Oh, Bureaucracy...*sigh*

Sometimes I have to wonder at the people I work for.

For example, I generally page through the newspapers and magazines (especially the magazines) and remove inserts, gratuitous ads, and anything sexually explicit, too violent, etc.  This is policy.  Today, I found a free sample of lotion in one of the magazines.  This means that, when Administration finally catches on (two weeks or so), I will have to turn the whole issue of the magazine over to them, even though I’ve already removed the offending free sample.  Yeah, makes sense to pull a whole magazine THEY paid for so on can read it. 

When something like this happens, I go to the Administrators’ censorship spreadsheet and see if anyone’s raised the red flag yet.  Then I generally peruse the censorship list.  I guess I do this because I LIKE banging my head against the desk.  In the past month or two, here are some examples of items that have been censored (read: pulled from institutions):

• Penthouse Special Down & Dirty Issue
• Yum-Mo-Licious (Nude 45 + Hot Cougars)
• Big Black Book (a book of empty pages for writing)
• Buttcrack Mountain
• Amerikan Prisons are Government Sponsored Torture
• Mass Effect Invasion (comic book/graphic novel)
• Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton

Now, I’m sure you can tell which of these publications might not be allowed in a state prison.  Especially since policy states nothing sexually explicit, graphically violent, concerned with illegal drugs, hate speech, or promoting anti-law-enforcement or government should be available to the offenders.  However, considering that this policy is literally rammed down your throat, how does Buttcrack Mountain or Yum-Mo-Licious even get ordered?  And why does it have to go all the way to the top for censorship?

More importantly, I have issues with both the Mass Effect comic book and Guilty Pleasures.  Both were censored for “promoting violence”.  Do these censors even read?  Comic books are always full of violence.  Would Batman or X-Men be disallowed, too?  And they’re trying to save the universe from marauding aliens.  Possibly with lasers.  So real.  I guess that means I have to pull all the Star Wars and Star Trek books, because phasers and light sabers kill people, so it must be too violent.  And forget Ender’s Game, because unintentional genocide is just too much.

And I actually read Guilty Pleasures before adding it to my own library.  I knew the author could be suspect, so I read it.  It’s a very entertaining book.  And the main character uses magic rituals and a sword (I think) to kill vampires, zombies, ghouls, etc.  Totally fantasy.  I mean, is the sacrifice of Aslan promoting violence?  Do I have to redact when Eowyn kills the Witch-King of Angmar?

My absolute favorite was a book about Indian mythology…censored because it “discusses the origin of death and the first parricide”.  Welp, guess we can’t allow the offenders to have Bibles anymore, either.  Too inflammatory.