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GEORGE CARLIN: BACK IN TOWN (1996) – Full transcript

Back in Town is George Carlin’s 15th album and ninth HBO special. It was also released on CD on September 17, 1996. This was also his first of many performances at the Beacon Theater in New York City

“Abortion”
Why, why, why, why is it that most of the people who are against abortion are people you wouldn’t want to fuck in the first place, huh? Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren’t they? They’re all in favor of the unborn. They will do anything for the unborn. But once you’re born, you’re on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don’t want to know about you. They don’t want to hear from you. No nothing. No neonatal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you’re preborn, you’re fine; if you’re preschool, you’re fucked.
Conservatives don’t give a shit about you until you reach “military age”. Then they think you are just fine. Just what they’ve been looking for. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. Pro-life… pro-life… These people aren’t pro-life, they’re killing doctors! What kind of pro-life is that? What, they’ll do anything they can to save a fetus but if it grows up to be a doctor they just might have to kill it’They’re not pro-life. You know what they are? They’re anti-woman. Simple as it gets, anti-woman. They don’t like them. They don’t like women.They believe a woman’s primary role is to function as a brood mare for the state.
Pro-life… You don’t see many of these white anti-abortion women volunteering to have any black fetuses transplanted into their uteruses, do you? No, you don’t see them adopting a whole lot of crack babies, do you? No, that might be something Christ would do. And, you won’t see alot of these pro-life people dousing themselves in kerosene and lighting themselves on fire. You know, moraly committed religious people in South Vietnam knew how to stage a goddamn demonstration, didn’t they?! They knew how to put on a fucking protest. Light yourself on FIRE!! C’mon, you moral crusaders, let’s see a little smoke. To match that fire in your belly.
Here’s another question I have: how come when it’s us, it’s an abortion, and when it’s a chicken, it’s an omelette? Are we so much better than chickens all of a sudden? When did this happen, that we passed chickens in goodness? Name six ways we’re better than chickens… See, nobody can do it! You know why? ‘Cuz chickens are decent people. You don’t see chickens hanging around in drug gangs, do you? No, you don’t see a chicken strapping some guy to a chair and hooking up his nuts to a car battery, do you? When’s the last chicken you heard about came home from work and beat the shit out of his hen, huh? Doesn’t happen. ‘Cuz chickens are decent people.
But let’s get back to this abortion shit. Now, is a fetus a human being? This seems to be the central question. Well, if a fetus is a human being, how come the census doesn’t count them? If a fetus is a human being, how come when there’s a miscarriage they don’t have a funeral? If a fetus is a human being, how come people say “we have two children and one on the way” instead of saying “we have three children?” People say life begins at conception, I say life began about a billion years ago and it’s a continuous process. Continuous, just keeps rolling along. Rolling, rolling, rolling along.
And say you know something? Listen, you can go back further than that. What about the carbon atoms? Hah? Human life could not exist without carbon. So is it just possible that maybe we shouldn’t be burning all this coal? Just looking for a little consistency here in these anti-abortion arguments. See the really hardcore people will tell you life begins at fertilization. Fertilization, when the sperm fertilizes the egg. Which is usually a few moments after the man says “Gee, honey, I was going to pull out but the phone rang and it startled me.” Fertilization.
But even after the egg is fertilized, it’s still six or seven days before it reaches the uterus and pregnancy begins, and not every egg makes it that far. Eighty percent of a woman’s fertilized eggs are rinsed and flushed out of her body once a month during those delightful few days she has. They wind up on sanitary napkins, and yet they are fertilized eggs. So basically what these anti-abortion people are telling us is that any woman who’s had more than more than one period is a serial killer! Consistency. Consistency. Hey, hey, if they really want to get serious, what about all the sperm that are wasted when the state executes a condemned man, one of these pro-life guys who’s watching cums in his pants, huh? Here’s a guy standing over there with his jockey shorts full of little Vinnies and Debbies, and nobody’s saying a word to the guy. Not every ejaculation deserves a name.
Now, speaking of consistency, Catholics, which I was until I reached the age of reason, Catholics and other Christians are against abortions, and they’re against homosexuals. Well who has less abortions than homosexuals?! Leave these fucking people alone, for Christ sakes! Here is an entire class of people guaranteed never to have an abortion! And the Catholics and Christians are just tossing them aside! You’d think they’d make natural allies. Go look for consistency in religion. And speaking of my friends the Catholics, when John Cardinal O’Connor of New York and some of these other Cardinals and Bishops have experienced their first pregnancies and their first labor pains and they’ve raised a couple of children on minimum wage, then I’ll be glad to hear what they have to say about abortion. I’m sure it’ll be interesting. Enlightening, too. But, in the meantime what they ought to be doing is telling these priests who took a vow of chastity to keep their hands off the altar boys! Keep your hands to yourself, Father! You know? When Jesus said “Suffer the little children come unto me”, that’s not what he was talking about!
