George Carlin on Natural Disasters

I look at it this way... For centuries now, man has done everything he can to destroy, defile, and interfere with nature: clear-cutting forests, strip-mining mountains, poisoning the atmosphere, over-fishing the oceans, polluting the rivers and lakes, destroying wetlands and aquifers... so when nature strikes back, and smacks me in the head and kicks me in the nuts, I enjoy that. I have absolutely no sympathy for human beings whatsoever. None. And no matter what kind of problem humans are facing, whether it's natural or man-made, I always hope it gets worse. Don't you? Don't you? Don't you have a part of you, a part of you that secretly hopes everything gets worse? When you see a big fire on TV... don't you hope it spreads? Don't you hope it gets completely out of control and burns down six counties? You don't root for the firemen do you? I mean I don't want them to get hurt or nothing, but I don't want them to put out my fire. That's my fire - that's nature showing off and having fun. I like fires. You know something else I like? Those spring floods in the Midwest! Aren't they great? Like clockwork, spring floods in the Midwest. Now I'm starting to notice... I'm starting to catch on, that every year... it's the same story. Another flood, in the same place, with the same people, on the same river- SAME FUCKING PEOPLE! And these people do not move, they will not fucking move! They repaint, put down new carpeting and wallpaper and they move right back into the same fucking house on the flood plain, next to the river, and then they wonder why grandma's floating downstream with the parakeet on her head! Fourth time, again, fourth fucking time. There's no learning curve with these people. It's very hard to feel sorry for them. Every year - same people, same rowboats! Out there paddling around... rescuing a chicken. What the fuck kind of a life is that? "Well our kids love it here...? Oh really, what do they got, gills? And while they're showing all that action on the screen, the announcer's saying to me "It's been raining steadily for three months now, the ground can't any more water... The river is cresting higher than it has it two centuries, the levees have washed away...? And I just hope it keeps raining and raining and raining and raining and raining and raining and raining and raining and raining and raining and raining and raining and raining, and it rains steadily for five years... and then after that, for ten years it's cloudy. With occasional showers. And the river never returns to its natural banks! It becomes a completely new river, and the borders of three states have to be changed, and all the maps and atlases have to be redrawn and reprinted... and no one's couch ever completely dries out. For years and years, every time they sit down there's always that little "Squish...? "Dan, Linda, come on in you guys, have a seat" - "Squish!" "Squish!" I like that. I'm an interesting guy.

I always hope that no matter how small the original problem is it's gonna grow into bigger and bigger proportions until the whole thing gets completely out of control. Here's an example. Let's say a water main breaks in downtown Los Angeles. Then it floods an electrical substation, knocking out all the traffic lights, and tying up the entire city. And then emergency vehicles can't get through. And at the same time, one of those month-long global warming heatwaves comes along, but there's no air conditioning, there's no water for sanitation, so cholera, smallpox and dysentery break out and thousands of people start dying in the streets. But before they die, parasites eat their brains and they go completely f**king crazy and they storm the hospital. But the hospital can't handle all the casualties, so these people rape all the nurses and set the hospital on fire. And the flames drive them even crazier so they start stabbing social workers and garbage men. And a big wind comes along and the entire city goes up in flames and the people who are still healthy, they get mad at the sick people, and they start crucifying them, nailing them to crosses, trying on their underwear, shit like that. Then everyone smokes crack and PCP and they march on City Hall, where they burn the mayor at the stake, strangle his wife and take turns sodomising the statue of Larry Flint. And at this point, it looks like pretty soon, things are gonna start to get out of control.

