Carlin, Camus, No Poker

These may or may not be quick.

The Carlin book was fun, but it was primarily stuff that he has done in stand-up. I would say that I recognized 85-90% of the stuff in the book, and I'm guessing that everything in there appears on a comedy DVD or CD somewhere. It's still nice to get Carlin's refreshing point of view on most things because our society gets bogged down in bullshit quite often. George is a guy who cuts right through all of it, and it makes you look at how you lead your life, which we all should do regularly.

I hated The Stranger by Camus. I read the introduction which discussed all of the philosophy behind the book, but when I read the story, I was let down. Maybe something was lost in translation, but what I thought the book lacked was a human element for the main character. Meursault (sp?) just wasn't a real person to me. I understand the point that Camus was trying to make (according to the preface); that we don't all have to buy into social norms and that they can be oppressive, but he went beyond social norms and past basic animal instincts like the right to survive or logical thought. I feel that the main character is mentally disabled and we simply weren't told that, because I don't buy into the notion that self-preservation is a social norm. Interesting idea, terrible execution.