33. Various one-liners, part 7

GEORGE CARLIN DID NOT write these

Various one-liners, part 7

  • Ever wonder about those people who spend $2 apiece on those little bottles of Evian water? Try spelling ‘Evian’ backwards.

  • Isn’t making a smoking section in a restaurant like making a peeing section in a swimming pool?

  • OK…. so if the Jacksonville Jaguars are known as the “Jags” and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are known as the “Bucs,” what does that make the Tennessee Titans?

  • If 4 out of 5 people SUFFER from diarrhea…does that mean that one enjoys it?

  • No one ever says, ‘It’s only a game’ when their team is winning.

  • Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.

(etc.)

These quotes weren’t included as examples on georgecarlin.com of stuff he didn’t write, but they sure show the same typical signs of being fake. For starters, they were part of mass-forwarded joke lists on the internet, often mixed in with some of the other one-liners in the lists above (these lists include “Questions that Just Need to Be Asked”, “Thoughts to Ponder” for the game-losing line, and “Some Time-Honored Truths…” for the fishing one). Also, they don’t show up in any of Carlin’s actual works. And finally, they made their rounds on the internet for years with no attribution, only later being credited to George Carlin. In fact, I don’t see evidence of idiots attaching Carlin’s name to these until 2003.

Regarding the “Evian” quote, The Mammoth Book of Humor, which was published in 2000 by Geoff Tibballs, lists it as quote #884 but has it with no attribution. In 1995, Curt Johnson published a book called Thanksgiving in Vegas (December Press, 106 pages), which includes the following line: “It was then that Barry noticed the holster with the plastic bottle of water in it over her shoulder. Apparently, citizens of California had to carry their own private supply. Which probably came straight from the tap before the bottler slapped on a label. Try spelling Evian backwards”. Though he’s certainly not the only one to notice the spelling; I remember seeing a t-shirt around that same year in a mall that had the same exact “Evian” logo, only it had the letters reversed to spell “naive”. Regardless, there’s no reason to think George Carlin wrote any of this.