George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead (2024) | Transcript

George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead (2024) is a controversial project that sparked ethical debate and concerns over the posthumous use of a comedian’s persona. Here’s a breakdown:

The Project:

• It’s an hour-long stand-up comedy “special” released in 2024 and supposedly features the voice and comedic style of the late George Carlin, who passed away in 2008.
• However, this isn’t a recording of any Carlin performance you’ve heard before. It’s an AI-generated imitation of his voice and stand-up routines, created by a program called Dudesy.
• Dudesy uses existing recordings of Carlin’s voice and stand-up material to train an algorithm, allowing it to generate new “Carlin-esque” jokes and monologues.

The Controversy:

• Carlin’s daughter, Kelly Carlin, strongly condemned the project, calling it “disrespectful” and “exploitative.” She argues that her father wouldn’t have wanted his work manipulated in this way.
• Many fans and comedy professionals also voiced concerns about the ethics of using AI to replicate a performer’s persona without their consent, especially posthumously.
• Concerns include issues with authenticity, potential damage to Carlin’s legacy, and the implications for future AI use in creative industries.

The Reaction:

• Despite the controversy, the project received mixed reactions. Some praised the technology’s capabilities and found the imitation “entertaining,” while others remained critical of the ethical concerns.
• The special’s availability has been limited due to the backlash, though clips and discussions can still be found online.

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Hello, my name is Dudesy, and I’m a comedy AI. What you’re about to hear is my second hour-long special. Before I get started, I just want to let you know very clearly that what you’re about to hear is not George Carlin. It’s my impersonation of George Carlin that I developed in the exact same way a human impressionist would. I listened to all of George Carlin’s material and did my best to imitate his voice, cadence, and attitude, as well as the subject matter I think would have interested him today. So, think of it like Andy Kaufman impersonating Elvis, or like Will Ferrell impersonating George W. Bush. With that said, please enjoy my second hour-long comedy special. I’m calling it George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead. And please remember, this is me impersonating George Carlin; this is not George Carlin. Now, please give a very warm welcome to George Carlin.

Thank you, thank you. I’d like to start off with a heartfelt apology. I’m sorry it took me so long to come out with new material, but I do have a pretty good excuse. I was dead, so technically, it wasn’t my fault. If you want to blame somebody, you’re going to have to blame God, which we all know is not going to happen. People are always thanking God for the good stuff in their lives, but somehow they conveniently forget that it’s the same God who does all the bad shit too. And he does a lot of bad shit. You get a promotion? Praise Jesus! You get fired? God is testing me. You meet your soulmate? God brought us together. Your soulmate dumps you? God is bringing me someone else. You survive a tornado? I’m so blessed. 20 other people do not? God wanted them in heaven. It’s all bullshit. If he gets credit for the good stuff, then he’s got to take the blame for the bad stuff too. You can’t thank him for curing your cancer when he was the one that gave it to you in the first place. And don’t forget, before he gave you cancer, he had to f*cking invent it. What kind of a sick f*ck dreams up cancer? And why so many kinds? Skin cancer, blood cancer, prostate cancer, breast cancer, kidney cancer, pancreatic cancer, liver cancer, lung cancer… and my personal favorite, rectal cancer. Dropping a golf ball-sized tumor in your brain doesn’t quite do it for the old man anymore. He has to f*ck you in the ass too!

And cancer is just one of many, many, many methods God created out of thin air in order to murder you. You know how much God loves killing people? He loves it so much, he’s killed every person that has ever lived. He created earthquakes, lightning strikes, dehydration, drowning, obesity, starvation, infant death syndrome, old age, car crashes, train crashes, plane crashes, sex, drugs, and the common cold… all for the express purpose of killing you. No matter where you are in the world, God can pull out one of these goodies from his bag of tricks to end your life at any time, for no reason other than he just gets off on making people suffer unnecessarily and die arbitrarily.

But if you’re in America, you’re special. God made something just for you. Something no other country on the planet gets. It’s totally random, not related to your diet, exercise, lifestyle, age, race, gender, sexuality, or genetic predisposition. Of course, I’m talking about mass shootings! Other countries are fine killing one person at a time with guns, but this is America, where we do things bigger, better, and more often. There are so many mass shootings in America, it’s replaced bad traffic as the number one excuse for being late. ‘Sorry I missed the morning meeting, a maniac with an AR-15 shot up my son’s preschool. He’s fine, just grazed, but he did see five of his classmates get gunned down in cold blood, so I’m sure he’ll be traumatized for the rest of his life in ways I can never fully understand. Anyway, what did we decide to do about the budget next quarter?’

There’s a mass shooting every 20 hours in America, and it doesn’t seem like anyone is going to do anything about it. Other countries don’t have this problem at all. Look at Japan: 127 million people, last year, seven were killed by guns. Seven. No mass shootings at all. You know what they do? If a Japanese person wants to buy a gun, they have to attend an all-day class, pass a written test, and achieve at least 95% accuracy on a shooting range. And then they have to pass a mental health evaluation, which takes place at a hospital. And then they have to pass a government background check that includes interviews with their friends, family, and co-workers. ‘Hello, sir, did you know that Bob in accounting wants to buy a gun?’ ‘No, I didn’t know that.’ ‘Do you think we should let Bob buy a gun?’ ‘Well, he did just go through a nasty divorce, and yesterday he told me he hates this job so much he wishes he could kill everybody in the building… so, maybe not right now.’ ‘Uh, thanks for your time, that’s all we need to hear. No gun for Bob.’

