George Carlin

Much like for my favorite movies, here is a list of my Top 25 favorite writers.

1. Vladimir Nabokov
2. Ray Bradbury
3. JRR Tolkien
4. Kurt Vonnegut
5. Douglas Adams
6. Mark Twain

The rest in alphabetical order by last name:

• Robert Benchley
• Charlotte Brontë
• Emily Brontë
• Albert Camus
• Raymond Chandler
• Umberto Eco
• William Gibson
• Spalding Gray
• Franz Kafka
• Milan Kundera
• Ursula K Le Guin
• George Orwell
• Dorothy Parker
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Muriel Spark
• Bram Stoker
• Jules Verne
• Edith Wharton
• HG Wells

Honorable Mentions

• Jane Austen
• Jorge Luis Borges
• George Carlin
• Philip K Dick
• James Ellroy
• Ernest Hemingway
• James Joyce
• Jack Kerouac
• Stephen King
• Herman Melville
• Flannery O'Connor
• William Shakespeare
• Mary Shelley
• Neal Stephenson
• John Steinbeck
• Hunter S Thompson
• Virginia Woolf
• Oscar Wilde
• PG Wodehouse
• Emile Zola

It's always tough when one of your heroes dies.

George Carlin was a guru of mine, though we never met. His love of language and its many wonders never failed to send the synapses firing in my brain. His ability to tweak the noses of those in authority was inspirational, and his mission to call anybody on their bullshit was a gift.

"I love and treasure individuals as I meet them, I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to." - George Carlin

So John Scalzi is procrastinating horribly (or procrastinating very well, depending on how you look at it), and today decided to tape bacon to his cat. Why? Because certain people were skeptical about that particular item being on his to-do list for the day. Never ever question a procrastinating writer!

Anyhow, it's now gotten picked up on Fark on the beginning of its trip around the Interwebs, which should guarantee some moments of hilarious trolling and mashed-up picture-making...though I'm unclear on why the submitter felt the need to add an "SFW" tag. The post has the potential to set off WWIII, unfortunately, as Scalzi points out in the comments in reply to someone mentioning PETA:

It is true that the pictures feature both pet humiliation and meat, two things PETA is against. But as I say, Ghlaghghee was not harmed and the bacon is beyond caring.

Which naturally reminds me of this quote from George Carlin:

"When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?" This title offends all three major religions, and even vegetarians!

"Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life; football begins in the fall, when everything is dying."

-- George Carlin

"Baseball is a 19th century pastoral game; football is a 20th century technological struggle."

-- George Carlin

"Baseball is the only major sport that appears backward in a mirror."

-- George Carlin