He had another sports rule. Derivatives of ping pong could not be sports.

Tennis: Ping pong played while standing on the table

Volleyball: Raquetless team ping pong played with an inflated ball and a raised net while standing on the table

His abscence will be conspicuous indeed....

And if you didn't get him that's really a shame.

Will never forget the first time I ran into George Carlin outside a concert hall. It was a seedy parking garage just off Broadaway and Times Square in NYC back in the early 80's. He was evediently a regular monthly patron like so many of us waitng for our vehicles to come down off the three-abreast antiquiated lift. It hardly qualified as an elevator which was fairly typical for the City in those days.

Anyway, finally down comes the lift, up goes the gate revealing one impossibly polished cream colerd Rolls Royce with the orange NY License Plate: STOLEN.

A few of us chuckled wondering who belonged to the ride when a smallish guy scurried over to the car, handed the attendant a five, looked over at the line and just kinda smiled that wry thin smile. And he was gone.

Don't pretend that atheism isn't a religion

It isn't.

Thanks for showing that just because you're a fan of some intelligent comedy it doesn't necessarily mean you yourself are intelligent.

The less we heard from him the less there was America, now he is dead.

Thank You George.

Baseball's played in a park

Oh, and I believe that George Carlin was by far a member of the lofty group that includeds the most effective fundamentalist atheists in the history of our culture! In these fundamentalist times is it any surprise at all the he's receiving the Mark Twain award? I weep at the magnitude of that honor, and to think that though he knew he got the honor he'll get it posthumously is a brutal thought indeed

As a teenager growing up in a conservative town (Spokane) with a family that was an active member in our Foursquare church, hearing Carlin in the 80's ranks only behind seeing Kingsley's Ghandi and reading Slaughterhouse Five as the most important catalysts for me abandoning my parents' Christianity.

He's a fucking prophet, man. I will not deny that, my friend. Nor will I deny that his body is rotting in the earth. So it goes.

'Returning to the primordial stew' would serve just fine; as would 'gone to meet his maker', 'fallen into a black hole', 'kicked the bucket', or 'bought the farm'.

I was simply following through on a particular metaphoric interpretation of death via the Carlin quote that King was referencing.

Don't pretend that atheism isn't a religion, my friend. Fundamentalism springs up in all of them, regardless of how evolved they are (yes, a modern, fact-based atheism is more evolved than fundamentalist Islam or Judaism or Christianity, et al.; but it can still manifest in a fundamentalist form, leading to very similar ends, if not always means).

The downfall of any belief system is believing that it is The Ultimate Belief System That Has All Of The Answers. There is a branch of TUBSTHAOTA that consists of atheists, and members of this branch are far too often promoted here on Salon--not that I don't learn something from whatever I read, just that relative to all the other shades of atheism they are the most prevalent here.

I just have one question for them: What started the chemical and electrical process?

...and where did that come from?

Oh, but where did that come from?

etc...

I had this entire hour memorized by the time I was in Junior High. I loved the wordplay, and I still owe much of my cadence and my humor to those early HBO specials, which they ran ad nauseam in those days, and I watched 'em each and every time they came on.

He was also one of the rare comedians who became deeper the older he got, not just relying on old schtick.

Personally, I still think his suggestion to put a gasoline fire in the center of the basketball court to liven up the game is a great idea. It'd get me to watch the NBA for more than 5 minutes at a time.

I'm glad it was you, King, who did the honors for Mr Carlin. The only other Salon writer who could have done him justice is Gary Kamiya, and he's probably asleep at the moment.

When I heard the news a little earlier, I hollered NO! and cried for a little bit. I learned about George Carlin's genius from my mom, and so hearing that we'd lost him just reopened the wound that was losing mom 3 years ago. I know, it sounds weird, but there ya go. It even made me feel better to see that George was still around when he was on Countdown with Keith Olbermann recently, like a reminder of my mom and what made her laugh.

By "going home", I hope you mean "buried in the ground in a box" or "incinerated into ashes". George Carlin was an atheist.

Soft-peddling that disrespects his legacy.

Thanks King, for being so quick to post. And thank you too for the full quote at the end re: football vs. baseball. Apparently, in the end Carlin was a baseball man after all: he went home.

God bless.