Back in 2017, I wanted to create a character inspired by my parents’ elderly neighbor who would call them several times a day, asking for favors, not taking no for an answer. Her original name was “Katy Scary.” However I felt the need to make some changes as the neighbor had gotten ill and sadly passed away.
Instead of modeling the Hurlbutt matriarch after my parents’ neighbor, a former co-worker came to mind who fit the personality and loo of the character I was developing..
Some time ago, I had worked in a call center. If you had to call T-Mobile and were greeted by “Rep 12-3456”, that was me, and yes that was my real ID. Seated to my left was a young male who told tall tales of going to Afghanistan over the weekend and coming back to work on Monday. Seated to my right was this lady who wore muumuus to work every day, until our supervisor complained about her violating our already casual dress-code.
This 55-ish slovenly lady asked me for help with her workstation and her calls. I have always loved to help people, however I felt this woman took advantage of me by asking the same questions repeatedly without showing her appreciation. At this call center, we could all relate to the challenges working with our customer base and would go up to a random representative in the break room and vent. However, the main inspiration behind PJ seemed like she was uncut for the job due to her poor emotional range. She had no regard for boundaries, just randomly talking to people bugging them, even if they had made it clear they were busy.
Back in 2019, I parodied the Peloton bike ad which raised controversy from its sexist overtones. I drew her son Damien dreaming up the idea of buying one of their bikes to help his mother lose weight.
Of course, her next-door neighbor Sybil Kibble thinks PJ is great, because she is just as moronic.
“Been drinkin’ again?” Manteno narcissist Bernadette Cacca asks her husband, sociopath and portapotty co-proprietor Peppi Cacca.
“Can you blame me?” Peppi replies as he takes another moonshine swig from a jug marked “XXX”.
“I want a new drug,” Peppi thinks to himself, “one that won’t make me heave.”
Peppi Cacca knows crap is king, after all he and Bern own a portopotty business. Bored with binge-watching the Crap Me Outside Girl rapping on TakTik, Peppi starts looking for videos on how to get high on uTube. After scrolling through pages of unpredictable results, Peppi sits through a four minute commercial and watches a video filmed at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
“Plutonium tastes sweet” the presenter announces.
Intrigued, Peppi asks YooHoo Answers in their Qannon section if Queue can tell him if snorting Plutonium can get him high. After all, Peppi believes everything he reads on the Internet.
Peppi goes to Wally Green’s and Bucketheads looking for plutonium to buy, but comes up empty. No 11 per cent off sale for him, no buy one, get one 50 per cent off (but never free) either.
Driving home, Peppi gets stuck at a light at the intersection underneath the I-57 interchange. Under the bridge he spots a wild Leona Krabalsky, the Kankakee town troll.
Peppi drives his crapmobile to the underpass, going through the red stoplight because he thinks the laws do not apply to him. Peppi rolls his window down and yells his mating call “git, git, git” to Leona.
“I don’t want you and I am not for sale!” the elderly hag growls.
“You got some anything good?” Peppi clarifies wearing his turd-eating grin.
“I just might. What’s your pleasure?”
Peppi and Leona shake hands and Peppi peels out after chucking the brown paper bag into his backseat. Peppi rushes back home to meet wife Bernadette at their Manteno shack for dinner.
Bernadette and Peppi sit in their bedrooms, eat their Hardlees burgers and fries and belch a bunch of times. Bern lifts her leg and farts.
“Ahhh, that was a good one,” Bernadette says with glee.
Peppi takes his newly discovered rocks out the paper bag he bought from Leona.
“Mmmmmmmmm…this is sweet” Peppi thinks out loud as he munches on the pebbles.
Then Peppi pukes up his dinner since he was drunk.
Bernadette walks in on Peppi tossing his cookies in their washroom.
“Hey, what’s up?” a nosey Bern asks her beloved Pep.
“Blecccccccchhhhhhhhhhhhh” Peppi repies into the toilet.
“What were those cat turds doing in your bedroom? I need to burn them. Let me light a fart first to spark the flames and then I will watch them burn in the fireplace.”
Bern watches the glisten and pop, all aglow, gleaming like a twinkle in Bern’s eye. “Ooooh, that smell.”
Disgusted that Leona sold him fake Plutonium, Pep cooks up a way to make some cash.
Bern and Pep team up to make a mumble rap video. Pep raps and plays a single snare drum which fell off a truck, while Bern sings show-tunes while playing her accordion she uses to trick people on the internet into thinking she cares about charities.
The video fails to get monetized.
