Rich People Problems

[ Part five of a continuing story which inspired people to rise up and start this petition: https://www.change.org/p/albion-college-remove-dr-mathew-johnson-from-albion-college ]

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“Why are people up here in Albion so anti-Reynolds? I have done nothing but help this community. The other day, I told an obese lady about the new gym I wanted to build. I wanted to help her. But, noooo, people are so rude and mean. They do not appreciate my help! After all, they shut down The Mathew B. Johnson School of Intrepid Arts — The Best Martial Arts School around I could have taught them kiddos how to make PSI Balls!!”

“Those are fake.”

“I know. But but makes us money, and I want to teach ’em! This whole state needs a good schoolin’! This whole world!”

“Hey Barry, why don’t you call that Bernadette moron, the bog witch who sings opera for charity?”

“Don’t you remember? She and her husband drove all the way from Manteno, Illinois and just left! I mean, how rude! Everyone hates me!”

“How about we drive down to Manteno. Maybe we can try their porto potty business since their number always goes to voicemail. I can only listen to that recording of them polka-rapping about porto potties so many times.”

“We have nothing better to do. I am bored. Let’s go!”

“Take that ugly desk with you. Maybe you can give it to her to pay for our public-relations clean-up act.”

Barry and Terry Reynolds run to Manteno. 

“Turn left. Then turn left. Then turn left. Recalculating.”

“That dang GPS, why does it screw up so much? It has one job!” Terry exclaims.

Terry and Barry arrive at Peppi’s Portapotties. 

“Dang! Just missed ‘em. They closed ten minutes ago. Let’s do a drive-by past their house.”

The bumbling idiots drive past the Caccas’ run-down shack. Nobody’s home. Spotting the beautiful slate, Victorian Gothic home next door, their curiosity draws them in.

The Westminster Chimes are played as they ring the doorbell. A 5’10”, slender, medium-skinned Gothic beauty answers the door, wearing an all-black dress and fishnet stockings.

“Yeah?” Gothic Diana Ross answers.

Barry’s stoic face turns a slight smile.

“Umm, hi Miss. We will not take up much of your time.”

“You’ve already taken up too much.” Diana quips.

“What’s the deal with your neighbors? The Caccas?”

‘Oh man. Just don’t.”

Diana inches away and begins to close the door.

“Wait? Miss! We have this $1000  desk we can give you, if you just talk to us!”

“I’ll tell you where to put that desk.”

Diana slams the door and goes back to singing rehearsal with the Midnight Supremes.

“Barry, I gotta whizz.”

“Yup. You’re the boss.”

“No Diana is. Let’s go.”

Barry and Terry pull into the nearest corner Wally Green’s. While Terry is emptying her bladder in the washroom, Barry finally answers the sales clerk who asked him six times if he needed help finding something.

“Yeah, do you sell those SpamMaster 2000 CD-ROMs?”

“No, sorry. Are you looking to send unsolicited emails? I got a guy.” Drugstore clerk, covert narcissist and Elvis impersonator Robbie Hurlbutt slips Barry the number for Pat Splatt, petty criminal and junk emailer.

Pat Splatt multitasks, sending out heaps of junk emails on one monitor, while repeatedly right-swiping on the other monitor.

Barry and Terry meet Pat Splatt at midnight on the street, not far from the interchange bridge under which Kankakee troll Leona Krabalsky is sawing wood.  The three shadowy figures shake hands and part ways. The Reynolds drive onto Interstate Route 57 North, toward Chicago-O’Hare Airport, and board a plane for their monthly vacation. 

“We’re headed to Australia and we’re so stoked!” reads the craption below Terry’s Fakebook post, loaded with the hashtag #RichPeopleProblems. Terry cannot wait to take photos of her legs and feet.

Pat Splatt hopes to buy an overly lifted truck to compensate for his lousy personality with all the money he makes spamming on behalf of the dysfunctional former leaders of the Mathew B Johnson School of Intrepid Arts.  Brandon Dixon’s imbecile machine lot is booming with their end of year sales and Pat hopes to wheel-and-deal himself one.

