Bob snapped.
It couldn't have come at a less opportune time, but come it did. Bob, as
chairman of the local Toastmasters branch in Idionville, was often invited to
speak at various events, usually focused on generally ambiguous motivations.
But this time was
different. The local chapter of Manure Sculptures of America had invited
him to speak on freedom of artistic expression. As he began his very typical
process of fabricating his talk, the words flowed, the ideas came as a fountain
and he generated his typical thirty minute talk. Bob lay down for sleep
that night, the mind that generated thirty minutes of inanity, now was focused
on the upcoming Superbowl, all thoughts of motivational manure, gone.
Bob woke the next
morning, refreshed, distracted and merely looking forward to completing his
motivational talk for that afternoon being completed. As he drove to work
that morning, he ran through the notes of his talk, mentally, still formed and
driven for excellency by his years of Toastmaster training. Inane the
subject may be, Bob would still deliver a rousing, moving, motivational talk,
so he supposed.
Entering the
oversized facility that afternoon, Bob was continually assaulted by the smell
of manure and the calloused handshakes of far too many brown fingernailed
artists. Following a brief introduction by the president and founder of
the MSA, Bob mounted the stage and took his place behind the podium, a brown
podium, nonetheless.
As the words began
to flow, the heat from the overhead lights began to feel a little to
overpowering. Bob looked across the crowed, numbering easily over 300,
sweaty foreheads and twiddling, browned fingers. And then it happened.
Bob choked on his own spit, cleared his throat and deviated from his well-rehearsed
speech. He snapped.
The next 22
minutes were a blur as Bob flew off the handle, ad libbed and verbal assaulted
every form of artistic license of which he could conceive. He attacked
the ridiculous medium that most art took. He ridiculed the mockery of all
this truly artistic in the American mindset of creativity, caricature and
novelty. He briefly considered urinating in a jar and placing a small statue
of the Buddha therein, to declare it a creative outlet, but then thought better
of the idea, Mapplethorpe be damned.
By the time the
police had arrived, Bob had slipped into his happy place and was quoting
Shakespeare.