From the Frauds and Scalawags Department: Have We Seen the Last of Kaayva?

It is reported in today's Scotsman that Kaayva Viswanathan-you know, she who unaccountably absorbed the words of fellow scribbler Meg Cabot as if by osmosis and scored a $500,000 book deal in the process? Well, she's got more trouble.

As I previously noted, my advice to her was to batten down the hatches and secure for heavy weather, because this was going to get worse.

Well, sure enough, it got worse. Much worse. The book deal's gone, the second novel's gone, no revisions will be made to the first, the copies will likely get shredded and buried in a toxic waste dump, and more than likely the next item up for grabs will be the $500,000 advance.

A reader spotted certain...ahem...."similarities"... to works by Sophie Kinsella, another writer in the "chick lit" genre, and the Scotsman reports that a book by Salman Rushdie was involved as well. Mr. Rushdie opined that he was not a subscriber to the theory of plagiarism by osmosis and digestion. In a word, he was not amused.

A Bergen County New Jersey paper is looking carefully at her writings from an internship she served there last year, as well.

Why people insist on this foolishness is difficult to determine, in view of how easy it is to get caught these days with tools like Google search and turnitin.com. A lady I know with a doctorate in linguistics says a string of five words is pretty much unique in all the world. It's not hard to figure out.

We here at the Dougloid Papers are informed that being a writer wasn't in Kaayva's future anyway. She has plans to be an investment banker it is said.

All we have to say on that score is God help the investment banking community-just what they need is another liar, thief, and cheat.