MoronicArts Classics: Bern Book

“Story time with Gothic Diana Ross & The Midnight Supremes? At the Manteno Library? I would say that a trip to Manteno is not complete without spending a few hours at the Manteno Optimal Club with Bernadette Cacca! Hmmpf!”

“Why don’t you start your own book club, honey?” Shapeshifting humanoid turkey vulture Sonya Moran asks her communal narcadoodle, bog-witch niece Bernadette.

“You’re the best!”

“Butt first, a trip to Bucketheads.”

“Why are you going to a hardware store?”

“It’s my own personal prop department!”

“Hot dawg!”

Bernadette pinches a massive loaf upstairs in the washroom while tapping away at her smell phone to announce yet-another-gig her aunt Sonya got her. Ahhh, the stench of nepotism.

BOOK CLUB NIGHT, TUES with yours truly! Join me at @MantenoOptimalClub TONIGHT, AUGUST 18, 9:30pm-3am. What will I read? It’s a surprise!  It’s the hottest new event in Kankakee County!

“I never drank coffee while I was in college. I drank pop,” Gothic Diana Ross complains to the Buckstars staff about her coffee again. 

“What’s this crap? A port-a-potty made out of poop? Do you drop dookie in it, on it, or next to it?” Diana scrolls through her Fakebook feed as she waits for her iced caramel latte to get re-made.

“She’s no Bansky…” Gothic Flo quips.

“I know, we should crash her gig. Maybe we can heckle her or something,” Gothic Mary giggles.

“Well, there is this card game…ooops. Nope, we’re not old enough,” Diana laughs as she reads the community events.

“Oh darn.” The dark gothic beauties share a laugh and drive away from their Gothic Victorian home in their black 1988 Chrysler Conquest TSi.

The Poopy Groupies surround Mrs. Cacca and shower her with a gush of superlatives at the Manteno Optimal Club:

“You’re the best thing that ever happened to Illinois!”

“You make me feel like a star, Bern!”

“It’s the Manteno icon herself! You should be beatified!”

Queen Bernadette rolls out her porcelain throne and makes an announcement:

“Today, I’m here on a campaign to promote regularity!”

The portapotty empress sits on her toilet which she just bought from Bucketheads Hardware and begins to sing from a book:

image: “regular” book

“Being regular is important to me, and I hope it is EQUALLY important to my regulars. I love my Poopy Groupies! Nooowwww–baaaaaack–toooooo-the—booooooooooook!”

The Poopy Groupies hoot, holler and catcall. Yes the cat-calling is sexist but the queen of the porcelain throne does not care what kind of attention she gets, as long as she gets it and she is the center of attention. After all, she feels entitled to it since she does gigs like these for charity.

The cheering crowd of Bernadette bootlickers is cut like a knife from a few voices in the crowd.

“Why are you pooping in public?”

“Oh honey, I am not really pooping. See look, all golf balls!”

image: toilet box on a hardware store shelf. image on box of flushed golf balls. text on box reads: "Flush like a champion."

The crowd roars with laughter.

The Midnight Supremes join in on a tune of their own:

“You can’t hurry death
You just have to wait.
Charon works on his own time,
No matter what prayers you say.”

Upset about getting upstaged, Bernadette throws a fit:

“Do you know who I am?”

“Yeah, an unruly citizen who is obsessed with pooping!”

Awkward silence fills the hall of the Manteno Optimal Club. Eyes roll. People begin to chortle.

“I am reprising my role from the Human Body Odor EXCLUSIVE show, “Dropping the Deuce.”

A voice emerges from the crowd.

“Hey, I have a gift for ya Bernadette!”

Sybil Kibble hands Bernadette a box and walks away as fast she can. Happy for the distraction, Mrs Cacca opens her gift. “Is this for meeee? Oh you are the best.”

Bernadette shows her malcontent for the gift, and even the mere thought behind it. She rambles like a Turd Machine spitting out letter-blocks from a craft store. 

Sybil Kibble escapes Bern’s word-salad diatribe in her trusty Chrysler LeBaron as do the Midnight Supremes in their sleek sportscar.

