from www.houstonpress.com – It’s official: The Texas Department of Transportation hates bodice-rippers. Especially the modern ones with their manly, barechested men cradling lissome, sassy cowgirls. Especially if they involve former-cop PIs named “Dallas O’Connor.”
And especially if they try to name themselves Don’t Mess With Texas.
TxDOT has filed suit against publisher Hachette Book Group, Barnes & Noble and author Christie Craig over the use of their trademark motto.
“The book,” TxDOT’s suit says, “contains numerous graphic references to sexual acts, states of sexual arousal, etc.” Selling it at Barnes & Noble, which sells many TxDOT materials with the slogan, would cause irreparable harm, the agency says.
“States of sexual arousal” apparently include, according to the search-inside function at Amazon, such pornographic sentences as “She glanced down at his sex, still standing completely erect.”
And here’s the ensuing sex scene:
As soon as the condom was in place, he rolled her completely on her back and was on top of her. Keeping his weight on his elbows, he adjusted his weight until things down south lined up. She felt the cool tips of the condom at her center. Closing her eyes, she pressed her head back in the pillow and waited for him to enter her.
“No. Open those baby blues. I want to see you when I first enter you.”
She did as requested and he pushed inside. Slow, easy. Even wet with want, his fit was tight, hitting nerve endings she didn’t know she had.
It continues from there until “Pleasure exploded inside her and her entire body shook with sweet spasms of release.”
My, we think we have the vapors.
TxDOT’s Karen Amacker tells Hair Balls the agency does not comment on pending litigation, but she notes it has won a similar suit once before.
Our efforts to contact the author, who is from Houston, and her publisher were unsuccessful, but Christie Craig’s Web page notes that her books, which include Divorced, Desperate and Dating, Weddings Can Be Murder and Shut Up and Kiss Me, are “sexy, suspenseful and seriously funny.”
TxDOT apparently doesn’t think so.
Update: TxDOT has been sending out this response to tweets about the suit: “Dont Mess w/ TX is a registered trademarked slogan for our anti-littering campaign. U cant misrepresent the meaning of the slogan–it dilutes the value of it. We hope u understand.”