Dear George Carlin,

July 1, 2023July 14, 2023 RilalyLeave a comment

George Carlin’s latest and last book: A Modern Man: The Best of George Carlin, includes a section of short takes called Short Takes. He almost wrote it as a letter to future readers, and it inspired me so much that I decided to write back.

“Most people aren’t particularly good at anything,” George Carlin wrote. “We’re all amateurs. It’s just that some of us are more professional about it than others.”

Most of the truly impressive people I’ve met, over the years, didn’t impress me at hello. My impressions of them involved a slow build that could take days, sometimes weeks to process, until it ends coming out on a little, yellow piece of paper, similar to those that came out of computers in old sci-fi shows. The primary reason most truly impressive types fail to blow us away in the intro is that they’re not trying to impress us. There are others, of course, and they usually greet us with a little something like this:

“Please, don’t call me Mr. Duggin,” those who’ve attained levels of authority often say in a handshake, “Call me Henry.”

“I understand that you’re trying to impress me with your humility,” we should say to Henry, “but could you wait until we’ve felt each other out here a little bit?” I could be wrong, of course, but I think they consider the ‘Call me Henry’ hello a shortcut to impressions through humility. They’re basically saying, ‘Hey, I’m not as impressive as you think. I’m just another peon, like you.’

‘All right, well, I didn’t consider you particularly extraordinary until you said that. Now, I’m just like wow, your humility is so impressive, but if you are truly humble, why do you need to impress it upon me? What are you hoping to accomplish here?’

Is Henry as impressive as he wants us to believe, or is so uncomfortable that he hasn’t adapted to the societal norm we all use to address someone we don’t know with a prefix followed by their surname? He has, of course, but Henry Duggin is hoping to short-circuit these dynamics, so we consider him more humble, more professional, and more impressive. Henry wants us to consider the idea that only an all-that-and-a-bag-of-chips guy would demand informalities.

When I had a “Please, call me Henry” as a boss, I tried to think of a time when I arrived at a familial link with a boss who allowed me to call him Henry in the privacy of a corporate boardroom. I know others enjoy this. I’ve seen that warm glow and those blushing smiles of euphoria on their faces when the boss dropped that invitation on them. They appreciate the gesture of a boss reaching down to touch them on a familial link, as God did in Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam, but I see it as Henry’s method of reinforcing his leadership mystique.

“Why do you keep calling him Mr. Duggin?” they ask me. “He wants us to call him Henry.”

“Because that’s the way I was raised,” I lie. “I was taught to address a boss as Mr. or Ms. Duggin. It isn’t intended as a compliment or an insult that I refuse to call him Henry. It’s just the way I was raised.” In truth, I feel queasy calling him Henry, because I feel like I’m feeding into his narcissistic humility.

***

“Nothing rhymes with nostril.” –George Carlin

Thanks to the modern convenience of the search engine that George Carlin obviously didn’t use often enough, I found some words, austral, claustral, and rostral that rhyme with nostril. Sorry George! Now that we’ve established that, the next question is why haven’t any of the millions of lyricists (poets and/or songwriters), since Shakespeare, invented a more romantic, or utilitarian, word that rhymes with nostril? The Oxford English Dictionary claims that William Shakespeare invented 1,700 words, and other lyricists invented innumerable words to serve their cause, but none of them rhyme with nostril. If necessity is the mother of invention, why didn’t Mr. Shakespeare (“Please call me Willy”), or any lyricists since, invent a word to rhyme with nostril?

How many words have lyricists devoted to the eyes and the lips? Their beauty is so self-sustained that some artists have painted nothing but eyes and lips. Lyricists have written songs and poems about nothing more than a woman’s eyes, and we could probably create a War and Peace-length compendium to the space created for lips. Artists also focus effort on high cheek bones, or a high or low forehead, but they don’t put any effort, beyond necessity, to the size and shape of nostrils.

Some nostrils are thin, others wide, and some take on a more oval shape. There are even some that appear to take on an unusual pear-shape that almost achieves a point. We might think these variations would excite artists to invent words to capture the perfect nostril, but they haven’t, because the nostril(s) is never strikingly beautiful or ugly. They’re just there. They might be more attractive than the other orifices, but they’re never so stimulating that we would rank a persons’ degrees of attraction based on the size or shape of their nostril. To my mind there aren’t any subconscious visual stimuli regarding their sizes and shapes either. Maybe there are, and I just don’t know it.

