Tuesday, June 24, 2008

George Carlin One-liners

George Carlin died at age 71 of his fourth heart attack. An article in today's paper ranked him as the county's 2nd best comedian behind Richard Pryor and ahead of Lenny Bruce. As a retired English teacher who loves the English language, including playing with its idiosyncrasies and vagaries, I've always appreciated Carlin's command of our language and his uncanny ability to poke fun at the hilarity of many of our idioms, often sagaciously expressing deep philosophical points as he mocked our language. In honor of Carlin's life, here are some of my favorite one-liners from his hilarious routines:

  • Saliva has been found to be a carcinogen, but only if ingested slowly over a long period of time.
  • Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?
  • If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?
  • Why is it called tourist season if we can't shoot at them?
  • Where do forest rangers go to "get away from it all?"
  • Can a stupid person be a smart-ass?
  • Does killing time damage eternity?
  • Why is it that night falls but day breaks?
  • Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations?
  • How do you get off a non-stop flight?
  • We have mileage, yardage, and footage. Why don't we have inchage?
  • The day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of your life.
  • I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, "Where's the self-help section?" She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.
  • Is it true that cannibals don't eat clowns because they taste funny?
  • One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.
  • If the police arrest a mime, do they tell him he has the right to remain silent?
  • Why do they put Braille on the drive-through bank machines?
  • How do blind people know when they are done wiping?
  • How do they get the deer to cross at that yellow road sign?
  • Why do we park in driveways and drive on parkways?

1 comment:

Goldenrod said...

You've chosen just delicious one-liners, Chuck. I'm going to do a direct link to this post from mine later. Thank you for reminding me how much I enjoyed him.