I remember a time when ads preaching the gospel of simply reading a book were relegated to the realm of antiquated laminated posters tacked up inside a school library. All of these posters were infused with a sense of false hyper-enthusiasm, the kind that adults employ constantly when interacting with adolescents, forgetting that kids are particularly adept at noticing when they’re being treated like mongoloid chimps.

It’s nice to see a quality piece of advertising for literature, even if the necessity of marketing for books makes me cringe. Click through to the larger image to get the full effect of the piece.

Penguin Books [Why Me]

The Chinese, for all their questionable practices, have at the very least seen fit to make it easier for English speaking tourists visiting their country, a prime example of which is pictured above. How else is a female visitor supposed to know in which direction she should turn in order to have lady-bits looked at? The Chinese know that not all Westerners are of a level of intelligence or education to know what the acronym OB/GYN stands for, let alone what medical arts a gynecologist practices. With this in mind the hospital did the only thing it could in such a situation, using the diction that even the most moronic Occidental outlander would understand: obscenities. In turn it becomes crystal clear where the speculum wielders can be found.

Conversely the department of “Fetal Heart Custody” brings to mind a wing of the hospital full of labyrinthine corridors and rows of bank-teller windows manned by the dour faced, low-level minions of some Kafka-esque bureaucracy dealing in prenatal cardiovascular systems in which parents desperately run from window to window in a futile effort to fill out all the proper paperwork necessary for completing the construction of their infant; an image that may possibly be closer to the truth than I realize.

Excuse me, I Am Here For My Cunt Examination [Weird Asia News]

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), literacy rates rose at a faster rate in the 1970s than in any other decade. Meanwhile, in the new millennium, the American Library Association fights for funding with grim desperation. We here at Ectomo would like to suggest a correlation between those two data points with the help of the above advertisement for a 42nd Street Library, circa 1976. Seems like the solution to both problems in one deft stroke, doesn’t it? Or more, I guess, depending on the collaborative skill of the seven librarians and whether or not they are working simultaneously, or in shifts.

In 1970s Times Square, even the libraries were sleazy. [Copy Ranter]