My favourite Welsh word is the word for supermarket — “#archfarchnad”
Dw i’n hoffi coffi – I like coffee (no covfefe about it)
Weithiau, dw i’n prynu losin – Sometimes, I buy candy (Andes Candies are great, unlike Andy Skandees)
Llefrith, ffrythiau a llysiau — Milk, fruits and veggies are my other top three.
“Archfarchnad” is fun so say. It sounds like I am cursing, and feels just as cathartic, when I’m just talking about the grocery store. (Though I would not blame you one bit for cursing in Walley World.)
Are you on the front line battling Hamas? Do you have a neighbor who just grinds your gears? Did Bernadette Cacca stink up your store’s washroom again? Get on people’s nerves using this handy playlist!
“I am so tired of sticking my beak up animal butts to slurp out all the entrails. I want some chocolate! Why does everyone else get to have THEIR ice cream?”
Shapeshifting humanoid vulture Carla Rachella Amanda Medici Moran hatches a plan and flies down to the swamp where her love-child, bog witch extraordinaire Bernadette Moran Cacca swims and devours the living when she’s not burning port-a-poops nor doing charity cover songs just to look good.
“Hey, do you want to go with me to the Egon Spangler Candy Factory in Ohio? That’s where they keep all the dum-dums.”
“No, it’s not nice to call people a dum-dum…” the holier-than-thou Bernadette Cacca snarks as she rejects her mother’s offer and bites the head off a man whom she just ate for supper.
“Fine. Don’t come to ME when YOU want a favor!” Carla squawks as she flies away.
“What an idiot. First Sonya breaks into my apartment, moves some stuff around, then she pees on my bed. Last year she posted a nastygram on my door accusing me of stinking up the floor from cat pee. The litter-box had just been scooped and there was no smell. If she poops out another fake lease violation, I am going to scream. Then I’m gone done report her to the Illinois Fair Housing Department. I’m done with her shenanigans.”
So go the postings on Manteno People and Places. Albion Places and People. Musings Around South Bend. This is not her first rodeo. She owns apartment complexes all across Northern Illinois and Indiana.
“Yeah, last year when the guys came in to do the bug inspection, they broke my shower-head. Then Sonya had gone and issued ME a violation!”
Complaints continue to pour in.
“Come in” Sonya Marie Smith Moran says, beckons, then gets up to close the door.
“Yeah I’m here to pay my rent.”
“Name and apartment number?”
“Edith Smith, apartment B240.”
The tall, slender, shapeshifting humanoid vulture taps away at the keyboard with her talons.
Edith can see from the angle at which she is standing in the tiny, closed office that there is a flash-note on her account.
Sonya’s assistant, JB the Turd Burglar comes over and looks at Sonya’s screen, craving Evansville brains after a long day stealing turds.
“You’re late.”
“I just got the bill Friday and it’s due today.”
Sonya’s eyes get really big.
“OK I am just gonna stand here and watch this interaction to make sure it’s copacetic.”
“Here is my check. I’d like my receipt.”
“You overpaid.”
“I would like my receipt.” Sonya prints her receipt and Edith walks out the door.
“She did not seem as biligerant and obnoxious as it says on the computer.”
“If it’s who I think it is, she made my last assistant cry,” Sonya projects.
Edith cracks the door back open pokes her head back in. “No that was two assistants ago. That was Erick, and he’s an idiot. He deserves it.”
“Put in that she eavesdrops too.”
Edith walks away, lets the door hang, and laughs in Twiddle-Dee and Twiddle-Dumbs’ faces. “You guys are morons. You need to get better hobbies! Maybe you’d sleep better!” she cries out sarcastically, then looks away, strutting her stuff like she’s living her best life — because she is.
“What’s this?” JB asks as he holds up a blue and white winter hat with the words “Be Nice” embroidered all over it.
“It fell off a truck,” Sonya snarks as she puts the hot hat onto her hard head.
“Time you asked for a refund!” JB jokes as he points at his boss, who does not look pleased to say the least.