Bern makes a TakTik viral video lighting her farts and burning poopies in her fireplace which her fans adore. Then Bern runs out of poops because the neighborhood turd-burglar JB Martin stole them all.
Bern makes a collection of her own poops to burn since she needed more, and makes more TakTik videos, becoming an “influencer.” Companies offer to mail Bern free toilet paper in return for her becoming their brand ambassador.
As Bern logs into accept the free toilet paper, the Caccas’ fire alarm goes off from the unattended poopies burning in her fireplace.
The Manteno Fire Department rushes over to the Caccas’ house.
Bern screams with excitement when the Waaaaaah Machines wail and fart as the firefighters rush to their house to put out the fire, clapping as they arrive.
“Hi guys, I really love those fart noises your fire engines make. Can I get one of those keen blow-horns for my house? I think they will go great with my accordion routine I do for charity and the Turd machine I mounted on the side of the shack to shoot at Gothic Diana Ross.”
“Shut up and leave, your house is on fire,” the firefighter warns Bern as the two Caccas walk away and watch their house burn, along with the poopies.
“I’m With Stupid” reads the graphic tee Leona Krabalsky wears to the Kankakee job fair. She along with her younger sister, Doris, are busy manning their booth.
“I hope we sell truckloads of these here essential snake oils, you oily mama!” Leona slyly says as she slaps her sister on the arm.
“I hope we sell lots of these here business ops too. After all a sucker is born every minute! But don’t tell them that, Bossbabe! Shhhh.” Doris whispers in Leona’s ear.
The day is almost over and the ladies have yet to make a single sale. Tired, hangry and frustrated, Leona grabs her pack of unfiltered smokes and gets ready to head out to burn one. A 40-something gent with long, straggly, dark brown hair and round, blue, plastic glasses approaches the booth. Leona hides her cigarettes, dons her cheesiest grin and locks eyes with the only person who approached the booth all day.
“How may we improve your life today?” Leona says with a huge, fake smile.
“Hi. I am Pat Splatt. Nice to meet you” he says as he tightly shakes Doris’s hand, and clasps his left hand over both hands.
“Our essential oils can change your life.” Doris says to Pat.
“Can they get me la-…dies?” Pat giggles.
“They sure can!” Doris says with a smile.
“All right!” Pat pumps his fists.
“We have patchouli, try this out, I bet you will love it.” Doris tries to persuade Pat.
“And we can make you rich! Let me tell you about our business opportunity!” Leona chines in.
“And I can make you richer!” Pat exclaims.
“How so?” Leona asks quizzically, finger to her lip.
“I can make sure your oils and opportunities are known by every person with an email address!” Pat says with a smile.
“I tell you what, I will give you that a set of oils in exchange for you marketing our stuff.”
“Deal.” Pat says and the three exchange handshakes.
The next day, Pat goes down to his basement and fires up his email harvester, stealing massive numbers of addresses across the Internet. After loading the addresses, he imports them to his Spam-o-Matic 2000 program.
“I do not like spam. But I do not care. It makes me money and gets me free stuff” Pat says to himself as he clicks the “Send Spam” button.
Over a billion emails spew out Pat’s basement server to unsuspecting people all over the world, advertising Leona and Doris’s unsolicited snake oils and pyramid schemes. Pat kicks back in his dark basement and falls asleep after eating a box of cheese doodles and drinking an entire bottle of pop straight from its two liter bottle.
Meanwhile, Doris and Leona are getting flooded with angry emails and calls.
“Take me off your rotten list!” states one message.
“Stop spamming me! I hate this crap!” writes another.
“Who is this? You’re a moron! There is a special place in Hell for people who send out junk emails!” shouts a third.
Doris Krabalsky and Damien Hurlbutt arrive at Hell’s in-processing line, both wanting to take over.
Leona and Doris decide they have enough of the thousands of messages and change their contact info.
“That’s a bust. I guess we will have to try telemarketing next,” Leona says to Doris.
“Naaaw, I will go back to selling this stuff on the street like I did before…” Doris snickers and grins.
Sirens are heard in the background and flashing lights are seen. What was that about selling on the street? The world may never know.
It is that wonderful time of the year. Kankakee bill-collector Sybil Kibble enjoys eating dog food almost as much as she loves bothering strangers probably eating something else to ask for money. To celebrate the things she loves, Sybil decorates her Christmas tree with dog bones with the high hope that Santa brings her money for being a good lil debt collector. Do you think Sybil is on Santa’s good list or naughty list?
