Rejoice, Rib readers – it’s Banned Books Week! This is a favorite time of the year for me, behind Christmas and National Jelly Bean Day.  Banned Books Week is an annual reminder of the great debt we as a society owe to the many god-fearing asshats in this country.

You see, there are still many American subcultures that enact a traditional religious coming-of-age initiation ritual. This ritual involves the full moon, various barnyard animals and the now-patented TSTL Pill (the recipe for which was inscribed by the angel Moron on some stone tablets, buried in Wyoming by his lackey, and found a few years later by a prophet who could only read them when he was alone. All alone.).

The popularity of this ritual (or its barnyard animals) has stood the test of time, and Banned Books Week is an important part of it’s legacy. It celebrates one of the ritual’s primary effects: near-total amnesia of childhood, and thus the loss of its two most significant lessons:

1. if you don’t get caught, it’s all good, and
2. if they don’t want you to read/see/wear/eat it, it must be totally awesome and it is imperative that you find a way to read/see/wear/eat it immediately.

Thus you can see how attempted censorship has done more over the years for homosexuality, violence, offensive language, alternative religious and political viewpoints, explicit sex, and animal husbandry than any single author could have, even with every penny of Rush Limbaugh’s drug fund.

So this week, remember to give thanks for the brave souls who have managed to make two doughnut-punching penguins and their love child one of the most popular children’s books in America for three years in a row!  You make us proud.

[tags]Banned Books Week, censorship[/tags]