Picasso believed beauty arrived in angles and symmetry, but if the nostril achieves either of these, the artistic credit goes to the nose. The point is, no artist I know of has expended artistic energy, beyond necessity, to the nostril. If they did, they might’ve invented a word that rhymes with it we all know by heart by heart, or they would’ve used some artistic license to use austral, but how does even the gifted lyricist, create beautiful rhyming sentences around a “southern” nostril, or a nostril from the south? If they attempted to soundboard a rhyme with claustral, what artistic benefit could they achieve with a nostril that is “secluded”. “I felt claustral in her nostril,” or “his nostril left me claustral.” The artist’s interpretation of such lyrics could lay in the affect of feeling lonely in her presence, which would be a beautiful sentiment worthy of exploration. If the lyricist was in a band, however, my guess is that his bandmates would suggest they know where the lyricist was headed, but they might caution him that the general public might misinterpret the lyrics to mean that his beloved is booger-free, except for him, dangling on a precipice. To declare that the poet’s lover was such a beauty that her nostril appeared rostral, or “a scale in reptiles on the median plate of the tip of the snout that borders the mouth opening”, just doesn’t achieve a level of artistic appeal most artists seek when they’re trying to impress upon others their talent for expression. So, we can’t fault George for not knowing that there are words that rhyme with nostril, because no lyricist has ever sought to capitalize on what could’ve been an artistic first for someone.

***

“Everything is still the same. It’s just a little different now.” —George Carlin

In the not-so-distant future, future earthlings will have not-so-distant emotions, if we believe George Carlin. If we believe time travel movies, however, we will all have exaggerated emotions. The characters therein are either overwhelmingly happy, in a creepy, surreal way that suggests they don’t question anything anymore, or they’re incredibly unhappy, because of that whole Armageddon thing. Some of these movies were made in the 50’s and 60’s, and in the 50’s and 60’s, we apparently thought that 2000 man would have all these exaggerated emotions. No one predicted that not much would change in the ways of human nature and human emotions. If we 2000 men and women could send a message back, we might write, “Everything is still the same. It’s just a little different now.”

With that in mind, how do we view 2100 man? We don’t, because to our figurative schemes of thought, if there is an Earth, it will be uninhabitable. Interpersonal relationships will evolve to intrapersonal relationships, or on the inside, or within. If we smile, it will be strained, and we will no longer feel the need to leave the house. In truth, the future will probably evolve to everything being the same, just a little different.

2100 man will also, apparently, lose any and all skills at problem resolutions, and they apparently won’t feel the need to survive either, if current time travel movies are to be believed. We won’t be happy or sad. We will enter an era of acceptance. We’ll just accept things the way they are, and the fact that life is rotten and death is close at hand. If these characters have water or food shortages, they just learn to live with it. Geniuses, who fix things, are apparently nowhere to be found in the future, and the only thing 2100 man will do is accept life the way it is and learn to accept the fact that they’re just going to die soon as a result. I would submit that these writers know as little about humanity as we do the future.

***

“Not only do I not know what’s going on, I wouldn’t know what to do about it if I did.” “The nicest thing about anything is not knowing what it is.” “When I hear a person talking about political solutions, I know I’m not listening to a serious person.” —George Carlin

Anytime someone proposes solving a problem with political solutions, the yang to that yin should be, “What then?” What happens when “we” attempt to resolve a problem from the outside in? Every effect involves a countereffect, and some unforeseen consequence that we forgot to imagine. “We just wanted to fix the problem?” the political solutions proponent says. Their intentions were more important to them, and hopefully to you, than their attention to detail. Political solutions involve the invisible hand putting a thumb on the scale, but most of us don’t know what’s going on, so we try to find someone who does. We turn to someone who has great hair, with a side part, 3-4 inches on top, and about an inch on the sides and back. He has a suave, confident hairstyle that matches what we associate with knowledge and power, and she has a chin that harmonizes with the face, and is well balanced. It’s not too small, too wide, or retracted. It’s also well-rounded, and she has beautiful arms. So, when our preferreds say something to us, it sticks, because in some way we haven’t fully explored, we want to be them. If we sound like them, because they sound like they know what they’re talking about in a way we find inspirational, we hope that we might be sound as inspirational as they do when we repeat it. We still won’t know what’s going on, and we wouldn’t know what to do about if we did, and now we know that they didn’t either. Their proposed solution now is to fix all of the problems their initial political solution created, with another political solution, but they sound like they know what they’re talking about now. Their presentations are so artful, no ums or uhs, and isn’t that somewhat, sort of, important enough? The “What then?” guys are often nerdy guys who wear some kind of gel (ick), and they wear some kind of clip-on to keep their ties straight.

