A very bad dream.
Originally published Early 1998

In the 1970s, former Beatle George Harrison was sued, successfully, for unintended plagiarism. Basically, his song "My Sweet Lord" was ruled to have been an accidentally-remembered plagiarism of the chords and melody of the Chiffons' "He's So Fine." Frankly, "My Sweet Lord" is a huge improvement and the Chiffons should have thanked him.

Anyway, there's a word for that: "cryptomnesia," or hidden memory. And it happens to the best of us. This strip, for instance, uses a punch line which I now believe I accidentally stole from an episode of "Frasier." In it, Frasier Crane reassures his son over the phone "No, no, it's okay...it was just a dream...Senator Thurmond is not in your closet."

I feel embarrassed about this, now...I mean, I didn't even switch houses of Congress for my version. But I swear, I had no conscious memory of having seen that episode, though now I realize I must have.

As for which southern racist senator was scarier...heck, it's a tossup. I don't want either of them in my closet.

I'll rerun a few more examples in the next few days, as a sort of penance, but also because, so help me, I think it's interesting.

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