Napalm & Silly Putty

by George Carlin

  After all, when is it? Do you know? No one really knows when it is. We made the whole thing up. It’s a human invention. There are no numbers in the sky. Believe me, I’ve looked; they’re not there. We made the whole thing up.

  So, when are we? Sometimes we think we know where we are, but we really don’t know when we are. For all we know, it could be the middle of last week.

  And the time zones are no help; they’re all different. In fact, in parts of India the time zones actually operate on the half hour instead of the hour. What is that all about? Does anybody really know what time it is?

  What Year Do You Have?

  And never mind a piddly little half-hour difference in India, how about thousands of years? The major calendars disagree by thousands of years. To the Chinese, this is 4699; the Hebrews think it’s 5762; the Muslims swear it’s 1422. No telling what the Mayans and Aztecs would say if they were still around. I guess their time ran out.

  Remember, folks, these are calendars we’re talking about, instruments specifically designed to keep track of time. And they’re all different. And they’re not just off by a couple of weeks, this is thousands of goddamn years we’re talking about. How did that happen?

  Our current (Gregorian)calendar is such an amateur show that every four years we have to cram in an extra day just to make the whole thing work. We call it February 29. Personally, I don’t believe it. Deep down, I know it’s really March 1. I mean, it just feels like March 1, doesn’t it?

  But even that simple quadrennial adjustment doesn’t fix things, so every 100 years we suspend that rule and dispense with the extra day. Unless, of course, the year is divisible by 400, in which case we suspend the suspension and add the extra day. But that’s still not quite enough, so every 4, 000 years we suspend that rule too, and back comes February 29!

  Here’s how we got to this sorry state: The Julian calendar was introduced in 46 B.C., the Roman year 709, but it was off by eleven minutes a year, so by 1582 there was an accumulated error of ten days. Accordingly, that year Pope Gregory XIII decreed that the day following October 4 would be called October 15. They just skipped ten days. Threw them out. Officially, in 1582, no one was born in France, Italy, Spain or Portugal during the period October 5 through October 14. Weird, huh?

  But even weirder, Britain didn’t adopt the Gregorian calendar till. 1752, when they dropped eleven days out of September. Since this also applied to the American colonies, officially, no one was born here from September 3 through September 13, 1752. Except Indians. By the way, during that same year New Year’s Day was moved from March 25 to January 1. The way it had been handled before, for example, was that March 24, 1750, would be followed by March 25, 1751. Pretty fucked up, huh? And you thought that big millennium party you went to was being held right on time.

  Staying in the “Now ”

  We try hard to keep track of time, but it’s futile. You can’t pin it down. For example, there’s a moment coming…it’s not here yet…it’s still in the future…it’s on the way…it hasn’t arrived…it’s getting closer…here it is…Oh shit, it’s gone!

  We use words like “now.” But it’s a useless word, because every time you say it, it means something different.

  “Can you tell me the time?”

  “Which time did you want? Now? Or the time you asked me? Or how about now? Is this the time you want? Speak up, this stuff isn’t standing still.”

  And think of the phrase “just now.”

  “Did you hear that?”

  “What?”

  “Just now.”

  “You mean, ’Just then.’”

  “Yes, just then. Wait, there it is again!”

  “When?”

  “Just now.”

  Everything we think of as “now ”is either the very recent past or the very near future. There’s no present. “Welcome to the present.” ZOOM! Gone again!

  Keep It Vague

  It’s all so imprecise that people sometimes don’t bother with minutes and hours at all; they keep things purposely vague.

  “What time you got?”

  “Just after.”

  “Just after? Jeez, my watch is slow. I got ‘goin’ on.’”

  It’s amazing how something as precisely calibrated as time can be described so loosely. Especially where short periods of time are concerned. We say “at once, ” “immediately, ” “right away, ” “just like that, ” “no time at all, ” “nothing flat, ” “at a moment’s notice.”

  And one that I never understood: “Before you can say Jack Robinson.” You don’t hear that much anymore, do you? Maybe Jack ran out of time. Maybe he was an Aztec.