Bernadette continues to sing and ramble like the moron that she is, as she watches her mug on the community FartTV, ignoring the confused crowd leaving her stupid book club: “Late last night when the moon green, around the corner came a turd machine…shots were fired, a scream was heard…Join me here next week as I livestream again…oh dear.”

Damien’s desperate Dreamland letter to Donnie

Tired of eating corn for his hot and getting yanked from his cot, captured trespasser, communal narcadoodle and neckbeard nincompoop Damien Hurlbutt asks if he can write a letter.

“You can only send inter-departmental mail here.”

“I know, I know, I know, I know…”

“Stop acting like a clown and get back in your cell.”

“Hooo!”

“I don’t know who. You’re the one who asked, fool.”

The guard slams the door, then the world’s largest source of natural gas starts scrawling, before he gets hauled away for his thrice daily flatulence testing. After returning to his cell in the Alternative Fuels Division at Dreamland Resort, Damien finishes his letter to President Turnip (no relation to Jamie Turnip), then gives it to the staff to type up so he can sign it.

The letter is put into inter-office mail and sent forth to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC.

Bored with inventing new recipes for covfefe to barf up all over social media, the president reads the mail with his tiny hands and aging mental acuity. A couple hours later, Donnie reads Damien’s desperate cry for help.

After giggling, Turnip divides up the letter into strips, chucks it into the fireplace along with his other mail and proceeds to fall fast asleep in his chair, dreaming about how to bigly cheat at golf.

Then he poops.

MoronicArts Classics: Welcome to Hell

Kankakee pyramid schemer Doris Krabalsky and Bourbonnais communal narc-a-doodle Damien Ulysses Hurlbutt both arrive at Hell’s in-processing department at the same time.

“Sign the register” says Hell’s in-processing clerk and former Medical Office Assistant, Lucy Furr, who was notorious for bullying her roommate on their college trip to Italy. Meanwhile, Doris and Damien try to take over.

MoronicArts Classics: Konrad Teirant Cleans House

Image: a bald, stocky male with shoulder length orange hair and an orange beard clenches his jaw and looks to the left. Text: shirt reads "World's largest source of natural gas."

Bourbonnais cinema clerk, neckbeard and communal narcadoodle Damien Ulysses Hurlbutt was last seen near Area 51.

While cleaning out his ex-employee’s desk, Teirant Cinema-13 owner Konrad Teirant found Damien’s scribbled-on evaluation forms. Behold, the work of a master-moron!

MoronicArts Classics: Aim High

“Oh man, I want to see the new movie Aim High but the tickets are all sold out. It opens this Friday, you know, the one based on the newest Nora Roberts book?” Dorian James rambles.

“Never heard of it.” Sybil tells Dorian in the CRASS cafeteria as she crunches her dog biscuits.

“I want to see it when it comes out, but the tickets are sold out because it is a Valentine’s Day movie.”

Sybil has a few extra minutes before she logs onto the phones, so she searches OKStupid for potential dates, reacting to herself as she reads through the personal ads.

“41 year old man in Chicago seeks female. Must be 18-25 and love sports.”

Nope.

“Do you like big trucks? 21 year old guy, loves beer, weed, works hard and plays hard, no games.”

Naw, I like the occasional backgammon.

“Rare frog, last of his species, seeks woman of any age to give him a kiss. Very polite tender-heart. Age 48. Bourbonnais.”

Just a photo of his feet? A bit odd, but I can try I guess.

Before Sybil has a chance to message the stinky feet from Bourbonnais, they email her.

Sybil and the mystery man email back and forth. They hit it off right away. The divorced man complains a lot about his ex-wife, which Sybil tunes out. Sybil talks about her love of lawnmowers and dog food, which the guy ignores only to interrupt her about his “poop elves” story.

It’s a Valentines Day in Kankakee. The birds are chirping and Sybil is tweeting online about how excited she is about her new man and the mystery gifts he keeps teasing her about. Could he be the next Robert Stack?

