Honolulu Lite
IF plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery, I should be glowing like a schoolboy who just got his first kiss. You are what you
write—anonymousSomeone spammed me an e-mail with this really funny piece about how people in Hawaii are thrill-seekers when it comes to food. The sender thought I'd get a kick out of it since I write about the same kind of nonsense myself.
In this case, not only do I write the same kind of nonsense, but I wrote this exact piece of nonsense. The only problem is that someone has started sending it all over Internet creation without mentioning that minor detail.
I guess it's not really plagiarism since no one has actually claimed that they wrote it.
A fellow columnist who has been sent several copies of the orphaned column by well meaning fans recognized its origin and gave me a heads up. She said it is being circulated among mainland Hawaii clubs and has developed a mystique of being a brilliantly but anonymously written piece.
So what was this brilliant piece that has achieved mythic proportions? It was just a stupid diatribe making fun of the federal government's attempt to ban the selling of runny eggs in restaurants. I talked about how in Hawaii, we eat a lot of dangerous foods, from week-old rice to room-temperature musubi to dried squid to decades old plum pits to Zippy's chili that has sat in the refrigerator long enough to grow a green beard. For godsakes, couldn't they find a decent column of mine to rip off? (I know. Dumb question.)
But readers are funny. The ones who send you e-mail or snail mail are taking a few minutes out of their day to contact you. That's nice. And I really feel bad about threatening to sic my lawyer on the guy who sent me my own column. He obviously had no idea where it originated.
Who can blame him. There have been times when I'm writing a column and I think, man, this feels kind of familiar. Then I realize I wrote practically the same thing several years ago. I still finish the column, I just put in a little disclaimer like, "As I've said before ..." or " The first time I made this observation, I believe it was during the Carter administration ..." That's not plagiarism, that's an homage.
Long ago, I did a column on some ideas for funny bumper stickers in Hawaii. (Eisenhower administration?) One suggestion was a bumper sticker that said "Aloha. Don't Leave Home Without It." A reader who had a bumper sticker business liked the idea so much he began making actual bumper stickers with that phrase. He even sent me one, thinking it would make me happy.
Why he thought I'd be excited about him making money from one of my ideas, I don't know. I mean, he could have just as easily sent me a bumper sticker and a small check. I take solace in the fact that the "Aloha. Don't Leave Home Without It" bumper sticker didn't make him a millionaire. And if it did, I don't want to hear about it.
Alo-Ha! Friday compiles odd bits of news from Hawaii
and the world to get your weekend off to an entertaining start.
Charles Memminger also writes Honolulu Lite Mondays,
Wednesdays and Sundays. Send ideas to him at the
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 7-210,
Honolulu 96813, phone 235-6490 or e-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com.
The Honolulu Lite online archive is at:
https://archives.starbulletin.com/lite