"When it comes to God's existence, I'm not an atheist and I'm not an agnostic. I'm an acrostic. The whole thing puzzles me."

- from ‘When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?’ by George Carlin

To get more technical the term is originally taken from the Greeks: acrostic n. A poem or series of lines in which certain letters, usually the first in each line, form a name, motto, or message when read in sequence.

But we all make up our own terms of life and sometimes we even make up our own
words in the big picture….especially if we are the likes of George Carlin.

To gang bang me with a group of live penguins and some broken new age crystals would have been better than the death of George Carlin, which has left me completely and utterly depressed and worried about where I will now get my guidance in life. I digress.

Some people have a religion to depend on for their wisdom and advice: some go to Jesus, some Allah, some love Buddha, some worship Shiva, Some go to God directly, some see Joseph Smith, and finally some go to Scientology for that off the cuff Hollywood alien advice.

Then there are the people that have the IQ of 10 that have Dr. Phil for spiritual nourishment.

There are people like me, i.e. the “Godless” ones, the spiritual but not religious types that see the

inherent problems with most religions. Us Godless types are few and far between. And all we have is people like George Carlin to give us so many moments of spiritual enlightenment or should I say philosophical ideals that we can adapt to our lives in every day use.

You could even say Carlin was and is our God. He was and is our mouthpiece for rational thoughts and new non-conforming ideals that reached and hopefully still will reach for more generations to come—across that bible belt, to the wasteland that is our Hollywood and finally at times to that pretentious social Mecca of New York City and even in Jersey.

I don't care what you think of him, or me. But the knowledge and enlightenment he shared with the world to me, was bordering on biblical. Biblical in the sense that Carlin was like a modern

Jesus. Hell, he played Jesus in Kevin Smith’s film “Dogma.”

If I were a religious man I could even be tempted to say that Carlin was my Jesus. But I'm not religious, and he would hate that. Come to think of it, I would hate that too.

I never personally knew him, but I took great comfort in know that we lived in the same city. Okay but now, I feel better that I got to vent about how the late great George was so very great.

I am glad I am getting an opportunity to say to the world how sad and fucked up I feel that we lost in essence—the only real modern philosopher that never won the bloody, stinky Nobel peace prize.

There’s no doubt that he should have won, and he would have used that Nobel Prize as an ash-tray. But I guess sometimes that ‘official’ award recognition is considered important in life, to some people at least. It’s never a guarantee but is always a bonus.

In life’s big picture the people who recognize who you are and were is kind of the only footprint some of us might have in this crazy, stupid, deformed, yet lovely world that you and I live in.

So in closing June 22, 2008 was a terrible day.

But tomorrow might even be worse.

So I'll go read some Carlin and think about his sweet cynical voice as if he were my coolly estranged father. Try it. It might just work on you too, close your eyes and picture him saying your next five thoughts.

Who knows, somewhere in the future I might start manufacturing bracelets that say “WWGCD”.

Carmelo Valone is a playwright, screenwriter, novelist and memoirist; he works in other forms of media as well. Carmelo is a graduate of the UCLA Extension Writer’s program. He has just wrapped up a memoir about the 1990’s. Stay tuned for his future projects. He can be reached at: thewriterwrites13@gmail.com or his blog can be seen at: http://awriternamedcarmelovalone.blogspot.com/ or his current website is: http://www.myspace.com/carmelobrian or He’s even on Facebook.