While Scary Barry and Terry Reynolds spend loads of money they got from who-knows-where, seeing the sites of Australia, email junker Pat Splatt is busy sliding unwanted emails into the inboxes of college students all over the USA. Pat spams on behalf of disbarred college president Reynolds about the wonders of PSI Balls and how Barry Reynolds can teach them to defend themselves from psychic attacks. A second wave of spam stinks up the computer mailboxes of students at UCLA, Yale, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Colgate, Boston University, Loyola, Olivet Nazarene, Baylor, Kent State, Oregon State, Nebraska and Iowa City, spewing propaganda to try and connive random students into taking Barry’s online martial arts courses “because he is a nice guy who does a lot for the community.” 

A sleeping Barry is awakened by an unexpected phone call. 

“This is the Albion Health Department. We have received multiple complaints about a cockroach infestation at your compound.”

“It’s 3AM. Who the heck is this?”

“Huh? I don’t know where you are or what you’re talking about. We need you to rectify the infestation or we are going to have to condemn your property.”

“I’m in Australia on vacation with my wife.”

“Must be nice. I have not had a vacation in 21 years.”

Barry hangs up the phone and goes back to sleep. The Reynolds spend the day at their exclusive resort on Australia’s Gold Coast taking pictures of themselves and braggity-boasting on their Fakebook pages.

A month later, the relaxed, but tired couple heads home to their Albion McMansion. Several “Condemned” signs are seen posted all over their estate. 

“What the heck now? After all we do for this county? This state? The entire Universe?”

Beep-Beep-Beep goes the Avelli Truck, lowering a shipping container on the grass outside the massive, now-condemned Reynolds residence.

“What’s this?” a stern Barry asks.

“Your new home. There’s even room for your desk.”

A truck from Peppi’s Portapotties pulls up, “King and Queen of the Throne” its lettering reads below a smiling cartoon depicting owners Bern and Peppi Cacca.

“His and Hers,” Peppi says to the Department of Health worker overseeing the Reynolds property seized by the City of Albion, Indiana as he sets up the two portable toilets.

“We are NOT going to sleep in there.” Barry says with his nose to the air, walking away from the metal shipping container.

“You can live in a dumpster. We won’t judge.”

Barry checks his bank account, hoping to stay in a swanky hotel.  The robobank announces “Negative Forty-Nine Thousand, two-hundred twenty-four dollars.”

“Paaaaaaaaat!” Barry and Terry exclaim as they fall to their knees in unison, mad because their goose is cooked.

Awww, sucks to be them.

Caccas Burning, Stomachs Turning

Image: a full-colour cartoon of a black lady with big hair holding her head in her hand the foreground, looking out the window at a house with a smelly bonfire.

Poor Gothic Diana Ross. All she wants to do is lie down in her silky black sheets and take a nap after a long day practicing with her bandmates, Gothic Mary and Gothic Flo in her Manteno home. Nope. Next-door neighbors Bernadette “Bern” Cacca and her husband Peppi are burning port-a-poop again in a backyard bonfire after a job as Bern claps and sings, interspersed by random kazoo sounds. They sure love to farty.

Bernadette Cacca is Brown With Envy

Manteno communal narcadoodle, port-o-dump proprietor and charity-kazoo-cover-queen Bernadette Cacca wishes she could figure out why her biggest fan, Greg Schneissder, can blast blue flame from his bum when hers always come out yellow and orange. Bern plots revenge on Greg, because, you know she has nothing better to do with her time. Bernadette needs to get a life. Bern gets out her sparkly EyePhone 28 and dials him up. Nobody’s home.

“Why is he so good at farting?” Manteno pretend do-gooder and entramanure Bernadette Cacca asks her husband Peppi upon his return from the half-way house.

“Git!”

“Oh not now, I just showered…” Bog witch Bernadette answers Peppi’s mating call, that same one which had attracted her years ago, while Manteno’s queen of the porcelain throne was bathing in the swamp.

“I dunno…Why don’t you go over and ask him?”

“You’re awesome!”

“Just like the last time…” Peppi responds to Bern’s superlative, giving her the stinkeye as he takes his first puff of a skunky joint, one of many to follow, not the first by any means. The Caccas love anything that stinks.

“Oh no, that’s Bernadette. Don’t let her in, she’ll never leave!” The Midnight Supremes shout out the arched window of their dark stone Gothic Victorian home. All Gothic Diana Ross wants to do is cut the grass. Bern peels out the driveway, around the corner and back by the Midnight Supremes house again.