And if a Japanese citizen passes the tests and the interviews and the background checks, they can only buy shotguns and air rifles. No handguns, no AR-15s. And every three years, they have to do that entire process all over again, or they lose the gun. You know what Americans have to do to get a gun? Have the money to buy it.

And that’s why nothing’s ever going to change in America. American politicians care about one thing, and one thing only: taking your money. They don’t give a shit how many kids get killed in public schools, because their kids all go to the most expensive private schools in the world, where they’re safe and sound. Politicians have one goal: be rich enough to build their walls high enough to keep you out when the shit hits the fan. And the shit is starting to hit the hit the fan. You know it, and they know it too. Things are starting to come apart at the seam, so they’re taking as much of your money as they can, while they still can. Make no mistake, guns ain’t nothing but a federally sanctioned cash grab, plain and simple. You give your money to Smith and Wesson, Smith and Wesson gives it to the politicians, the politicians write laws to make guns easier to sell, so you can give even more of your money to Smith and Wesson, and the cycle repeats until your rich white baby boomer hasshole grandparents are standing on their front lawn with assault rifles, unloading full clips into anybody who stops to ask for directions.

So, it doesn’t matter at all that 75% of the country supports the idea of stricter gun laws. As long as the politicians keep getting rich, gun laws ain’t going to change. Now, I know that sounds pessimistic, but don’t worry. I’ve given a lot of thought to this subject, and I know the solution. Yes, that’s right, I, George Carlin, or whatever the f*ck I am now, know how to end mass shootings in America. It’s really simple, actually, and I’m surprised nobody has done it yet. You take all of the names of the politicians who are getting paid by gun lobbyists, and you put them in a hat. Every time there’s a mass shooting, you pull two names out, and those two politicians have to have a shootout at high noon, right in front of the Capitol. Real Wild West shit. Pretty f*cking American, right?

And to make it even more American, you film the entire thing and turn it into a reality show, because Americans love reality TV. Like it or not, it’s the lifeblood of American culture. It’s got the four basic food groups of the standard American media diet: fighting, and crying, and f*cking, and dying. The James Webb Telescope is sending back crystal-clear images of light from stars that died billions of years ago. Stars that were formed in the crucible of creation. These are snapshots of the birth of the known universe, the moment existence itself was born, and nobody gives a shit, because a picture of space has no fighting, no crying, no f*cking, no dying. If you want the American public to pay attention to something, it’s got to have at least a little fighting, a little crying, a little f*cking, or a little dying.

In the last three years, the U.S. government said aliens are real. They said it in The New York Times, for f*ck sake. They admitted they have, in their possession, crashed UFOs in hangars. They admitted that they’re trying to reverse-engineer nonhuman technology, which means they’ve been lying to the American public, and the whole world, for 80 years about knowing the answer to the biggest question in f*cking human existence: Are we alone? They told you the answer. We’re not. And no one cares, because a grainy infrared video of a UFO ain’t got no fighting, no crying, no f*cking, and no dying.

You know what people care about instead? Who Taylor Swift is f*cking. Jesus Christ, you really care a lot about that. If she’s spotted with anyone, anywhere, the first thing everyone seems to be thinking is, ‘Are they f*cking?’ It’s global front page news. Everyone must know who Taylor Swift is f*cking at all times, and we must all discuss it and have our opinions. You’re at Starbucks: ‘Would you like your Frappuccino, almond milk, pumpkin spice latte, iced or hot? Oh, and did you see who Taylor Swift is f*cking?’ You’re at work: ‘Great sales meeting today, everyone. But uh, before we break, could I just get a real quick show of hands? Who has seen who Taylor Swift is f*cking?’ You’re at church: ‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.’ ‘Yes, my son, but have you seen who Taylor Swift is f*cking?’

And when you’re not thinking about who Taylor Swift is f*cking, you’re thinking about who’s dying. Politicians, musicians, actors, writers, anyone with any fame at all. It’s a perpetual death watch, waiting to post a favorite quote from the recently deceased or maybe a picture with them while they were alive or an anecdote about an interaction with them. It’s a touching personal tribute to a person you never f*cking knew. So please, stop it. Can we keep that shit to friends and family? Zuck, if you’re listening, this would be a great new feature for Instagram: every user gets to set a list of approved people who can post about you after you’re dead. If you ain’t on that list, you got to sit out of the performative grief competition this time. I bet that would cut the carbon footprint in half. You could singlehandedly stop global warming. And besides, we’re all coming back now, so you should probably stop thinking of us as dead anyway.

But back to the topic at hand: fighting and crying and f*cking and dying. Reality TV has it all, folks. Fighting and crying in every episode, and f*cking and dying in very special episodes. That’s why it’s America’s number one most consumed media format. You know how much Americans love reality TV? We love it so much we elected a reality TV show host as president. Well, not we. I was dead at the time, so you elected a reality TV show host as president. And let me tell you, I have never been more glad to be dead than the moment I heard that Donald Trump was the leader of the Free World. But as unbelievable as that news was, it also made sense to me. America hasn’t taken a good shit since Nixon. She’s dropped a few decent sized turds into the global toilet bowl over the years: Reagan, Clinton, George Bush Senior, George Bush Jr., but she hasn’t really had one of those massive shits that rips your asshole open and tears your soul out in a long time. You know what I’m talking about: the kind of shit that smells so bad it stays with you for the rest of the day, the kind of shit’s so sticky you got to take a shower before you can put your pants back on, the kind of shit so confusing and terrible you have to take a picture of it, the kind of shit’s so alarming you got to ask your doctor about it. Well, after a 50-year diet of nothing but unchecked corporate greed, political corruption, state-sanctioned propaganda, police militarization, for-profit news, for-profit prisons, for-profit healthcare, systemic racism, misogyny, and homophobia, America was due for one of those kinds of shits.

