I'm not sure I ever had the conscious thought "George Carlin is one of my heroes," but when I heard he'd died this morning (it was a casual mention by a talk radio host who assumed everyone listening already knew, which made it worse), I knew it was true. I could try to write something about him, but my High Hat colleague William Ham has written an absolutely beautiful post that pretty much mirrors my experience in every respect, so I'll just link to that instead: Bye, George.