Monday, November 29, 2004

Smacked down by The Man

Just got back and saw the automatic censorship that the public library in my grandma's town inflicted upon the post I made from there. I had no idea such a thing was even possible. Our own blocking software does not make it a point to go in and remove words from blog posts or, presumably, e-mail, as they're being posted. That's bad craziness.

I mean, I can understand the blocking of my blog as I did recently drop a P-bomb here in the process of telling a story. I'm even pretty liberal in my usage of the word "shit." But to edit the word "auction" and all subsequent references to it from a blog post seems more than a little draconian to me.

Maybe I just don't see the big picture, though. Maybe someone out there can explain to me how accessing or even mentioning auction websites is such a detriment to society that library computers have to prevent it. Maybe someone can explain just why auction sites are a bad thing to be able to access from a public library? I mean, that particular library gives you an hour on the computers anyway. So if I want to spend that hour looking for TARDIS Cookie Jars on ebay, what's the big deal?

My guess is that this is just an extension of the logic that library's "librarians" use in keeping sex and cursing out of the library. But again, maybe there's a good reason why my freedom of speech was violated?

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An employee of a small town "liberry" chronicles his quest to remain sane while dealing with patrons who could star in a short-lived David Lynch television series.