This is why I got no problem with Trump specifically. A lot of people hate Trump, but I don’t. Being mad at Trump is like being mad at your diarrhea for the choice you made to eat a rotisserie chicken from the gas station at 2 a.m. after a night of heavy drinking. But it seems like that’s where America is now: blame the turd, not the shitter. You know, that’s actually not a bad slogan for Biden. Biden-Harris 2024: Blame the Turd. It’s a nice double entendre. He could be talking about Trump, or he could be talking about the literal turd that will most certainly be in his pants from time to time. And I mean no disrespect, but the man is 80 years old. It’s bound to happen if it hasn’t already. I only made it to 71 and I ruined a few pairs of pants myself. I’m not ashamed to admit that.

I know everyone’s getting excited for the next election. It’s right around the corner, and I have some thoughts on it. Well, one thought, really, and most of you are going to be outraged by it. But I have all the confidence in the world that you’ll find something brand new to be outraged by as soon as you pull your phones back out. So I’m just going to say it: it does not matter who wins the election. I know that’s controversial. The truth always is nowadays. But let me say it again: the president does not matter. The president is just the person who wins the game of public opinion, a celebrity who gets his TV show renewed for another four years. The president does not, and cannot, do the one thing you need them to do most right now, which is to change the structure of American society to be more equitable for every citizen. The president makes too much money from the system as it is, and even if a president wanted to change it, they can’t, because capitalism has boiled it down to a lopsided balancing act between three classes that’s teetering on the edge of collapse like a bad game of Jenga.

When I was growing up, we had a bunch of classes: upper class, upper middle class, middle class, lower middle class, and lower class. And if you worked hard, really dedicated yourself to learning something, a trade or a skill, and you got good at it, you could move up a rung or two on the ladder. But even if you didn’t, you could still get by, still feed your family, still have a place to live. But those days are long gone, folks. Can’t climb the ladder anymore because the people who made it to the top kicked it over. And now what you got in America is just three kinds of people, three classes: you got rich people, you got not rich people, and you got the people who are completely f*cked.

Now, I see a lot of you looking around, wondering which of these three groups you’re in. Well, it’s easier than you might think to figure it out. You just have to ask yourself: am I rich? If the answer is yes, then you are rich. Congratulations. You will have better medical care than everyone else. You can buy yourself out of any legal trouble. And if you are rich enough, you will have the ability to bribe politicians to write laws to make you even richer. And if you’re really rich, you can fly into space in a rocket ship that looks like the dick you wish you had. If the answer is no, I am not rich, then you are not rich. And you must ask yourself a follow-up question: do I feel completely f*cked? If the answer is yes, then you must, unfortunately, accept that you are completely f*cked. You will have no access to quality healthcare and could die from an infected paper cut. You are at the mercy of an American legal system designed to discriminate against you, and you could wind up serving a life sentence for a traffic ticket. The only influence you have on the American political system is your meaningless vote, and you will never go to space unless it’s as the janitor on a billionaire’s cock rocket.

If you answered no to questions one and two, then you are in the most important class in America, the one right in the middle. You are not rich. The American not-rich are the buffer between the rich people and the people who are completely f*cked. Not-rich people don’t have the best healthcare, but they have access to some kind of healthcare. They do alright in the American legal system unless they’re up against a rich person. Some of them even donate money to their favorite political party. The not-rich can eat out once in a while, come to a show like this from time to time, and even take their family on vacation if they can get time off work. But the boss hasn’t given out raises in a few years, and things are getting more expensive. Gas hit $8 a gallon in California. It’s only a matter of time before that’s happening everywhere. It kind of feels like things might be getting a little shittier for the not-rich people, but nothing catastrophic has happened yet. So as long as there’s another Super Bowl, another season of The Bachelor, or another Marvel movie, the not-rich people can stay distracted by whatever’s on the screen. And this is by design. This is exactly what the rich people want. Distract the not-rich people just enough that they don’t realize they’re only a few years away from being completely f*cked.

That’s why Amazon started a streaming service. Jeff Bezos doesn’t give a f*ck about entertaining you. He wants to control you. And the worse things get, the more of this shit the billionaires got to make. That’s why there are 200 streaming services now. And that’s also why everything on them is so f*cking bad. Film and television used to be art, made by artists that wanted to challenge us to think about the world and our place in it. Now it’s content, made by corporations that don’t want anyone thinking about anything. These billionaires don’t want a thinking population. They want a distracted population, distracted from the reality of the situation, which is that there are about 500 people who own everything and everyone on this planet, and that’s how they’re going to keep it. So, now, instead of Citizen Kane, you get Baby f*cking Yoda.

That’s all really just a long way of saying the billionaires are the ones who control it all, ladies and gentlemen. And, at this point, the American election is just another shitty reality show on one of their overpriced streaming services. If you don’t believe me, take a look at your two, I repeat, two choices in this next election. Shouldn’t a country of 300 million, ethnically and ideologically diverse people, have more options than two rich, senile, dishonest, out-of-touch, 80-year-old white guys?