JB leaves his job for the day and drives his Turdmobile over to his favourite singer’s house. No not Gothic Diana Ross and the Midnight Supremes, thankfully for them.
As the two sit on the couch to chill, JB’s former boss – and Bog Witch Bernadette’s other lover – Undead Greg Schneissder emerges from the washroom. Bernadette, the self-proclaimed “piano dominatrix” gets up and gives Greg a stern look. Hey poopy-brown eyes say it all.
“I flushed this time!”
“Did you wash your hands?”
“Don’t nag me, lady.”
Undead Greg spies his employee JB sitting in his seat. “Hey, wanna go over to Evansville and eat some friends? I mean some fried brands. Brains. Excuse me, I’ve had too much of your spicy fecal matter again.”
“I’ll do anything to get out of Manteno.”
After losing all but two dollars in the local mini-casino, Carla soars over to the factory in Northwest Ohio hoping to satisfy her sweet-tooth, only to discover they don’t even make chocolate there.
Hanging her beak in disappointment, she tries to raid a mini-mall ice-cream shop in Sandusky, only to be chased out by the customers grossed out at the sight of a vulture with a six-foot wingspan invading their space.
After doing some fluffy sky donuts across Ohio and Indiana, Carla goes looking for a vending machine. Sadly the only ones she could find take CryptidCoin — not to be confused with Craptocoin.
The shapeshifting humanoid vulture busts the door open of a highway convenience store down in southwest Indiana. “Ah finally, some chocolate ice cream with peaches, licorice and oatmeal raisin cookies! My favorite kind!” Carla thinks to herself as she wolfs down the entire half-gallon. She savors her last bite, only to puke it all up outside.
“Get away bird, or I will call the cops! Stop stealing our crap!” the clerk demands of the bird-brained thief. Carla had tossed her cookies and ice cream out of fear. That’s what you do if you’re a vulture.
Undead Greg and his buddy-pal JB have just got their fried brains at the annual festival in Evansville, Indiana. JB chows down when suddenly Greg’s plate is swiped by an unseen force. He slams down his fists and starts making off-color remarks.
A certain vulture can be seen in her natural habitat, eating dead stuff off a plate.
“Wow, that’s the weirdest thing I’ve seen all day,” Cierra Glitchmore says to her wife.
“You’re surrounded by people eating brains,” April Fool-Glitchmore deadpans.
Then Sonya empties all over the ground and her feet the caustic waste of her previous day’s feast.
“Have that lady arrested!”
Sonya causes a public freakout, cameras naturally rolling, including those of the Evansville television station covering the brainy event.
“I pee freely. I poop freely. I’m a bird. I go wherever I want to. You can’t discriminate against humanoid shapeshifting vultures! Do you know who my niece is?”
“Umm, never heard of her,” Kitty Bee reports.
“Carla? What are you doing here?”
“And this is history in the making. As you just saw this…umm…human vulture thing just…well…make a mess where she probably should have not gone. Evansville police have got the woman, bird person in custody. Man, it’s been a day. Reporting live for Evansville TV, this is Kitty Bee.”
Bourbonnais communal narc-a-doodle Damien Hurlbutt ignores the letter carrier. “Must be my Weekly Weewee Wonders; the mailman can tuck those away in the box,” Damien tells himself, as he trims his glowing orange neckbeard.
Damien dons his newest fedora, carefully selected from his newest box of identical hats ordered from an online retailer.
Damien logs onto M’Ladies by Mail Online one last time to check for replies to his daily messages to Ha, his long lost mail-order bride from Vietnam. He sings the empty-inbox blues.
Damien looks for his flip phone and cannot locate it. “Check your pocket, Farley!” Damien says out loud, Lord only knows why.
“Who the heck is Farley?” his downstairs neighbor asks as Damien locks up, jiggling the doorknob for a full five minutes.
“Nothing!” Damien exclaims to his neighbor, as if she cared.
