No excuse.

[hummingwolf]

I understand that there are a great many unfortunate people in the world. Having lived through my own health problems, financial problems, family problems, and suchlike, I deeply sympathize with those who suffer through situations which most in our society would prefer to believe could never happen to them. And it is undeniably true that the horrific things which happen to people can make them commit acts which they would heretofore never have even considered, much less performed.

Even so, it doesn't matter if you have some variant of arthritis which makes it impossible for you to hold a pen or type while leaving you able to wield a pair of scissors--or that you have some learning disability leaving you able to read yet unable to write--or that you are too poor to pay the fifteen cents per page that the library charges for copies--or even that you are so friendless and bereft of all social graces that you cannot find someone willing to help you out with simple tasks. Even for you, this is an absolute commandment: Do not EVER cut out the last paragraph of a book you've borrowed from the public library.

Sometimes I wish they'd bring back public floggings.

Comments

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

oh no! what a terrible thing -- you found a book defaced like that? ack!

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

Yep. I've seen cut-up library books before; but those were usually books with pretty pictures, so I could imagine someone's small children attacking the book when their parents weren't looking. Still a bad thing, but I could imagine an excuse. This book however, was all text and no pictures, so all I can think is that someone valued that paragraph enough to tape it to their refrigerator but not enough to let somebody else read it.

Maybe tarring & feathering would be better than flogging.

[danalog.livejournal.com]

public flogging sounds good, or maybe something more symbolically appropriate, like cutting off something equally as "unimportant", such as their big toes

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

Works for me!

[skygypsy.livejournal.com]

ohhhh noooooo!!!

as a fellow bookworm, i feel your pain!!!

that is truly an act of pure evil. *shudders*

/me intones: may such loss return to the evil doer a thousand fold.... (oh wait, did i just earn myself bad karma? aw crap.)

;)

what book was it? can you go sneak a peek in the bookstore?? (i know your reading flow is forever broken, but at least you can know how it ends)

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

The library may have another copy for all I know. I hope so. I just don't understand why someone would do that to a library book--do they have absolutely *no* sense at all? If you want to re-read a four-line paragraph, either write it down yourself or make a frigging copy! This isn't rocket science. Sheesh.

Grrrrrrrrr.

[sophy.livejournal.com]

Whoever did that was a sadistic human being.

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

Or possibly just a moron. Morons outnumber sadists by a bit, though of course the planet is filled with far too many of both groups.

Re:

[sophy.livejournal.com]

It just sounds like a sadistic thing to me.

So diabolical that it had to be premeditated.

Like the time someone pretended to be an usher and kicked me and my friend out of the theater for no reason with just ten minutes left of Dead Poet's Society. It was a year or so before I found out why the movie was so tragic!!

[whitelinefever.livejournal.com]

If it were a book like Naked Lunch, or Finnegans Wake for that matter,who could tell?

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

Heh. It was a more coherent book that the vandal attacked, so it was easy enough to tell. Besides, most books don't have neat rectangular holes in the last pages.