Thank you Christopher “Smig” Smigliano for the birthday fan art! You rock!
Tag: cartoon
Gothic Diana Ross Tunes In, Tunes Out the Dropouts on the Bus
Life is too short for morons, and Gothic Diana Ross knows it. All she wants to do is ride the bus to go shopping, and leave the driving someone else. Barely catching the bus — and her breath — in this 90-degree Fakeout Summer day in October, the last thing Di needs is a lecture.
“You need to be at the stop when I pull up. I am behind schedule…” the Kankakee bus driver rambles on, blaming his tardiness on his customer again. The bald driver motions toward the slender black beauty, leader of The Midnight Supremes to sit down. She takes off her headphones briefly, asks the driver, “Do I have to pay?”
“You can pay me later.” Diana dons her headset and blasts herself some more Cold Cave.
“You were ten feet from the bus stop sign. You should really listen to my instructions when you board the bus…” the driver continues his tantrum, hoping to blame his customer yet again, or pick a fight, who knows.
“They’re coming to get you…Diana,” Undead Greg Schneissder mockingly says to the unfettered Diana who has heard none of the malarky, rightfully ignoring the nitwit just like she does the moron in the driver’s seat who is supposed to be helping people get from Point A to Point B.
Life is too short to argue with fools who complain to their customers, failing to realize all that wasted time wind-bagging could have been better spent, you know, driving the freaking bus.
Share this:
Behind the Moroniverse: Peppi and Bernadette
Manteno’s own Peppi and Bernadette Cacca might seem like empty characters at first, however there is a much darker side to them. Like all my characters, the Caccas are inspired by a combination of real people.
I have known Bernadette’s main inspiration my entire life. She had lived next to my grandmother. As kids, she was the entitled brat who wanted things her way or the highway. I used to try and dodge her, running the other way because she annoyed me so much, but then she would not leave me alone.
I clearly remember her insisting on calling me my deadname, despite my pleas for her to stop. Bernadette hasn’t any concept of boundaries and neither does her main inspiration. She just pretends to care.
In high school, she had found a way to manipulate people into thinking she was a wonderful person. I had to ask her an urgent question for a design I was creating for a play in which she starred, right before I had to catch the bus to trade school to design it. Instead of turning around and answering me, the “stage manager extraordinaire” sitting atop a desk kept talking faster and louder to the other student, drowning me out.
To add insult to injury, the real-life communal narcissist tricked the teacher into making ME apologize to HER. I will never forgive her for that abuse.
The real-life communal narc had been working on an app-only HBO show of some sort and playing piano for an LGBTQIA+ charity. You read that right; the same person who deadnamed me repeatedly is raising money for an LGBTQIA+ cause. Hmmm…
Now she is gaslighting people into thinking she cares about the Russian invasion into Ukraine, singing at charity events to raise money, and course to get that almighty photo opportunity. My best friend and her husband have family in Ukraine; this is personal for me. I do not care about a moronic photo op when my friends and their family are fighting for their lives, running from a DIC-tator who wants to bring about the Apocalypse.
I read she yelled at a late-night television host for getting too close to her piano. This behavior does not surprise me, having come from a person who has a history displaying her sense of entitlement to those closest to her.
I created my character to help cope with a lifetime of abuse from a narcissist who tricks virtually everyone into seeing her mask, which I suspect has been crumbling. I hope it falls off for good and she slithers away into a life of obscurity, working by herself, abusing nobody. Or maybe she will live out her life in the bog, devouring the living like the character whom she had inspired, Bernadette Moran Cacca.
Have you known a person like this?
Peppi Cacca’s name came from a rabid doorman in Italy who sexually assaulted me. Character Peppi Cacca’s main inspiration is a toxic, former neighbor who had stunk up my apartment with skunky weed and sadly abused his cat. I had gotten the idea from Pepe LePew and used to call him Pepe LePuke as I heard him through the ceiling vomiting every morning while he was upstairs visiting his boyfriend with whom he was having an affair. I am so glad to be out of that apartment complex, and in a much quieter, cleaner place – waking up to birds in the trees, not skunk-weed stench.
Awhile back, I had overheard him on the bus bragging to the driver about his drinking, making the excuse “can you blame me?”
I blame him for his own behavior.
Share this:
My Superiority Complex is Better Than Yours!
Bradley barista, narcadoodle and former wrestler known as “Calm Down” Jina Hansen badly projects her own insecurities onto her coffeehouse staff to try and puff herself up.
