Difficult Dilemma Dealt Deathblow… Sort Of

By Regis Michelena

            Life is full of difficult decisions. It isn’t hard to think of several examples.

But since I’m paid to write (and at least a few of you are all sorts of lazy), I have come up with a couple:

            Supersize it or do laundry this week?

            Sit and listen to Jethro Tull or study for a class that – should I pass – will enable me to get a good paying job?

            Come up with a new and exciting idea for a column or just change a few things from a previous journalistic endeavor?

            Such was my dilemma as I agonized over what to write about this week. But who can blame me?

            I was so very hungry, and I still had a few pairs of socks left.

            Stinging pangs of hunger aside, I was most sidetracked from coming up with a real idea by the inherent ethical questions and struggles in the final example.

            Can you really plagiarize yourself?

            Instead of citing Merriam-Webster Online, I will say that I have defined the term using the superhuman intelligence that I have simply because I write a weekly column as: “Noun. Transitive senses: to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own, use (another's production) without crediting the source. Intransitive senses: to commit literary theft, present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.”

            There are clearly two sides to this issue. On one hand, the “transitive” sense involves stealing the work of “another,” which cannot physically include yourself, barring (1) cloning, (2) schizophrenia, (3) cloning and (4) lack of attention to detail.

            On the other hand, the “intransitive” sense only requires that the plundered material be preexisting; the source is apparently as irrelevant as Liberace at the Playboy mansion.

            Of course, I can and will refute both arguments simultaneously by claiming (and this is my own claim, I’m not stealing it from anybody including myself) that the words “transitive” and “intransitive” were both made up by some grad student trying to look smart by using new and big words.

            Think about it, kids. If the real academics don’t know that a word isn’t real, they’ll probably go along with it just so they won’t look stupid and lose whatever credibility they may have in the event that the words are real.

            Which these aren’t.

            Before you realize that by negating both sides of the debate I have completely killed the topic, I will remind you that lack of attention is one of the loopholes in the “transitive” argument. Just overlook the complete dearth of logic and we’ll all be just fine.

            Yes, the real answer all along was to blindly trust and believe whatever you read in the newspaper, especially if it was in an opinion column.

            But because we weren’t looking for a “real” answer in the first place, I will say that it is indeed possible to plagiarize yourself, but only if you fail to secure permission from yourself first. Apparently, this is where John Fogerty screwed up when he wrote “The Old Man Down the Road.” When obtaining said permission, it is advisable to have a public notary on hand to verify the occurrence.

            If this has confused you, then I have accomplished something that, while not my primary objective, somehow makes me wonder why Liberace would be at the Playboy mansion in the first place.

            He is dead, after all.