ON DEADLINE? WRITER'S BLOCK? TIME FOR ... THE PLAGIARIZER.

Byline: MARIEL GARZA

Somedays it's hard to be a columnist. Your head feels empty of all but stupid one-liners. You can't even work up a decent irritation over the antics of those rascally politicians in City Hall or on Capitol Hill. The only things on your mind are, well, nice thoughts like fluffy bunnies and group hugs and warm doughnuts.

On days like those there's really only one thing to do. And that's when crafty writers turn to The Plagiarizer (TM).

This is a program created specifically for the occasionally lazy or harried writer. It takes any professionally written article and, through the cunning use of synonyms and adjectives, makes it totally one's own. Theft of intellectual property was never so easy! No longer will journalists worry about getting fired for stealing the written work of the their peers!

If only Jayson Blair had used this innovative tool - instead of stealing the work of a former co-worker - he might never have been caught making up stuff in his New York Times stories. If Stephen H. Dunphy of The Seattle Times had used The Plagiarizer when he lifted information from other journalists, he might not have been fired.

It really works. Take any previously published column or article, like this excerpt from a recent piece by The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, and run it through The Plagiarizer. In minutes you will have a distinctly different version. Just consider the opening of Dowd's column before The Plagiarizer:

It's enough to make you nostalgic for those gnarly union stevedores in ``On the Waterfront,'' the ones who hung up rats on hooks and took away Marlon Brando's chance to be a contend-ah.

Maybe it's corporate racial profiling, but I don't want foreign companies, particularly ones with links to Sept. 11, running American ports.

< Now, take a look at Dowd's column after The Plagiarizer:

It's sufficient to make one recall those twisty brotherhood dock workers in ``Atop the Waterfacade,'' the ones who displayed rodents on sharply bent devices and retracted Marlon Brando's opportunity to become unidentified word or slang.

Perhaps it's aggregated phylogenetic characterization, but I don't desire alien syndicates, especially ones with connections to Oct. 12, jogging anchorages on the landmass North America, Central America and South America.

It ain't Shakespeare, but it is easy and will get your editor off your back.

For those who think they simply need to use Babelfish's online services to translate the column into Spanish and back into English for a new, legal version, it doesn't work. Here's what you get using that same Dowd column:

He is enough to make him for those gnarly nostalgic dock workers of the union in ``In the coastline,'' those that hung above for rats in the hooks and cleared the occasion of Marlon Brando of being to affirm-ah.

He is perhaps corporative racial to outline, but nondesire the foreign companies, particularly with connections to the one of Sept. 11, working American ports.

That's just ugly.

There really is only one Plagiarizer. And once you find out how easy it is to rely on someone else's hard work and original reporting, you'll never go back to the drudgery of coming up with your own ideas.

And why not? There isn't an idea that hasn't been thunk up before.

For your copy of this program, just send a cashier's check for $10,000 to Bad Reporter Corp., C/O Mariel Garza, Los Angeles Daily News, P.O. Box 4200, Woodland Hills, CA 91365.

Act now and we will throw in a complimentary copy of The Fabricator, a program to get you through those tough deadline days when only the impossible-to-trace made-up information will do!

Note to humorless lawyers: The preceding was parody. Please don't sue me.

Mariel Garza

mariel.garza(at)dailynews.com