“Elvis, I mean Robbie has left the building. Leave a message. BOOORT!”
“Heyy, man. This is your brother. I am leaving to go try and patch things up with Grimace, I mean Lori. Wish me luck, okay!” Damien flips his phone closed.
Damien hops onto 57 North to Chicago, where Lori lives. He had got her address by abusing his employer’s NexusLexus database program. He has an idea she will be home tonight, because he has been tracking her plans through a sock puppet account on Fakebook.
Damien parks in a nearby garage and walks up to Lori’s apartment, roses and balloons in hand. He knocks on her door.
Lori answers, as she has been expecting a pizza delivery. It is 5:30 PM.
“I want to start things all over with you from the beginning.” Damien tells a shocked, angry Lori.
“Damien? Get the freak outta here now, or I will call the police!” Lori screams sternly.
“I could doink you every day if you would let me!” Damien says with an evil grin and his usual blank eyes.
“Eeeew, you moron! Get out of here!”
Damien spots his mail-order bride Ha in Lori’s apartment. Ha introduces herself, “Damien is that you?” “Why you love her not me?”
“Come now?” Damien says, startled.
Damien collapses emotionally. He is found out. Damien leaves hoping to dodge the police, failing to accept responsibility since he thinks he can do no wrong..
Like most narc-a-doodles, Damien Ulysses Hurlbutt does not sleep well, usually because lies awake dreaming up devious schemes. This is not one of those nights.
“Her toes, her toes, her delicious toes…let me sniff her toes…cover them in barbecue sauce, oh M’Lori, M’lady Madame….”
“Vitals!”
Damien’s audible pillow talk comes to an abrupt halt.
“You okay in there? Time to get your vitals before we install your probe,” says a worker sporting a badge reading “Alternative Fuels Department, Area 51.”
Damien gazes over at the wall-mounted digital clock, which reads 0500 Hours.
“You’re a freak. Your body contains the highest concentration of natural gas we have ever tested here in Dreamland,” the nurse says after they capture Damien’s blood pressure, temperature and pulse oximetry.
Nevermind me – let’s talk about the Manteno, Illinois’ very own Bernadette Moran Cacca – a communal narc-a-doodle.
She sings with the voice of an angel and has the soul of the Devil.
A proverbial wolf-in-sheep clothing, looks are deceiving.
Bernadette does charity work, pretending she cares, just for the photo opportunity.
A port-a-potty proprietor, she burns the port-a-poopies in the fireplace after lighting her farts to spark the fire. She excels at gaslighting in more than one way, because you know, she’s a narcissist.
She is great at pooping and does it a lot.
A master of her domain, she is a swamp witch who is great at luring in unsuspecting men so she can have a Donner dinner party for one.
She excels in annoying her next-door neighbors Gothic Diana Ross & the Midnight Supremes burning poops and practicing her kazoo cover tunes. She is secretly pathologically envious of her neighbors because they are talented and beautiful. Meanwhile she continues to pump out sludge like this:
Bernadette M Cacca YOU’RE THE BEST, Undead Greg! Great to see you!!! Undead Greg: Oh my! This is so much fun. Bernadette Cacca is a goddess. We’re taking over this joint! Thank you for all the great music Miss Bern. Bernadette M Cacca You’re the GOAT!!! Undead Greg: NO YOU!
As Hell’s Chief Operating Officer Satan unveils his newly procured “Welcome to Hell” sign — shown off by visiting intern Gothic Diana Ross — in-processing clerk for the newly damned Lucy Furr looks at her boss with visible dismay.
“Isn’t our new sign just peachy?” Satan asks Lucy as Diana continues to model by it, nearly getting hit a baker’s dozen times by the devil’s not-so-careful use of the pulley system.
“Couldn’t our money be better spent on improving working conditions? Hiring more people? Fixing the toilets?” asks the bully known for her tormenting of an autistic 20-something on their college trip to Italy.
“You have your own heated place for the rest of your life. Try being more thankful for the things you have,” Satan passive-aggressively demands of his clerk while sporting a devilish grin.
