-A few days ago, there was a debacle here when a young man from Penn State plagiarized one of my columns (The Ten Commandments of College). Collegehumor.com and Steve Hofstetter, lovely parental figures that they are, rushed to my assistance and took swift action against the Penn State Daily Collegian. The writer was fired by his editor, Lynn Funk, and an apology was written to myself and collegehumor.com, so the whole ugly incident is dead and gone. However, it is not over for me.

-Since this little incident occurred I have had many people come to my defense and offer their support for protecting my work. Naturally I was overjoyed by all of this, but then there were other people. These people seem to have gone through every issue I have ever written and try to find things that I have pilfered from other writers.

-First, one of my subscribers pointed out that an article I wrote ("I Wish I Had a Nickname"�) sounded a lot like a front page update done by James Girvin called "Poop the Goldfish; A Eulogy."� (very funny) I gave that update another read and found one part that was similar.

-James'
""¢ I could walk into any room and say something akin to "Wow, it smells a lot like Poop in here."� It would be hilarious!!!! Exclamation point!
"¢ You could get chummy your fellow fish-owning friends with phrases like "Hey, your fish looks a lot like poop,"� or "Wow, even Poop is more attractive than your goldfish there."�
"¢ How about going to a fancy restaurant on a first date, ordering some nice swordfish, take a bite, and exclaiming to your girlfriend: "I wonder if this is what my Poop would taste like if I cooked it."� Guaranteed to ensure either a second date."

-Mine
"Being dumb, I decided I would try to give myself a nickname. "Hey guys,"� I called out to my rabble of friends one evening over hot slop at the caf, "you guys should call me condom from now on,"� I suggested. Why condom? I didn't really have a reason to be called that, I just thought it sounded funny. "Hey condom, toss me a beer."� "Condommmmm, how you been dude?"� "Have you met my friend condom?"� The possibilities were endless."

-Yes, that passage is similar, so I changed it a little bit when I posted it. However, the subject matter is clearly different. One is about nicknames; the other is about a pet goldfish. The similarity is one of style, not content. I suppose James and I have similar styles, but that doesn't mean I stole the idea of dreaming about the ways in which a funny name could be applied from him. I respect his writing and wouldn't do such a shitty thing.

-Look through all the writing on collegehumor.com and see how many of us have written about dirty rooms, bad food, girls, drinking, RAs, hooking up, etc"¦It's called a theme and college happens to provide ripe ground for a great number of them which we all write about in our own ways. We don't steal from each other. In fact, we respect each other's work and often congratulate each other on it. C'mon, if I was going to plagiarize someone else's work (which I would not because I am not a hack and I can think of my own ideas), I wouldn't do it to someone who works for the same website. That would be like farting in an elevator and blaming it on the only other person riding it with you.

-But even more absurd than the claim that I stole writing from another writer on collegehumor, is one that I stole the idea for the nickname article from a live journal. This just made me laugh. First of all, I didn't even know he had a live journal, and I certainly didn't know how to get to it. Secondly, he hadn't even read my article before he accused me of stealing his idea. Thirdly, there are millions of live journals out there and I'm sure about 100 people wrote about nicknames the same day I posted my article. After reading my article, and me reading his, we agreed that they were very different. His was about how to change your nickname; mine was about how I wanted one. So we worked it out and all is settled there.

-But, best of all, the nickname article was written before James' update and before this live journal entry. Like many writers, I have a bunch of articles that I keep on the backburner until I feel it is time to post them. This nickname one was written about a month ago and has been sitting around in my computer waiting for its time to shine.

-So, I would just like to take this time to say that I do not plagiarize, nor will I ever. How dumb do you think I am? Why would I plagiarize someone else's work when there was a situation about someone plagiarizing mine going on at the same time? If you're going to go through my writing and try to find ripped material and tell me about it, it had better be the real deal (by this, I mean it had better have the same wording, subject, and style). However, you will not find anything like that. I, like all the other collegehumor writers, am not a hack and I take it as a personal insult and an insult to collegehumor to be called one. (say that in a British accent for maximum effect) As you can see, I am very angry about these insinuations. I work for a great website, I respect the people who run it and I would not screw them over by stealing material. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a bunch of random live journals to read so I can do some research.



Still no email Mary-Kate?