Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Vegetating at the monitor


Telling it like it is


More on censorship



In 2014, we're not allowed to show a naked vinyl doll on a book cover.

Yet, in 1973, the music group Rare Earth produced an album titled simply "Ma" and nobody blinked an eye.

My taste in popular music is more or less frozen in the ballads of the fifties and sixties.  Remember "Unchained Melody", or the Brothers Four singing "Green Fields?"

However, when I saw the album pictured above, I bought it for the cover art.  Still have it in a box somewhere.  Then, as now, I find it hilarious.

Friday, October 24, 2014

Censorship is alive and well in the book world

I discovered, when I published "Sold!" that there were limits to what you can show on the covers of books.  Smashwords, for example, doesn't allow butt cracks to be shown on the cover of a book.  Imagine that.

Well, get this, dear readers:  neither Smashwords nor Amazon will allow naked dolls to be shown, hence the cover for the next George and Mike book had to be modified.

Here's the way I wanted it to look:






Unfortunately, Mrs. Grundy and company won't allow either mammary glands or crotches, even if they're plastic.

As a result, the book cover now looks like this:





And the world is now safe from the horrors of nudity.
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