The Story of the Stories of Jaqueline Madelaine LeBlanc and Marie Clark O'Nealsson by Thomas Lipschultz, completed 8/30/01 Never before has there been such a bloodthirsty feud between trashy romance novelists as there was during the brief period of time between May and June of 1988. American history book publishers deny all knowledge of the battle between Jaqueline Madelaine LeBlanc and Marie Clark O'Nealsson, and the news quickly dispelled any circulating rumors by giving us the Gulf War to talk about several years later. This one-month feud is considered by those few who remember it to be the single most shameful time in American history. It all began when both novelists published their premiere romance novels on the same day: Marie with "The Love and Times of James Life," and Jaqueline with "The Life and Times of James Love." When each found out about the other's book, they became infuriated at the coincidentally similar titles, though they were at least somewhat pleased with the vastly different stories presented -- Marie's book was about an English prostitute, whereas Jaqueline's book took place in the jungles of Africa and featured mostly apes. Determined to remove her competition anyway, Jaqueline began to plant passages from her new book, "Slumbering Sultans," into Marie's life, making subtle changes such as correcting newspaper headlines and vegetable labels in the local supermarket. "Prez sez taxes to go down" would read "Prez sez she felt his sinewy biceps," and the label for Red Delicious Apples would read "Sinewy Bicep Melons." Jaqueline's goal was to try to get Marie to plagiarize her work so that she would be arrested and lose all respect in the trashy romance community. Unfortunately for Jaqueline, however, the only copied phrase in Marie's new book "Paradise in Pixieland" was the excessively overused "sinewy biceps," and this phrase alone couldn't constitute a lawsuit. At this point, Marie was gaining in popularity, having written two dollar-store best sellers in two weeks. Jaqueline had only written one best-seller, and had devoted all of her efforts during the week of "Paradise in Pixieland" to trying to force Marie into plagiarism. As a result of this schadenfreude-based devotion, "Slumbering Sultans" was severely lacking in quality lust, and the trashy romance community was furious. Determined to make a sweeping comeback, Jaqueline picked up a copy of "Paradise in Pixieland" and read it cover-to-cover four times over, trying to determine what Marie had done in this novel to merit her position as Vogue magazine's "brand new Shakespeare of Lustiness." She counted the number of times Marie used the phrase "sinewy biceps," but unfortunately, it was only in the triple digits -- not enough to warrant plagiarism by sheer word count. Jaqueline had to admit, Marie was a romantic genius. Her book managed to take formerly profane phrases, like the ever-popular "hung like a horse," and make them sound sweet and darling. Without even realizing it, Jaqueline began to take mental notes for her third novel, "Radiator Coolant for the Heart." Considering it her best novel yet, with a mixture of her own style and Marie's, Jaqueline had "Radiator Coolant for the Heart" published a.s.a.p., without even proofreading it. She was waiting for the praise to roll in, but she didn't wait very long, and what rolled in wasn't praise. Amazingly, Jaqueline's novel had been published mere moments after Marie's new novel, which was also called "Radiator Coolant for the Heart." But the most amazing thing of all is that both novels were exactly the same, down to the smallest detail. The respective editors even missed the exact same typos and misspellings, and the cover art was exactly the same, pieced together haphazardly from clip-art and downloaded softcore pornography. Both authors were shocked and accused the other of plagiarism, but because Marie's novel had been officially published less than a second prior to Jaqueline's, Jaqueline was arrested and taken to an oceanside prison in California immediately, without trial. Meanwhile, in the Pacific seaside town of Bootybooty, the world's largest volcano erupted, spilling hot lava into the ocean. A tsunami of incredible proportions was erected and began to approach the west coast of the U.S. at speeds exceeding 600 miles per hour. A few hours later, Marie stopped by Jaqueline's oceanside prison cell to express her disappointment with what had occurred. She took a large box full of chocolate cupcakes with her, which Jaqueline foolishly mistook for a good will gift. This particular perception quickly faded, however, as Jaqueline began ducking and dodging cupcakes that were being flung toward her through the cell bars as if from a batting machine. Her cellmates were ecstatic, and began scraping chocolate off the walls and eating it. But Marie had planned for this occurrence, and had baked laxatives into the cupcakes. A dozen other women all had sudden bowel attacks. It was about at this time that they heard the rumbling. And, a moment later, the California shore was wiped clean by the biggest tsunami in recorded history. And, if you think about it, there could be no worse fate than drowning to death with your head bashed against the wall of a collapsing jail cell full of women who had each terribly soiled themselves only seconds before. And both Marie and Jaqueline had suffered this fate, though Marie was dead for most of it, her body shoved piecemeal through prison bars by the awesome power of displaced water. If anyone were to ever find remains of this once great fiasco, it would probably not be a very pretty sight. This entire situation has been kept quiet for the past 13 years, every copy of every book ever written by either author removed from every shelf in the world and burned in an underwater furnace. Even the tsunami has been forgotten, the people of California somehow convinced that the areas washed away by it never actually existed in the first place. But I have risked my life to retrieve the files which document these happenings, the story of the stories of Jaqueline Madelaine LeBlanc and Marie Clark O'Nealsson -- the only ever recorded incident of two people independently telling the exact same original story -- so that you, the people of the world, could benefit from it. I have since learned, however, that these happenings have no beneficial value whatsoever, and there is no lesson to be learned from them. Although most government cover-ups seem to be hiding information that may be fascinating or life-changing, this particular cover-up seems to be hiding nothing more than embarrassment. I didn't want to risk my life for nothing, though, so I'm reluctantly telling this story to you anyway, in hopes that perhaps it will discourage you from ever associating with people like Marie and Jaqueline. But if you've read this far, then this sort of incident fascinates you, so you probably won't listen to me anyway. So, basically, I'm screwed.