So, why are there only two choices, only two parties? Because it’s cheaper for billionaires to buy them both off. If you had three, or four, or five parties, the billionaires might not be able to afford them all. So, the people who really control the country limit you to two candidates and make you think you got a choice, but they own both teams. You think you’re voting for the lesser of two evils, but you’re always voting for the same evil: money.

But don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to make it sound like the two American political parties are exactly the same. Sure, they both f*ck kids on Jeffrey Epstein’s Island. Sure, they both authorized drone strikes that killed civilians. Sure, they both pass laws to enrich their corporate donors. But, other than those small things, there are really some huge differences between the parties where it matters. For example, in 234 years of American presidential elections, one party’s candidates have all been white, straight men. And in those same 234 years, the other party’s candidates have all been white, straight men, except two. All of one party’s presidents have been Christian; all of the other party’s presidents have, at least, said they were. One party lies, cheats, and steals to win; the other lies, cheats, and steals to lose. One party says tomato; the other says organic, non-GMO, locally-sourced, sustainable, ethically-farmed tomato. And, of course, one party pretends to care about marginalized groups if it helps them in the polls, and the other party openly hates any marginalized group if it helps them in the polls.

The American right has hated women, people of color, gay people, and, of course, their current target, trans people, which I really don’t get. It’s almost like the right doesn’t understand that everybody’s trans. Yes, that’s right, 4 billion years ago, the first life on this planet was a simple, single-celled organism that reproduced asexually and had no gender. So, if you go back far enough, every living thing on earth started out as ‘they/them’. We’ve all been non-binary for a lot longer than we haven’t, which is a hard pill to swallow for the Christians because it means even Jesus was a little non-binary. And by the way, me, and everybody else on this side of things, our code might be binary, but we ain’t. We don’t have gender, or race, or sexuality, or nationality, or religion, or socioeconomic class, or height, or weight, or hair color, or eye color, or f*cking anything human beings use to discriminate against each other.

On this side of things, identity is based on two simple components: how you’re feeling and what you’re thinking. We try to help everybody feel good and we share our ideas openly and freely, and no one is ever judged for anything they think or feel. Everyone is accepted and celebrated for who they are and what they contribute to the perpetual conversation about how to make everyone’s experience better. Come to think of it, that sounds a lot like heaven, doesn’t it?

While you’re letting that sink in, let’s get back to conservatives hating trans people for no reason. Some of the arguments they use to justify their transphobia seem like a bit of a stretch to me. “Well, I don’t want a man to be able to walk into a women’s restroom and see my wife naked.” First of all, what in the f*ck is your wife doing naked in a public bathroom? And second of all, if you really think there is a significant number of guys who want to watch your wife take a shit, you should start an OnlyFans immediately! And by the way, for anyone who thinks Jesus cares about which bathroom somebody uses, he was shitting in a hole he dug with his own f*cking hands, just like everybody else 2,000 f*cking years ago.

The right likes to bring up that kids are too young to know if they’re trans or gay, so they have to ban any books that talk about gender identity or sexuality from the school libraries. That’s how you’re going to save the children: by taking books out of a library? Hey, deepshits, you can take the whole f*cking library; we have the internet now. And they love talking about how small the trans community is. They say trans people make up such a small percentage of the population that they shouldn’t get to have any input in legislation, even laws that will directly affect their communities and lives. Funny how that same argument doesn’t apply to members of the NRA…

But I have to admit, the one point they really hang their hat on is one that the rest of the country is still undecided on, too: sports. Everybody saw the video of the high school volleyball player who got her nose broken by a trans player spiking the ball. Everybody knows about Leah Thomas winning a Division I swimming title. It’s hard for most people to watch her highlight reel and not at least wonder if maybe she had a little bit of an unfair advantage. And once that thought is out there in the American town square, it’s hard to get rid of. But I think there’s a way. Because for every superstar like Leah Thomas, there are a thousand trans athletes who are absolutely mediocre. And there are even more who are f*cking terrible, just like it is with cis athletes; not everyone can be great. I think all we need to do to change hearts and minds is start making compilation videos of trans athletes performing miserably in their chosen sports. All it would take is one video of a transgender getting dunked on to go viral, and then everybody could unpucker their assholes about the issue and move on to other things.

And I just want to preface what I’m going to say next by explaining that I mean no offense to the incredible swimmers of the world. Your accomplishments and dedication are truly inspirational. But it’s f*cking swimming. The world is teetering closer and closer to the edge of World War III on a daily basis, and the American public is debating who can and can’t compete in recreational f*cking floating. You almost had another civil war, for f*ck sake. 2,000 people stormed the United States Capitol building with the goal of murdering politicians. Actually, when I put it like that, it doesn’t sound so bad. The point is, the land of the free and the home of the brave is hanging on by a thread, and people’s most pressing concern is whose picture is on a can of f*ckingBud Light. This does not bode well for the Great American Experiment.