Scat Mask Replica VIII

August 10, 2019June 14, 2020 RilalyLeave a comment

How much money does the average Fortune 500 Company spend learning the mind of the consumer? How many psychologists, linguists, and marketers do their preferred research firms and marketing agencies consult before starting production on a commercial? Their job is to know what makes us laugh, what makes us cry, and what intrigues us long enough to pitch a product or idea. They also have the unenviable chore of finding a way to keep us from fast forwarding through commercials. The average commercial is thirty seconds long, so advertisers need to pack a lot into a tight space. With all the time, money, and information packed into one thirty-second advertisement, one could say that commercials are better than any other medium at informing us where our culture is. One could even go so far to say that each commercial is a short, detailed report on the culture. If that’s true, all one needs to do is watch commercials to know that the art of persuasion has altered dramatically in our post-literate society.

Booksellers argue that we don’t live in a post-literate society, as their quarterly reports indicate that books are selling better than ever. I don’t question their accounting numbers, but some of the commercials big corporations use to move product are so dumbed down and condescending that I wonder if fewer and fewer people are buying more and more books.

When advertisers make their pitch, they go to great pains, financially and otherwise, to display wonderful messages. They then hire a wonderful actor, or spokesman, to be the face of the company. By doing so, of course, the companies who employ the advertising agencies want the consumer to find their company is just as wonderful. If you’re not a wonderful person, their carefully tailored message suggests you can be if you follow their formula. If I am forced, for whatever reason, to watch a commercial, I find their pitches so condescending that they almost make me angry.

Thirty seconds is not a lot of time when it comes to the art of persuasion, so advertising agencies take shortcuts to appeal to us. These shortcuts often involve quick emotional appeals. The problem with this is that people who watch commercials adopt these shortcuts in casual conversations, and they begin using them in everyday life.

I find the quick, emotional appeals these research and marketing firms dig up so appalling that I avoid commercials as much as possible. I find the opposite so appealing, in comparison, that I probably give attempts at fact-based, critical thinking more credit than they deserve. I walk away thinking, “Hey, that’s a good idea!” whether it’s actually a good idea or not, I appreciate the thought they put into making a rational appeal.

Some quick, emotional appeals add crying to their art of persuasion. “Don’t cry,” I say. “Prove your point.” A picture says a thousand words, right? Wrong. We’ve all come to accept the idea that powerful figures and companies require an array of consultants to help them tailor their message for greater appeal. Yet, if one has facts on their side, they shouldn’t need to cry. They shouldn’t need to hire consultants, they shouldn’t need attractive spokesmen, and the idea that they “seem nice and wonderful” shouldn’t matter either. I know it’s too late to put the genie back in the bottle, but I think the art of persuasion should be devoid of superficial and emotional appeal.

***

Marketing firms and their research arms also spend an inordinate amount of time discussing “the future”. Some ads intone their pitch with foreboding tones, and some discuss it with excitement. Our knowledge of the future depends on our knowledge of the past. As evidence of that, we look to our senior citizens. They don’t pay attention to the present, because they find it mostly redundant. “What are you kids talking about these days?” they ask. We inform them. “That’s the same thing we were talking about 50 years ago.” Impossible, we think, we’re talking about the here and now. They can’t possibly understand the present. They can, because it’s not as different from the past as we want to believe. The one element that remains a constant throughout is human nature.

You’re saying that all the change we’ve been fighting for will amount to nothing? It depends on the nature of your fight. Are you fighting to change human nature? If so, there’s an analogy that suggests, if you’re trying to turn a speedboat, all you have to do is flick a wrist. If you’re trying to change the direction of a battleship, however, you should prepare for an arduous, complicated, and slow turn. My bet is that once we work through the squabbles and internecine battles of the next fifty years, the future will not change as much as these doomsayers want it to, and if it does, it will probably be for the better.