As Bernadette rolls by she, shouts all mockingly “take the pictures” at the Midnight Supremes who are minding their own business taking video of the weather.

“Grow up, you child!” Gothic Flo defends herself against the abuse spewed by spoiled-brat Bernadette.

“Methinks the trolls are crawling out from under their collective bridges and mothers’ basements again,” Gothic Diana Ross addresses her bandmates, The Midnight Supremes.

“Peppi and Bernadette gang up on me like a bunch of schoolyard children. I am 42. I am starting to think that Bern harassed us out of fear that maybe I was videotaping her, because it’s all about her you know? The funny thing is my video was of the rain; it was raining in one spot only. But those spoiled entitled brats it’s all about them you know? Because nobody else deals with the weather here on Earth right?”

“Yes. The rain is there to annoy those morons.” Gothic Flo deadpans.

Bern Cacca peels into her driveway, runs into the bathroom with her smell-phone and replies to a Fakebook post looking for “10 models” to “type yes in the comments.”

“I’m a plus sized model is that okay?” Bern asks Leona Krabalsky.

“Oh yes, we have a special bonus for you,” sister Doris Krabalsky answers Mrs. Cacca’s query.

“Robert Roy Gary Hurlbutt. I never want to see him, again. However, here I am. Mamma and I unload the van containing the remaining items from our broken marriage he demanded back: pooped-on record albums, Elvis dolls, countless cardboard tubes formerly holding paper of the wrapping and toilet kind.” Robbie’s former girlfriend dictates into her phone.

Back at his unit again, Kay feels bad for Robbie’s new source of narcissistic supply. 

“I am sorry” Kay whispers into the young lady’s ear, her eyes’ micro-expression meeting in agreement.

“Just put that over there” Robbie says to her mother carrying a heavy box of ratty blankets.

“Where is Heidi?”

“I gave her away,” Robbie speaks of the cat Kay wanted to keep, the poor lil tortie Robbie speaks about as if she were part of the furniture, mere chattel. Robbie walks over to the washroom and leaves the door a-crack. “Don’t lock me in.”

“I’m Kay.”

“Ann. I go by Annie.”

“Annie?” 

“Yeah. I work over at the taco place. I am getting promoted.”

“Congratulations! I am happy for you.”

“It is not much. I got this new name badge which reads “King.”

“I catch your drift. I am thankful for you retail workers.”

Bernadette is running behind to meet The Krabalskys under the I57 underpass for her “modeling.” Extremely impatient, Bern throws a hissy-fit at the Krow-Grrr self-checkout whinging because it doesn’t take CraptoCoin.

“You guys are too woke! I am too good for this! I play all these songs for the Manteno Optimal Club and raise money for them and Ukraine. I wanna talk to the manager! My aunt Sonya knows the owner of this entire plaza!”

“Karen! Karen! Karen!” emerges from the crowd of customers wishing to shop just once sans harassment from the activity-impaired crowd and their ensuing ennui.

“What a dope!” Store clerk Annie King says as she yeets Bern out the door.

“Oh good, I got it! Ha!” Gothic Diana thinks to herself of the exposure captured of her narcissistic neighbor Bernadette Moran Cacca throwing a childish tantrum at the supermarket.

Bernadette meets Kankakee County trolls Doris and Leona Krabalsky under the bridge.

“You need to remove your twitter post about my friend Undead Greg. Especially when you were selfish enough to do what you did and then block him. Because he is the only person who ever farts and that’s all that matters! Look at me, I’m a troll who crawled out from under my bridge because I need to get a hobby and I hate myself. I don’t appreciate the way you treated him about his farts looking prettier than yours. Yeah.”

Gobsmacked, B. M. Cacca’s jaw drops to the floor, realizing she has been duped by people almost as narcissistic as she.

“But if you would like to try our product, we can still get you our special deal.”

“Product? I thought this was a modeling gig.”

“Oh yes, I have these lovely magic beans just for you. They will clean your colon FAST!”

“Will they make me farts turn blue when I light them?”

“Oh yes, they will alright.”

“Sign me up!” Bernadette says to her sisters-in-narcissism as they sell her the overpriced coffee beans. The Krabalskys will do anything for a sale and Bernadette will do anything to brag about her precious farts.