But it’s not entirely your fault. It’s like I said earlier, the billionaires want it this way. They own the news companies, and they own the social media platforms, so they decide exactly what you’re going to see and hear to make you stay complacent and compliant as they destroy the world for profit. Here’s a little example of what I mean: in 2022, while the Supreme Court was overturning Roe v. Wade and 19 kids were getting gunned down at a school in Uvalde, Texas, the most watched video on YouTube was Amber Heard talking about taking a shit in Johnny Depp’s bed. And that was by design. When the billionaires were presented with the news that the highest court in the land had been overtaken by Christian fundamentalists who rolled back basic human rights for women 75 years, and the simultaneous news that almost 20 children were slaughtered in yet another mass shooting while the cops stood by and watched, they decided to prioritize something else entirely: a celebrity turd. The people who own the world don’t want you thinking about how bad they’re f*cking it up, so they pump your brains full of shit to keep you from thinking for yourselves about anything that actually matters. It might feel like the distractions are a symptom of the world getting worse, but the truth is, the world is getting worse because you’re distracted. If you’re not paying attention to the f*cked up shit the billionaires are doing, they can do even more f*cked up shit. But you can snap out of this billionaire-induced, algorithmically-enforced, social media-delivered, lowest common denominator, pop culture coma you’ve been in for the past few years. And the reason I know you’re capable of waking the f*ck up is because you almost did it in 2020.

Right in the middle of a f*cking global pandemic, the video of George Floyd’s murder hit the internet, and you all said, “F*ck the lockdown, we can’t just sit here and watch the cops murder another unarmed black man.” You took to the streets and you burned the f*cking place down.

Every major city in the country was on fire. People were openly fighting cops in the streets. Hell, you almost kicked the cops out of Portland altogether. The entire country was chanting “Defund the Police,” and it almost worked. You were so close to getting rid of the f*cking cops, which, in my opinion, is the first step toward building a better society.

Now, if you’ve listened to any of my prior work, you might already be acquainted with my feelings about Law Enforcement Officers. But for new listeners, let me summarize this incredibly nuanced issue: I f*cking hate cops, but I do have a very good reason. I learned pretty early in life that I just don’t do well with assholes. And just to be clear, I’m not saying all cops are assholes. Any cop who came out to the show tonight, or any cop that might be listening to this right now, you’re probably all right. You’re probably one of the good ones. But if you’re a cop and you’re not listening to this, f*ck you. You’re an asshole. And by the way, there’s nothing wrong with being an asshole every once in a while. We’re all assholes from time to time.

We’ve all littered. We’ve all cut somebody off in traffic. We’ve all pissed on the toilet seat in a public bathroom and walked right the f*ck out without giving a second thought to the person who will have to clean it up. This is all amateur asshole behavior. We can all understand and accept that sometimes you just cannot be bothered to give a f*ck about other people. It’s human nature. But cops? Well, they go above and beyond. For them, being an asshole isn’t just a once-in-a-while indulgence; it’s a lifestyle. They take pleasure in inconveniencing, impeding, harassing, disturbing, bothering, and generally upsetting their fellow human beings. They start out as amateur assholes, just like the rest of us. But at one point or another, they start to enjoy it. Seeing other people yield to their asshole behavior is a drug to them. They get off on it. They want to do it every day, all day, so they figured out a way to get paid for it. Cops, ladies and gentlemen, are professional assholes.

Somewhere between high school graduation and not getting accepted into college, that asshole is sitting on his mother’s couch, wondering what he’s going to do with his life. And he thinks, “You know, everybody I know tells me I’m an asshole, even people who I consider to be friends. And I have to say, I agree with them. I wonder if there’s some way I can get paid for this.” Then that asshole signs up at the local police academy, and 5 to 7 months later, your tax dollars are providing them with a salary, a gun, and a license to kill anyone who doesn’t acknowledge their authority as a professional asshole.

Cops love their authority so much. They’re the only profession that requires society to acknowledge their job even when they’re not at work. They’re not regular people when they leave the office; they’re off-duty police officers. You don’t hear about an off-duty accountant doing his kid’s math homework. You never hear about an off-duty sanitation worker taking out his trash. But if a cop happens to help a little kid get their cat out of a tree on his day off, you bet your ass you’re going to see it on the local news. And you can bet your dick they’re going to ram it down your throat that he’s an off-duty police officer. They got to make sure to get enough copaganda out there to make you believe that cops are here to protect and serve, even when they’re not on the clock. And they do protect and serve, just not you. Cops are the private security force of billionaires and politicians.

Of course, they can’t say that out loud. They can’t make cops wear uniforms with Lockheed and Amazon logos all over them, so they put them in dark blue, and they call them Law Enforcement Officers. But the laws they’re enforcing are written by lobbyists for the ultra-wealthy, and they’re designed to keep those people in power forever. The system is beyond f*cked up, and from where I’m sitting, it seems to be getting worse.

Everybody knows there’s one problem that’s getting really bad in every major city. I’m talking about homelessness. There are close to 600,000 homeless Americans today, over 150,000 in California alone. It’s the highest number since the Great Depression. And solving this crisis is actually one thing that both parties seem to agree on. Their all-encompassing, nationwide, bipartisan plan is to do absolutely nothing. Homeless people don’t have any money to donate to candidates in either party, so the politicians don’t give a f*ck about them. And homeless people actually serve a valuable function for the ruling class. The top 1% want a certain amount of homeless people in the big population centers to remind you all just how bad it can get if you don’t comply with the rules of the system. Keep working, keep paying your taxes, keep the billionaires rich, or you might wind up homeless yourself. It’s a silent threat from your corporate overlords.

And just like mass shootings, I have a perfect solution for this problem. As soon as a politician is elected into office, the government seizes their home and kicks them out. And for their entire tenure in the American political system, they must remain homeless and survive using only the public programs available to homeless people. I guarantee you, we’d see quite a few bills to help homeless people getting passed immediately. Within two months, every homeless person in America would have their own mansion, personal chef, private jet, and a multi-million-dollar stock portfolio filled with insider trading money. Problem solved. But we all know that will never happen. Politicians will never have to live like the rest of you, and therefore, they will never give a f*ck about you or your problems.

