I love George Carlin... BTW, back in 1979, the guy who is credited with popularizing partly sunny instead of partly cloudy (an evolution of optimism) lived next door to me in Ventnor, NJ. I watched him carried out of his front door on a stretcher-- dead of a heart attack at a relatively young age. So much for enforcing optimism.
my black friends refer to themselves as...all the time. i see words as not offensive, because i have my head in the sand and don't realize the baggage that comes with them.