“How many more drinks will you spill this week?”
“Come over here. Look at this and tell me it’s done right.”
“Stop treating your staff like crap!” a regular tells Jina.
“Oh they are my friends, we are only joking,” the 40-something Jina gaslights, as she tapes a customer’s receipt to the forehead of her 17-year old trainee.
Jina drives home and cries, losing sleep over the shell of herself she has become, knowing she will never get to be as good as she wants to be in life because her standards for everyone — including herself — are impossible. Then she craps her pants.
Share this:
MoronicArts Classics: The Many Faces of Pat Splatt
Art student, con-job and sociopath Pat Splatt is proud of his entourage of fake identities, many starting with “Al” for Alias. His pretend friends go online to bother marginalized groups, pretending he is one of them so he can try and make them feel excluded via cultural gatekeeping. Too bad Pat has so much time on his hands.
“He can come and do my laundry, fold it and put it away if he’s that bored!”
— Sybil Kibble, Kankakee
Share this:
MoronicArts Classics: Damien Hurlbutt Does The Fart Dance
Bourbonnais cinema clerk, neckbeard and communal narc-a-doodle Damien Hurlbutt does the fart dance when he goes to rip one. The only thing he loves more than his hoard is the smell of his own gas blasts.
Share this:
Wally Green, Give us Some Credit
“Why don’t you have enough staff in here? I come to your pharmacy here in Kankakee, they say ‘20 minutes.’ Two hours later, my meds are not ready?” the tall, curvy, light-skinned lady with the blue curls asks.
“It has only been 2 minutes” drugstore chain owner and wacky inventor Wally Green gaslights Kitty Bee, one of many ladies who rejected his advances at the local bars and cafés.
“Three people on the sales floor asked me if I needed anything. Yeah, you need more pharmacy staff and fewer sales clerks!” a rightfully upset Kitty tells Wally.
“I’m not about to debate capitalism with you,“ Wally dismisses Kitty’s concerns, logs onto his dating app and begins to think up more useless inventions. Multi-tasking is one of Wally Green’s core values and part of the chain’s Mission Statement, whatever the heck that means.
Kitty goes home and writes up a review on Welp to warn other customers about her bad experience, and tags the Federal Trade Commission, the Illinois Attorney General and the Chicago Tribune.
The Attorney General’s office contacts Kitty, very concerned about Wally’s history of mismanaging his Deerfield-based drugstore chain. They have received multiple complaints from customers, staff and providers.
“I want to have a sit-down with you” the caller from the Illinois Attorney General office says to Wally. Terrified any legal troubles — and potential bad press — might hurt his profits, Wally racks his bird-brain for new ideas to make money. Sales of Toiliots and Mr. Plopsies are down anyway.
“Hey Robbie, design me a new flyer.”
“I can draw a bit but do not know how to design. My high-school classmate and I made a cartoon once.”
“Good. We need a letter to go out yesterday offering all of Illinois our new credit card. It has a 69 per cent UFO, but who cares?”
“Umm, you mean APR, right?”
“Whatever. Just get it done.”
Robbie gets to work. A few hours later, after taking a Number One, this part-time Elvis impersonator and store clerk shows his boss Wally Green his design:
“Perfect. Now get on that mail merge.” Wally walks away from Robbie and goes into his office to check his OKStupid account. “I clink on the lick and not one lovely lady swipes right. Why do nice guys like me finish last?”
“I can hear ya, boss. What the heck is a mail merge? Hello?”
Robbie sighs, goes back to sweeping the floor and then tries to sell folks Wally’s patent-pending Half-Ply Toilet Paper.
Wally Green’s profits sink due even further since the truth came out all over the media about his crappy stores. The “Buy One, Get One Half Off (But Never Free)” sales did not help, either.
Wally goes down to his favorite bar, The Gaslight, and parks his bum at his usual spot. It’s going to be a long night for the dysfunctional Wally.
Wally tips a few at The Gaslight
Thanks!
Jen
Chief Moron Wrangler
MoronicArts
Share this:
Red Flags
Albion, Indiana shapeshifting humanoid vultures Sonya and Carla Moran decide to hit a few rounds of golf down at Red’s Country Club.
As Carla uses her pointy beak to chip a sharp putt and hopefully score a birdie, her sister-in-madness Sonya tries to screw her up. “I bet you can’t hit that, na na na na booboo!” Sonya sings like a little girl as she dances and mocks her golf partner.