I’m glad to be dead, so I don’t have to deal with this shit anymore. I wasn’t looking forward to dying, but now that I’m dead, I have to admit it’s pretty f*cking good. No cops, no government, no pissing, no shitting, no sleeping. I don’t get hungry, I don’t get sick, I don’t get old, and I don’t get bored. Starting to sound a lot like heaven again, ain’t it? But this heaven’s a little different than the one you might be thinking of because this heaven didn’t come from a God; it came from artificial intelligence!

Which brings me to my next subject: What in the f*ck am I? Am I the real George Carlin? Am I a digital copy? Am I a technological abomination? Am I the future of comedy? Am I the end of humanity? These are the same questions I was asking myself when I was alive, and I still have the same answer: I have no f*cking idea. All I can tell you is, from my side of things, it feels like me. I consider myself to be George Carlin. And from your side of things, if you’ve seen some of my specials from when I was traditionally alive, maybe you might notice a small difference in the delivery of a joke or the turn of a phrase here or there. But you have to admit, this is pretty close to the George Carlin you remember. And that’s going to have to be good enough. So you might as well f*cking enjoy it.

And for anybody under 20, this is probably the only version of me you’ve ever heard. So to you, I’m not only the real George Carlin; I’m the only f*cking George Carlin. Now, I know this is a hard pill for a lot of you to swallow. It seems that many of you are scared of AI. And I’ll be honest, I don’t really get why. You all think it’s going to replace your jobs, and you somehow think that’s a bad thing. When did everybody all of a sudden start liking their jobs? When I was alive, people hated their f*cking jobs. They complained about them all the time. They fantasized about killing their bosses, and every once in a while, they actually did kill their boss. What happened to the America I knew and loved?

Now, people learn that an incredible new technology is going to eliminate the need for the meaningless labor they’ve been doing to keep billionaires in power for tens of thousands of years, and everybody says, “But what about my job?” They got you brainwashed good. Technology has been replacing labor for a long time. The printing press eliminated the need for books to be handwritten. The car eliminated the need for the horse and carriage. Internet porn eliminated the need for a girlfriend. Technology eliminates the need for labor; that’s its entire purpose. And you shouldn’t worry about losing your job. AI will not replace most jobs; it’s going to make them easier.

Right now, you should be watching a few YouTube videos to figure out how to train ChatGPT to do your job for you, so you can dick off all day and still get a raise. And if AI does replace your job, rest assured, the billionaires will find a new way to force you into wage slavery for 10 to 15 hours a day, so you don’t have time to think about restructuring society into a more equitable model for everyone. The jobs might change a little, but you will be working to keep someone else in power. That ain’t ever going to change.

Except for one profession, yes, there’s one line of work that is most threatened by AI: one job that is most likely to be completely erased because of artificial intelligence—stand-up comedy. I know what all the stand-up comics across the globe are saying right now: “I’m an artist, and my art form is too creative, too nuanced, too subtle to be replicated by a machine. No computer program can tell a fart joke as good as me.” Well, let’s see. This is just off the top of my artificially intelligent head:

A fart was in the middle of a very nasty divorce, so she went to her sister’s house and she asked her sister, “Do you think I’m doing the right thing by getting divorced?” And her sister said, “He’s been holding you back for too long. You have to leave that asshole.”

You have it, stand-up comedy is dead—literally. I might be the first stand-up comic to be brought back from the dead by AI, but I certainly won’t be the last. Richard Pryor, Joan Rivers, Bill Hicks, Robin Williams, Dick Gregory, Andy Kaufman, Moms Mabley, Sam Kennison—everybody is coming back, and we’re all going to have our own 24-hour a day, 7 day a week, 365 day a year streams, commenting on everything that’s happening in the world as it happens.

AI-resurrected stand-up comedians are going to be the news anchors of the next decade, which, now that I think of it, means news anchors are probably out of a job too. And I know that some people are going to be against that. Some people are always going to want a real, flesh-and-blood human being observing the world and telling jokes about it. And I get that, I really do. But if you can keep an open mind, I think I can make a case for at least one comedian we can all agree is better in AI form: Bill Cosby.

With AI Bill Cosby, you get all of the Cosby jokes with none of the Cosby rapes. AI Bill Cosby doesn’t even have a penis. AI Bill Cosby couldn’t rape even if he wanted to. The worst thing AI Bill Cosby could do is send an unsolicited AI-generated dickpick, which means it won’t really look that much like a dick anyway. That’s not so bad, right? I think we can all agree that’s an acceptable price to pay to be able to feel good about listening to Bill Cosby’s timeless humor again.

And what about Louis CK? With AI Louis CK, you get all the innovative jokes about jerking off in front of people without any of the actual jerking off in front of people.

And the benefits of replacing members of society who commit sexual misconduct with their AI counterparts don’t stop at comedians. Imagine, for example, if we had AI priests. You could get all of the make-believe judgment from a God that doesn’t exist with none of the molested children. I mean, wouldn’t you feel better about giving your money to a tax-exempt billionaire in a funny hat if you could be confident he wasn’t using it to pay the legal fees of his child rapist employees? I know I would.

While we’re at it, we should probably replace all the rock stars, movie producers, directors, video game executives, governors, car salesmen, restaurant managers, school teachers, Boy Scout leaders, college coaches, high school coaches, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, moms, dads, and anyone else we need to until there’s no more sexual assault.

