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Tuesday, June 17, 2008

The naughtiness of certain words, from amazon.com




On a casual check of the amazon.com page for Deadly Shoals, the fourth in the Wiki Coffin mystery series, I was intrigued to note that a review by J. Cameron Smith, a young woman of ACT, Australia, had elicited no less than thirteen comments. What had she said that was so controversial? Nothing, as it turned out -- it was editing by amazon.com that had caused some hilarity.


The pertinent line in the review reads, Along the way, the reader acquires all manner of important nautical information and factoids [lovely word!], including the role of [...] in Polynesian navigation.


"[...]???" said the reviewer's readers.
"Apparently, the word 'testicles' requires censorship," explained J. Cameron Smith, "and was excised accordingly."
"!!!!" said the readers.
Yes, I have it on the best authority that in the old days of voyaging canoes, those sensitive parts of the male anatomy played an important part in sensing the flow and direction of currents and patterns in waves. So that is the explanation of one mystery. The next is whether "blogger" will excise the word, too.

3 comments:

Amber said...

You are not alone:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/books/18newb.html

The aunties all got the vapours over that one. It was quite the to-do, and stiff cups of tea were taken.

Vanda Symon said...

Censorship aside, (only in America) does this explain why men are supposedly better at finding their way around than women? (Not that they bare their, ahem, undercarriage in public to do so.)

Mary McCallum said...

Hi JOan didn't know you had a blog! I used the sensitive testicles as a way of navigating in my novel The Blue. The Friar tells Micky how men used to get around on the water that way and Micky thinks back to that later when's hunting whales and thinking of his girlfriend at the same time. YOu might imagine why....