STUFF!

Actually this is just a place for my stuff, ya know? That's all, a little place for my stuff. That's all I want, that's all you need in life, is a little place for your stuff, ya know? I can see it on your table, everybody's got a little place for their stuff. This is my stuff, that's your stuff, that'll be his stuff over there. That's all you need in life, a little place for your stuff. That's all your house is: a place to keep your stuff. If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house. You could just walk around all the time.

A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see that when you're taking off in an airplane. You look down, you see everybody's got a little pile of stuff. All the little piles of stuff. And when you leave your house, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn't want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. They always take the good stuff. They never bother with that crap you're saving. All they want is the shiny stuff. That's what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get...more stuff!

That's George Carlin. In fact, only a part of his riff on "stuff."  If you want to hear it, all of it, it's down at the bottom of this post.

We are a nation of people who like stuff, lots of stuff. We measure success by how much stuff someone owns. We are envious of people who have more stuff. We resent people who, we think, have too much stuff. And yet, we want more stuff.

And most of us don't have any place to put it all!

My mother, for example, filled a spare bedroom with stuff and had no idea what she had. She also rented a storage room and filled that up with stuff that she didn't use, didn't need, and probably really didn't want. My father filled the other spare bedroom with his stuff. My mother collected anything she thought was a collectible or an antique. My father collected tools. And paper. And he had all his cancelled checks for the 5 years previous.

I'm no better, I went out to my garage the other day to find a set of allen wrenches to use to fix my Delta faucet which had a persistent drip (in The Navy, that usually entailed getting a shot or two). Never found them. My tool bench overflows with stuff. I have shelves and drawers and toolboxes out there full of stuff. I no longer know why I have it and what it is.

Anyway, here's George: