Black Humour Passage of the Day

[Daisy]

The hilarious musings of the great George Carlin (1937-2008):


I think people should be allowed to do anything they want. We haven't tried that for a while. Maybe this time it’ll work.

*****

I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a guy nailed to two pieces of wood.

*****

I'm always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy and I realize I'm listening to it.

*****

I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.

*****

If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

*****

If we could just find out who's in charge, we could kill him.

*****

If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten.

*****

Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn't mean the circus has left town.

*****

May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.

*****

Not only do I not know what's going on, I wouldn't know what to do about it if I did.

*****

The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, “You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.”

*****

When you're born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.

[Odalisque]

Quote Originally Posted by Daisy

The hilarious musings of the great George Carlin (1937-2008): If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

How very true!

[G. S. Carnivals]

nobody loses all the time

i had an uncle named
Sol who was a born failure and
nearly everybody said he should have gone
into vaudeville perhaps because my Uncle Sol could
sing McCann He Was A Diver on Xmas Eve like Hell Itself which
may or may not account for the fact that my Uncle

Sol indulged in that possibly most inexcusable
of all to use a highfalootin phrase
luxuries that is or to
wit farming and be
it needlessly
added

my Uncle Sol's farm
failed because the chickens
ate the vegetables so
my Uncle Sol had a
chicken farm till the
skunks ate the chickens when

my Uncle Sol
had a skunk farm but
the skunks caught cold and
died and so
my Uncle Sol imitated the
skunks in a subtle manner

or by drowning himself in the watertank
but somebody who'd given my Uncle Sol a Victor
Victrola and records while he lived presented to
him upon the auspicious occasion of his decease a
scrumptious not to mention splendiferous funeral with
tall boys in black gloves and flowers and everything and

i remember we all cried like the Missouri
when my Uncle Sol's coffin lurched because
somebody pressed a button
(and down went
my Uncle
Sol

and started a worm farm)

--e. e. cummings

[gveranon]

From "Uncoupling," by Barry N. Malzberg

An attendant appeared, neutered in flowing robes. Everything in the Towers is done for effect; go one inch under the surface and the substance disappears. Nevertheless, one must persevere. The world is plastic. The world is corrupt. Still, in or out of it there is no alternative.

"Je suis au pardonne, monsieur," the attendant said in execrable French. "Je desire a' service mais je non comprendre votre desiree...."

"Speak English!" I snarled, hitting the counter, a tall, bitter man in my late thirties, the snakes of purpose wending their way through his shattered but wise features. (I tend to depersonalize, sometimes lapsing even into the third person in my desperate attempts to scrape free of the trap of self: au pardonniere.) "Speak English!" the tall, bitter man shouted, his voice echoing through the amplifiers in the walls of the Towers, and the attendant trembled, adjusted his/her robes more tightly about himself/herself.

"Yes," he/she said. "I am here to help you, all of us are here to help you, but you must understand, you must simply understand that in order to achieve you must modulate..."

"I will not modulate!" I screamed, slamming a bitter fist into the gleaming and refractive surfaces of the desk. "There is no need for modulation. I am entitled to service, service and understanding -- don't you clowns understand this -- and furthermore," I added more quietly as several threatening robot policemen, noiseless on their canisters, glided into the reception area holding cans of Mace at ready, "anyway," I whispered to the attendant, the gentlest and most winsome of expressions chasing the snakes from the panels of the features, "this is one of my prescribed days for heterosex and I want to make the most of it. Time is money, after all, money is the barter of existence, and without time and money where would any of us be? I wish to engage in normative heterosex during this, my relaxative period." I perched an elbow on the desk, turned a non-threatening blink upon the attendant. "Pardon me for my haste," I added, "pardoniere moi au mon haste, je suis so needful."

The attendant foraged under the desk, produced a standard application form, passed it across to me. The robot policemen chattered to one another, their tentacles flicking in a consultative manner, and then as noiselessly as they emerged, withdrew, leaving the reception area blank and impermeable once again. I respect the means by which they maintain security here. Really, the Towers is in a difficult position, catering as it must to the full range of human desire and perversity, and if I were administering it, which I happily do not (the Government itself administers everything nowadays; the projections of the mid-1900s were absolutely correct), I would be even more forceful than they. People must learn to accept their condition. People must realize that in a world of poison, overpopulation, and enormous international tensions, where five people occupy the space biology would have reserved for only one, tensions accumulate and the only way that the world can be prevented from complete destruction is a firm administrative hand at the top. (I wrote my thesis on neo-Fascism and have in my cubicle a handy collection of whips that I am apt at jocular moments to lay merrily about myself and all visitors.)

