The hour of the apocalypse came quietly and went the same way — leaving those who believed that Saturday evening would mark the world’s end confused, or more faithful, or just philosophical.

Some had given away earthly belongings, [and] others drained their savings accounts.

“I had some skepticism but I was trying to push the skepticism away because I believe in God,” said Keith Bauer — who hopped in his minivan in Maryland and drove his family 3,000 miles to California for the Rapture.

“I was hoping for it because I think heaven would be a lot better than this earth,” said Bauer…

Richard Dawkins (from Fresh Air, March 28 2007):

…said Bauer, a tractor-trailer driver who began the voyage west last week, figuring that if he “worked last week, I wouldn’t have gotten paid anyway, if the Rapture did happen.”

I hear a little buyer’s remorse in there, but who hasn’t felt some of that before? Of course, walking away from your job and piling the family in the minivan for a cross-country “Rapture-or-bust” road trip doesn’t sound like the behavior of a skeptic. I’ll give the guy the benefit of the doubt, since I’m not inside his head. Maybe he really was “trying to push skepticism away,” and if so, he sure gave it a hell of a push.

Now our buddy Keith needs a job, and I fear for him at his next job interview: “So, Mr. Bauer, why did you decide to leave your previous job?”

[They had responded to the] May 21 doomsday message by Harold Camping, an 89-year-old retired civil engineer who has built a multi-million-dollar Christian media empire that publicizes his prediction [of the world's end].

The Onion’s “American Voices”:
According to Harold Camping, the founder of Family Radio, the world will come to an end on Saturday. What do you think?

That’s funny because it might even be true — as of this posting, Camping still has not been seen since big non-event.

Camping had been projecting the apocalyptic prediction for years far and wide via broadcasts and websites. He has said that his earlier apocalyptic prediction in 1994 didn’t come true because of a mathematical error.

“I’m not embarrassed about it,” he told The Associated Press last month. This time, he said, “there is …no possibility that it will not happen.”

Well, “no possibility” could be interpreted in a lot of ways… if you happen to think one is a lot. He could always take a play from this week’s Newt Gingrich playbook and say that anyone who quotes his earlier statements is a liar.

Many followers said the delay was a further test from God to persevere in their faith.

“It’s still May 21 and God’s going to bring it,” said Family Radio’s special projects coordinator Michael Garcia, who spent Saturday morning praying and drinking two last cups of coffee with his wife at home in Alameda.

If Christianity were baseball these guys would be Cubs fans. Fortunately, Christianity is not baseball. I can understand being a Cubs fan and having faith that the Cubs will eventually win a championship, because it could happen.

As Saturday drew nearer, followers reported that donations grew, allowing Family Radio to spend millions on more than 5,000 billboards and 20 RVs plastered with the doomsday message. In 2009, the nonprofit reported in IRS filings that it received $18.3 million in donations, and had assets of more than $104 million, including $34 million in stocks or other publicly traded securities.

The end of “Interview with Jesus” from George Carlin’s A Place for My Stuff!, 1980:

Members of a local church, concerned [Camping's] followers could slip into a deep depression come Sunday were part of the crowd outside Family Radio International. They held signs declaring Camping a false prophet as motorists drove by.

Nothing says compassion and concern like a big “YOU FOLLOWED A FALSE PROPHET” sign.

“The cold, hard reality is going to hit them that they did this, and it was false and they basically emptied out everything to follow a false teacher,” the Rev. Jacob Denys, of the Milpitas-based Calvary Bible Church, said earlier. “We’re not all about doom and gloom. Our message is a message of salvation and of hope.”

Salvation and hope, and marketing!

Really, I am flabbergasted. That is just plain inappropriate, and I can’t imagine what possessed him to say it. I know Biden is prone to gaffes, but this is major. Think about it: after scratching and clawing through the fetid political muck for well over a year, Obama signed the historic health care reform bill into law, and Biden says it’s “A big fucking deal?”

No I say, NO! Ho-ly FUCKING shit, it is a HUGE fucking deal! I mean, fuck me running, that is ass-kickingly goddamned big. Suck it, FOX News punditiots, because Yes We Did! This long-overdue victory for the sane majority and the good of all Americans is, quite simply, tits.

Of course, it would be way better if we’d got single-payer, or at least a public option. Then I would set off all seven of George Carlin’s words, lighting up the blog post like magnificent fireworks of profanity. For now I’ll take what I can get — I’m a reasonable man (which is more than I can say for the teabagging cretins who tried to thwart the bill).