So you know what I tell these anti-abortion people? I say “Hey. Hey. If you think a fetus is more important then a woman, try getting a fetus to wash the shit stains out of your underwear. For no pay and no pension.” I tell them “Think of an abortion as term limits. That’s all it is. Bioligical term limits.

“Sanctity of Life”
But you know, the longer you listen to this abortion debate, the more you hear this phrase ‘sanctity of life’. You’ve heard that. Sanctity of life. You believe in it? Personally, I think it’s a bunch of shit. Well, I mean, life is sacred? Who said so? God? Hey, if you read history, you realise that God is one of the leading causes of death. Has been for thousands of years. Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians all taking turns killing each other ‘cuz God told them it was a good idea. The sword of God, the blood of the land, veangence is mine. Millions of dead motherfuckers. Millions of dead motherfuckers all because they gave the wrong answer to the God question. ‘You believe in God?’ ‘No.’ *Pdoom*. Dead. ‘You believe in God?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘You believe in my God? ‘No.’ *Poom*. Dead. ‘My God has a bigger dick than your God!’ Thousands of years. Thousands of years, and all the best wars, too. The bloodiest, most brutal wars fought, all based on religious hatred. Which is fine with me. Hey, any time a bunch of holy people want to kill each other I’m a happy guy. But don’t be giving me all this shit about the sanctity of life. I mean, even if there were such a thing, I don’t think it’s something you can blame on God. No, you know where the sanctity of life came from? We made it up. You know why? ‘Cuz we’re alive. Self-interest. Living people have a strong interest in promoting the idea that somehow life is sacred. You don’t see Abbott and Costello running around, talking about this shit, do you? We’re not hearing a whole lot from Musolini on the subject. What’s the latest from JFK? Not a goddamn thing. ‘Cuz JFK, Musolini and Abbott and Costello are fucking dead. They’re fucking dead. And dead people give less than a shit about the sanctity of life. Only living people care about it so the whole thing grows out of a completely biased point of view. It’s a self serving, man-made bullshit story. It’s one of these things we tell ourselves so we’ll feel noble. Life is sacred. Makes you feel noble. Well let me ask you this: if everything that ever lived is dead, and everything alive is gonna die, where does the sacred part come in? I’m having trouble with that. ‘Cuz, I mean, even with all this stuff we preach about the sanctity of life, we don’t practice it. We don’t practice it. Look at what we’d kill: Mosquitos and flies. ‘Cuz they’re pests. Lions and tigers. ‘Cuz it’s fun! Chickens and pigs. ‘Cuz we’re hungry. Pheasants and quails. ‘Cuz it’s fun. And we’re hungry. And people. We kill people… ‘Cuz they’re pests. And it’s fun! And you might have noticed something else. The sanctity of life doesn’t seem to apply to cancer cells, does it? You rarely see a bumper sticker that says ‘Save the tumors.’. Or ‘I brake for advanced melanoma.’. No, viruses, mold, mildew, maggots, fungus, weeds, E. Coli bacteria, the crabs. Nothing sacred about those things. So at best the sanctity of life is kind of a selective thing. We get to choose which forms of life we feel are sacred, and we get to kill the rest. Pretty neat deal, huh? You know how we got it? We made the whole fucking thing up! Made it up! The same way… thank you.

“Capital Punishment”
The same way we made up the death penalty. We made them both up, Sanctity of life and the death penalty. Aren’t we versatile? And you know, in this country, now there are alot of people who want to expand the death penalty to include drug dealers. This is really stupid. Drug dealers aren’t afraid to die. They’re already killing each other every day on the streets by the hundreds. Drive-bys, gang shootings, they’re not afraid to die. Death penalty doesn’t mean anything unless you use it on people who are afraid to die. Like… the bankers who launder the drug money. The bankers, who launder, the drug money. Forget the dealers, you want to slow down that drug traffic, you got to start executing a few of these fucking bankers. White, middle class Republican bankers.
And I’m not talking about soft, American executions, like lethal injection. I’m talking about fucking crucifixion folks! Let’s bring back crucifixions. A form of capital punishment the Christians and Jews of America can really appreciate. And I’d go a little further, I’d crucify people upside-down. Like Saint Peter, feet up, head down. And naked. I’d have naked upside-down crucifixions on TV once a week at halftime on the Monday Night Football game! Halftime! Monday Night! The Monday Night Crucifixions! You’d have people tuning in, don’t even care about Football! Wouldn’t you like to hear Dan Dierdorf explain why the nails have to go in at a certain angle? And I’ll guarantee you one thing. You start execut- you start nailing one white banker per week to a big wooden cross, you’re going to see that drug traffic begin to slow down pretty fucking quick. Pretty fucking quick- you won’t even be able to buy drugs in schools and prisons anymore!
Now, I don’t care about capital punishment one way or another ‘cuz I know it dosn’t do anything. It doesn’t do anything, ‘cept maybe satisfy a kind of Biblical need for revenge. You know, if you read The Bible, you see that it’s full of retrebution and revenge. So really, capital punishment is kind of a religious ritual. It’s a purification right. It’s a modern sacrament. And as long as that’s true, I say, let’s liven it up a little! I honestly believe that if you make the death penalty a little more entertaining and learn to market it correctly, you just might be able to raise enough money to balance the stupid fucking budget!! Balance the stupid fucking budget!!