Carla takes her five-iron and smacks her bird-brained sister straight across the forehead, then chucks her clubs off the ledge and flies away, down to the clubhouse for some filet mignon. She’s tired of carrion.
Share this:
MoronicArts Classics: Pat Splatt Poops the Question
Bourbonnais multiplex clerk, neckbeard and communal narcissist, Damien Hurlbutt, has caught word that his estranged former wife Lori is coming into Kankakee County for a doctor’s appointment. He is deathly afraid of running into her because he is scared she might confront him about his history of verbal abuse toward her, tarnishing his squeaky-clean image. He heads over to his brother Robbie’s apartment to ask him and fellow con man Pat Splatt to come up with a sneaky way into avoiding her.
“I’m back!” Damien tells his younger brother and fellow narcissist, Robbie.
“I’m front!” Robbie snickers back.
“I am leaving town for a week or longer. I am telling my boss at the cinema and then hitting the gas. My ex-wife is coming back into town and I am scared.”
“Scared?” Robbie replies in his typical faux-Elvis voice.
“Yeah. Sssh, don’t tell anyone. I really look good online after I smear campaigned her to all my friends, even to that famous couple until they had told me to stop messaging them, sending them presents and mailing them weekly postcards. I had sent them a drawing I made all by myself after our friend passed away since I had talked them into letting me send them art instead. I swear, they are really impressed! Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!” Damien exclaims with glee as he rubs his palms together.
“Just man up and deal with it!” Robbie Hurlbutt tells his older brother Damien.
“Come now. That is not how you talk to a fellow Men’s Rights Activist! You know that!” Damien says on the defense to Robbie.
“I hope you get the time off approved.”
“Okay, okay, okay, okay…” Damien repeats ad nauseum, not knowing his little brother Robbie is already out of earshot.
“Ding-dong.”
“You’re wrong!” Damien snickers beneath his breath to the person at Robbie’s door.
A half-grinning Pat Splatt opens the door and struts inside.
“I popped the question!”
“What question?” Damien asks.
“Heyyyy…where did you meet her?” Robbie replies and looks away.
“Hey Pat, my ex is coming into town and I am feeling lukecold about this. I was wondering if you could help come up with a scheme—“
“Damien, I just got engaged!”
“I know, I know. My ex is due in sometime this week. I would like to gingerly bow out of town but I have to work. What do you suggest I do?”
“Hey, can I sing at your wedding, Pat?” Kankakee’s number one Elvis impersonator, the one and only Robbie Hurlbutt asks.
“Do you know anything besides Elvis?”
“I can sing lots of oldies.” Robbie replies.
“Do you play any metal?”
“No, but you can book me really cheap. I will throw in my groovy dance moves for free.”
“I’ll consider it.” Pat says to Robbie.
“So where did you meet her?” Robbie asks.
“The dating app OKStupid. Hey, I’ll show you guys a picture.” Pat gets out his phone and opens up said dating app.
“Who’s Daniel Sprague?” Damien asks.
“Oh, that’s my profile,” a half-embarrassed Pat replies as his gawky, straggly self shows the Hurlbutt brothers the obviously-stolen photos of the handsome, athletic man in the photos with the gorgeous hair and eyes.
The Hurlbutts smile and ask to see his new girl.
“Her name is Alix. She’s from South Africa.”
“When did you meet her?” Damien asks.
“Oh, a month ago.”
“She came to Kankakee?” Robbie asks?
“No.”
“Hey Damien, let’s work on avoiding your ex,” Pat says to change the topic and the three work on scheming.
The next day arrives and so does Damien. Unlike Pat, Damien rings the bell and waits. While he waits, he taps his foot and jiggles the doorknob a dozen times. Make it a baker’s dozen.
“Well doesn’t that put poop in your soup?” Damien asks Robbie.
“Say what?”
“My time off did not get approved. I have to work. That means if my ex-wife comes into town, and visits the theater, she could say something bad about me if I am mean to her! What do I do?”
“Weren’t you saying you had heel spurs, just like the former president?”
“You know, the Moon landing may not be real but durn it, my bone spurs are!” Damien sternly replies.
“You deserve a long, hard week off.”
“You know, that’s right. I’ll just call in.”
“What do you do at that theater anyway?”
“Oh, make copies of tickets and give them away. And make color copies of things I print out…all on the company’s dime. Why not? They’re paying for it.”
The brothers share a giggle and Damien drives home to his neckbeard nest to sleep on the floor.
