Not to get all Dr. Laura on you or anything, but for crying out loud, think about the children.

The Captain reminded me of something else yesterday.

Flash back to 1993 or so. My musical tastes were becoming more and more extreme, as I was beginning to plumb the depths of bands like Obituary, Napalm Death, Dark/Death/Morbid Angel, and so forth. I had picked up one of those Concrete Corner sampler tapes that came out every month at one of the local record stores, on which then-up-and-coming bands like LSD, Ugly Kid Joe and the like would be featured. This particular one also had a death-metal band from Buffalo called Cannibal Corpse, who in hindsight had absolutely no redeeming qualities.

The drawback to hindsight, though, is that we often see things clearer when they are behind us, as opposed to when they are right in front of us. And I thought at the time that Cannibal Corpse, a band designed solely to shock, surely were the second coming of ... something. With song titles like “Hammer Smashed Face,” “Entrails Ripped From A Virgin’s ****” and so forth, and with guttural, incomprehensible lyrics belched out over grinding, jackhammering riffs, and without any sense of melody or hooks, they were, for about 27 seconds, my favorite band.

I had one of my epic cassette-buying runs, on which the Captain and possibly some combination of Doug from Maine, Grand Theft Jesse and Brian-ooo accompanied, when we went to Risley’s in Jasper, which was selling “Tomb of the Mutilated,” the then-new Cannibal Corpse album (in conjunction with their appearance on that month’s Concrete Corner sampler).

Here’s the catch: The store kept the album behind the counter; the cover art was so blatantly offensive that even those who didn’t shock easily had to consider converting to Christianity on the spot. We had to ask the clerk to see it. I won’t show it here, and I won’t even link to it, because really, it’s bad.

In the present day, though, our sensibilities have become numbed down, to coin a phrase. In a store in the mall in Bloomington, you can find that same Cannibal Corpse album cover - the same one that had to be kept from prying eyes, behind the counter in a record store in Jasper, IN - pictured on a T-shirt for sale, hanging in full view of everyone. I can’t imagine how it would be any less offensive now than it was in 1993, but the boundaries of good taste were obliterated long ago. I missed the memo, but I suppose that it’s now perfectly acceptable for 8-year-olds (and under) to stand and gawk at a T-shirt that depicts a drawing of a dead/decomposing man and woman engaged in some sort of postmortem foreplay. God … have we really sunk that far?