This is a more in depth and detailed version of my 14 X-Day Drill rant. It seems very appropriate to publish it now in the wake of recent events.
I have heard many stories of how the multitude of mutants came to find “Bob” and through those tales I have seen a glimpse into the inner workings of the minds of the Chosen Ones –
Friends – I have a tale to tell. A tale of how I came to know “Bob” and his message of Slack. I shall recount to you my earliest days as a young mutant struggling against the oppressive machine of the Conspiracy. I shall dispense to you firsthand accounts of my Slackful gains and shed some of “Bob's” pipe light on the reason for my raging contempt for the pathetic masses of Pink pestilence.
As with any good messiah, his Divine message comes in 3s – and so shall mine to you. I shall recount to you three key moments in my battle against the Conspiracy. Three moments in my life that helped to mold the mutant that stands before you. Three moments where “Bob” came to me in those trying times. Three events that would culminate in my coming before you today.
However this only meant that the alternative was an ever madding repetition of segregation, isolation and loneliness.
Upon entering First grade, it became apparent I was to suffer for my mutation. Due to what appeared to the taskmasters to be my refusal to assimilate into the machine, my academic career was to become one of compulsory solitude.
The reality was I needed stimulation! As we all need a little stimulating now and then – I was simply bored with their teaching techniques: the method of flinging abstract facts and figures at a room full of glassy eyed children, expecting it to stick in their brains, to be regurgitated onto standardized tests. For the first 5 years, “higher education” for me meant being locked in what was essentially a prison cell – 4X4 cinderblock walls, one overhead bulb and a big, heavy door with a tiny window so I could be watched.
On special occasions they would shake it up and put me on display with other 'deviant' children in a type of Carnival freak show. “Come see those who will be pumping your gas and filling our prisons in a few short years. Mind you, I was never a disruptive child – I didn't get into fights or backtalk teachers, nor did I go out of my way to cause mischief. And in fact I was still learning. As long as I was in the classroom, I was still absorbing the information the teachers were flinging at me. But it didn't matter to them – to them I was a 'disruption' that needed to be removed.
For years I thought this type of treatment was 'normal' – In three different schools over a 5 year period I found the same techniques being used by sadistic jackholes given undeserved authority over the minds and spirits of children. The schools, furious with me for daring to disrupt their perfect system, would ostracize me for the remainder of my academic career – and as far as I was concerned, I came to eventually understand just how good and screwed I had been all that time. And had about as much contempt, distrust and loathing towards an institution any child could muster.
And yet, all was not a total loss – for “Bob” works in mysterious ways. No one knows for sure just how, or if the Sultan of Sales' mind works, but I am convinced it was an agent of “Bob” who came to the aid of this young and impressionable mutant, preparing him for the trials he was about to endure.
During my first two years of Conspiracy torture... I mean 'Indoctrination' – I had the good fortune of having an art teacher, who I shall refer to as “Teacher Joe.” Teacher Joe was the kind of guy who would prop his feet on his desk as he went over the lessons for the day. Teacher Joe was the kind of guy who would pull his glass eye out of his head if his kids weren't paying attention. Teacher Joe was the kind of guy who plastered his classroom walls with posters of films his students weren't old enough to see. A few items that stand out in my mind are a full sized “Alligator” marquee poster, a 12 inch Boba Fett doll locked in a birdcage, the face of J.R. “Bob” Dobbs hanging next to his desk.
Teacher Joe took a special interest in me, seeing my inherent mutation, my natural abilities in art, and being aware of the solitude I was enduring on a daily basis. He would even go out of his way to ask the other teachers keeping me confined if I could assist him in whatever excuse he could come up with as a way of freeing me from that damn cell – even if for only a little while.
In reality, we would end up hanging out in the boiler room of the school, telling dirty jokes while I drew and he smoked cigarettes and graded papers. Imagine that happening today and the stink it would cause in the community – it was my only salvation from the torture I was enduring. Although he was my teacher for only two years, it was with his guidance that I managed to find the strength to keep my mind from cracking under the strain of all those years of solitude. With his teachings, I found the courage to defy the plans the Conspiracy had laid out for me – like whoring my talents to the highest bidder for some Pink propaganda firm, designing the most recent titillating beer commercials – or becoming some fuzzy headed drink of piss water painting happy trees and contented mountains on PBS. Or becoming just another stuff shirt, white collar designing the latest vertigo inducing monstrosity, or monuments to modern self absorption and spiritual abortion.
Thanks to his teachings I even managed to send one of those Pink sucking, failure of a teacher over the edge and forced her into early retirement.
Through Teacher Joe, I found the strength to do what I wanted to do – no matter who tried to stop me. I am convinced that Teacher Joe is or was a follower of the teachings of “Bob” Dobbs, coming to the rescue of a young mutant in his most desperate hour – giving him the tools to use later in life in his quest for true Slack.
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