And don’t forget, the polls show the American people want capital punishment, and they want a balanced budget. And I think even in a fake democracy, people ought to get what they want once in a while. Just to feed this illusion that they’re really in charge. Let’s use capital punishment the same way we use sports and television in this country, to distract people and take their minds off how bad they’re being fucked by the upper one percent. Now, unfortunately, unfortunately Monday Night Football doesn’t last long enough. What we really need is year-round capital punishment on TV every night with sponsors. Gotta have sponsors. I’m sure as long as we’re killing people Marlboro Cigarettes and Dow Chemical would be proud to participate! Proud to participate! Balance the stupid fucking budget!!
And- and let me say this to you my interesting judaeo-christian friends. Not only- not only do I recommend crucifixions, I’d be in favor of bringing back beheadings!! Huh? Beheadings on TV, slow-motion, instant replay? And maybe you could let the heads roll down a little hill. And fall into one of five numbered holes. Let the people at home gamble on which hole the head is going to fall into. And you do it in a stadium so the mob can gamble on it too. Raise a little more money. And if you want to expand the violence a little longer to sell a few more commercials, instead of using an axe, you do the beheadings with a hand saw! Hey, don’t bail out on me now, God damnit! The blood is already on our hands, all we’re talking about is a matter of degree. You want something a little more delicate, we’ll do the beheadings with an olive fork. That would be nice. And it would take a good God damn long time. There’s a lot of good things we could be doing.
When’s the last time we burned someone at the stake? It’s been too long! Here’s another form of capital punishment, comes out of a nice, rich, religious tradition. Burning people at the stake. Sponsor: Britchford Charcoal. And you put it on TV on Sunday mornings. The Sunday Morning Evangelical Send Us An Offering Praise Jesus Human Bonfire! You don’t think that would get big ratings? In this sick fucking country?! Shit you’d have people skipping church to watch this stuff! And you take the money they send in and the offerings and you use it to balance the budget.
What about boiling people in oil? Boy those were the days weren’t they? You get the oil going real good, you know, a nice high rolling boil. And then slowly, at the end of a rope, you lower the perpatrator headfirst into the boiling oil. Huh? You talk about fun shit! And just to encourage citizen participation, you let the mob in the stadium control the speed of the rope. Good, clean, wholesome family entertainment. The kids’ll love it. The kids’ll love it. And at the same time they’re enjoying themselves, we’re teaching then a nice, Christian moral lesson. Boiling people in oil. Sponsor: Crisco! And maybe, maybe instead of boiling all these guys every now and then you could french-fry a couple of them, you know. French-fried felons. Dip a guy in egg batter, just for a goof, you know? Kind of a Tempura thing, huh? Jeffrey Dahmer neverthought of this shit did he?! Jeffrey Dahmer, eat you heart out!! Which is an interesting thought, in and of itself!
Alright, enough nostalgia, what about some modern forms of capital punishment. How about we throw a guy off the World Trade Center and whoever he lands on wins the Publisher’s Clearing House? OK something a little more sophisticated, you dip a guy in brown gravy and lock him in a small room with a wolverine who’s high on angel dust. There’s one guy’s not going to be fucking with to many kids at the bus stop for a while. Here’s something really nice you could do. You shoot a guy out of a high-speed catapult… right into a brick wall!! Trouble is, it would be over too quick. No good for TV, you know? You’d have to do a whole bunch of guys right in a row. Rapid-fire capital punishment. Fifteen catapults, while you’re shooting off one, you’re loading up the others. ‘Course every now and then you would have to stop to clean off the wall. Cleanliness… right next to Godliness. Alright hi-tech. I sense some of yous are waiting for hi-tech. I got it. You take a small, tactical nuclear weapon… and stick it up a guy’s ass! A thermo-nuclear suppository! Preparation H-Bomb! You talk about fallout, huh? Woah! Or, you take the bomb and you stick it just inside that little hole on the end of a guy’s dick. Yeah, a bomb, in a dick! When it goes off, the guy wouldn’t know whether he was cumming or going!! Ah! Get outta here!! I gotcha! Hey… listen… I got alot of good ideas. Balance the stupid fucking budget.