It is 11:30 and Sybil is on the phone trying to double down on debt. Operations Manager Mike Philips comes by with a delivery.

“Flowers for Sybil!”

Sybil hangs upon the debtor and immediately logs off the telephones. The long, green and cream box, sealed with packing tape, came from New Jersey. Sybil gets out her scissors. She struggles for 20 minutes and finally opens the box. Inside are 12 longstemmed roses individually attached to the box by hard plastic fasteners.

Sybil’s frustration grows as her scissors are not enough to loosen the delicate roses from their restraints, so she grabs a set of pliers from her drawer after five minutes of searching.

Finally, the flowers are out. Thankfully, the potential suitor included a vase. Sybil goes to the ladies’ washroom, fills the vase with water from the sink, and puts the haphazard bouquet on her desk.

Sybil calls her mystery man to thank him.

“You just won Valentine’ Day!” he says to her.

“I did?” Sybil sighs.

“Well, did anyone else get as much as you today?” He asks.

“I do not know. I did not look…and I am not that impressed by gifts. I am more of an acts of service person. I like when people do stuff for me,” Sybil tells the gentleman.

“Look in the box, Sybil.”

She looks in the box. She uncovers a movie ticket.

“You and I can go to the opening of Aim High tonight! I cannot wait to meet you!” he says.

“You sound familiar. What is your name, mine is Sybil.”

“Damien.”

“Oh, you’re PJ’s son. I remember you.” Sybil tells Damien, remembering the terror that communal narcissist Damien caused by mentally abusing his former wife, Lori.

“I know, I know, I know…I will meet you tonight at the show, M’lady Madame. I have long red hair, an orange neckbeard and I wear a black fedora.”

“Right. See ya.” Sybil says to Damien hangs up the phone and laughs.

Sybil dials Dorian James.

“Yup.”

“I got a movie ticket for you. Aim High. Tonight’s the opening night. It is all yours. Have fun!” Sybil tells Dorian.

“Allll-right! Be right over.”

MoronicArts Classics: Damien Hurlbutt Thinks Excess Plastic is Fantastic

For Bourbonnais cinema clerk, communal narcadoodle, and neckbeard Damien Hurlbutt, invalidation of others’ feelings has always been one heck of a drug.

”Hey Damien? Why does Buckstars wrap all their plastic utensils in even more plastic?”

”Well actually, Lori…I was watching the Angery Game Nerd Show on PooTube and the host gets mad there is not enough packaging. After all, plastics makers need to make money too…“ Damien the self-proclaimed “nice guy” said to his ex wife at their former home in Champaign. Lori Brown – whom Damien calls “Grimace” – has been happily divorced from the Bourbonnais cinema clerk who sent her doctors lunacy letters, thinking he knew more about psychology than…um…an actual psychologist?

Have you known someone like Damien? I hope not. Lori would not wish his abuse on her worst enemy.

Go, Bernadette!

“Oh no. Not her again. Hey, let’s sit down and hide out over there.” Before Gothic Diana Ross & The Midnight Supremes have a chance, their next-door neighbor Bernadette rips a big one, the sulphuric stench drowning out the delicious coffee aroma.

“Bernadette, you farted in my chair. That’s my favorite chair! Lick it clean.”

The three songbirds cackle in unison and wave her away, butt, the queen of the plastic throne Bern keeps her bum firmly planted in the fragrant coffeehouse chair, wishing she had a match.

Waiting by the barista bar for their iced caramel lattes, the Gothic Boss Ms. Ross and her sisters approached by a slender, 5’4”, 60-something blonde woman wearing cheater glasses.

“It’s smelly out there, take this.”

“Do I know you?” Diana asks the stranger.

“No, I’m Sybil Kibble. I’m in here every night and I got this picture from some weirdo named Jen. They said they liked your music and felt bad about some smelly morons next door to you. You’re from Manteno, right?”

“Thanks! This is nice for a change.”

“Jen said to keep it for good luck. Maybe it will ward off Barn-o-dette or whatever the heck her name is.”

