While most people seem to mellow with age, George Carlin, the iconic stand-up comedian who died Sunday of heart failure, grew ever harsher. By the age of 71, Carlin had perfected his routine as a foul-mouthed curmudgeon, a life-long persona that grew more cantankerous with each passing year.

Born in 1937 and raised on West 121st Street in New York City, near Columbia University, Carlin fell more or less ass-backwards into comedy. He joined the Air Force, moved to Texas, and was soon discharged for being "unproductive." He started working on comedy routines as a radio host with Jack Burns, moved to California, and before long was a regular on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

In the spirit of Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, Carlin began taking shots at politics, pointing out hypocrisies, and doing it with a healthy dose of four-letter words. Nothing was off-limits, and no word was too baudy for the gravel-voiced, long-haired Carlin. He was a 1970s embodiment of Henry David Thoraeu's theory of "civil disobedience" -- the active refusal to abide by certain laws in order to register dissent with the political status quo, but without resorting to physical violence.

The young Carlin first appeared on television in a suit and tie, with neatly coiffed hair and a fresh smile that almost obscured the mischievous, sometimes maniacal look in his eyes, and those eyebrows that never seemed to stop bouncing around above them. By the mid-1970s, though, Carlin had shed the tie, grown the hair, and begun his comic revolution.

Throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, Carlin alternated between making a point about something and just making dirty words funny time and again. But one thing that never changed was his impeccable comedic timing, and the fact that Carlin's humor was instrumental in the radical change that has occurred in this country over the past four decades.

And what better time than now to revisit one of those early Carlin routines, in which the late comedian makes a pretty strong case for why he might, in fact, still be alive:

[Image: Mister Scratch]