“State Prison Farms”
Here’s another idea. I’m going to save you a whole lot of money on prisons, but at the same time we are still going to remove from society many of our more annoying citizens. Four groups are going away permanently. First group: Violent criminals. Here’s what you do with these Emmy award winners. You take the entire state of Kansas. You move everybody out. You give them a couple of hundred dollars for their inconvinience, you know. Got to be fair. And then, you move them out, you put a big ten story electric fence around Kansas and Kansas becomes a permanent prison farm for violent criminals. No parole, no police, no supplies, the only thing you give them is lethal weapons and live ammunition, so they can communicate in a meaningful way. Then you put the whole thing on Cable TV. The Violence Network, VNN. And for a corporate sponsor, you get one of those companies that loves to smear it’s logo feces all over the landscape. Budweiser will jump at this shit in half a minute. Alright, next group: sex criminals. Completely incurable, you got to lock them up. You could outlaw religion and in most cities sex crimes would disappear in a couple of generations. But we don’t have time for rational solutions! Much easier to fence off another rectangular state. Rectangular states are cheaper to fence, saves the taxpayers money, you know? This time Wyoming. But only for true sex offenders. We’re not going to bother consenting adults who like to dress up in leather boy scout uniforms and smash each other in the head with ball-peen hammers while they take turns blowing their cat. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that. It’s a victimless hobby. And think of how good the cat must feel! No, we’re only going to lock up rapists and molesters. Those hopeless romantics. Who’re so full of love they can’t help getting a little of it on you. Usually on your leg. You take all of these heavy breathing fun seekers, and you stick them in Wyoming. And you let them suck, fuck, and fondle, you let them blow, chew, sniff lick whip gobble and cornhole each other, until their testicles are whistling ‘Oh Come All Ye Faithful’! And, and you turn on the cameras and you’ve got The Sperm Channel! And don’t forget our corporate sponsor, we’re going to let Budweiser put little logo patches on the rapist’s pant right here, ‘This Bud’s for you’! Alright, next group: Drug addicts and alcoholics. Not all of them, don’t get nervous. Just the ones who are making life difficult for at least one other person. And we’re not going to bother first offenders. People deserve a chance to clean up. Everyone will get… twelve chances to clean up. Alright, fifteen! Fifteen! that’s fine, and that’s it, if you can’t make it in fifteen tries, off you go *fwit* to Colorado! Colorado! The perfect- a perfect place for staying loaded. Each week, all of the illegal drugs confiscated in the United States – that the police and D.E.A. don’t keep for their own personal use – will be air-dropped into Colorado. And we’re going to turn the Coors brewery over to the beer-drinking assholes, and everyone can stay wasted wired stoned bombed hammered smashed and shitfaced round the clock on another new cable channel, Shitface Central ‘This is the real Rocky Mountain HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGH!!! OK I’ve saved my favorite group for last. The maniacs and crazy people. Yeah. The ones who live out where the buses don’t run. And I distinguish between maniacs and crazy people. A maniac will beat nine people to death with a steel dildo. A crazy person will beat nine people to death with a steel dildo, but he’ll be wearing a Bugs Bunny suit at the time. So you can’t put them all away. You know you got to keep some of them around just for the entertainment. Like a guy who tells you the King of Sweden is using his penis as a radio transmitter to send anti-semitic lesbian meatloaf recipies to Soupy Sales and Marvin Hamlisch. A guy like that you want to give him his own radio show. No, the maniac farm will be reserved strictly for hopeless cases. Like a guy who gets a big tattoo on his chest of Liza Minnelli taking a shit, you know? And he tells you if he wiggles a certain way it looks like she’s wiping her ass, you know? A guy like that, you want to get him into custody as quickly as possible. Now, for the maniac farm, I think there’s no question we got to go with Utah. Utah. Easy to fence. Easy to fence. Right next to Wyoming and Colorado and Colorado is right next to Kansas, and that means all four groups of our most amusing citizens are now in one place. Except for the big fences. And I think I have another one of my really good ideas for Cable TV. Gates. Small sliding gates in the fences. Think of what you’ve got here. Think of what you’ve got. Predators, degenerates, crackheads and fruitcakes. Nine hundred miles of fence separating them. Every fifty miles you put a small sliding gate. But, the gates are only ten inches wide and they’re only open once a month… for seven seconds. And you know something? Fuck Cable, this shit has got to be on Pay-Per-View. Because, if those gates are only open seven seconds a month, you are going to have some mighty interesting people pushing and shoving to be first in line. Deeply disturbed armed cranky lunatics on drugs. You know the ones. Lot of tattoos… lot of teeth broken off at the gumline… the true face of America. And every time you open the gates, some of the more aggressive ones are going to get through. The creme de la creme. The alphas. They’re going to get through, they’re going to find each other and they’re going to cross-breed. And pretty soon you’ll have a melting pot. Child killers corpse fuckers drug zombies and full-blown wack-a-loons. Wandering the landscape in search of truth and fun. Just like now! Everyone will have guns, everyone will have drugs, and no one will be in charge. Just like now! But at least we’ll have a balanced budget.

“Farting in Public”
“Hey, hey, hey. Time for a few fart jokes. Where would a comedy show be without a few fart jokes? Question. Did ya ever have to fart on a bus or an airplane, or in some public place, but you hadn’t been farting all that day so you didn’t really know the nature of the beast. You only knew there was LOTS of it. In a situation like that, what you have to do is to release a test fart. You have to arrange to release, quietly and in a carefully controlled manner, about 10-15% of the total fart, in order to determine if those around you can handle it. Or, if in fact you may be about to precipitate a public health emergency. When releasing a test fart, it is often good to engage in an act of subterfuge, such as reaching for a magazine. “Say, is that golf digest?” That doesn’t smell too horrifying. In fact, in an odd way it’s rather pleasant. I think they oughta enjoy the rest of this baby. And it turns out to be one of those farts that’ll strip the varnish off a foot locker. A fart that could end a marriage. And everyone around you heads for the exits… even the people on the airplane, as you realize it’s time to review your fiber intake. It might not be necessary after all each morning to eat an entire wicker swingset.”