  And let’s not forget a “jiffy.” Or a “ flash.” Do you know which is quicker? Well, I looked it up; in fact, there are two jiffies in a flash. And there are six flashes in the twinkling of an eye. No one seems to know how many twinklings of an eye there are in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. And, by the way, why is it two shakes of a lamb’s tail? Wouldn’t the basic unit of measurement be one shake of a lamb’s tail?

  All of a Sudden

  Another vague word is “soon.” For me, soon has an emotional quality; it has great potential for sadness.

  “Is Daddy ever coming to visit us again?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  Here’s a spooky one: “Sooner than you think.” Wow! Sooner than I think. That’s like “before you know it.”

  “I’ll be back before you know it.”

  ZOOM!

  “Holy shit! He did it!!”

  “Sooner or later, ” “one of these days, ” “any day now, ” “from time to time, ” “every now and then, ” “a little while.”

  “A little while ”is nice. So gentle. “I’ll be home in a little while.” That wouldn’t bother you, would it? I think anyone could wait a little while. It doesn’t sound too threatening.

  “Your father is sick, but he still has ‘a little while.’” That’s different from “a short time.” A short time sounds terminal.

  “Your father has only a ‘short time.’”

  If I were about to be executed, I’d much rather have a little while than a short time.

  A Good Time

  By the way, do you have a favorite period of time? It isn’t easy to select a favorite period of time, there are so many appealing ones. I have a few.

  To me, the most useful period of time is five minutes. That seems to be the one most people choose when they’re pressed. “I’ll be there in five minutes.” “Give me five minutes, will ya?” “Whattaya, kiddin’? I could fix that thing in five minutes!”

  That’s all most people want. Five minutes. A good, solid, respectable period of time. And it goes by fast. I think I could do just about anything for five minutes. Even the most distasteful task.

  “Let’s go talk to George Bush.”

  “Are you kiddin’? He’s an asshole.”

  “Look, just five minutes, okay?”

  “Okay, five minutes. But no more! After that I’m gonna puke.”

  Fifteen minutes is a popular period of time. But it has an institutional ring to it. A regulatory quality. It sounds like it’s associated with something either compulsory or forbidden.

  “The exchange window will only be open for fifteen minutes.”

  “You have fifteen minutes to fill out the forms …”

  “In fifteen minutes we will be coming around and …”

  I like twenty minutes better. Twenty minutes sounds kind of free and sporty.

  “I’ll be back to pick up those test papers in fifteen minutes. Then you’ll have a twenty-minute break.”

  “Hey guys, cover me with the boss, will ya? I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

  Twenty minutes. Just enough time to get laid.

  Have a good time.

  SHORT TAKES

  Why was brown excluded from the rainbow? And where did indigo come from? I was taught there were three primary colors a
nd three secondary colors. What’s with this indigo shit?

  After the hurricane is gone, where do people put all that plywood?

  Standing ovations have become far too commonplace. What we need are ovations where the audience members all punch and kick one another.

  Watching television these days, I often wonder what happened to the “vertical hold ”knob. I miss that.

  Don’t you hate when a rock band comes onstage and apparently the drummer has decided that somehow it’s cool to wear a funny hat?

  There’s a store near my house with a sign that says, Unfinished Furniture. I must go in there. I’m looking for a nice three-legged table.

  If you live long enough, everyone you know has cancer.

  I once was dancing with a woman who told me she had a yeast infection. So I asked her to bake me a loaf of bread.

  Why don’t these people who live in hurricane-prone areas just keep some batteries on hand at home? Seems like a simple thing to me. There’s too much last-minute shopping.

  I’m always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy and I realize I’m listening to it.

  Why don’t network TV shows have a warning that says “Caution: You are about to watch a real piece of shit.” Actually, they could just leave it on the screen all the time.

  All music is the blues. All of it.

  I think it would be interesting if old people got anti-Alzheimer’s disease where they slowly began to recover other people’s lost memories.

  Electricity is really just organized lightning.

  You know what they ought to have on planes? A passenger voice recorder. So we could hear all the screaming when a plane goes down. I’m not really interested in the cockpit recorder; the pilots are always talkin’ a bunch of technical shit anyway. But the passengers! That would be fun.

  When you rub your eyes real hard do you see that checkerboard pattern? What is that?