After arriving home from the Bourbonnais Buckstars in their black 1988 Chrysler Conquest, the ladies go inside to practice their instruments. Gothic Diana Ross takes a break, walks outside to put out the waste bins, and spots her next door neighbor Mrs. Cacca standing nearby.

“Oh no. Eew. I hope she doesn’t bother me for the zillionth time,” Diana says to herself. She pulls out the talisman given to her by Sybil and puts it in her front jacket pocket.

Instead of running up the stairs of Diana’s slate Victorian house to verbally spam her about the Manteno Cantina charity crap only done to look good on the outside, the communal narcadoodle Bernadette instead waves at a bus passing by, hoping its smiling eyes would react to Bernadette’s wide open grin as if to catch a fly. 

In turn, the bus loudly “faaaaart-faaarts” like the truck from the American Freight commercials, one of the few things more annoying than Bernadette Moran Cacca.

Konrad’s Got a Big Ol’ Bag.

Former wrestler, entramanure and charity show-tunes do-gooder-just-for-the-photo-op Bernadette Moran Cacca is busy slurping down her breakfast burritos at the Manteno Cantina, as part of her personal campaign to promote regularity. Last week she bragged to her fan club, the Poopy Groupies, about her constipation.

“Did you know they re-made ‘Yo Mama’s House’ into a full-length feature film?” Bernadette asks the random stranger seated at the table next to her.

“Huh?”

“You betcha. And I’m in it!”

JB the Turd Burglar walks in with Poopy Groupies club president, Aunt Sonya Moran, and Bern’s drunken husband Peppi.

“You’re a national treasure, Bernadette!” JB exclaims.

“Bernadette for president! Feel the Bern!” screeches her aunt Sonya, a shapeshifting humanoid turkey vulture.

“You’re no Bernie Sanders!” chuckled a stranger from across the cantina.

Konrad Teirant is foaming at the mouth at his Bourbonnais business.

“This guy is a hot mess. Our janitor called in again! Imma gonna done post his job alrighty.” Konrad Teirant, mad that he can’t keep good cleaning staff, prints out a help-wanted sign to be posted on his Cinema-13 multiplex:

“Now hiring cleaners. $7.50 an hour, experience preferred.”

“Kids these days don’t wanna work!” Konrad whinges as he hangs the signs all over his cinema property and at bill-collection company Credit Recovery Associates (CRASS) in Kankakee where he is in charge of cooking the books, err, working as their Controller.

Bernadette Cacca can’t wait to see her face on every silver screen in the county. She buys tickets for every showing of “Yo Mama’s House,” in every single movie house, excited for the opportunity to take selfies at every single showing, so she can brag “I’m on every screen” in her Fakebook feed.

It’s opening night at Cinema-13. Bernadette sits down in the row right up front so she can see her mug grow as big as her ego.

A rumble takes over her belly.

“Oh crap.”

Bernadette tries her best to hold it. 

More rumbles make waves through her intestines, heaving her flesh increasingly as the minutes pass. She can’t wait any longer, so she runs for the washroom.

“It smells like rotten eggs and death over there,” box office clerk Bratley Teirant says as he points toward the ladies’ washroom at his father’s business. “I’m expecting a mushroom cloud to emerge any second.” Bratley ducks and covers.

Bernadette causes a cinema-wide brown-out at the spectacle, courtesy of her overflow error. The raw sewage floods well beyond yonder and into the electrical system powering the projector, sound system and the point-of-sale software.

Konrad has to think fast and on his feet. He dons his waders and books it to the ladies’ washroom to do doo clean-up dooty.

Mr. Teirant emerges from his outdated washroom carrying a big bag alright – just not full of money.

“What are you doing in there? Can’t you get things right? You childish little man!” his wife, 7 foot tall dumpster clown Madeline Topolla-Teirant shouts at her 5’4” hubby.

“Ha-ha!” Bratley laughs and points at the people who gave him his genes. He’s not very bright either. 

Konrad’s New Brown-Drink Adventure

Tycoon tyrant Konrad opens a new café inside his Bourbonnais multiplex, Cinema-13. The barista had just poured the drinks and of COURSE he orders his son Bratley to pick them up.