“Familiar Expressions”
“This next thing. This next thing is about the English language. Its about little expressions we use. The little expressions, we all use them all the time. And we never really seem to examine these expressions very carefully at all. We just sort of say these things, as if they really made sense. Like. “Legally Drunk”. Well if its legal? Whats the fuckin’ problem!? Hey! Leave my friend alone officer, he’s legally drunk!” You know you can stick it. Why do we always assume people can know where they can stick it? Suppose you don’t know, suppose your a new guy. You have absolutely no idea where to stick it. I think there ought to be a government title on “Where to Stick it”. Now that i think of it, i belive there is a government booklet like that, they send it to ya on April 15th. Undisputed Heavyweight Champion. Well if its undisputed, whats all the fighting about? It’s the quiet ones ya gotta watch. Ya know that one eh? Everytime ya see a story about a serial killer on T.V. What do they do? they bring on the neighbor. And the neighbor says “Well, he was always very quiet.” And someone in the room says “Its the quiet ones ya gotta watch. This sounds to me like a very dangerous assumption. I will bet you anything that while your watching a quiet one, a noisy one will fucking kill you! Suppose your in a bar and one guy is reading a book not bothering anybody and another is standing in the front with a machete banging on the door saying “I’LL KILL THE NEXT MOTHER FUCKER WHO COMES IN HERE!” ……who ya gonna watch? Ya goddam right. Lock em up and throw away the key. This is really stupid. Where ya gonna throw the key? Right out in front of the jail? His friends will find it! How far can you throw a key? 60. 50 feet at the most. Even if ya lay it flat on its side like that, and scale it. Waddya get? An extra 10 feet, tops. This is a stupid idea. Needs to be completely rethought. Down the tubes. Hear that one a lot, the people say “Ahhh the country is goin’ down the tubes” …..What tubes? Have you seen any tubes? Where are these tubes? And where do they go? And how come there’s more then one tube? It would seem to me, one country, one tube. What, does every state have to have its own tube now? One tube is all ya need. But a tube that big, somebody would have seen it by now. “somebody would of been like “hey, Joey, joey, look at the fuckin’ tube” Big ass fuckin’ tube ova here. Ya never hear that. Ya know why? No tubes. We don’t have tube 1. We are essentially, tubeless. Takes the cake. Ya know, say “Boy he really takes the cake”……Where? Where do ya take a cake? to the movies? Ya know where i would take a cake, down to the bakery, to see the otha cakes. And how come he takes the cake, how come he doesn’t take the pie? The pie is easier carrying then the cake. Easy as pie. Hey,wait. Cake is not too hard to carry either. Piece of cake. The greatest thing since sliced bread! So this is it, huh folks? Couple hundred thousand years, The fuckin’ pyramids for christ sake! Panama Canal! The great wall of China! Even a lava lamp. To me is greater then sliced bread. Whats so great about sliced bread? Ya got a knife, ya got a loaf of bread, SLICE THE FUCKIN’ THING! And get on with your life. Out walkin’ the streets. Ya know guy gets a parole. “Now instead of being in prison this guy is out walkin’ the streets”. How do we know? Maybe the guys home bangin’ the baby sitter. Not everyone who gets a parole is out walkin’ the fuckin’ streets. Lotta times they steal a car ya know. But we oughta be glad. Thank god he stole a car, least he’s not out walkin’ the streets. Fine and dandy. That’s an old fashion one, isn’t it, yea. Say to a guy “How are ya” “Fine and dandy” Not me, i never say that, ya know how come? Cause I’m never both of those things at the same time. Sometimes I’m fine, not dandy. Close to dandy, approaching dandy, in the vicinity of dandyhood, not quite fully dandy. Other times, i am indeed, highly dandy. However, not fine. One time, one time. 1965. August. For about an hour. I was both fine and dandy for about the same time. BUT NOBODY ASKED ME HOW I WAS! And I could of told ’em. I could of told ’em. I could of told em. I could of said to the person, Fine and Dandy. I consider it a lost opportunity. Walkin’ Papers. Ya know, guy gets fired. they say “Jeez, poor guy well they gave him his walkin’ papers today.” Did you ever get any walkin’ papers? Seriously? Believe me in my life i got fired a lot of times. You can tell. Never got any walkin’ papers. Never got a pink slip, either. Ya know what i would get? A guy would come around to my desk and say “GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!” You don’t need paper for that. It’s like the riot act. The riot act. They keep tellin’ ya there gonna read that to ya. Have you heard this thing at all? Especially when your a kid, they threaten ya. “You wait till ya father comes home, hes gonna read you the riot act!” Tell him I already read it myself! And I didn’t like it either. I consider it wordy and poorly thought out. He wants to read me somethin’ how about the Gentlemens guide to the Golden Age of Blow Jobs (Golden Age of Blow Jobs… I don’t know either). More then happy. I bet you say that sometimes, don’t ya? Once in a while you say to somebody. “Ohhh I’d be more then happy to do that.” How can you be more then happy? To me this sounds like a dangerous mental condition. “We had to put Dave in the mental home. He was, whahaha, more then happy”. One more of these. In your own words. People say that to you. ya know, they did that a lot in the classroom. Or in a court room. They’ll say to ya “Tell us, in your own words”. Do you have your own words? Hey, I’m using the ones everybody else has been using. Next time they tell ya to say something in your own words say “nikwakquarndayquanfloo!”

