A comedy writer named Nate Kushner received an IM from a college student, who commissioned him to write her a paper on Hinduism. Because it’s on Hinduism, Kushner could refer to such things as the “Shudahelupta class,” without necessarily alerting the student that she was turning in a patently absurd piece. The funniest thing is actually their exchange of IMs on how to prove that she would pay him (he asked for PayPal, she offered to take a cameraphone image of a check… something like that).

He posted the essay, their IM log, and her real name to his blog. Oh, Laura K. Prahl, you might want to consider changing your name…

P.S. The famous Peter Steiner cartoon appeared in the July 5, 1993 (wow!) episode of The New Yorker. The irony that this blog post is a nail in the coffin for Ms. Prahl's Googlism but itself could be construed as being beyond-the-pale of “fair use” is not lost on me. And yet, the image is not hosted by me...I do nothing but provide an <img> link to Google's #1 return for the caption... O Brave New World of Intellectual Property Rights!