Editorial

Simpsons, The Onion are Stealers

Our recent inquiry into the magical place where ideas come from has revealed that in fact the tv show "The Simpsons," and the web magazine "The Onion," have been stealing ideas from readme. Once we caught on, all too many examples sprung to mind. The consistent weekly poll done by the Onion immediately brings to mind the weekly poll taken by readme.

     Almost as obvious was the Simpsons episode where Mr. Burns thinks that Homer is the Pillsbury Doughboy, closely mirroring a discussion at a recent readme meeting about how Doughboy dolls should more resemble Stretch Armstrong.

     Many may claim that since the Simpsons episode came out before the conception of readme, readme itself might be the offending copycat and Matt Groening the creator of the original concept. However, regarding time as the fourth dimension, it is more than possible for writers to look into the distant past or future assuming they can actualize speeds fast enough to propel someone perpendicular to our universe. Judging from the incredible speed at which students were propelled across the 3rd floor of the UC in 6-person chains of swivel chairs shortly after the last readme meeting, there is no theoretical reason why ideas for this week's issue could not have been swiped by Simpsons writers years ago. Readme's staff is convinced that parallels such as those found between Apu's never-eaten hot dogs and certain not-to-be-mentioned items in the 3rd-floor vending machines could not have come about simply by chance.

The Onion's recent article portraying Al Gore as someone who would not know whether a political comic strip is about him is funny on its own - but things become much more curious when this week's interview of Ralph Nader and a sausage is brought into account.

Readme will continue to explore the possibilities of pop-culture theft, and readers can be assured that regardless of whether they have seen or read a specific joke before, readme was the first publisher of the joke (in a 4 dimensional sense), and that any previous or future uses of the jokes are in fact inspired by readme.