Tag: illinois

Sonya Runs For Albion Mayor, Fails to Understand the Assignment

~ Jen ~ Leave a comment

“Hey Sonya, do you have a minute? We would like to interview you.”

“Not now, I am busy working this charity event. I do a lot for the community.”

Sonya hoists a big bag of money, brandishing it, crooked grin from ear-to-ear; she flails her arms in the air like she is dancing.

“We would like to talk to you about the upcoming election,” Kitty Bee informs the histrionic Mrs. Moran.

Seizing the time to brag about her run for Albion, Indiana mayor, Sonya speaks.

“Yeah, I am here raising money for the Albion Optimal Club. My niece Bernadette Cacca came in ALL THE WAY from Illinois!”

“Tell me more about your bid for mayor.”

“If you choose me, I will represent you. Facts over feelings. I own a large apartment complex and make a lot of money. I can make even more for Albion.”

“What are your feelings about cats?”

Stunned into fright, Sonya pauses, frozen into place.

“Can you repeat the question?” 

Sonya did not understand the assignment.

“A visitor reported having seen you down by the river trying to convince a man to throw a cat in the river.”

“And defamation of character is a crime.”

“Do you have anything else to say to our viewers?”

“Facts over feelings. I, Sonya Moran, will ensure the people of Albion are put first.”

“This is Kitty Bee reporting live from the Albion Optimal Club. Back to you.”

Sonya walks into the washroom while Kitty communicates over her radio with her producer and director.

“I hate cats. I wish they would all die! And this election thing is so corny. I should just win and get it over.”

“Copy.” the producer says on his radio to reporter Kitty and the rest of the newsroom. Break when you can and pass it over to Kitty.”

“Breaking now, our news team has just heard something that may affect your vote in the upcoming mayoral election here in Albion.”

Sonya’s clip stating her disdain for cats is replayed over the airwaves, broadcasting to the viewers across the Albion, Indiana region and beyond.

Viewer mail pours in immediately, most of it from the Internet.

“Who will you vote for this November in Albion’s mayoral race? Back to you.”

Sonya storms out of the restroom stall, foaming at the mouth with rage, eyebrows afurrow. 

“Was that mic live? You are NOT going to damage MY reputation.”

“Facts over feelings.”

CRASS Cubicle Contest

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“You are number one!” Team Leader Sybil Kibble tells new part-time Collections Representative, Robbie Hurlbutt at Credit Recovery Associates (CRASS).

“I know,” Robbie smirks.

“I mean you made the top of our production metrics. Good job, keep doubling down on debtors and you will do just swell here at CRASS.”

Robbie flashes a thumbs-up to Sybil and dances back to his cubicle.

“Ding.” Everybody gets the same email.

From: “Mack. E. Avelli” [bigmack@crass-llc.con]
To: “CRASS Corporate Listserv” [all-crass-l@crass-llc.con]
Friday, October 25, 2022
Subject: Cubicle Decoration Contest

We here at CRASS care about employee stress. Therefore I, as your polite and tenderhearted Chief Executive Officer, am extending an entire thirty minutes (:30) to participate in the company cubicle contest (CCC). Be creative in decorating your cubicles and have fun! You are not required to use your lunch for this event, but we encourage you because time is money and money is time!

The winner will be selected by our very own art director, the lovely and talented Dorian James on Halloween Day. The prize will be a trophy to display in your office. Think of all the fun things you can do with that!

Regards,

Mr. Mack E. Avelli
CRASS Chief Executive Officer

The collectors get to work making calls and decorating their cubicles. Robbie Hurlbutt, a local Elvis impersonator best known for an Internet meme featuring a scowling lady unhappy with his nursing home performance, covers his cube with Elvis record covers. Dale Davis covers his walls with ghouls and goblins. Sybil Kibble covers her supervisor cubicle with dog bones because she likes to eat them during her breaks.

It is a cold, windy Halloween day in Kankakee and it is starting to rain. “If you don’t like the weather here in the Midwest, wait five minutes,” Dale jokes in between calls, jogging in place, beeping his watch to check his heart rate.

“Eeep!” The email all CRASS employees have been awaiting for has arrived.

“Who changed our notification sound to a wild eep?” Robbie asks.

“That was probably Dorian,” Sybil sighs.

From: “Dorian James” [dorian@crass-llc.con]
To: “CRASS Corporate Listserv” [all-crass-l@crass-llc.con]
Thursday, October 31, 2022
Subject: Cubicle Decoration Contest Winners and Losers

Sybil: Your design lacks thought and maturity. It is not what we are looking for.