These tiny twin sisters sing about breaking crap in their new single “Broken” from their album “Broken,” coming soon from Broken Records. Not coming to a store near you. Be sure to see them open up for Vaudeville troupe Moronic Half-Assets (MHA) who bring you all the entertainment with half the budget.
Their favorite hobby is talking to each other in the washroom stalls, making sure to flush repeatedly, pretending to whizz while other ladies line up because they have to actually use the facilities. Bern Cacca would be proud.
Kankakee Elvis impersonator and vulnerable narcadoodle Robbie Hurlbutt thinks he is Elvis. He posted this billboard to hopefully bring in some birthday cheer from the single ladies. Do you think it will work? Don’t lock him in the bathroom!
Scary Barry Reynolds gets fired from his job as a road-test proctor for the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles, and starts his own college called “Dr. Mathew B. Johnson School of Intrepid Arts” in Albion, Indiana, teaching martial arts and telekinesis, a school he named after his favorite academic leader and best friend.
Gothic Diana Ross gives her TV the side-eye
“Become as powerful as the Dragonball Y characters you see on TV! Develop your real life martial-arts skills, and when you get to your senior year, you’ll become a PSI-ball master!”
“Not this ad again…” Gothic Diana Ross says across the Indiana border in Manteno, Illinois at the slate Victorian home where she and her bandmates reside. “Who wants to go to Indiana anyway?”
“Indiana wants us, but we can’t go back there.” Gothic Flo retorts and The Midnight Supremes all giggle.
Classes begin at the School of Intrepid Arts in Albion. Students practice basic self-defense, mixed martial arts and fencing.
“A new life awaits you at the School of Intrepid Arts” a flashing, talking blimp advertises as it flies over Northern Indiana and Illinois, spending a rather long time over Chicago, until someone begins to fire at it.
“Pop! Pop!” is heard as the floating advertisement-machine is gunned down somewhere on the Southside.
A scholar gets harassed in his dorm, racial remarks litter his marker board. One moron, Pat Splatt, writes “KKK” on an empty pizza box and drops it outside his dorm room.
Protests are held by multiple school groups which make the local news.
Barry and Terry Reynolds respond to the media from the comfort of their own home.
“I will answer that later. Come back.” President Reynolds tells the news, and does not return their calls.
The scholar tries to learn to make “PSI Balls” on the internet and learns that it is fake. Meanwhile President Reynolds uses school money to pay for pet construction projects so he can hire his wife Terry’s company to do all the work.
Barry and Terry make the classes so hard, it is impossible to pass. Barry and Terry love seeing the disappointed faces of aspiring martial-arts students receive their report cards littered with Fs.
President Barry Reynolds sends out a memo to his wife Terry using negative humor, snarking she should bulldoze “trash and idiots who live on minimum wage.” Barry accidentally copies the entire college on the email.
Oopsie!
Students start creating memes and Fakebook groups. President Barry reports them to Fakebook owner Emperor Zucc who shuts them all down.
Students take to the news to expose the corruption.
The scholar is interviewed, and talks about his brother — also a student — who died when trying to defend a bully using “PSI Balls.”
“If President Reynolds wants to create chaos and censor those who rise up against his regime, then maybe he should move to North Korea. I bet he would feel right at home.”
Barry and Terry visit Bern Cacca bathing in the bog near Manteno, Illinois, for public-relations advice hoping to clean up their image, since Bern is so good at maintaining her squeaky clean image while doing dirty those closest to her. Oh, and she burns poopies.
Bern Cacca bathes in the bog
“Bern Cacca? We have an important message. We need your help.”
Bog Witch Bern keeps on swimming.
“Bern? We have something to tell you.”
Bern continues to ignore the looming Terry and Barry.
“Bern? We want to know how you keep your image so clean while you do others dirty.”
“Can’t you see I am taking a bath?” an angered Bern yells back, hoping to be left alone.
“Oh you are so…RUDE!” Terry snarks at Bern.
“I am busy. Go away.”
“God hates ugly people! I am calling the manager!” Terry says out of desperation and fear.
“I am the manager.” Bern replies as she shoos away Terry and Barry.
“I wish my hearing aids were broken.” Peppi Cacca says to his wife Bern and the Reynolds couple leaves.
The Indiana Attorney General investigates and shuts the school down, and the story makes television headlines.
“Oh good, we no longer have to see those annoying ads.” Gothic Flo says to Gothic Diana and then turns off her TV.
For 5 years and 300 some-odd stories, some shorter than others, we thank you for all your views comments and shares!
As long as there are morons to inspire stories, we will keep on writing them. Thanks for five good years, many more to come! (Unless the world runs out of morons)
MoronicArts 
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