Tuesday, 24 June 2008

George Carlin

Seven words for the late, great standup comic George Carlin:

Innovative - pioneering - brilliant - unrepentant - hippy - dippy - weatherman.

Thank you George Carlin for fighting the good fight on the language front.

For those who have been living on Mars for the past half century, this is how George says in his most famous - and literally arresting - routine in the 1970s:

"There are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven of them you can't say on television. What a ratio that is: 399,993 to seven. They must really be bad."

While most of those seven words, and their variations, have since become common on television and in a few liberal Canadian newspapers, few Googled news coverage links provide the words.

The Village Voice in New York is an exception, providing not only the seven words, but Carlin's complete monologue.

The Independent in London, England, caps its lengthy tribute to Carlin with the seven words, preceded by a caution not to read them if easily offended.

We were not alone in our search - searchengineland.com says searches for the seven words spiked after George's death on Sunday.

George Carlin - 1937-2008.

Who would have thought the forever young George Carlin would go (.) (.) up at 71? He should have kept us laughing into his 80s or 90s.

We'll miss ya, George. Thanks for the laughs and the logic.

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