I can't help it if I'm lucky.
It all started when I was waiting in the bank, and the guy behind me got pushy. So I pushed him back. And he pushed me back. And I shot him. I mean, that's what anyone would do right? The guy was named Augustus Gray. The police were getting all uptight about it. Then his wife came in, I thought she'd be upset too. But no she was hot. She was all over me.
And she was rich too. She paid my bail. Pretty soon we were bopping all over the world. Hawaii. Rio. Italy. But in Italy, she fell off a watchtower. And died. I was heartbroken. I mean, I might have bumped her when she was trying to hold my hand, it might have been my fault. But she left me all her money. Millions of dollars. Wow. What can I say. What a dame.
So what could I do? I bought me a mansion and a yacht, and wrote a music video about it. I called it "All Along the Watchtower." I was a complete unknown, but it really took off. It had some super cool harmonica licks. And people threw more money at me. But then, out of left field, I got sued by Hootie and the Blowfish for copyright infringement! But I don't see how they had a leg to stand on. I sang from my heart. It is what it is. And it was great.
I can't help it if I'm lucky.
This was in response to a prompt on reddit/rWritingPrompts, "I shot a man named Gray and took his wife to Italy. She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me. I can't help it if I'm lucky". This was a direct copy of lyrics by Hootie and the Blowfish, so the prompt violated rWritingPrompts rules. The Hootie and the Blowfish line was itself copied verbatim from a Bob Dylan song, "Idiot Wind". Bob Dylan sued Hootie and the Blowfish for copyright infringement. The Hootie song was clearly quoting the Bob Dylan song, though, so it was probably fair use. Bob Dylan also sued them for another of their songs, "Hold My Hand", which he said bore too much resemblance to his own song "All Along the Watchtower". The whole point of this story is plagiarism, so I threw in as much Bob Dylan plagiarism as I could (at least, without doing any actual research). The story and the prompt were completely removed from rWritingPrompts immediately after I posted the story, without explanation. I found it all a fun (if pointless) exercise.