It's All a Lie

Following today's revelation today that the critically-acclaimed memoir Love and Consequences by Margaret B. Jones is in fact a complete fabrication--which comes a scant week after it was revealed the best-selling Holocaust memoir Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years is a fake and two years after A Million Little Pieces author James Frey had deceived a nation and, even more egregiously, Oprah--I feel I must finally come clean to all my blog and Sally Forth readers.

My name is not "Francesco Marciuliano." In fact, there never was a "Francesco Marciuliano." And, most importantly, there has never been a strip called Sally Forth.

I am actually Lou Stanton, a building contractor in North Bend, Washington who simply wanted to achieve some recognition and a satisfactory level of renown by pretending to be a cartoonist with an unpronounceable surname. Or I'm Henry Ribar, a strategic sourcing manager in La Jolla, California with a lovely wife, two adorable kids and a cute-as-a-button Yorkshire Terrier. Or I'm Miss Anna Mae Lumpkin, clinical diabetes researcher in the Woodhall Mountains of Mississippi. It doesn't matter, really, since like I said I don't exist.

My story started to unravel last Thursday when a person kept calling me "Francesco Marciuliano" straight to my face for a full 45 minutes and I had no idea they were talking to me. They then reached out to shake me into awareness, only to discover that I am imaginary and they were throttling a Hear Music display at Starbucks (which would be a nice place to enjoy coffee if only there ever were such a place).

Further investigation revealed that while a "Francesco Marciuliano" had graduated from Duke University in the late 80's, he did so at age 21 and since I am age 40, we clearly could not be the same person (this leading to the possibility of identity fraud, which will easily be dismissed when it is learned I just created the phrase "Duke University"). I should also note that any and all pictures of me on the Internet ("Internet"--where do I come up with these words?) are complete fabrications and there is only one extant photograph of the real me, which I used as my "author photo" when I wrote Gravity's Rainbow and V. (also a lie, since neither book--or any book, for that matter--has ever existed...just like the previously mentioned but unreal photograph and supposed "me").

As for Sally Forth, a cursory search Google and Wikipedia (two funny names I just made up) reveals that while there was indeed a comic strip by that name it revolved around an oft-nude action adventure character, was targeted to a male military readership and was discontinued back in 1974 (or so I just wrote, since reality is but a shared illusion and as long as I can get a handful of people to believe such a strip existed then we can say it did). Had I known this I would have certainly named my imaginary comic something else to avoid confusion, returning to my original fake idea of a strip called Bring Home the Bacon, focusing on the life of a wife and mother who works full-time work at an abattoir. I apologize to all my readers and fans who made the strip a daily part of their lives for the past 26 years only now to realize they had never done such.

In response to my disclosure about the true nature of Sally Forth, I'm pretending my fictitious syndicate King Features released the following made-up statement:

"We have no idea what he is talking about. Ignore him. He clearly is a sick, sick man...Wait, if the syndicate doesn't exist then I am clearly writing this false statement, so why on earth would I call myself 'sick'? Couldn't I say that I'm 'charming' or at least 'not prone to warts'? How about 'doesn't stink to high heaven'? That would have certainly been better than 'sick.' Hmm...I wonder if I'm having some sort of mental breakdown right about now. La dee da, la da da..."

Once again. I deeply regret my deception and apologize to all those who think they are reading this nonexistent blog post right now, since in addition to both me and the comic being complete fabrications, so is the blog, Blogger and your computer. Everything you have perceived is in fact an all-encompassing hallucination due to crippling Lewy body dementia, In fact, you are currently running naked and screaming through the Delta hub at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, trying to outrun a Cinnabon. Please stop, take several deep, cleansing breaths and let the nice men with the billy clubs take you to a place of rest and prolonged examination.