The 10 Best Dark Humor Jokes from George Carlin
George Carlin was a master of context. There was never a topic too taboo or too controversial for him to tackle, and he’d always break it down in one of three ways: 1) Make it too goofy for anyone to take seriously; 2) provide a reasonable counterargument to the nonsense; or 3) just tell the powers that be exactly where and how they could shove it.
As a result, there was never a shortage of instances where Carlin’s material got dark. How dark, you ask? Welp, check out the incredibly dark hue of the 10 jokes below…
On the ‘Quiet Ones’
“Every time you see a story about a serial killer on TV, what do they do? They bring on the neighbor. And the neighbor says, ‘Well, he was always very quiet.’ And someone in the room says, ‘It’s the quiet ones ya gotta watch.’ This sounds to me like a very dangerous assumption. I will bet you anything that while you’re watching a quiet one, a noisy one will fucking kill you. Suppose you’re in a bar and one guy is reading a book not bothering anybody, and another is standing in the front with a machete banging on the door saying, ‘I’LL KILL THE NEXT MOTHER FUCKER WHO COMES IN HERE!’ Who are you gonna watch?”
On Things You Don’t Want to Hear
“There are some things you don’t want to hear. Some things you just flat don’t want to hear. You don’t want to come home from work and hear, ‘Honey, remember how we told the children never to play on the railroad tracks?’ You also don’t want to be sitting in your doctor’s office and hear, ‘Well, Jim, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t live another 20 to 30 years. However, you will be bleeding constantly from both eyes.’ And here’s something I don’t want to hear: ‘I’M PREGNANT, YOU’RE THE FATHER AND I’M GOING TO KILL ALL THREE OF US!’”
On Parents of Honor Students
“Here’s a bumper sticker I’d like to see: ‘We are the proud parents of a child whose self-esteem is sufficient that he doesn’t need us promoting his minor scholastic achievements on the back of our car.’ Or: ‘We are the proud parents of a child who has resisted his teacher’s attempts to break his spirit and bend him to the will of his corporate masters.’ Here’s something else realistic: ‘We have a daughter in public school who hasn’t been knocked up yet. We have a son in public school who hasn’t shot any of his classmates yet. But he does sell drugs to your honor student. Plus, he knocked up your daughter.’”
On Necrophilia
“You know the best thing about necrophilia? You don’t have to bring flowers. Yeah, usually they’re already there. Isn’t that nice and convenient?”
His Tips for Keeping People Alert
“Go into the photographer’s studio in your neighborhood and ask the man if you can buy the pictures of the other people. Say, ‘How much for that heavyset couple in the window?’ They will stare at you a long time on that one. In fact, they might even back up several feet.”
“Go into a gun store, buy a gun and buy some ammunition. Then ask them if they have any ski masks.”
“Next time you’re at a wishing well, ask to see the manager. Tell him you’ve been coming there for 10 years and none of your wishes have come true — ‘Either you give me my money back, or I’m shitting in the well.’”
On Death
“This conversation is bound to turn up. Two guys in a street meet each other, and one of them says, ‘Hey, did you hear? Phil Davis died.’
“‘Phil Davis? I just saw him yesterday.’
“‘Yeah? Didn’t help. He died anyway. Apparently, the simple act of you seeing him did not slow his cancer down. In fact, it may have made it more aggressive. You know, you could be the cause for Phil’s death. How do you live with yourself?’”
On Irony
“Irony deals with opposites; it has nothing to do with coincidence. If two baseball players from the same hometown, on different teams, receive the same uniform number, it is not ironic. It is a coincidence. If Barry Bonds attains lifetime statistics identical to his father’s, it will not be ironic, it will be a coincidence. Irony is ‘a state of affairs that is the reverse of what was to be expected; a result opposite to and in mockery of the appropriate result.’ For instance: A diabetic, on his way to buy insulin, is killed by a runaway truck. He is the victim of an accident. If the truck was delivering sugar, he is the victim of an oddly poetic coincidence. But if the truck was delivering insulin, then he is the victim of an irony.“
On American Culture
“I’m the first one to say it’s a great country, but it’s a strange culture. This has got to be the only country in the world that could ever come up with a disease like bulimia. Got to be the only country in the world where some people have no food at all, and other people eat a nourishing meal and puke it up intentionally. This is a country where tobacco kills 400,000 people a year so they ban artificial sweeteners because a rat died. This is a place where gun-store owners are given a list of stolen credit cards but not a list of criminals and maniacs. And now they’re thinking about banning toy guns — and they’re going to keep the fucking real ones?!?!”
On Going to the Beach
“There is something refreshingly ironic about people lying on the beach contracting skin cancer in an attempt to acquire a purely illusory appearance of good health, while germ-laden medical waste washes up on the sand all around them.”
On Flamethrowers
“We have flamethrowers, and what this means to me is, at some point, some person said to himself, ‘Gee, I sure would like to set those people on fire over there, but I’m way too far away to get the job done. If only I had something that would throw flame on them.’
“It might have ended right there, but he mentioned it to his friend — his friend who was good with tools. About a month later, he was back: ‘Hey, quite a concept!’ WHOOSH! And, of course, the Army heard about it, and they came around, ‘We’d like to buy about 500,000 of them, please. We have some people we’d like to throw flame on. Give us 500,000 and paint them dark brown. We don’t want anyone to see them.”