Meanwhile, communal narcadoodle Bernadette Cacca is still waiting to poop. All the other washrooms in Hell are closed for maintenance.
Twenty-two-year-old Judithann Avelli, wife of CRASS chief Mack E. Avelli, and unemployed brat really has a thing for daemons. This enquiring mind wants to know whether or not she can get knocked up by those interdimensional hellspawns, therefore she turns to the Internet, just like these guys.
Oh man. the main inspirations for Scary Barry and Terry Reynolds are people I hope you never encounter.
One hundred per cent miserable, and equally evil as her counterpart Barry, there is no pleasing Ms. Terry. She gets joy out of seeing others suffer. She’ll bite the hand that feeds her and once you’re sore from the fresh wound, she’ll bite it again to make it hurt that much more…
Imagine going on a trip overseas to study, experience different perspectives and have fun. That was my hope in the summer of 1999. when I took classes through my university for a study-abroad program in Italy.
What comes to your mind when you think about traveling?
Being forced to share a room with strangers who hated me was the last thing I expected.
Scary Terry was one of the haters. Much older than me, Terry made it a point to harass and belittle me. One time she woke me up and called me “whiny” because I was, you know, groggy like most people who just got up?
And then there was the time Terry told me to cover my legs. I have an autoimmune condition which affects my skin. get over it. Terry, if you don’t like it, then don’t look at it. Find something else to do in Italy than harass a fellow student.
I did smile when Terry had the audacity to talk trash about me at dinner, in front of all the other students from the United States. They told her to shut up and said they did not want to hear it. Neither did I.
Sadly, this Terry person (yes, the real name is Terry, different surname of course) majored in education. I feel bad for any student of Terry’s. No wonder we have some awful teachers in the school system.
When I got home from Italy, I told my family about the abuse I endured from her and her cousin, with whom I was forced to room. Since I did not grow up in a supportive family, they invalidated me by acting like it was no big deal. My feelings are valid.
To help process the trauma from repeated verbal abuse by Terry and the cousin, and the gaslighting I faced when i went home, I created my character Terry Reynolds. I will discuss the cousin in a separate entry.
Taking your road test is nerve-wracking enough. Imagine living in a small city where the sole proctor is a malignant narcissist, taking joy in seeing people fail. Meet the inspiration for Scary Barry Reynolds.
Barry (again, real first name) loved telling students “YOU FAILED” in a stoic tone, with a hint of an evil grin.
And now we get to learn about the psychic attack crap. Back in 2001 (No not 1991, sorry Greg Snyder), I received this junk mail:
Imagine greeting your proctor as you enter the car “Hi Barry” only to be screamed at, likely out of fear “How do you know my name?” And then told “I. Don’t. Like. That.”
Barry may look like Leon Kowalski from Blade Runner, and act like him. It goes without saying he would fail any empathy test. Maybe I should run the V-K Test on him and watch him fail. I just won’t ask him about his mother.
After failing my road test five times with Barry, I passed my test when I took it in another city and of course a different proctor. I had called his supervisor, per advice of my driving instructor, who failed to address the problem, saying “he makes his quota.” Yes, some doctors graduate at the bottom of their class. What do you call them? Yeah, a doctor. .
When I first got the spam, I thought it was for EarthBound cheat codes. Think again.
These morons tried to sell a psychic attack self-defense e-book. The spammer only accepted a check mailed to them, and then they promised to email you the electronic book after they got your check. Yeah, sounds legit.
The email was so funny, I had to save it, and use it for something.
Around the time I got the Defense Against Psychic Attack spamvertisement, I spent a lot of time on message boards chatting about metaphysics. Fans of Dragonball Z asked how to make “PSI Balls” and some even made videos pretending to “psychic attack” people using them. I thought the whole darned thing was so funny, it needed to prompt a story idea. Most of my ideas sat dormant in a different series, which I merged into MoronicArts.
MoronicArts 
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