Art-O-Matic.

In the dark ages, when man was realizing that dark cave walls were not the smoothest surface for drawing on, and he and she were tiring of drawing bison and flightless birds, large black stone obelisks appeared. Primitve man beat on them with their primitive palette knives and lo, it came to pass that, ideas sprung into being like no time in man's history. First they invented fountain pens, conte crayons, woodblock printing, rock guitars, and sandblasting. Then a cave man made transfer type that you simply burnished to put on things. Cave man's sloping foreheads were ideal for affixing unintelligible words from these sheets. Before long, words like AKEE-TAH, and MA-WONGA became the in thing. But the type was not like cave people's primitve tattoo's, so they moved on. They made the wheel, and the internal combustion engine, but abandoned them when they couldn't figure out how to use them. 

In time they came up with quartz clocks, abacus with quartz beads, the Dewey Decimal System, five or six new languages, Blue-ray players, direct-mail, the curve ball, and shopping malls. The large brained humans showed prowess with these devices, but in time all were abandoned but the malls. Ten thousand years passed. The black obelisks summoned the brighter man-apes, and the nubile woman-apes, and taught them binary codes, that, if strung together well enough, would create the Internet. The Internet never caught on, but smoke signals caught on. Friends would send smoke signals to say they were headed to the malls to shop for bison burgers and elephant ear donuts. But just when man was on the verge of something big, bigger than hula hoops, badmitten or lacrosse, the Dark Ages descended. Knowledge passed out of man's cortex. The survivors, the dumb humans, the artistic ones, decided that smoking was a better hobby. They tried everything: rocks, dirt, various fruits, arcaic corn, wheat, rice, barley, oats, ganja, various flowers, grapevine segments, and the herb of choice - tobacco. The dumb apes got together and created vending machines out of shale and slate for their tobacco. In time metallurgy was born, and glitzy machines were everywhere in the malls of America, and every dive in every village. Everyone smoked - babies, toddlers, adults, senior citizens. Outdoor signage encouraged it. It was manly, and womanly to do it. But after a couple thousand years, the habit took its toll. The billboards fell into disrepair, and humanity forgot it was addicted to the noxious tobacco. A lone cave artist, tired of the foul tobacco and the resulting cough and cancer, started making small artwork to put inside the tired frames of the now discarded tobacco vending machines. He named the newly branded machines: Art-O-mat. Soon everyone was flocking back to the primitve malls to get his art from the machines. He bought a condo in Florida, and four blonde cave women, who looked like The Girls Next Door, moved in with him. They had a grand time. Time passed. Meteors struck the Earth. All was in ruins; the sun was smote by the plumes of volcanoes. The only thing that survived were a plethora of small mammals, and the vending machines to remind us of this ingenious cave man. We only know him by his first name: Art, or Arty. Modern artists took up his long dead hobby. The spirit of Art survived. The refurbished machines were reborn; they are everywhere, just like in the old days. There is talk in California of having them dispense ganja. But for now, for a pittance, you can put your money in them and get one-of-a-kind treasures. Recently an email came to me. My new friends in Nebraska are sending me art they got from an Art-O-Mat machine. I hope it's a piece of charcoal. I am in the mood to do some art.