March 23, 2011 - A thief in our midst

I know that I’ve been cruel what with the no updates on the worst driver thing and all, but I promise I’ll fix all that soon¹. In the meantime, however, there is a grave injustice that must be brought to the world’s attention.

As I’m sure you know, I subscribe to a magazine called The Sun, which publishes fiction, essays, poetry, photography, and the like. It’s a great read – albeit a bit gloomy most times² – and is one of the few magazines that spares you the gaudy advertisements magazines are known for these days³.

But then the March 2011 issue arrived, and with it, a little story entitled “The Great Bewilderment: Reading ‘Captain JJC The Feirce’.”⁴

The premise of the story is that Oliver Cooney-Martin, the son of the listed author Gregory Martin, wrote a story called “Captain JJC The Feirce.” The father submitted the 587-word story⁵ to The Sun, complete with explanatory footnotes (or, you might say, annotations). For the record, using my highly developed sense of guessing word counts by eye⁶, it’s safe to say that the father’s footnotes are at least three times as long as the original story itself. Hell, the footnotes to the preface alone are 110 words long⁷. Shameful.

So at this point I’ll tell you what you already know: it is abundantly clear that this Gregory Martin character has unapologetically stolen my intellectual property⁸. Hell, the guy even goes so far as to include all the original typos and strange style elements, which he hilariously points out in the footnotes. What an original idea!

This is a textbook hatchet job. Just because the father⁹ exerts a lot of energy making himself the star of the show¹⁰ doesn’t mean that the theft is any less apparent.

Furthermore, I would like to state that it is abundantly clear¹¹ that no one else in history had the idea to publish documents written by children with footnotes written by an adult. I did what creators usually do: I used thoughts in my brain to manufacture an idea all on my own¹². I’m pretty sure I copyrighted it or something.

Basically, I’m calling on my numerous friends in the Albuquerque area to find this Gregory Martin character and tell him that having a son who writes stories about criminals doesn’t give him the right to be one himself.

Apparently the guy walks his son to school every day¹³ so he shouldn’t be too hard to find. When this “Captain JJC The Feirce” nonsense gets optioned for a Hollywood film, I expect to get a little coin on the side. After all, it was practically my idea in the first place.

But at the very least, this Gregory Smith character – or the intellectual property spy working on his behalf – should make himself¹⁴ known. Stand up and see your accuser! For shame!

¹ – Soon is a relative term.

² – Irony!

³ – Sure, they will pester you for donations, but it is an interesting experience to read a magazine with cover-to-cover content. It makes other magazines – which are already pretty bad – seem that much worse by comparison.

⁴ – Yes, the capitalized “The” and misspelled “Feirce” are accurate reproductions. I’m sure you can see where this is going…

⁵ – The kid’s father actually listed the word count in the preface to the story. What a goober.

⁶ – Admission into the X-Men: Pending.

⁷ – Yes, I counted. My skills don’t extend to exact word counts. I’m not that superhuman.

⁸ – That is to say, the entire premise and content of The Ship of Theseus, with Annotations.

⁹ – Who is also a struggling/failed writer himself…imagine that!

¹⁰ – Say what you will about this blog, I feel that I always make the original artifact the main attraction. Well…exact for posts like this one. And the whole ranking state drivers thing. And the listing of favorite authors and bands. But that’s all.

¹¹ – An example of one of my footnotes in this regard: Repetition is important! An example of the kind of footnote Gregory Smith would write here: There are so many phrases Guy could use here, but he chose to repeat himself. Why? Does this call forth a sense of déjà vu? Is he making the same point, expanding his point, or asking a question of the reader? There is no way for us to know. Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote that, “Repetition is the reality and seriousness of life.” [Honestly, this is pretty damn close to a Gregory Smith-style footnote]

¹² – Ignore the stuff about Plutarch or any of the other influences I may have implied over the years. I was just being nice.

¹³ – It’s quite an act for a thief, I know.

¹⁴ – I assume that the perpetrator of such a heinous act would have to be a man. You’re welcome, ladies.