29,695 Seashell Crafts that Evoke the Beauty of Summer Yachting Season

I had a very distracted writing day, frittering my time away trying to find the worst dissertation that I could find, scouring every corner of the internet. I spent over an hour doing this without writing a single word. To get myself on track, I gave myself a challenge: to fit in as many Martha Stewart shell crafts as possible. I managed to seemlessly fit in 19 shell or shell inspired crafts. (Thanks Martha). And that got the writing juices flowing. 

And after all that, I won't even be posting the excerpt with the 19 shell crafts. Instead, I am posting an exerpt of the speech at the Stratford Yacht Club 2nd Anniversary Party. 

~~~

For reference: Cody Simpson's 'Grate' Abs

“I’d like to take a moment to thank the Stratford Yacht Club Ad Hoc Anniversary Speech Planning Committee for their exhaustive efforts in this year’s search,” Kathy starts. “With no further delay, I’ll give the microphone over to a man who needs no introduction: Gordon Toodie.”

With a dramatic flourish of his classic black velvet cape with red lining, Gordon takes to the stage.

“By popular demand, the theme of my talk for tonight is Toodie vs Patterson: A Takedown of my Grad School Rival.”

This is met with a lacklustre scattering of applause through the room. There is not a single person here who has not already been sequestered in a corner by Gordon and given a painfully detailed play-by-play of his grad school rivalry.

“My name is Gordon Toodie, famed author of the groundbreaking, world-changing dissertation Becoming Piquette: Bodily Molecularity and the Wine-Adjacent Beverage that Becomes. As many of you know, I had many hurdles to overcome in the writing of this important work. The first hurdle to overcome was how to write my dissertation while eating my favourite snack: Cody Simpson’s Own Artisanal Cheese Puffs. I know that you will not mind my digression into a fun story of the provenance of this very special nosh. 

Cody Simpson is a well known figure in both the music industry and swimming world. His teammates on Australian Olympic swim team used to always joke that his abs were so ‘great’ you could ‘grate’ cheese on them. It turns out the joke was on them! Not only can you grate cheese, his abs are so powerful that the cheese instantly turns to dust! Every grain of cheese dust on his artisanal cheese puffs has been grated by these very abs you see here today.”

In a perfectly choreographed bit of show, it was at exactly this moment that the initial bars of “iYiYi” started blaring through the speakers and a veritable phalanx of servers exited the kitchen bearing trays laden with bags of the aforementioned artisanal cheese puffs. 

Pandemonium breaks loose. Some people shriek and run towards Gordon. Some shriek and hide under the table. Some shriek and tear open the bags of cheese puffs – a little confusing, because the bags were themselves artisanal, made of cloth, and tied with a ribbon – and began shoving them in their mouths. The fine cheese dust fills the air and coats every surface.

When the furor dies down, Gordon smiles exposing his plastic day-glo fangs, often known as the piquette of the fake teeth world.

He continues.

“As you can see from my demonstration, the snacks are delicious but messy. How was I to both consume this treat and keep my keyboard free from cheese dust. And then the solution came to me in a brilliant flash: voice to text. I had amazing success with this. Unfortunately, my grad school rival Rochelle Patterson tried to use voice to text as well, but to much less success.

“Rochelle’s dissertation, The Possibility of Unicorns: Kripke v Dummett, ostensibly explores whether the existence of unicorns is metaphysically possible. She wrote her dissertation by hand, spending months with crayon to paper writing out six copies in her signature loopy scrawl. When the committee rejected the hand written version, there were mere days before she was due to give her defence. With no time left to type it out from the handwritten original, she resorted to voice to text. She completed it moments before the deadline with no time left to proofread. There were entire paragraphs of her dissertation that were entirely gibberish as a result. One of her committee members tried to cancel her dissertation defence because of it.”

Gasps from around the room.

“Anyway, she was eventually awarded her PhD, sullying the reputation of the Social and Political Thought program at University of Toronto. But her dissertation speaks for itself. I will spend the next few minutes doing a dramatic reading, such that you can all appreciate the ‘quality.’” He finishes with a sneer.

“The Possibility of Unicorns: Kripke v Dummett by Rochelle Patterson,” Gordon says, reading the title page of the document that he produced from the back pocket of his cape. He continues:

Michael Dummett argues, against Saul Kripke, that there could have been unicorns. He then claims that this possibility shows that the logic of metaphysical modality is not S5, and, in particular, that the B axiom is false. Dummett’s argument against B, however, is invalid. I show that although there are number of ways to repair Dummett’s argument against B, each requires a controversial metaphysical or semantic commitment, and that, regardless of this, the case against B is undermotivated. Dummett’s case is still of interest, however, as if his assumptions are correct, S5 has to go, with the natural culprit being S4. Hitherto, therefore, there remains the possibility of existence of unicorns.

By the time he has finished, there is a small smattering of quiet applause throughout the room. He takes a bow and sweeps off the stage, his cape fluttering in the breeze left in his wake.