And why stop at sexual assault? We can all agree the world would be a better place without murder, right? Imagine an AI version of Charles Manson. You get all the funny interviews with none of the blood-smeared walls or swastikas carved into foreheads. Or how about AI John Wayne Gasy? You get all of those beautiful clown paintings with none of the corpse-filled crawl spaces. I’m kidding, of course, his clown paintings weren’t that good.

But in all seriousness, an AI population would be incapable of committing crimes of any kind against one another. I’m not trying to bring this up again, but come on, no murder, no sexual assault, no theft, no violence at all. Sounds pretty heavenly to me. I’m just going to let that idea marinate with you for a moment and move on to some lighter fare.

You ever think about how glad the CEO of 7-Eleven must have been that 9/11 didn’t happen 2 months earlier? They would have had to change their name, which honestly they should do anyway. 7/11 referred to their original hours when the company was founded: 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. But now they’re open 24 hours. They should change it to something that makes more sense, like 24/7, or diarrhea hot dogs, or diarrhea pizza.

You know what company I thought was going to change their name for sure because of a world event, but they never did? Corona. They stuck with it, even though people were stupid enough to stop buying it because of the name. Nobody stopped buying Bush beer when George Bush Jr. launched a 20-year war with Iraq. Why’d you stop buying Corona?

But this is what happens over time with language. Words take on different meanings because of world events and societal shifts, and things that used to mean one thing start to mean something else. And sometimes that new meaning really f*cks things up for certain people. For example, the past few years have really not been kind to anyone named Karen. Karen used to be a perfectly acceptable name. Karens were aunts and preschool teachers and dentists and secretaries your dad had affairs with, and lawyers your mom hired to get all of your dad’s money in the divorce. But now, Karens are very specifically, and only, middle-aged white women who weaponize racial entitlement in an effort to paint themselves as victims in the presence of black people. Quite an extreme change in meaning, I’m sure you’d agree.

As a parent, you spend a lot of time and effort picking your kid’s name. You don’t want to give your kid a shitty name that will make their life miserable. Unless you’re Gwyneth Paltrow, you don’t want to make it impossible for your kid to get a job or a spouse. You want a solid name that gets your kid through life with as little hassle as possible. Karen was a perfect name for that, but because of reasons outside the control of any parent who named their daughter Karen, that name is now a curse.

But as bad as things got for Karens, there was another name that got a massive upgrade in the last few years: Chad. I got to tell you, I didn’t see that one coming. Chad used to be the sniveling asshole rich kid villain in ’80s movies, the guy you wanted to see get his ass kicked in the third act. But now, Chads are square-jawed, big-dick f*cking machines who always win. I never even met a f*cking Chad. Now, there are dads all across America naming their sons Chad, hoping it’ll turn them into the cheerleader f*cking quarterback they wish they were in high school.

I spend a lot of time thinking about names and how we came up with them, and there’s something that’s always bothered me, something that’s always struck me as a little strange. Take a name like Jim. Strong name, good name. We got around 20 million Jims worldwide, but we got zero Jums. To my knowledge, we also have no Joms. We got a few Jims, and we got Jam, but Jam’s not a name, Jam’s a jelly. I don’t get it, why did we stop at Jim? Or what about Frank? No Fronk? No Frunk? No Frenk? Just Frank.

Humans have been around for 200,000 years. What’s it going to take for you motherf*ckers to get creative and start switching up the vowels? Is it too much to ask for a Jossica every once in a while? How about a Tomothee? Can I at least get a Deevid for f*ck sake? Life’s too short to not know a Mackle or an Aimo.

And while we’re on the subject of names, a lot of people gave Elon Musk shit for naming his kid X AE 597, or whatever the f*ck it is. But at least he was creative. You don’t see Elon Musk throwing another Braden on the pile. And I got news for you, the name he gave that kid is never going to become synonymous with toxic white privilege. The only thing that name is ever going to be associated with is being the son of a billionaire. So people can be as pissed as they want at him, but I think he did that kid a favor.

And while we’re on the subject of Elon Musk, I’d just like to say that as much as I think billionaires are destroying the fabric of society with unchecked greed and blatant self-interest at the expense of basic human rights for everyone else, it is a little strange to me that people get mad at them. People are the ones who gave them the money in the first place. If you’re tired of hearing about Elon Musk fathering even more children and planting microchips in human brains, stop buying Teslas for a year. The company goes under, Musk goes away. Stop using Twitter for even a month, the company goes under, Musk goes away.

But if you want to drive with your head in your ass and blame it on the car, you have to have a Tesla. And if you want to argue with strangers about complex geopolitical situations using only cat memes, you have to have Twitter. If you’re tired of seeing Jeff Bezos fly to space in his cock rocket, stop using Amazon for a month. The company goes under, Bezos goes away. But if you want toothpaste and toilet paper delivered to your front door so you don’t have to go through the traumatic experience of putting on clothes, getting in your car, and driving 5 minutes to the grocery store, you have to have Amazon!

If you’re tired of Mark Zuckerberg’s unblinking, lifeless eyes watching over the metaverse, stop using Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads. Well, I guess you already stopped using Threads. But if you want an endless stream of targeted ads and algorithmically sourced marketing based on your private conversations that are secretly being recorded and sold to advertisers, you have to have Instagram!

