Robert Green Ingersoll

[cornerofmadness]

said it well when he said “You have no right to erect your toll-gate upon the highways of thought”

I'd like to tattoo that to forehead of the idiot who set his/her god-given righteousness loose on the young adult section of my local library.

I'm reading the third book in the Gatekeeper's series and some fool has gone through and blacked out all the swear words (as if you can't tell what they should have been) and anything that used God's name in vain (Like an OMG).

I'd like to tie this person down and read Harry Potter to him until he foams at the mouth.

Ingersoll also said "Every library is an arsenal” I guess that's what holier than thou is trying to disarm. Wouldn't want the young ones to have freedom of thought.

My thought is, does the library have to use my tax dollars to replace the book this moron defaced?

ETA - Holy crap! I wrote 7438 words since wednesday and most of it was holiday fic fulfillment!

Comments

[anguisel.livejournal.com]

More or less probably unless someone donates another copy or something. I hate when people do that. Even more, I hate when they decide to let a little kid to it and turn the page to find that it had been drawn in by some brat in crayon....

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

that doesn't thrill me either but i can excuse that (since kids can get away from the watchful eye) but to deliberately scratch out what you don't like in a book? No excuse for it

[anguisel.livejournal.com]

I can understand the kid thing since I deal with my nieces every once in a while but I always go by the 'it's not your property' thing. At least it was only the words, I remember picking up a copy one time in the teen section of Harry Potter that had whole sentences blacked out. -.- I do remember buying a book from the thrift store and finding along the top of the pages little messages of love to whoever had it before me. It was quite interesting.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

i read a book recently talking about Mithras vs Jesus (Mithras being born of a virgin, having 12 apostles, baptised by a man name John and was hung on a tree about 1000 years before Jesus) and some one frantically scribbled so many things a bout how this wasn't true etc that the book was unreadable.

[jennawaterford.livejournal.com]

What did I call your location a few posts ago? DumbFuckBerg? *eyerolls* Ignorant gits.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

that about sums it up. If the truth doesn't agree with YOUR truth, obliterate it (well the Catholic church already did that too poor Mithras)

[anguisel.livejournal.com]

Oh that really sucks. There was a book I used to get all the time when I was little and found in the adult fiction section called The World of the Dark Crystal. Completely awesome book about the movie with full pictures of all those designs and that within it. Some of the pages were like tracing paper, so you can overlay the designs of the uru and skeksi so you can see how they are one and that. Then one day I grabbed it and found that someone ripped some of the pages out especially the tracing paper pages so if someone new grabbed had grabbed it, they wouldn't have a clue what the book was talking about. It broke my heart because we were only able to find this book in a bookstore once and were unable to buy it because they wanted $79 for it and didn't have the money. I adored it so much. It's one of those gems that you only see once in a blue moon on sale....like The Burbs or Gnorm the Gnome.... *sigh*

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

i think i remember that book. I may HAVE that somewhere

[rain-oubliette.livejournal.com]

That kind of thing just makes me nauseated. As if people can't figure out that the words are by using context. *Rolls eyes* Death to Anti-Literature Nazis!!

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

agreed

[mulzrule.livejournal.com]

It freaks me out when people fold pages of books, but to write in them? *hyperventilates* On with the Harry Potter torture!

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

seriously I mean how dare they determine what should and shouldn't be read by other people

[mulzrule.livejournal.com]

*nods* They need to reread the amendments. Not that they'd have to go far for that one.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

no kidding

[jennawaterford.livejournal.com]

This smacks of defacement-by-indoctrinated-young-person to me. It reminds me of the Boris Vallejo-cover DRACULA we had at my library branch. Someone had scratched out the word "Damned" on the back which just made me LOL. I went around waving the book at my coworkers, saying in dark tones, "Dracula! Prince of the Darned! Ruler of HECK!"

And, yes, since they missed the defacement when it happened, there is no one to bill for it, so a replacement would come out of regular funds unless someone donated a replacement. In this case, one would need to do something along the lines of, 'I noticed someone had defaced this copy, so I bought this copy to replace it for the library.' -- Just tossing a copy into the donation pile won't necessarily get it into the collection and the person who's aware of the replacement need may not hear of the donated copy.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

that is funny.

yeah that's how it used to work at the library I worked at but it was a college one though I suspected regular ones worked the same.

I'll bring it to their attention. I do that a lot at this place.

[ladystarlightsj.livejournal.com]

Nrrgh! Take it back in and point it out -- they may know of the problem already (and by this, I mean have a suspicion of whodunnit), but if you don't let the staff know then nothing will happen.

Luckily, noone's hit us like that yet, just the one lady and her "OMG PR0N" complaint.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

oh i always tell them (points into the posts somewhere about the completely defaced book that pointed out the early people didn't get the flap about Christianity since the exact same story had been told for centuries)

well at least she's just complaining and not blotting out things she doesn't like

[0-mother-0.livejournal.com]

Geez... I wonder if the library itself did that? And what's the big deal with so called 'dirty words'? These are the types of people who wouldn't hesitate to damn someone but recoil from the word 'damn'. *phfft*

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

nah not this library. they get pissed off when they find this stuff.

[a2zmom.livejournal.com]

I hate people who deface books. I wouldn't even use hilighter on my college textbooks I hate it so much.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

i know. I used to highlight but after a while realized it's all important and I hated the way it ruined the book