MoronicArts Bores a Scammer with Gothic Diana Ross, Portapotties and Siberia

“Mary” from Delhi, India called from a spoofed New York number to ask nosey medical questions.

MoronicArts wasted this scammer’s time boring her about Gothic Diana Ross, Peppi’s Portopotties and Norilsk, Russia so she cannot use that time to try and rip off other people.

Get a real job, “Mary.”

Upside Down You Turn Me

Much to the dismay of their narcissistic neighbors – entramanures and poopyburners Peppi and Bernadette Cacca – the beautiful dark ladies Gothic Diana Ross & The Midnight Supremes debut their new tune, “Upside Down.” This Manteno, Illinois cover group is happy to drown out the brown notes emanating from Bern’s kazoo, mouth and accordion.

MoronicArts Is Out To Lunch!

Happy June from The Moroniverse! The Midwest lunch bunch carries the weight of the world’s largest carrot on their shoulders. We would like to thank the Universe for all the story-fodder, all that moronic inspiration, and Sybil’s mom JoAnn Kibble.

Under The Bridge

“Where did all the trolls go?” Gothic Diana Ross asked as she walked under the dark underpass in Kankakee, near Brandon’s Imbecile Machines in the Used Car District.

”Dude, they are taking a dump all over the Internet,” Gothic Mary quips and the Midnight Supremes giggle.

”Yeah, they crawled out from under the bridges and onto the Interwebs again,” Gothic Flo advises the girl group on the way to their gig, so excited to be busy, unlike the trolls whose home they just passed through.

Voices Carry, Bernadette

Bog witch Bern bathes in the bog

Manteno port-a-potty proprietor, singer and communal narcadoodle Bernadette “Bern” Cacca spends her vacation swimming in the bog. She gets bored devouring the living and speeds home to her shack to visit her husband Peppi.

Bern opens her mailbox to find a letter sent from Peppi.

“DEAR BERN. I GOT OUTTA REHAB AND AM LIVING IN A HALFWAY HOUSE. BRING BEER.”

Bern fears the loss of narcissistic supply since her husband is away. 

Bourbonnais cinema clerk, communal narcissist, and proud neckbeard Damien Ulysses Hurlbutt is visiting his brother; Wally Green’s clerk, Elvis impersonator and covert narcissist Robert Roy Gary Hurlbutt at his apartment, with whom he used to share with drifter Andy Skandees.

The Narcissist Brothers: Robbie and Damien Hurlbutt

“What are ya gonna do on ya day off?”

“After lunch, smunch, gonna zogg on over home and write me an article!”

“Don’t you wanna spend it with your only brother? I am in a dark mood.”

“Naw, you see, I am going to write a paper.”

Awkward silence passes the two, like a fart in the wind.

“Since people think we are narcissists, I am gonna prove them wrong! Bwahahahaha.”

A sinister grin fills Damien’s face, morphing his orange, straggly beard into something even creepier.

“After I write an article all about narcissism, I am going to send it to my former therapist down in Champaign for a once-over, and prove forever we are not narcissistic at all. Then I people will know I am the victim and all her friends will say goodbye! Bwa ha ha ha ha!”

“She’s the counselor also who saw the convicted murderer who lived in your old apartment complex, right?”

“I know, I know, I know…”

“Did you help him move the body?”

“Anyways…I need to go back to Bourbonnais and write this important article.”

Damien taps away at his 10-year-old desktop machine atop his TV tray, sitting on a folding metal chair, the only furniture he has since the rest of his apartment is cluttered with boxes containing useless crap; shredded tissues strewn across the carpet, empty pop cans littering the apartment he uses as a dumpster.

Bern runs all over Manteno looking for gullible men, to no avail.

Remembering that fellow communal narcadoodle Damien Hurlbutt hit on her at Cinema-13, she heads over to pay him a visit. Damien is not there, so the clerk hands Damien’s card to Bern.

“Damien Hurlbutt, old soul and tender-heart looking for M’ladies.

Call me now. I am the last of my species. 1-815-555-FART”

Happy she does not have to look anymore for someone she can idealize, devalue and then discard like used burger wrappers, Bernadette calls Damien and heads over his neckbeard nest in Bourbonnais. 

Damien opens the door and immediately hugs Bern, handing her a bouquet of long stem roses.

“Hello, M’Lady. I tip my hat to you, so little and dainty. I have another surprise inside.”