“Free-Floating Hostility”
Now this next piece of material is real simple. it’s called free-floating hostility. 24 minor cultural items I’m bored with, tired of, and pissed at. So i hope you’re ready for a little random anger. People… people… PEOPLE who make quote marks in the air with their fingers. Are you tired of these people yet? He said he was “Sober”. hey lady, “EAT ME”! Budda-boom budda-bing. The next guy who says to me “budda-boom budda-bing” is getting kicked right in the fucking nuts. Budda-boom mother-fucker! You want to try budda-bing? Bad hair day. Where did this shit come from? What a superficial culture. Put on a hat and go to work you shallow cunt. It’s a good thing lewis and clark never had a bad hair day, or daniel boone huh? custer: he had a REALLY bad hair day. But he had it coming, that blond, blue-eyed, criminal fuck. What about these guys that tell you: “I heard that…”, “I heard that…”, oh you did did you? Well isn’t this exciting… what is this, a fucking hearing test? Did I wonder into a beltone commercial here? Of course you “heard” you fucking nimrod. I’m standing right next to ya… I’m going to move down here… I’m going to move a little farther away… BLOW ME! by any chance did you hear that? What about these people who tell you their needs aren’t being met? You run into this stuff? this is support-group shit, twelve-steppers. “my needs aren’t being met”. Know what i tell them? “DROP SOME OF YOUR NEEDS”. Life is a zero-sum game. What else is troubling me? Mickey Mouse’s birthday being announced on the television news as if it’s an actual event. i don’t give a shit. if i cared about mickey mouse’s birthday, I’d have memorized it years ago, and I’d send him a card: “dear mickey happy birthday love George”. I don’t do that, why? because i don’t give a shit. fuck mickey mouse. fuck him in the asshole with a big rubber dick, then break it off and beat him with the rest of it. i hope mickey dies. i do, i hope he god-damn dies. i hope he gets a hold of some tainted cheese, and dies lonely and forgotten, behind the baseboard of a soiled bathroom, in a poor neighborhood, with his hand in Goofy’s pants. Mickey Mouse – no wonder no one in the world takes our country serious. why do we waste valuable television-time, informing our citizens of the age of an imaginary rodent. Now let me ask you this: the two pandas in the zoo, do you care if they fuck? i don’t. why don’t they stop telling me on the news “the pandas didn’t fuck again this year”. I’m not concerned. i have no emotional stake in panda fucking, all right? if they want to they will, if not, they’ll watch the price is right. probably the only reason they’re not doing it on time is ’cause some jack-off from the environmental movement has moved into the cage with them. could you get a hard-on if some guy in a green t-shirt with a stopwatch was taking your girlfriend’s rectal temperature? leave these creatures alone! And as long as were talking about the news, i don’t want to hear anything more about sperm-egg donor, surrogate, in vetro, test-tube, biological, adoptive foster parents who want their baby back. baby jane, baby ruth, baby this, baby that, baby it’s cold outside, i don’t give a shit. leave me alone and keep it off my tv. Sick American shit. I’m also tired of hearing about “innocent victims”. this is an outmoded idea. there are no “innocent victims”. if you live on this planet, you’re guilty. period. fuck you. end of report, next case. NEXT FUCKING CASE! next case. your birth certificate is proof of guilt. And what happened in this country that now suddenly everyone is walking around with their own personal bottle of water? when did we get so thirsty in America? is everybody so dehydrated they have to have their own portable supply of fluids with them at all times? get a drink before you leave the house. Another crime against society: hyphenated names. Hey lady, pick a fucking name would you please? Pick a fucking name. “Hi I’m Emily Jericho-Fordescu”. Hi I’m George jerk-me-off-fuck-you-too. You don’t acquire personal dignity by adding a name to your name. Feminists think it’s a “radical act”. It’s not. Castrating a guy in a parking lot with a coke bottle is a radical act. Hyphenating your name is pretentious bullshit. And what is going on with all these telephone-calling plans? Mci, at&t, is this shit really necessary? When did the phone bill become life’s most critical document? In a country where you can buy cinnamon dental floss, cheese in a spray can, and eatable women’s panties, are people really breaking their balls to save nine cents on a fucking phone call? Talking to your mother once a year might not be the most pleasant thing in the world, but it should not be seen as a critical spending decision. Something else I don’t understand: motivation tapes. Motivation books. What happened here? Suddenly everybody needs to be motivated? It’s a fairly simple thing. Either you want to do something or you don’t. What’s the big mystery? Besides, if you’re motivated enough to go the store to buy a motivation book, aren’t you motivated enough to do that so you don’t need the book? Put it back. Tell the clerk “fuck you”, “I’m motivated”, “I’m going home”, “I’m going home”. And can anyone explain to me the need for one-hour photo-finishing? You just saw the fucking thing, how can you possibly be nostalgic about a concept like a little while ago? Another complaint: too many vehicles. There are some families in this country who own entirely too many vehicles. You