***

How many people truly want to create works of art? “I would love to write a book,” is something many people say. How many want it so badly that they’re willing to endure the trial and error involved in the process getting to the core of a unique, organic idea? How many of us know firsthand, what a true artist has to go through? If others knew what they have to go through, I think they would say, “Maybe I don’t want it that badly.”

We prefer quick, emotional appeals. How many overnight geniuses are there? How many artists write one book, one album, or paint one painting to mass appeal? How many of them were able to generate long-term appeal? We should not confuse appeal with best seller. The idea of best seller or attaining market appeal is, to some degree, not up to the artist. They might have a hand in the marketing process, but appeal is largely up to the consumer. The only thing an artist can do is create the best product possible in the large and small ways an artist creates. In this vein, creating art involves a process so arduous that most people would intimidate most.

On the flip side, some say that there are artistic, creative types, and there are the others. There’s no doubt that there are varying levels of talent, but I believe that with enough time and effort most people could create something beautiful and individualistic.

Leonardo da Vinci was a talented artist, who painted some of the greatest pieces of art in world history. From what I’ve read about the man, however, he achieved so much in the arts that it began to bore him. After working through his apprenticeship and establishing himself as one of the finest painters of his day, he received numerous commissions for various works of art from the wealthy people and government officials around him. He turned some down, never started others, and failed to complete a whole lot more. One theory I’ve heard on da Vinci is that if he had a starving artist period, he probably created hundreds of thousands of pieces in that period, but that a vast majority of those pieces were lost, destroyed, or are otherwise lost to history. By the time, he achieved a level of stature where those in his day wanted to preserve his work, painting bored him so much that he created comparatively few pieces. Either that, or in the course of his attempts to create that elusive “perfect piece” da Vinci began studying the sciences to give his works greater authenticity. In the course of those studies, he became more interested in the sciences than he was in painting. These are just theories on why we only have seventeen confirmed pieces from Leonardo da Vinci, but they sound firm to me.

***

There is a hemispheric divide between creative types and math and science types. One barometer I’ve found to distinguish the two is the Beatles. So many types love the Beatles that we can tell what type of brain we’re dealing with by asking them what Beatles era they prefer. With the obvious distinctions in style, we can break the Beatles down into two distinct eras, the moptop era includes everything they did before Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, and the “drug-induced” era that followed. Numbers-oriented people generally love the moptop era more, and the creative, more right brain thinkers tend to prefer Sgt. Peppers and everything that followed. The moptop era fans believe the Beatles were a better band during the moptop era, because “they were more popular before Sgt. Peppers. Back then,” they say, “the Beatles were a phenomenon no one could deny.” Moptop era fans often add that, “the Beatles got a little too weird for my taste in the “drug-induced” albums that followed.” Although there is some argument over which album sold the most, at the time of release, it is generally argued that the latter half of their discography actually sold more than the first half. Numbers-oriented people should recognize that the latter albums were bound to sell more if for no other reason than the moptop Beatles built a fan base who would purchase just about anything they created after the moptop era. Those who lived during the era, however, generally think that the Beatles were less controversial and thus more popular during their moptop era, and if you’ve ever entered into this debate you know it’s pointless to argue otherwise. We creative types would never say that the pre-Sgt. Peppers Beatles didn’t have great singles, and Revolver and Rubber Soul were great albums, and we understand that those who lived during the era have personal romantic attachments to their era of Beatles albums, but we can’t understand how they fail to recognize the transcendental brilliance of the latter albums. We think the brilliance and the creativity they displayed on Sgt. Peppers and everything that followed provided a continental divide no one can dispute.

Further evidence of the popularity of the latter half of the Beatles catalog occurred in 1973. In 1973, the Beatles released two greatest hits compilations simultaneously for fans who weren’t aware of the Beatles during their era. The blue greatest hits album, which covered the 1967-1970, post Sgt. Peppers era has sold 17 million to date, while the red greatest hits 1962-1967, moptop-era album has sold 15 million. As anyone who has entered into this debate knows, however, it’s an unwinnable war.