I grew up on George Carlin, which explains a lot about me really. All joking aside, he was like having an inappropriate uncle full of wisdom and dirty words. Over the course of my entire growing up experience we would sit down to hear the latest HBO special from Brother George, to learn something new about ourselves, to laugh at what needed laughing at, and to experience that man's particular genius with words.

Now that he's gone, and that still doesn't seem possible, there's a glurge of people out there penning their own half-ass attempts to capture that unique combination of cynicism and whimsy that made Carlin one of the greatest of all time. That's fine, except they then sign his name on them, and that is not cool at all, son. You can't just elevate your crap to the level of a master with a forward button or a macro. You've got to earn that.

Since Carlin in gone, I thought I'd drop in real quick with four of the email essays I find infecting my newsfeed recently that Carlin absolutely did not say in hopes that when you see them in the future you will know that whoever felt the need to share it was basically indulging in intellectual extortion. You can Google the full texts if you must. I'm sticking with the highlighted quotes that prove they could not possibly be Carlin.

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We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

One really great way to test out whether a contemporary person like Carlin said something is to read in their voice in your head. Try it now with this, and may I recommend Class Clown-era Carlin. See, even with old George at his hippiest this saccharine dollop of doodoo just does not work.

The piece is part of a longer work called "The Paradox of Our Time" and was originally penned by a former pastor of Seattle's Overlake Christian Church. Carlin isn't the only person who has been roped into being the author of this. The Dalai Lama and an anonymous Columbine High School student have also been co-opted.

Carlin himself debunked the piece while still alive, calling it a "sappy load of shit." It's hard to imagine George saying we prayed too seldom. In general he treated prayer as less productive than masturbation.

I believe the money I make belongs to me and my family, not some midlevel governmental functionary with a bad comb-over who wants to give it away to crack addicts squirting out babies.

I think owning a gun doesn't make you a killer.

I believe that if you are selling me a Big Mac, you'd better do it in English.

These are all part of an obnoxious email that started circulating in 2011 called "I am a Bad American," and its veracity can be best traced by the fact that it is also occasionally attributed to Ted Nugent. If you believe Ted Nugent and George Carlin have anything in common besides scrotums and three-syllable names then you probably sip tea made from unfluoridated water in an Info Wars mug.

Again, I encourage you to read it in Carlin's voice, perhaps one from the later angry parts of his career like "You Are All Diseased." It still doesn't fly. Even at his meanest Carlin had no respect for people that didn't care about the actuality of raising children in bad situations.

From Back in Town, "Pro-life... You don't see many of these white anti-abortion women volunteering to have any black fetuses transplanted into their uteruses, do you? No, you don't see them adopting a whole lot of crack babies, do you? No, that might be something Christ would do. "