see them on the highway in an rv but that’s not enough for them. The rv’s not enough. Behind them they’re towing a motorboat, go-cart, dune-buggy, dirt-bike, jet-ski, snowmobile, para-sail, hang-glider, windsurfing equipment, a hot air balloon, and a small two-man deep-sea diving-bell. Doesn’t anyone just take a fucking walk anymore? The only thing these people lack is a lunar excursion module. Too many choices America. It’s not healthy. Another abomination: white guys over ten years of age who wear their baseball hats backwards. Listen to me white guys. Let me tell you something. You’re never going to be as cool as black guys, it’s not going to happen… You’re white, and you’re lame. It’s a fucking law of nature. Turning your hat around and learning a complicated handshake will not make you cool. And you black guys, since you started the whole thing, I’m going to let you stay with the hats a little bit longer, but i think really, once you qualify for social security it’s time to spin that motherfucker around to the front of you all right? Yeah. Another tip. Another tip for the men. The earring. The thing with the earrings. It’s over. It’s been over for a long time. Doesn’t mean anything anymore. It was supposed to piss off the squares. The squares are wearing them now! Doesn’t mean anything. It’s just fucking jewelry, unless you have an earring with a live baby hanging from it. It’s just jewelry. And I want you to know I’m in favor of self-mutilation and personal disfigurement. I’ve always said there’s nothing like puncturing and perforating your skin in a dozen or so places in order to demonstrate your high self-esteem. When i see a young man decorating his scalp with a soldering iron i say: there’s a happy guy, thinks highly of himself. And haven’t we gone a little over-board with these colored ribbons for different causes? Every cause has it’s own colored ribbon now. Red for aids. Blue for child-abuse. Pink for breast cancer. Green for the rain forest. Purple for urban violence. I got a brown one. You know what it means? EAT SHIT MOTHERFUCKER! EAT SHIT MOTHERFUCKER! And what can we do to silence these christian athletes, who thank Jesus whenever they win, never mention his name when they lose, not a word. You never hear them say: “Jesus made me drop the ball, the Good Lord tripped me up behind the line of scrimmage”. According to these guys Jesus is undefeated. Meanwhile these assholes are in last place. Must be another one of those “miracles”. And speaking of delusional people, what about a guy who hears a voice in his head which tells him to kill his entire family, so he does it. Is this the only thing a voice in the head ever tells these people to do, is to kill others? Doesn’t a voice ever tell a guy: “go take a shit on the salad bar at wendy’s”. Doesn’t a voice… doesn’t a voice tell a guy to take out his dick on the merry-go-round once in a while? Well some guys do take out their dicks on the merry-go-round, but usually it’s their own idea. Something else i can do without: after-shave and cologne, and this disgusting shit that men put on their bodies. Just what I need in the elevator, some guy standing next to me smells like a fucking pine tree. I say go home and wash you smelly prick. You smell like the urinal in a Portuguese cat-house. God-damn guys are stupid. Guys are really fucking dumb. They think they’re going to get laid with this stuff you know. Oh yeah, they put it on at home thinking: oh boy, oh boy, I’ll get laid tonight. I’ll get laid tonight. You don’t get laid with green shit that comes out of a bottle okay? The only smell that’s going to help you get laid might be your own natural scent. You have pheromones. It’s a secondary sex characteristic. people in America, they’re all nervous about sex. They want to cover it up and disguise it. Guys in Europe, they know how to live. Guy gets in an elevator over there, he smells like a pile of dog shit, those people are sophisticated! Getting pretty tired of these guys walking around in cowboy hats and cowboy boots. You ever see these jack-offs? Can’t we kill some of these motherfuckers? Walking around in a fucking cowboy hat. Grown men. It’s not even Halloween for christ-sakes. I say “hey Tex grow up and get yourself a wardrobe consistent with the century you’re living in”. Why do certain men feel the need to dress up as mythic figures? You don’t see anyone walking around in a pirate costume do you? When was the last guy you ran into who had on a viking outfit? Make-believe cowboys… the closest they ever got to a cow, is when they stopped to take a piss at an arby’s. And cam-corders: here is technology gone bezerk. Everywhere you go now, there’s some dick, some yo-yo, some putz, with a cam-corder. And he is going to tape everything. Doesn’t anyone in this country just stop and look at things anymore? Sort of take them in, maybe even remember them? Is that such a strange notion? Does experience have to be documented, and brought home, and saved on the shelf? And do people really watch this shit? Are people’s lives so bankrupt, they sit at home looking at things they already did? And these guys are so intense you know. It’s always guys, they won’t let women touch the cameras. It’s a highly technical skill. Look for a hole. Push on a button. Big skill. and they all think they’re Federico Fellini. Low-angles, zooms and pans, and it’s the same ugly three children in every god-damn shot. All the George Lucas magic in Hollywood is not going to change the unfortunate genetic