Dale: There is no art development and it basically reads like a rather puerile joke.

Tara: You are obviously a 13 year old drama queen…Grow up little girl.

Mack: Several of us discussed your design and did not like it. Not everyone likes what I make. It is not personal.

Mike: You need to get used to the fact that not everyone is going to like your work and move on.

Robbie: That is the best design I have ever seen. That’s so deep. I love Elvis. You are a real winner!

R,

Dorian James
Art Director Extraordinaire
Credit Recovery Associates (CRASS)

The CRASS staff is upset…except for Robbie. He is smiling away, taking calls and collecting his Form 4s from all the bonuses he gets collecting on fake debt. Robbie is grinning ear to ear and cannot wait to rub his trophy in the faces of the collections team entire staff after he receives it.

Robbie continues to successfully make one call after another, when he gets a wide-eyed visitor.

“Hey there, fella!” an upright, confident Dorian James chants to Robbie as he is very happy to see him.

“Oh hey man! Thanks for picking me! Better than picking my nose ya know.”

Awkward silence ensues.

“That was a joke, ya know,” Robbie says nervously.

“Oh sweetheart, I am here to present you with your award.”

“Thanks, man!” Robbie says as he accepts his tiny, gold-tinted trophy.

“Oh, thank you honey. Not a problem at ALL! Hey Robbie, what ya doin’ after work? I think ya kinda cute and wanna take my number one man to dinner!”

“Wait, what?” a confused Robbie asks.

“Yeah cutie! I love your Elvis hair and your clothes! Let’s go out and do karaoke or something!”

“No way, man. You’re not my type. I quit!” An infuriated Robbie storms off the job and out the building.

Dorian feels crushed by the rejection.

“How does it feel to get rejected, huh? Yeah, ya little twerp! See what it’s like?” Sybil says to a beleaguered Dorian.

Happy Halloween!

Caccas Burning, Stomachs Turning

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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.

Solitaire

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Deerfield, Illinois-born drugstore chief, wacky inventor and barfly Wally Green is playing solitaire at The Gaslight after the nice lady in heels rejected his moves. Apparently his tall tales about wrongly losing the deed to Manhattan Island – after pirates had stolen it from his ancestors – was too much for her to handle. I wonder what she thinks of the air-horn inside his nose which blares whenever he blows it.

In Lieu-Au Fun

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Manteno’s self-proclaimed “giver extraordinaire” who performs accordion covers of pop-tunes to raise money for the photo opportunity, Bernadette Cacca holds a kitschy, Hawaiian-themed shindig to thank her enablers, the Poopy Groupies. She really wants them to know she just loves their continued excellence in bum-kissing and useless-drama creation.

“That’s so bad!” Bernadette says as Peppi leaves the party. “He just came for the food and did not stay. All I do for him! All I do for the world! He just left me here to die alone!”

“He left for the washroom, Bern. I would too if I ate pineapple on pizza,” JB the Turd-Burglar tells his crush, the Manteno Wonder herself, Mrs. Bernadette Cacca.

Artist’s Corner: Behind the Moroniverse – Devolution of Sybil

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Sybil is busy calling up people and bothering them right now, so this is Jen here filling in.

I created Sybil in response to the constant harassment from the moronic debt collectors who could not care less about my situation, and started writing to help cope with my extreme physical and emotional pain.

MoronicArts Classics: Security is a Good Thing

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Dale Francis Davis moved to Kankakee, IL from Snowflake, AZ to seek work after his relationship with Juli-Irma went sour.

His two year engagement with his dear poopiehead, and fellow Snowflake, Juli-Irma went downhill rather quickly when Miss Juli figured out dear Dale’s tablet and mobile telephone password, “password.” In a fit of jealous rage, she discovered that he had one contact other than his mother and his buddies from the town saloon, a Sybil Kibble, and blocked her promptly.

She then destroyed both devices by throwing them in the toilet, perplexed why they did not go down the bowl when she flushed.

A few days later, Dale hit the road to interview for his new position as a Collections Representative at Collections Recovery Associates (CRASS) in Kankakee, IL. He pulled out his new phone and confirmed the time. Today was the first day of the rest of his life.


Dale thanked Ms. Sybil Kibble for the offer, shook her hand and gladly accepted the job.

MoronicArts Classics: Sybil Sells Snake Oil on the Side?

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Sybil will do anything to make a buck. Spotting an ad for an MLM company, she gives it a go. “If the girls at Credit Recovery Associates (CRASS) can sell essential oils, I can do it too, only better!” Sybil tells herself. “There is a sucker born every minute.”