As for Vice-President Biden, be more careful next time. I don’t want to hear any more of that kind of egregious understatement out of you.

People who know me well will attest that in a normal conversation, it’s quite common for me to quote George Carlin. It’s no accident: he was so prolifically funny and insightful for so long that he covered the majority of topics relevant to our lives at one time or another. More than any other individual source, George Carlin’s stand-up formed the basis of my comedic sensibility. He showed me what comedy could be—that its full effect extends well beyond what is merely funny. His wit was restless, impatient; it tugged persistently at the uneven corners of our society.

When I was about 11 or 12, his 1972 album Class Clown became the first comedy recording I ever owned. I brought that LP home, listened to it, and then listened to it again. And then again, a few more times. Soon his brilliant riffs were committed to my memory (where they remain), and I returned to Tower Records in Mountain View to repeat the process with another opus from the Carlin catalogue. LPs gave way to cassette tapes – easier to store, useful for my new, bitchin’ bright-yellow Walkman, and good for comedy recordings because the eventual decline in audio fidelity didn’t matter so much.

As I’ve mentioned, his penetratingly funny insights are too numerous and wide-ranging to recount. Here’s just a few, off the top of my head. George, forgive me if I paraphrase.

“You ever notice how you don’t get laid much on Thanksgiving? …I think it’s because all the coats are on the bed.”

“What do dogs do on their day off? Can’t lie around — that’s their job!”

I could go on and on. Maybe I already have a little. Well, if you want to toss in more of your favorites, that’s what comments are for.

All the memorial compositions I’ve glanced at thus far have emphasized Carlin’s status an “anti-establishment” or “counter-culture” icon, that kind of thing. Most often remembered is his arrest on obscenity charges, mirroring the legal run-ins of his predecessor Lenny Bruce and his contemporary Richard Pryor. They also all mention “The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television,” the routine that first put him on the law enforcement radar and, not coincidentally, still his most famous bit. Strangely, my fellow eulogists conspicuously don’t mention what the seven words are. This strikes me as disrespectful of the underlying point Carlin was making, which was that they’re just words. They can’t hurt you. So, as George said:

“Shit piss fuck cunt cocksucker motherfucker and tits. Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that will infect your soul, curve your spine, and keep the country from winning the war.”

Decades have now passed. All Tower Records stores in the U.S. have closed (but, encouragingly, the Mountain View store location I remember so well is now occupied by an independent, old-school Bay Area outfit called Rasputin Music). Anyway, my George Carlin records and cassettes have long since been left behind, my Walkman became obsolete, and newer cars no longer even have tape decks. Now Carlin himself has departed the scene, but his influence on me and countless others will remain as long as we do, and then longer still, even if unrecognized.

What are we to make of the sad news of his death? I can think of no more appropriate course of action than to turn to the man himself for his views on the subject.

So this is it. It is with the utmost gratitude, admiration, respect, and affection that I say farewell, George Carlin… you cantankerous old fuck.

(*lights fuse, plugs ears*)

I’ve started a new category here at C&B, cryptically titled “Lists.” Some of the lists will be ordered, some will be unordered, and some will be not what you ordered. Maybe at some point if I get really fancy with it, some of them may even have items AND sub-items! If you want to see all of the lists together on one page… well, for the moment just click on the “Lists” category (or tag, once I either get UTW to work again or switch plugins… if you have no idea what I’m talking about, just ignore this). My grand visions of this blog’s future will have a much cooler solution, but for now… yadda yadda yadda. Without further ado, here’s my inaugural list:

My Favorite Things Ever Said

• “We may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.”P.T. Anderson, Magnolia (1999)
• “There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t.”Robert Benchley (attributed)
• “I got fired last year in Las Vegas from the Frontier Hotel, for saying ‘shit’ in a town where the big game is called ‘crap.’ That’s some kind of a double standard, you know? I’m sure there was some Texan standing out in the casino yelling ‘Aw, shit, I crapped!’ And they fly those guys in free, you know? Fired me. Shit.”George Carlin
• “What do dogs do on their day off? Can’t lie around — that’s their job!”George Carlin
• “As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.’ When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”Abraham Lincoln, 1855
• “At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined… could not by force take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years… If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”Abraham Lincoln, 1838
• “I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as a member.”Groucho Marx
• “I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not tell a lie; I can, but I won’t.”Mark Twain
• “I haven’t a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatsoever.”Mark Twain
• “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.”Neil deGrasse Tyson