So everyone panics and tries to leave the city at the same time, and they trample each other to death in the streets by the thousands, and wild dogs eat their corpses, and the wild dogs chase the rest of the people down the highway and one by one the dogs pick off the old f**ks and the slow people because they're in the fast lane where they don't belong. Get the f**k out of the fast lane if you're an old f**k, if you're a slow f**k. Get over on the right! And then the lucky ones, the lucky people who manage to make it all the way outside of town, they discover when they get there that big sparks from the city have lit the suburbs on fire, and the suburbs burn uncontrollably, and thousands of identical houses have identical fires with identical smoke. Killing all the identical soccer mums with their identical kids named Jason and Jennifer. And now the fire spreads to the farmlands and the farmlands burn intensely at 425 degrees creating millions of baked potatoes. And as the farmlands burn thousands of barns and farmhouses begin to explode from all the hidden methamphetamine labs. And the meth chemicals run downhill into the rivers and streams where wild animals drink the water and get completely geeked on speed. So bears and wolves all hemped up on crack start roaming the countryside looking for people to eat – even though they're not really hungry. And the fire spreads to the forests and the forests burn furiously and hundreds of elves and trolls and fairies come running out of the woods screaming "Bambi is dead! Bambi is dead!" and he is, he is, finally that f**king little shit Bambi is dead. Dead!

Now hundreds of regional fires come together into one huge interstate inferno, and all twelve of the western United States are burning out of control – except Utah, where the Mormons don't allow fires. And then the fire spreads across the Great Plains, toasting the wheat, cooking the cattle and producing…hamburgers, actually. Then it leaps to Mississippi and races through the south, blowing up stills and interrupting lynchings and killing millions of inbred people. And then it turns northeast and it heads for Washington, D.C. where George Bush can't decide whether its an emergency or not. Oh it's hard work. He can't decide because Dick Cheney is in prison. So instead he takes a nap. He takes a nap, he puts his empty f**king brainless head down on the little pillow his mother gave him at Christmas time and he takes a f**king nap. So the fire moves to Philadelphia, but it's a weekend and Philadelphia's closed on the weekend. So the fire moves to New York City and the people in New York City tell the fire to GO F**K ITSELF. GO F**K ITSELF.

And it does. So instead it burns down Long Island and Connecticut, killing all the rich white arseholes and completely destroying their evil faggoty golf courses. And while all this is going on, Canada burns to the ground but nobody notices. And now the entire North American continent is on fire, producing a huge thermal updraft and creating an incendiary cyclonic macro-system that forms a hemispheric mega-storm, breaking down the molecular structure of the atmosphere and actually changing the laws of nature. Fire and water combine, burning clouds of flaming rain fall upward. Gamma rays and solar winds ignite the ionosphere creating huge clouds of ionised plasma. Bolts of lightning 20 million miles long begin shooting out of the North Pole and…the sky fills up with green shit. And then suddenly the entire fabric of space time splits in two. A huge crack in the universe opens. And all the dead people from the past begin falling through. Babe Ruth, Groucho Marx, Davy Crockett, Tiny Tim, Porky Pig, Hitler, Janis Joplin, Alan Ludden, my uncle Dave, your uncle Dave, everybody's uncle Dave, an endless stream of dead uncle Dave's falling through the crack.

And all the dead uncle Dave's gather around the heavenly kitchen table. They light up cigarettes and they begin to talk. They talk about how they never got a break. How their parents didn't love them and their children weren't grateful. They talk about how the government screwed them out of money and they JUST missed out on a big job. They say the Jews own everything and the Blacks get special treatment. And all the hatred and bitterness drips out of these people and forms a big pool of liquid hate. And the pool of liquid hate begins to spin. Round and round it spins, faster and faster. And the faster it spins, the bigger it gets, faster and faster, bigger and bigger, until the whirling pool of hate is bigger than the entire universe and then suddenly it EXPLODES into trillions of tiny stars. And every star has a trillion planets. And every planet has a trillion uncle Dave's. And all the uncle Dave's have good jobs and perfect eyesight and shoes that fit. They have great sex lives and free health care. They understand the internet and their kids think they're cool. And they all love their neighbours. And every week, without fail , uncle Dave wins the lottery. Forever and ever, until the end of time, every single uncle Dave has a winning ticket. And uncle Dave is finally happy.