PulpLit.net

Auntie Intellectual Property Laws

I got a call, recently, from my dear maternal aunt who was caught, as it were, in an absolute panic about the moral fabric of her two young sons who are, almost by definition, my “cousins.”? It seems that the two young boys had become fascinated with a game of their own invention which had been dubbed “Race Pee” and proceeded thusly: One of the excited children yells “Race pee!” and the two proceed to the toilet simultaneously; the first to drain himself completely is crowned winner.? My aunt---her general realm of knowledge confined to the world of femininity, having herself spent the vast majority of her own life as a woman and, before that, a girl---was shaken to the core by this sudden introduction of what she could only describe in a tragic staccato as a “bizarre… obscene… parlour trick.”? I calmed her down with a laugh, explaining coolly that the game was perfectly natural; that nearly every young boy I knew had played some variant at one point or another---“Race Pee” was only the newest manifestation of “Sword Fight,” or a dozen other euphemisms.? As kids, my own brother and I had played a version called “Desert Storm”: we would step together toward the toilet bowl, whereupon I would brusquely kick him in the testes in order to control the price of urine.

Once my aunt had been sufficiently calmed on the score of her children’s psychological suitability for interaction with the world at large, our conversation took on more sombre hues.? She informed me that our family friend, William Featherton, had been murdered.

“Gasp!” I said aloud, my tendency towards onomatopoeia getting the better of me even upon the receipt of such tragic news. “That’s shocking!? There can’t be more!”

“There is more,” said my aunt, highlighting the absurdity of my initial reaction.

She went on to explain that Featherton had been struck down by a “Copycat Killer”---a young man who had been inspired towards his nefarious activities by the televised exploits of the one whom the press had dubbed the “Superfluous Strangler,” who had attained national prominence by lacing dog food.? The Strangler had eluded the authorities for months, because no one had thought to investigate laced dog food in connection with the deaths of humans.? His strategy was a feat of sinister cunning; upon poisoning the pet of his victim, the killer would wait patiently as victim sped away to the veterinarian with man’s best friend in tow.? Invariably, the vet would prescribe the necessary antidote in order to ease the animal’s suffering.? Victim would then return home with his pet, nursing the animal for several days thereafter, as it convalesced and recovered.? Weeks later, after the animal’s full recovery and when least expected, the killer would forcibly enter the home of the victim and strangle him.? After a months-long and aimless manhunt, the Strangler himself had come forward to confess, in anger, that he had sought a nickname employing the word “Redundant,” and was enraged by the decision of the press to go with “Superfluous” in order to describe the expensive and unnecessary dog food modus operandi.? A local sheriff politely offered that perhaps the Strangler’s definition of “redundant” was wanting, which further enraged the accused.? By the time William Featherton was taken down by the Copycat, the Prosecution and Defence in the actual Strangler’s case had only just settled on their choices of semantics experts for the witness stand.

I had always considered it a special sort of tragedy, to be killed by a copycat killer; so ignominious and anti-climactic, twice or even thrice or frice removed from the original crime.? But when he was alive, Featherton had plagiarized almost everybody.? In fact, when I told the news to a friend who had recently converted to Hinduism---and was trying, with the typical zeal of a recent convert, to convince me of the karmic nature of the universe---he licked his finger, marked the air and declared “That’s one for the good guys!”

The episode of Featherton’s piratical artistic choices which stands out most in my memory was his unfortunate plagiarizing of his film school classmate, Miles Fjerg.? You see, Featherton had attended film school, but had done so quite reluctantly, due to his strong dislike of films.? Among his favourite observations to cinephiles was his stock dismissal of the art form: “Movies are nothing but the worst parts of a play and the best parts of a record.”? In order to pass his final test before graduation, he had lifted Fjerg’s script, The Age of a Life, in its entirety.

Fjerg had written what he believed to be the definitive pro-choice action script.? The plot, such as it was, revolved around the exploits of a squad of highly-trained anti-abortion terrorists, who engaged in a campaign of targeted assassinations aimed at those who provided the service.? The twist was that the squad had charged its youngest member--still six months shy of his eighteenth birthday and therefore still eligible to be tried as a minor--with carrying out its deadly mandate.

In the course of the story, the young man is arrested, charged, and brought to trial.? During the proceedings, one of his comrades, seated in the gallery, leaps to his feet and launches into a stirring, emotional speech denouncing abortion as a practice.? So moved by the man’s touching, provocative and eloquent soliloquy, the judge announces before the entire court her abiding new belief that life begins at conception.

Accordingly, the defendant is tried as an adult and sentenced to death.

Fjerg’s pro-choice views were rooted and steeled in his family history, coming, as he did, from a family brought together by abortion.? He had been born Miles Skutch, but was adopted by the Fjergs, a barren couple who had, earlier in their lives, aborted a pregnancy upon which they had not felt that they were emotionally nor financially prepared to deliver.? The abortion, which had been performed very late in the pregnancy, had left Mrs. Fjerg unable to bear children.? They had adopted Miles for the uncanny resemblance that he bore to the ultrasound photographs of their unborn son; Miles was ten years old at the time, but had very short hair and very poor posture.? His biological father, Skootch Skutch, had traded the boy to the Fjergs for a bicycle.? Young Miles would likely have been far more traumatized by the transaction had he not seen it coming.? One of Skootch’s favourite riddles, with which he often favoured his biological son as he grew up, was: “What has two wheels, pedals, and means more to me than you do?”? Some people just aren’t ready for children.

When I inquired as to the burial plans for Featherton, my aunt clucked her tongue disapprovingly, in a manner that stood in stark contrast to her more encouraging clucks.

“The burial is all tied up in legal troubles,” she finally said, “You know William and his tendency to borrow.? His Last Will and Testament clearly stipulates that he is to be buried in T.S. Eliot’s grave.”

“What a waste.”