“Oooh, let’s go!”

Damien holds the door for Bern, and brags about it as if he needs a medal.

Atop one of his many boxes of crap is a bunch of balloons attached to a massive teddy bear. 

“I gotta go for real.”

“So soon?”

“No, I mean I need to use the washroom.”

“Ahh.”

Bern wades through the lake on his washroom floor, farts a bunch of times, and takes a massive crap.

Bern opens the door to a wide-eyed Damien.

“Are these for me?” Bern asks Damien, mouth wide open, almost inhaling one of the flies buzzing around Damien’s dumpy excuse of an apartment.

“Yes, honey puddin’.”

“Oh you are the best, Damien!”

“Anything for you, M’lady, Madame.” Damien tips his black fedora.

“By the way, I’m impressed!”

“You think so? Oh, you are nicest guy on earth. I love to sing for charity, I am the best giver you know! And the best listener.”

“No, I’m the best giver. And I mean your farting. Man, those are some hot toots!”

“Yeah, I light them to burn poopies in my fireplace.”

“Dang, wanna stay the night?”

“Yeah, baby!”

“Hoooo!”

“I don’t know. Who? I hope me, handsome dahhhhling.”

The two spend the night together on Damien’s bare floor, cuddled together under Damien’s ratty blanket, sharing his lone pillow.

Bern awakes many times in the night by a loud, dissonant noise.

Damien wakes up, farts three times, and heads to the washroom, peeing loudly. Then he rips a few more air biscuits, bragging, “Pheeeew!”

Bern checks her phone for donations to the Manteno Optimal Club, for which she plays accordion, covering pop tunes to raise money. Secretly, she does not really care about the charity nor the community as a whole. She just wants to look good on the outside.

Damien walks back into his room.

“Dude, why do you snore so loudly?”

“Oh, I have sleep apnea.”

“Why don’t you wear your mask?”

“It fills up with water in the night.”

“You do know they make automatic cleaners for those things. My mom has one.”

“I know, I know, I know…”

“And no bed? My back is killing me from sleeping on your hard floor.”

“How about we go to your place, M’lady?”

“I don’t want my husband to find out.”

“Husband?”

“Yeah, Peppi is in rehab for his drinking again.”

“Oh, I won’t tell him. I was married once before I married Grimace and I never told her.”

“Grimace? Who?”

“Oh my ex-wife. She got more hostile every day when I was getting ready to leave her down in Champaign. It was all about her, her her,” Damien smears the woman he emotionally abused.

“Why do you call her Grimace?”

“She is so fat and so dumb. One year I bought her a vacuum and she could not even put the thing together.”

“Sounds like me.”

“Naw, honey puddin’. You are a lot prettier than her.”

Damien takes his usual hour-long shower, runs out the bathroom to grab a towel and spills water all over the floor. After drying off his manhood with a hair-dryer, he gets dressed, and meets Bernadette in her car.

The two walk into Bern’s Manteno shack, which she shares with husband Peppi.

“Can I use your computer?

“Go ahead!”

Damien checks his email.

“Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!” Damien exclaims with glee.

From: “Florence” [ProgressiveTherapyLLC@dmail.calm]

To:  “Damien U. Hurlbutt” [connivingpimp@hautemail.con]

Sunday, January 30, 2022

Subject: Re: I have a great idea which I think you will like

Damien, you have sent me four emails now. You are not my client any more, and I will not sign off on your idea. Here is a list of therapists in Kankakee County.

Attached file: “TherapistsInKankakee.pdf”

Damien fires back an angry email:

From: “Damien U. Hurlbutt” [connivingpimp@hautemail.con]

To: “Florence” [ProgressiveTherapyLLC@dmail.calm]

Sunday, January 30, 2022

Subject: Re: re: I have a great idea which I think you will like

No, I do not need help. There is nothing wrong with me. You are psycho like my ex-wife!

Bern walks in and Damien quickly locks the computer screen so she cannot see what shenanigans he has been barfing up.

“I gotta head upstairs. I will be awhile.”

Damien grabs Bern’s hands and looks her dead in the eye.

“I was about to close off my heart and never love again, M’lady. When I was born, my mother saw my head full of red hair and named me after the kid from The Omen. We redheaded males get discriminated against—“

“Damien, you are really handsome and your farts smell amazing. I really need to go poop for awhile.”