configuration on the faces of these children. Keep these unfortunate youngsters out of public view. Now a lot of these cultural crimes I’ve been complaining about can be blamed on the baby-boomers. Something else I’m a little tired of hearing about, the baby-boomers. Whiney, narcissistic, self-indulgent people, with a simple philosophy: “gimme-it it’s mine”! “give-me-that it’s mine”! These people were given everything. Everything was handed to them, and they took it all. Took it all. Sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. And they stayed loaded for twenty years, and had a free ride, but now they’re staring down the barrel of middle-age burn-out, and they don’t like it. They don’t like it so they’ve turned self-righteous, and they want to make things hard on younger people. They tell them to: “abstain” from sex. “Say no” to drugs. As for the rock-n-roll, they sold that for television commercials a long time ago, so they could buy pasta-machines, and “stair-masters”, and “soybean-futures”. “Soybean-futures”. You know something? They’re cold bloodless people. It’s in their slogans. It’s in their rhetoric. “No pain no gain”, “just do it”, “life is short play hard”, “shit happens deal with it”, “get a life”. These people went from “do your own thing” to “just say no”. They went from “love is all you need” to “whoever winds up with the most toys wins”. And they went from cocaine to rogaine. And you know something? They’re still counting grams, only now it’s fat grams. And the worst of it is, the rest of us have to watch these commercials on TV for Levi’s loose-fitting jeans, and fat-ass docker pants, because these degenerate yuppie-boomer-cocksuckers couldn’t keep their hands off the croissants, and the häagen-dazs. And their big fat asses have spread all over and they have to wear fat-ass docker pants. Fuck these boomers. Fuck these yuppies. And fuck everybody now that I think about of it. Well sometimes in comedy you have to generalize.
Now there’s one thing you might have noticed i don’t complain about: politicians. everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well where do people think these politicians come from? They don’t fall out of the sky. They don’t pass through a membrane from “another reality”. They come from American parents, and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses, and American universities. And they’re elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It’s what our system produces: Garbage in. Garbage out. If you have selfish ignorant citizens… If you have selfish ignorant citizens, you’re going to get selfish ignorant leaders. And term-limits ain’t going to do you any good. You’re just going to wind up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So maybe… maybe… MAYBE, it’s not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here like: “THE PUBLIC”. Yeah the public sucks. There’s a nice campaign slogan for somebody: “the public sucks, fuck hope”. Fuck hope. Because if it’s really just the fault of these politicians, then where are all the other bright people of conscience? Where are all the bright, honest, intelligent Americans ready to step in and save the nation and lead the way? We don’t have people like that in this country. Everybody’s at the mall scratching his ass, picking his nose, taking out his credit card out of a fannie-pack, and buying a pair of sneakers with lights in them. So I have solved this little political dilemma for myself in a very simple way: on election-day, I-STAY-HOME. I don’t vote. Fuck ’em. FUCK THEM. I don’t vote. Two reasons. Two reasons I don’t vote: first of all, it’s meaningless. This country was bought and sold and paid for a long time ago. The shit they shuffle around every four years doesn’t mean a fuckin’ thing. And secondly, I don’t vote ’cause I believe if you vote, you have no right to complain. People like to twist that around. I know, they say, they say: “well if you don’t vote you have no right to complain”. But where’s the logic in that? If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent people, and they get into office and screw everything up, well you are responsible for what they have done, YOU caused the problem, you voted them in, you have no right to complain. I on the other hand, who did not vote, WHO DID NOT VOTE. Who in fact did not even leave the house on election-day, am in no way responsible for what these people have done, and have every RIGHT to complain as loud as I want, about the mess YOU created, that I had nothing to do with. So I know that a little later on this year, you’re going to have another one of those really swell presidential elections that you like so much. You enjoy yourselves. It will be a lot of fun. I’m sure as soon as the election is over, your country will “improve” immediately. As for me, I’ll be home on that day, doing essentially the same thing as you, the only difference is, when I get finished masturbating, I’m going to have a little something to show for it folks.
Thank you very much. thank you very much. Thank you everybody. See ya later.

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2 thoughts on “GEORGE CARLIN: BACK IN TOWN (1996) – Full transcript”

  1. Nicely done. The two items you were struggling with are: “Ball-pein Hammers” (It’s a kind of machinist’s hammer. You can check them out on Amazon). The other is “Golden Age of Blow Jobs.” Thanks for laughs. I used have this CD but misplaced it years ago.

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