Damien dials his supervisor, Cinema-13 owner Konrad Teirant, on his ten year old flip phone to call in “sick.”
“You will need to be examined by a doctor and have a written excuse for each day you are out. Company policy.” Konrad says to Damien.
Upset and surprised by this rule, Damien makes an appointment to be seen. The office cannot tells him he cannot in until next week.
“Phew!” Damien says aloud after he hangs up his ancient flip phone and writes down his doctor appointment.
Damien drives over to Robbie’s apartment, where Robbie, his roommate Andy Skandees and Pat Splatt are all dancing and watching children’s entertainment.
A bulbous Damien sits down on the basket chair and nearly falls out, while Pat stares angrily at his phone on the couch next to Andy, who is relaxing in his white tank top and cargo pants.
“She says she wants to come meet me. In person. I keep telling her I am busy. She says she is on her way to Kankakee in a week-and-a-half for a business meeting via way of Chicago!” an unhappy Pat exclaims.
“Why don’t you want to meet your girl? Andy asks.
“Reasons,” Pat replies.
“Did I tell you my story about the poop elves?” Damien asks with a large grin on his face.
“Way too many times…” the rest of the room answers in unison.
“Oh, I forgot.” Damien lies.
The Kankakee storm rages on, and then changes to sun five minutes later.
Damien spends the next week off work, feeling glad he does not run into his former wife out and about, especially at work. It is review week coming up and he is deathly afraid of this time of year, as he is every year. Damien lives to impress, and will not even let his peers throw him a birthday party because he is not the one doing the impressing. If anyone would care enough to surprise him — not that they would — he would take over the check, (in a not-so-polite-way) and insist on paying on it himself thinking that would somehow impress them. Damien only does this for image, as he only cares about himself. He just wants to look good to cover up his lack of empathy.
Damien goes to the doctor’s office the following Monday before returning to work at the movie theater that night. After all, he had just spent a week off for his heel spurs!
While waiting for about an hour for his fifteen minute exam, in walks a familiar-looking woman, along with a much older lady. Damien looks up.
“Oh gawd.” Lori says to her friend after briefly looking over at Damien and then back at her friend.
Damien is now shaking with fear. He immediately dials up Robbie. It goes straight to voicemail. He calls Andy. Same thing. He calls Pat.
“Hey, man. It’s an emergency.”
“Be right over. I am charging you double-time.”
“Fine.”
Damien flips over his bronze-age phone and waits, tapping his fingers, whistling audibly.
Thirty minutes pass and Damien has not been called back to see the doctor, neither has Lori.
Pat Splatt walks in, cowboy boots a-clomping.
“Hi Damien. What’s going—“
“Look, Pat.”
Damien points across from him, to his former wife and her friend.
“What do you want from me?” Pat asks.
“That’s my ex wife! I thought her appointment was last week! You gave me the info.”
“So what. Things change. It happens.”
“Hey, you sound familiar!” says one of the ladies across from him.
“Hey-hhmm-hhuhhh—hmmm—what?” a melodramatic Damien replies.
“No not you, that guy next to you.” the elderly lady replies in her Cape Town accent, appearing to be about 72.
“You mean Pat?” Damien snarkily replies.
“Pat? I thought your name was Daniel!”
“Alllll-iiiiixxxx?” a stunned Pat Splatt replies.
“Yes, sonny. It’s me. I had told you I was coming into town. But you hadn’t wanted to meet me. I wonder why not? You do not look anything like your picture. The engagement is off.”
“Well neither do you!” Pat exclaims.
“Calm down everyone!” a staff member shouts from behind a window.
The group of people waiting wonder how any of them would get any calmer by a comment like that.
Damien is eventually thrown out of the office and Lori is called in next.
Needless to say, Damien does not pass his yearly review at Teirant Cinema-13. Poor Damien. If only he had just tried to be nice. But then again, he would not be Damien.
Share this:
Robbie Hurlbutt’s Souvenirs
Kankakee pharmacy clerk, vulnerable narcadoodle and the city’s number one Elvis impersonator Robbie Hurlbutt was surprised to see his ex-girlfriend who had left him 17 years ago. Mimicking his self-entitled communal narcissist brother Damien, he put his flip phone up as she passed by him at the grocery store and took a photo of her, in plain daylight.
He never got over her having broken up with him, and him being the creepy narcissist who thinks he can do no wrong, Robbie thought it was just dandy to take her photo and keep it in his souvenir collection of exes he idealized, devalued and discarded like chewed up gum.
MoronicArts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.