No Bookee No Fuckee

Throughout the centuries the Vatican has maintained an Index of Prohibited Books comprised of proscribed authors such as Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Voltaire, Denis Diderot, Victor Hugo, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, André Gide, Immanuel Kant, David Hume, René Descartes, Francis Bacon, John Milton, John Locke, and Galileo. Nazi Germany extolled the SA and SS and Hitler Youth for submitting offensive and subversive books to bonfires. America has long been a bastion of banned books and publishers were guaranteed a sales surge by any tome with BANNED IN BOSTON emblazoned across the book sleeve. Presently the country still upholds the tradition of demonizing the books and reading.

In 2008 the Washington Independent published a list of Top 10 Banned Books in America based on the American Library Association's findings of the book most requested to be withdrawn from a library along with the reasons.

1. AND TANGO MAKES THREE by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson Synopsis: Tango, an orphan puffin at the New York City zoo, is taken in by a loving penguin couple — both male. Reasons: sexism, homosexuality, anti-family, religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group 2. THE CHOCOLATE WAR by Robert Cormier Reasons: sexually explicit, offensive language, violence 3. OLIVE OCEAN by Kevin Henkes Reasons: sexually explicit, offensive language 4. THE GOLDEN COMPASS” by Philip Pullman Reasons: religious viewpoint 5. THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain Reasons: racism 6. THE COLOR PURPLE by Alice Walker Reasons: homosexuality, sexually explicit, offensive language 7. TTYL” by Lauren Myracle Reasons: sexually explicit, offensive language, unsuited to age group 8. I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS by Maya Angelou Reasons: sexually explicit 9. IT'S PERFECTLY NORMAL” by Robie Harris Reasons: sex education, sexually explicit 10. THE PERKS OF BEING NORMALS OF ” by Stephen Chbosky Reasons: homosexuality, sexually explicit, offensive language, unsuited to age group

I haven't read most of the books on this list, however I was glad to see that Huckleberry Finn hasn't lost its dubious reputation, but actually I'm surprised that Americans even bother to ban books anymore, since many of the houses that I have visited in recent times are devoid of books.

The only reading material are magazines in the bathrooms and the only reading by these householders seems to be that of a text.

We are living in very illiterate times, where opinions are formed en masse like jello casseroles quivering on a picnic table. What people know they know thanks to the talking heads of TV telling them what to know, so they can say they know something and we fight for the right to tell you that they know what they know, so they can challenge anything to might say by asking, "Where you hear that?"

"I didn't hear that anywhere. I read it."

"Read it? In what?"

"A book." You call tell them the title, but they suspect that you're lying since real people don't have the time to read books, unless they're welfare cheats or commie teachers retired on a pension.

Books are deemed useless by the masses.

Owning book speaks of evil for the Despicables.

According to Baptists reading them leads to Satan's backyard.

Thus lives America as the Land of the Unread, because books will endanger whatever you are told to know.

Illiterati of the Modern Age # 1

Back in the early 1960s I attended a good Catholic grammar school on the South Shore of Boston. Dyslexia was considered a sign of the Devil by the Nuns of Our Lady of the Foothills along with writing with the left or sinister hand. The inability to decode words has been declared incurable by various speech and reading therapy experts and I have to admit that they are probably right. I read the page from the outside in and my typing matches my consonant mispronunciations; gh distorts to hg ad infinitum. I can not read a poet aloud without changing the sentences to suit my impediments, but friends and family emails from the Internet have proven that people aren't dyslexic, then they are horrible spellers and grammarians. Their illiteracy had risen to a new level unrivaled since the Dark Ages, when there were only 3 books in all of Christendom.

The Bible and two holy treatises on pornography.

One male and one female with a small pamphlet for the perverse.

But little concern needs be shed about this collapse of intelligence.

You only have to read the following to understand why we no longer need geniuses. Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe can.

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.

The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it.

Like I said who ndees samrts?

Thankfully none of us have to read porn.