“You’re hired! Now git to work!” Kon demands while he dreams of the big bags he will make from his new bean-soup business venture, happy to be rid of his former concessions clerk Damien Ulysses Hurlbutt whom he fired after he stopped showing up to work, because he was too busy getting caught trying to storm Area 51.

Want to go behind the scenes and see the artistic process behind these silly stories? Visit: https://ko-fi.com/artbyjenx and if you feel so inclined, leave Chief Moron Wrangler Jen a tip. The Moroniverse will thank you. :)

Behind the Moroniverse – Damien Ulysses Hurlbutt

The main inspiration behind fictional character Damien Hurlbutt has is so self-centered, he thinks this blog is all about him.

Seriously. I hope over time more people learn about communal narcissists and how they insidiously abuse people. Overts and covert narc-a-doodles are bad enough; communals are even sneakier.  I would not wish narcissistic abuse on my worst enemy and wish no ill will. I just wish they would all form their own narc colony on a deserted island and leave the rest of us alone. 

Or better yet, drop them from planes into an erupting volcano, and vaporize them so they cannot make more narcissists.

I was married to one of these evil souls. Had I known he was the son of Satan, I would not have dated him, moved to Illinois to marry him, leaving behind a job I loved to take one that was less than pleasant. 0/10 would not recommend.

I wish I had been given the omen.

Now divorced, this real-life neckbeard and “men’s rights activist” has told his friends that I draw cartoons of him and write stories about him.

Has he heard of Squirrely Dan?

Ginger Squirrely Dan GIF by Crave - Find & Share on GIPHY
Allegedly not.

My ex works as a senior library specialist and loves to read. I would hope that someone like him, whom I would think has a good grasp on literacy would understand that Damien and all the other morons on this blog are fictional characters — as in pretend people, not real ones. DUH.

Apparently my former husband thinks he works in a movie theater, like the random stranger whom I had met in 2004. Just like the fictional Damien Ulysses Hurlbutt, this real-life despot had been offering cloned movie tickets in return for a date, to us call-center coworkers taking breaks outside. I did not meet my ex until 2008.

I will never forgive my ex for trying to turn the spouse of my late friend against me in his smear-campaigning. Such a tender-heart, a self-proclaimed “old soul” writes lunacy letters like the drivel below and sends them to his estranged spouse’s medical providers.

Because, umm, a librarian knows more about psychology than an actual mental health provider? yeah…no.

My ex thinks so. Behold part of this lunacy letter he sent to my mental health team:

Projection: A narcissist’s calling card, as is pathological lying. Methinks narcissists have their own code of misconduct, maybe even a manual.

I will never forgive him for telling me he was “a nice guy for not throwing me into oncoming traffic” while we were walking into the hospital. Yeah, a really nice guy NiceGuy™ does that, right?

I will never forgive him for manipulating the divorce judge into letting him take custody of my cat Holly, whom he repeatedly hit (“it’s just a light tap” he gaslit when caught) and put into the shower to “punish.” Who does that to a cat? Has he helped move a body or something?

He had been seeing the same therapist as a convicted murderer who made international headlines, the killer had been living in the same apartment complex as my ex the night of the murder. I left him at 8:30 AM the day after the poor lady was abducted.

I will never forgive my ex for idealizing, devaluing me and then attempting to discard me, shortly before I left him.

I write and draw MoronicArts stories to cope with having been abused. I feel it helps and I am a lot happier back in New York State, doing my own thing, living with my sweet kitty.

My hope is that my stories help others who have been abused by these monsters cope and process the crap they have been going through and hopefully bring a little joy to them, and myself also. Oh and it s fun to draw silly cartoons of fake events and pretend people doing moronic things to each other..

Moronic Martial Arts

Do you think you may going through domestic violence or know someone who suffers it? Emotional abuse is still abuse and a form of domestic violence. Please click this link to learn more and to find help in your area: https://www.un.org/en/coronavirus/what-is-domestic-abuse

Your needs are valid, I believe you, and you are not alone. Healing is possible, as hard as it may seem.