Comedian Lewis Black has the not-so-sunny disposition of someone who just got doused by a puddle from a passing car, so it comes as no surprise that the first words out of his mouth during his 2005 Carnegie Hall performance are: “This is so (expletive) stupid.”

With Black, famous from his “Back in Black” segment on Comedy Central’s

“The Daily Show,” this kind of anger in perpetuity doesn’t let up. With his ruffled feathers shtick and huffy, halting delivery, he talks Yom Kippur, the New Orleans disaster and candy corn, using the “f-word” in every grammatical category, he admits later, “so (he) can think of other stuff.”

Because of the variety of Black’s targets and the length of the double-disc album — nearly 90 minutes — Black’s Carnegie show is a mixed bag bolstered by his abrasive personality. And its biggest flaw, strangely enough, isn’t completely his fault.

Just as on “The Daily Show,” Black liberally prods national policy and current events, but his best material comes from neurotic observations about things few sane people would mull. In the best and most brilliant bit on the album, Black laments candy corn as the thing that “proves just how dumb we are collectively as a people.”

The more Black takes on topics such as air travel and gay marriage, however, the more the album’s biggest gaffe shows: It was recorded seven months ago, and much of it has dated. What’s more: Black’s commentary on the hypocrisy and irony within these topics — matches are allowed on airplanes, but lighters aren’t, political parties have different facts on the same subject — aren’t particularly insightful or new.

But just as often as Black recycles a few comedic clichés, he just as easily turns in the right direction. In an overlong bit on his experience performing at the Congressional Correspondent’s Dinner, Black starts out talking about politicians with metal poles lodged in certain places but comes out with a pointed and complex conclusion about how the evening was both exalting and deflating.

Without a visual picture of Black — his hands shooting in the air in disgust, front teeth sticking out in a vengeful fury, jaws wagging in a double-take — some of the charm of his rants disappear, but not his blithe self-loathing. He can pull off “edgy” humor so it doesn’t feel like he is intentionally pushing audience buttons; it just, well, makes sense that Lewis Black, after watching Terry Schiavo coverage for days on end, would come to the conclusion that a feeding tube would be awfully convenient.

For of all Black’s Tourette’s-like paroxysms and shocking asides, he arrives fairly early at a point emblematic of both his comedy and his feelings about our mixed-up society. The truth is hard to come by these days, and the only place anyone is going to get trustworthy information is at an elementary school, he says.

Look on a schedule, and on Tuesday, the cafeteria is serving meatloaf and peas. You walk in on Tuesday, and there will be meatloaf and peas. A point like that won’t be dated for a long, long time.