The Icepick Cometh

My favorite quote after reading the coverage of George Carlin, who died Sunday at age 71:

“Scratch any cynic,” he said, “and you’ll find a disappointed idealist.”

"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."

Not entirely off-topic:

A photo of George Carlin was on the cover of Monday's USA Today with an appetizer of some of his well-known jokes and bits surrounding him — "Seven Words You Can't Say on Television," "JUMBO Shrimp," "Hippy-Dippy Weatherman."

I swear he was either rolling over in his grave or laughing from beyond at the sheer absurdity of the mere existence of USA Today and its corporate ownership, responsible more than any other newspaper for the dumbing down of America, and all it made me want to do is curse Al Neuharth for inventing something as shitty as USA Today and and forever vowing to hold it against any writer who ever worked for Gannett merely for contributing to the lowering of the level of intelligence in this county — something George Carlin couldn't help but laugh and be angry about when he said "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that" — and then I realized that George Carlin is now gone and USA Today is with us forever and I was sad.