Wanting to outdo the competition, Sybil creates her own oil to sell. “Essential Snake Oil” Sybil dubs her new concoction, and she labels it “made from real snakes.”


What Sybil does not tell plan to tell her potential customers, is that her product contains no snake content at all. It is made from 100% Canola oil.


“I cannot wait to rip people off! With all the money I make, I can buy lots of dog food for dinner! Yum!” Sybil plots in her head.


The following day, Sybil heads to the cheapest grocery store in Bourbonnais to get canola oil. Customers looking for the best deal from nearby Manteno and Sybil’s hometown Kankakee look puzzled as a conniving Sybil fills her cart with gallons and gallons of canola.


As Sybil approaches the cashier with her cart, she can barely move, it is so heavy.


Sybil loads her stash onto the conveyor belt, and the clerk immediately gives Sybil the stinkeye. “You are sure buying a lot of oil there, girl! Are you frying up a bunch of fish?” The clerk giggles, unaware of the scheme Sybil is trying to cook up.

“Okay, ma’am, that will be $413.83.”


Sybil gets out her Wally Green’s credit card.


A few uncomfortable seconds pass, which seem like hours in Sybil’s mind.


“What is the matter?” gasps Sybil.


“Declined.”


Sybil’s heart sinks.


“This cannot be. Run it again!” Sybil snips.


The clerk ran the card two more times.


“Declined.”


“Get me your manager!” Sybil screams.


“I am the store manager and owner.”


“Why was my card declined?” Sybil asks defensively.


“NSF – Insufficient Funds. Pretty bad for a bill collector like you. There was a time I was down and out and you called my house relentlessly, usually at dinner time. I could not afford to make my payments because you doubled the amount you would accept. Now you are broke. What did you need all that oil for any way? Are you you going to oil a snake or something?”


Sybil backs away with her head down and slowly heads out the door, and to her home alone, in Kankakee.

Sybil City

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(to the tune of Midnight City by M83)

Sybil’s in a mood

Wishing she had some dog food.

Driving to some beats

Hoping she will score a sale on some treats

Getting to the shop

Sybil forgets to check her clock

Sybil gets there too late

The Pets’ Mart just closed their gate.

MoronicArts Classics: Meet the Hurlbutts.

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Meet Kankakee bill-collector Sybil Kibble’s favorite neighbor and her wacky sons, The Hurlbutts.

On the right is Damien Ulysses Hurlbutt of Bourbonnais, IL. He is the 46 year old neckbeard son of Pearl Hurlbutt.

Communal narcissist Damien is divorced because he verbally abused his ex-wife Lori, to whom he only refers as “Grimace”. A shopping addict and hoarder, he would rather sleep on the floor and on top of his boxes than furniture, because he spends all his wages on impressing co-workers and single ladies when not buying useless crap he does not need. He mops up the lake he creates every time he showers with his moldy socks. Prone to outbursts and wearing socks with his $125.00 sandals, Damien thinks he is a hit with the ladies…yeah, no.

Damien works as a clerk at the local multiplex’s ticket counter. He offers free movie tickets to local and online young ladies in his feeble attempts to woo them. He snores incredibly loud due to his innattention to his diagnosed sleep apnea. He blocks his sleep doctor’s telephone calls on his flip phone so he can avoid dealing with it.

He loves to sleep and wishes he could sleep more, however he spends too much time lying awake thinking up new ways to emotionally swindle people. Damien was last seen outside Area 51.

In the middle stands Kankakee’s very own Pearl Josephine “PJ” Hurlbutt. She wears the same muu-muu inside and outside the house, every day of the week. She even had worn it into her call center job at CRASS, before she retired. Sybil Kibble thinks PJ is “just swell” and considers PJ her best friend.

On the left you see Robbie Roy Gary Hurlbutt of Kankakee, IL His mother PJ likes to brag about that time in Gary, Indiana when Robbie was conceived.

He is the 43 year old son of Pearl Hurlbutt and brother to Damien.

Robbie is a ladies’ man, Elvis-obsessed and is as big a hoarder as his brother Damien. He has a room in his apartment just for his record collection. He is 42 and never married; covert narcissist Robbie would rather “make love to the audience” at the Kankakee County karaoke bars because the women with whom he has been in relationships eventually have figured out his con game. When he is not committing love-fraud, petty criminal Robbie pals around sociopath Pat Splatt cooking up ways to rip off innocent people for fun and profit; ideas inspired by his father N. Ron Hurlbutt.

He is thoroughly convinced he is the reincarnation of Elvis and has an intense fear of being locked in a bathroom.