE 6E0R0E CAR1II BOOKQUI ‘IK Oot Books OuttfeAtf Offer #2: ADVICE AND SEIE-HELP TITLES Where to Go for a Free Fuck

Eat, Run, Stay Fit, and Die Anyway X You Give Me Six Weeks and I’ll Give You Some Bad Disease X Why You Should Never Mambo with a Policeman X The Stains in Your Shorts Can Indicate Your Future X Earn Big Money by Sitting in Your Car Trunk

brain droppings «£ Where to Take a Short Woman

; Gave Up Hope and It Worked Just Fine

Why You Should Never Yodel During an Electrical Storm

Fill Your Life with Croutons ** 5u Ways to Screw Up Before Breakfast % I Suck, You Suck X Reorganizing Your Pockets X Where to Hide a Really Big Snot X Why You Must Never Give Yourself a Neck Operation X The Wrong Underwear Can Kill X Now You Can Cure Cancer by Simply Washing Up X Lightweight Summer Ensembles to Wear on the Toilet X Why No One Should Be Allowed Out Anymore X A Complete List of People Who Are Not Making Progress X Where to Throw Up Secretly X Ten Things No One Can Handle at All X Why You Should Not Sit for More Than Six Weeks in Your Own Filth THEIIEWZODIAC

We need new zodiac signs. The old ones depict an obsolete world: the archer, the water bearer, and—talk about obsolete—the virgin. What we need are modern zodiac signs that represent today’s reality: The Serial Rapist, the Lone Gunman, the Suicide Bomber, the

106

GEORGE CARL Paranoid Schizophrenic, the Transsexual Crackhead, the Money Launderer, the Disgruntled Postal Worker, the Diseased Homeless Veteran the South American Drug Lord, the Third-Generation Welfare Recipient the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, and … the Personal Trainer!

In case you’re one of those people who doesn’t relate well to the real world, here’s a nice, safe zodiac for you: the Soccer Mom, the Sensitive Male, the Special Needs Child, the Role Model, the Overachiever, the Jogger, the Little Leaguer, the Recycler, the Anchorperson, the Codependent, the Domino’s Delivery Boy, and … the Recovering Shopaholic.

brain droppings

ver in too big a hurry that I can’t stop and watch someone else’s suf-f ring. The bigger the accident the better, as far as I’m concerned. I

a

6IVE A HOOT

I don’t give a hoot. Not since 1959. That was the last one I gave. Wait! I think I gave a hoot in 1967. Just one. As a favor to a friend. But that was it. I’m not even sure I have any left. Frankly, I’d be afraid to look. I think I’m all out of hoots. If you want one, you’re go

I often hear otherwise intelligent people complaining about drivers who slow down when driving past a traffic accident. They curse them and call them “rubberneckers.” I don’t understand this at all. I a111

I have a cable cha

GEORGE CARLIN

America has no now. We’re reluctant to acknowledge the % present. It’s too embarrassing. Instead, we reach into the past. Our culture is composed of sequels, reruns, remakes, revivals, reissues, re-releases, recreations, re-enactments, adaptations, a

Of course, being essentially full of shit, we sometimes feel the need to dress up this past-preoccupation, as with pathetic references to reruns as “encore presentations.”

Even instant replay is a form of token nostalgia: a brief visit to the immediate past for reexaminination, before slap-“; ping it onto a highlight video for further review and re-review on into the indefinite future. Our “yestermania” includes fantasy baseball camps, where aging sad sacks pay money to catch baseballs thrown by men who were once their heroes. It is part of the fasci- A* nation with sports memorabilia, a “memory industry” so lucrative it has attracted counterfeiters. In this, the Age of Hyphens, we are truly retro-Americans. And our television newscasts not only reflect this condition, they feed it. Everything they report is twisted into some fa reference to the past. If there’s to be a summit meeting, you’ll be told all about the last six summits; if there’s a big earthquake, they’ll do a story about big earthquakes of the

brain droppings past; if there’s a mine disaster, you will hear about every mine disaster since the inception of mining. They’re obsessed with looking back. I swear I actually heard this during a newscast, as the anchorman went to a commercial break: he said, “Still ahead, a look back.” Honest.

“A look back: Hurricane Hugo, one year later.” Why? The a

Bugs Bu

There’s really no harm reviewing the past from time to time; knowing where you’ve been is part of knowing where you are, and all that happy horseshit. But the American media have an absolute fixation on this. They rob us of the present by insisting on the past. If they were able, I’m sure they would pay equal attention to the future. Trouble is, they don’t have any film on it.