[G. S. Carnivals]

"Later that afternoon Connolly sat back in a canvas chair on the deck of the launch. About half the Indians had returned and were wandering about the huts in a desultory manner, kicking at the fires. Ryker, his authority re-asserted, had returned to his bungalow.

'I thought you said they weren't cannibal,' Connolly reminded Pereira.

The captain snapped his fingers, as if thinking about something more important. 'No, they're not. Stop worrying, Lieutenant, you're not going to end up in a pot.' When Connolly demurred, he swung crisply on his heel. He had sharpened up his uniform, and wore his pistol belt and Sam Browne at their regulation position, his peaked cap jutting low over his eyes. Evidently Connolly's close escape had confirmed some private suspicion. 'Look, they're not cannibal in the dietary sense of the term, as used by the Food & Agriculture Organisation in its classification of aboriginal peoples.They won't stalk and hunt human game in preference for any other. But' - here the captain stared fixedly at Connolly - 'in certain circumstances, after a fertility ceremonial, for example, they will eat human flesh. Like all members of primitive communities which are small numerically, the Nambikwara never bury their dead. Instead, they eat them, as a means of conserving the loss and to perpetuate the corporeal identity of the departed. Now do you understand?'

Connolly grimaced. 'I'm glad to know now that I was about to be perpetuated.'"

J. G. Ballard - "A Question of Re-Entry"

[Daisy]

A glorious vintage routine by Sam Kinison (1953-1992):

“I got a real depressing letter from my folks about two weeks ago, because I haven’t been taking real good care of my money. They said, ‘Sam, we can’t send you any more money. You’re out of control, and you don’t know what the f--k you’re doing with your cash. And . . . you’re old enough to be on your own.’ I said, ‘Oh, okay’ . . . and I called them. I said, ‘Mom, get dad on the phone too, wake him up, I know it’s late, but I want you both to hear this. You know, before I was your little son, before I was your baby, before I was your LOAN, I was a free spirit in the next stage of life. I walked in the cosmos, not imprisoned by a body of flesh, but free, in a pure body of light. There were no questions, only answers, no weaknesses, only strengths, I was light, I was truth, I was a spiritual being, I was a God . . . but you had to F--K and bring my ass down HERE. I didn’t ask to be born! I didn’t call and say: ‘Hey, please have me so I could work in a f--kin’ Winchell’s someday!’ Now you want me to pay my own way? . . . F--K YOU! PICK UP THE F--KIN’ CHECK, MOM! PICK IT UP!”

[Vulture]

This is the story I can’t make head nor tail of it, somebody said: “You ought to write it down,” I can’t remember who, perhaps it was me, I get everything mixed up, it’s true sometimes when I’m being introduced to someone I concentrate so much I take on the same face as the person and the friend who is introducing us doesn’t know if it’s me or the other one, he just leaves me to sort it out for myself. Instead of saying: “Excuse me” and putting on my real face again, I explain why I like to look like people and get all mixed up again, my friend gets angry and the other person goes off saying she hasn’t got all day to waste she’s got shopping to do.

Mahu or The Material - Robert Pinget

[Inhumation]

People keep a dog and are ruled by this dog, and even Schopenhauer was ruled in the end not by his head, but by his dog. This fact is more depressing than any other. Fundamentally it was not Schopenhauer’s head that determined his thought, but Schopenhauer’s dog. It was not the head that hated Schopenhauer’s world, but Schopenhauer’s dog. I don’t have to be demented to assert that Schopenhauer had a dog on his shoulders and not a head. People love animals because they are incapable even of loving themselves. Those with the very basest of souls keep dogs, allowing themselves to be tyrannized and finally ruined by their dogs. They give the dog pride of place in their hypocrisy, which in the end becomes a public menace. - Thomas Bernhard

[Viva June]

As described by Kay Redfield Jamison in Night Falls Fast, the suicide of James Whale (director of the classic Frankenstein adaptation) was a doubly ironic event:

Morbidly afraid of water, he then drowned himself in his swimming pool.

[Bleak&Icy]