Potential danger and dissoluteness

Having been away for several weeks means that I have quite a pile of mail to work through, especially boxes and other packets of books. I notice a change in the working of some of the packing slips and wonder what laws may have come into use across the past month…or are publisher mailrooms simply adding cautionary notes ahead of the game?

My first discovery, in a machine generated wrap-around accompanying a small–and bland–manga title, was the promise that I was not receiving pornographic material. Today’s assertion, packed with two very mainstream novels, is a signed “security endorsement: “I certify that this shipment, as it leaves our docks, does not contain any unauthorized explosives, destructive devices or hazardous material…”. That did cause me to wonder about the possibility of authorized explosives, both as to the potential for their presence and the identity of the authority allowing them. The titles, however, seem to be rather other than inciteful or pyrotechnic.