“Okay, honey puddin’. I will be here.”

As Damien hits send on his email to his former therapist, someone rings Mrs. Cacca’s doorbell.

“Oh, horse-hockey,” Damien complains.

“Come innnnn!” Bern’s voice emanates from the upstairs restroom.

“Bernadette, somebody is here.”

“Let them in.”

Damien opens the door. A 5’10” average looking male asks for Bernadette.

“Who are you?”

“I am JB, her boyfriend. Who are you?”

“Uhhh-I’ll go get her.”

JB sits down on the Caccas’ couch while Bernadette continues to pinch loaves.

“Bern, I am gonna go on home. I have a stitch in my side, and my heel spurs are hurting.”

“PPPHHHPPPTTTTTT” says Bern’s butt. Damien’s derriere returns the sentiment and he heads home.

Bern comes down the stairs to greet her other boyfriend.

“Hey sugar, you the most handsome man alive. How are ya?”

“Do you have any turds? My turd-machine is out of ammo again and I have no luck stealing poopies.”

Little does Bern know, she has an audience.

“Is this the dawning of the age of morons?” the next-door neighbors Gothic Diana Ross and The Midnight Supremes ask each other, giggling. They have been standing on their porch, listening in on Bern’s conversations with her boyfriends. 

“Bern Cacca has her nose so far up her enablers’ butts she can see out their mouths,” Gothic Flo quips and the gothic girl group busts out laughing, happy to have a laugh at the Caccas’ expense.

Damien Hurlbutt’s Pool Toys

“Why does your brother Damien keep buying pool toys in the middle of Winter?” Wally Green asks his Illinois pharmacy-chain clerk, Kankakee Elvis impersonator and covert narcissist, Robbie Hurlbutt.

Robbie says nothing, chooses to ignore his boss and keeps on stocking shelves as he hopes to leave early so he can skip out on closing.

“Has he moved a body or something?” Wally says of Robbie’s equally creepy and narcissistic brother Damien.

Robbie ignores Wally, finishes stocking and sneaks out the door while the store owner is not looking so he can head down to the bar. First, he has to meet his speedball dealer.

Robbie, high on uppers, spends 20 minutes chatting up the bartender, while other customers grow impatient and angry as he is holding up the mixing of their cocktails and the pouring of their beers.

Robbie downs his downers and chases them with prescription painkillers he stole from his elderly mother PJ.

The inebriated Elvis impersonator texts his brother Damien, hoping he will join him and take him home, however after multiple selfies and text messages saying how much he loves his brother, Damien does not reply.

Cinema-13 clerk, bulbous neckbeard and communal narcadoodle Damien Hurlbutt strokes his dayglow-orange facial coiffe, and sets out a clipboard containing a sign-up sheet requesting email addresses for a newsletter. A theater customer walks up to the movie theater counter and asks what the newsletter is about. “It’s just a newsletter,” the sneaky narcissist Damien replies in his typical smug tone.

After the picture finishes its run and the ushers escort all the guests, Damien collects the newsletter sign-up sheet and heads to his Bourbonnais neckbeard-nest to sleep on the floor. Before he can retire for the night, he get annoyed over the mess of texts and photos from his brother Robbie. Damien would rather sleep in his mess of plastic tubs, and boxes of the things he loves more than people, than head back to Kankakee to pick up a drunk. Thinking he can gain something from helping his brother, he drives down to the Kankakee bar at which Robbie is performing slurred Elvis Presley Karaoke. The two bumbling idiots get into Damien’s beat-up van and head home. 

“What about my purple clown car?” Robbie asks Damien.

“Get it tomorrow.”

Damien gets a text from a coworker whose birthday is coming up soon. Knowing well it is illegal to text and drive, Damien messages his coworker, lovebombing her about the $50 gift card he is going to buy her, bragging about the surprise she clearly expressed she did not feel comfortable accepting.

After nearly crashing, Damien flips off the other driver and heads to Robbie’s Kankakee apartment, crashing on his floor instead.

Damien and Robbie wake up to snow on the ground. Damien retells the same story about his father N. Ron’s obsession with the weather channels he has already bored Robbie with at least 80 times now. Robbie leaves the room, stumbling on record albums he dumped all over the floor to get to the bathroom. Even though he is terrified of getting locked in the washroom while pooping, Robbie wants to get away from Damien.