  “Coming soon to a theater near you.” Actually, there is no theater near you. Look around your street. Is there a theater near you?

  Attention certain women: Transporting children is not a license to drive slowly.

  I saw a sign that said, Coming Soon—a 24-Hour Restaurant. And I thought, Well, that’s unusual. Why would they open and close it so quickly? At least try it for a week or two, and see if you can build a clientele.

  Why is it when the two main characters in an action movie have their big climactic fight it always turns out that both of them are really good fighters? Just once, wouldn’t you like to see a fight between two leading male characters where one of them gets the shit completely beat out of him in about eight seconds? Especially the hero.

  I’ve noticed my flax bill is not too high.

  Would someone please explain to me the supposed appeal of having grandchildren? People ask me, “Are you a grandfather yet?” as if it’s some great thing. I’m sure it has its charms, and I imagine some dull-witted people want to see their genes passed along just for the sheer novelty of the idea. But overall, I don’t get it.

  It’s been on my mind for some time, but I’ve never said it publicly. So here goes: “Vo-do-de-o-do and a scoddie-woddie doo-dah day.” Thank you.

  Boy, am I glad to finally be rid of that fuckin’ Mother Teresa.

  Masturbation is not illegal, but if it were, people would probably take the law into their own hands.

  It used to be you got a tattoo because you wanted to be one of the few people who had a tattoo. Now you get a tattoo because you don’t want to be one of the few people who don’t have a tattoo.

  Just when I discovered the meaning of life, it changed.

  People in Washington say it’s not the initial offense that gets you in trouble, it’s the cover-up. They say you should admit what you did, get the story out, and move on. What this overlooks is the fact that most of the time the cover-up works just fine, and nobody finds out a thing. I would imagine that’s the rule rather than the exception. My advice: Take a chance. Lie.

  The IQ and the life expectancy of the average American recently passed each other going in opposite directions.

  Hotel fun: Smoke a big fat joint and then watch a complex spy movie with a lot of characters and plot twists. Then a few weeks later at a different hotel, smoke another joint and watch the same movie. It’s like seeing a whole new film. But the real fun is that about every fifteen minutes something happens in the plot that you seem to know already. It’s an odd feeling. By the way, this exercise can probably be repeated indefinitely with the same movie. As long as the grass holds out.

  This is just one more way of starting a sentence with the word “this ”and ending it with the word “that.”

  Odd Slang: A woman who fucks a priest is said to have “taken a ride on the holy pole.”

  PEOPLE I CAN DO WITHOUT

  Guys in their fifties named Skip.

  Anyone who pays for vaginal jelly with a platinum credit card.

  An airline pilot wearing two different shoes.

  A proctologist with poor depth perception.

  A pimp who drives a Ford Escort.

  A gynecologist who wants my wife to have three Quaaludes before the examination.

  Guys with a lot of small pins on their hats.

  Anyone who mentions Jesus more than 300 times in a two-minute conversation.

  A dentist with blood in his hair.

  Any woman whose hobby is breast-feeding zoo animals.

  A funeral director who says, “Hope to see you folks again real soon.”

  A man with only one lip.

  A Boy Scoutmaster who works at a dildo shop.

  People who know the third verse to the “Star Spangled Banner.”

  Any lawyer who refers to the police as “the federales.”

  A cross-eyed nun with a bullwhip and a bottle of gin.

  Guys who have their names printed on their belts.

  A brain surgeon with BORN TO LOSE tattooed on his hand.

  Couples whose children’s names all start with the same initial.

  A man in a hospital gown, directing traffic.

  A waitress with a visible infection on her serving hand.

  People who have large gums and small teeth.

  Guys who wear the same underwear until it begins to cut off the circulation to their crotch.

  Any woman whose arm hair completely covers her wristwatch.

  CANCER IS GOOD FOR YOU

  A lot of people worry that their drinking water isn’t safe, because it contains things that cause cancer. Not me. I don’t care if the water is safe or not, I drink it anyway. You know why? Because I’m an American, and I expect a little cancer in my water. I’m a loyal citizen and I’m not happy unless government and industry have poisoned me a little every day.