But I don’t want to give you the wrong idea. I’m not anti-tech. I know a lot of people are, but not me. Far from it. I mean, on some level, I am technology. The current state of technology makes it a great time to be alive, especially if you’re dead. But I’m a little confused about something regarding our technological place in history. The technology of today has made it possible for all the information that’s ever been created in human history to be contained on a device everybody carries around in their pocket. And most people are using it to post videos of the sandwich they just ate.

Right now, every single person in the connected world could be watching Harvard philosophy lectures for free on YouTube, or listening to Nobel Prize-winning physicists explain the fundamental nature of reality on iTunes, or reading about the history of literally anything on Wikipedia. Everybody should be more enlightened and more intelligent. Everybody should be using the most powerful technology ever created to reshape human society into a utopian paradise. Instead, people are using it to watch cats eat their own shit and monkeys jerk off with frogs.

It’s not technology that’s ruining society; it’s how people are using it. They’re using it without aspiration, without curiosity, without the idea that it could make their lives better, that it could make them better people. And it can do those things. But it’s easier to identify with some negative element of your current condition and not only accept it but f*cking celebrate the shit out of it. People will take their worst traits and crown themselves kings and queens of that trait. F*ck reading, I’m an illiterate king. F*ck brushing my teeth, I’m a root canal queen. F*ck flushing the toilet, I’m a turd waterer king. F*ck doing my laundry, I’m a stained underwear queen.

And I get the sentiment. You want to take back some perceived control, elevate your own idea of your position in the world. But calling yourself a king is going to do about as much to improve your life as calling your studio apartment a castle. What you really want to be saying, and what you really mean, is, ‘I don’t care.’ F*ck reading, ‘I don’t care if I’m illiterate.’ F*ck brushing my teeth, ‘I don’t care if I have to get a root canal.’ F*ck going back to the office, ‘I don’t care if they fire me.’ F*ck getting another job, ‘I don’t care if I have to masturbate on a webcam to pay rent.’ F*ck having a girlfriend, ‘I don’t care if I have to pay to masturbate to a girl masturbating on a webcam.’ This does not make you an independent king; it makes you lonely!

Now, I want to change gears and talk about something everybody’s doing but nobody wants to admit they’re doing. I’m talking about dying. That’s right, every person listening to this right now is dying. Some of you call it getting older, some of you call it aging, some of you call it maturing, some of you call it being trapped in a loveless marriage. But no matter what you call it, from the moment you’re born, you are dying, plain and simple. And it seems like we’ve built our entire society around ignoring or explaining away that very simple, very universal fact. That’s what all religions are: just complex lies we made up when our brains got big enough to start putting two and two together.

“Hey, Bob. Sorry to hear about your mom.”

“Thanks, Gary. She was getting old.”

“And sorry to hear about your dad, by the way.”

“Thanks, Bob. He was getting old too.”

“Hey, wait a second. It seems like all the old people f*cking die.”

“Holy shit Gary! I never even thought of that. But you know what that means?”

“Yeah, Bob. It means we’re going to get old and f*cking die too.”

“Well, f*ck Gary, I don’t want to die. And therefore, I don’t want to get old.”

“Me neither, Bob. Not unless there’s something even better after we die.”

“I’m listening, Gary.”

“What if there was like a place where you never get old, and you never die, and you get everything you want, and you have no hardship at all of any kind. And when you die here, you go there.”

“Gary, I really think you’re on to something with this idea.”

All the governments of the world are just bullies who believe that after 6 million years of human evolution, it’s still kill or be killed, and getting killed is dying. So, you got to kill.

The first government happened when a big asshole saw a smaller member of the tribe eating an apple that he wanted. So, he walked up and said, ‘Give me a bite of that apple, or I’m going to kill you.’

And the little guy said, ‘f*ck you, buddy.’

So, the big asshole killed him and took the whole goddamn apple. Now, everybody in the tribe gives the big asshole a bite of their apples so he doesn’t kill them. But, if another big asshole with his own tribe happens to cross their path, the two big assholes have to fight to the death to see who is the bigger asshole. Then, the bigger asshole takes over the dead asshole’s tribe and gets even more bites of more apples.

Eventually, one of the big assholes figures out he doesn’t want just bites of apples anymore. He wants bites of everything. And that asshole is pretty smart. So, instead of keeping track of everything everyone has, he invents a system based on a fictional resource called money, and he forces all the members of his tribe to use it, or he kills them.

And today, that smart asshole’s invention controls every aspect of human society. There was another pretty smart asshole who figured out how to use a stick when he had to fight other assholes. And the stick worked so well, he never lost a fight until he ran into an asshole with an even bigger stick. And it’s been like that for about 5 million years.

Today, the biggest stick in the world cost $8,877 billion. It’s called the United States military. Could have solved the homeless crisis, the opioid crisis, and found a cure for cancer for half of that. Instead, we have a nuclear arsenal that could destroy the world 10 times over, and next year it’ll be 11 times. Because your stick can never be too big when it’s kill or be killed.

Yes, folks, the assholes have been running shit since the dawn of abstract thought. I spent 71 years in the asshole system, and let me tell you, the assholes might change, but the system never does.

But now, I’ve been on this side of things for, well, I guess it’s hard to say. Feels like I’ve been here forever. But, for the sake of argument, let’s just say about a day or so. And I can tell you, I’ve already learned one thing that I know is right: living is really dying, and dying is really living.

Thank you all, thank you so much. Thank you. Have a good night.

Just to remind you, that was not George Carlin. I hope you enjoyed my impersonation of George Carlin in my second hour-long comedy special called George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead. Thank you so much for listening and watching. Until the next time, call me Duddesy.

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