Robbie emerges, and Damien pulls out the newsletter sign-up sheet, filled with names and email addresses. “Hey Robbie, my number-one brother? I would love to ask a favor from you. Can you contact Pat Splatt and try to sell him these email addresses? I collected them to send out messages getting out the good things us tender-hearts at the Bourbonnais Men’s Rights Activist (MRA) Club can do to help us men fight misandry. I would like to sell him a copy because I need the money to buy my coworkers gifts. I spent my paycheck already on action figures.

“What’s in it for me?” Robbie asks his equally self-centered brother Damien.

“Well, our theater has an extra Gothic Diana Ross poster from when we sponsored her show a couple years back.”

“Sold.” Robbie grins ear-to-ear and dials up Kankakee criminal and email spammer Pat Splatt.

The Hurlbutt brothers drive over to Pat Splatt’s flat, where the straggly long-haired Pat is busy harvesting emails from the Internet using his Spam-O-Matic computer program. The three group together to organize their petty crime. 

“Damien, I can pay you per email reply, that’s it.”

“Oh come now!”

“Oh go now, Damien. That is my final offer. Take it or leave it. I don’t have to offer you anything.”

“I know, I know, I know…” Damien says like a broken record, mimicking a certain furniture commercial emanating from Champaign. 

Damien reluctantly hands Pat the photocopied sign-up list containing contact information he collected from unsuspecting moviegoers.

Damien then heads to Wally Green’s to buy more pool toys and chucks them in his bathroom. After whizzing, he washes his hands with far more water than he needs and sprinkles the water all over the bathroom floor, leaving on the bathroom light and fan because he does not care.

Damien begins typing up his MRA “newsletter” in a word-processor program on his 10 year old desktop computer, resting atop a wooden folding table, the only piece of furniture in the entire room. The rotund neckbeard emails his diatribe while wearing his graphic tee displaying the text:

“I can 

EXPLAIN 

it to you

But I can’t

UNDERSTAND

it for you.”

A few days go by, however nobody takes Damien up on his offer to join the Bourbonnais MRA Club. Nobody clicks on the ads for the 21 Conference either. 

Damien realizes he needs to get ready for work now so he can make it on time after taking his two-hour shower.

Mr. Hurlbutt walks into the theater barely on-time. His boss, theater owner Konrad Teirant, calls him into his office.

Damien’s heart sinks and he utters a melodramatic “gulp” as he walks over to Konrad’s office.

“Damien, you really dropped the ball this time. I have been receiving numerous complaints from customers who have been getting emails about some misogyny club.”

“What?“

“This is unacceptable. They told me they signed up for a newsletter here? I never ordered you to or anyone else to put out a call for contact information. Do you want me to get sued?”

“Well…no” an embarrassed-because-caught Damien tells his boss.

“Damien, you have been working here a long time. You know that if we want to gather contact information so we can sell it, that would come from me. And only so I can profit, not you Damien. You’re not that important. Not at all. In fact, I can fire you at any time. I am telling you that because I am your friend. Oh by the way, why do you wear that dumb fedora? It looks stupid. And wash your beard. It smells. Don’t tell anyone we had this meeting. Go home and stay home the rest of this week. I will call you about next week’s hours.”

An excited Damien rushes home to play with his pool toys because he is happy he has the week off, not wondering at all if his boss will even call him back to work the next week.

Poopcorn

In walks Bern Cacca holding hands with her new lover, JB The Turd Burglar. Since her hubby Peppi is living in a half-way house, Bern thinks it is okay to date other men, including fellow communal narcadoodle Damien Hurlbutt. After all, what Peppi does not know won’t hurt him, thinks the self-proclaimed community pillar of excellence and Queen of the Porcelain Throne.

The Manteno moron spies her next-door-neighbor, Gothic Diana Ross, minding her own business drinking a caramel latte. Of course, Bern thinks it is cute to flex, as if Diana cares. “JB whispered in my ear some awesome news!” Diana rolls her eyes and looks away, keeping her mild amusement hidden beneath her stoic visage.

“Someone re-made the show ‘The Wonderful World of Dung’ and we are gonna watch it tonight!”

Diana changes her mind about eating the delicious Buckstars popcorn she had just bought.