Every year on September 31, Kankakee debt collection firm Credit Recovery Associates (CRASS) wants staff to bring their parents in to have fun at their team-building events like the Medicine Pronouncing Contest, Browser Loading Race and Bill-Collector Speed Dating.
Collections Team Leader Sybil Kibble brought her ma JoAnn to enjoy learning how to bother people on the phone to ask for money they likely do not even owe, and her mother took 3rd prize in the CRASS Idol singing competition. Sybil took last place because her mouth was full of dog bones while she tried to belt a tune.
Junk email broker, failed film student and nextdoor sociopath Pat Oswald Splatt ventured over to the Kankakee County Spam convention with high hopes to rake in new customers to rip off bombarding their inboxes with unsolicited commercial crap for fun and profits.
Sadly, Pat was disappointed to instead find Damien Hurlbutt, Sybil Kibble and her mom JK along along with people actually having fun celebrating canned lunchmeat.
Maybe the self-proclaimed master-marketer should have read the event advertisement more carefully.
Doris Krabalsky is bored waiting in her bed for her meal and medication. Who knew staying in the hospital could be so boring? Doris decides to go for a walk to the nice skin cancer patient she met earlier in the day.
“I have the perfect solution for you.”
“Is it the stinky pink drink?” the lady asks?
“No, I drank that for four years.” Doris replies.
“I am not using essential snake oils because I am smell-sensitive,” the elderly lady replies.
“Nope.”
Doris’ nurse walks in. “What is going on here? Patients are not supposed to go into other patients’ rooms. You all signed and initialed an agreement when you got here.”
“She was just telling me about a new treatment for my skin cancer.”
“Oh no, selling stuff is strictly prohibited here.”
“I am not selling, I am recommending.”
“Recommending? Only licensed medical providers are allowed to do that here, per your agreement Doris. Now you broke three rules. Three strikes, you are out. I am afraid we will have to release you.”
“Waaaaah! What about my bum knee?” Doris growled.
“Oh, ma’am your pain was not that bad anyway. I will be back shortly with your discharge papers. Are you calling for a ride home or shall we have Security escort you?”
“Hrrmph.”
Five hours later, the Kankakee town troll Leona Krabalsky walks in the room after leaving her home undeneath the bridge.
“Bustin’ outta here?”
“They are sending me home too soon,” Doris sighs to Leona.
“You say? How so?”
“They told me not to suggest our fine products to other patients.” Doris says to Leona.
“Oh, you should see these magic beans!”
“I have tooted enough, Leona.”
“No Doris, magical beans, not musical.”
The two sisters head out after Doris signs her discharge sheet.
Doris walks into her home and Leona meets her in the den.
Leona opens up a small paper bag and pulls out a handful of dried beans.
“You see, Doris, these are not any beans. They are magic beans.”
“How are they magical?” Doris asks her sister.
“They can make us lettuce.”
The two sisters look each other in the eye and grin.
“By convincing our customers that these beans I bought at the grocery store they have special health benefits which they do not, and persuading them to pay more than they need, we can make a lot of green!” Leona tells an intrigued Doris.
Doris and Leona get busy setting up a Fakebook page. Since Pat Splatt has left town for South Africa and is unreachable, the Krabalsky sisters develop a marketing plan on Utube.
“Since Grammarlee did so well advertising their overpriced Autocorrect program before every video, I thought we could make an even longer commercial with even more annoying music and sound effects!” Leona tells Doris.
“Let’s do it. Add a slide whistle, boom clappity music and a vuvuzela.”
“Done,” Leona tells Doris, feeling accomplished.
Emails come in and so does money. Beans go out. As the word gets out, so do more beans.
“Soon we will have to hire a bean counter!” Doris jokes to Leona.
“Ding!”
“Ahhh, we got our first review. Hopefully it will not be our last!” Doris tells a nearby Leona.
“These beans did not work at all. I thought these were magical and I did not feel a thing. I did not see a thing! Not recommended!”
“Ding!”
“I planted these magic beans and my beanstalk did not lead me to find a giant. I want my money back!”
“Ding!”
“I ate these musical beans I did not even toot even once. What a ripoff!”
Doris and Leona log onto Welp to read their reviews and they are even worse. Every customer wants their money back and contacts the duo for a refund.
We want to TP everyone in Kankakee County! On April 1st, come over to the headquarters of Credit Recovery Associates (CRASS) and get the scoop on poop! One brand spankin’ new roll for each customer! If you use both sides, it lasts twice as long! Run on down now to CRASS before Bern Cacca steals it all!
And while we’re at it, be sure to pick up some half-ply toiler paper recipes, courtesy of Wally Green!
“Here I sit all broken-hearted, tried to crap but only farted,” a forlorn Bernadette “Bern” Cacca sings on her porcelain throne, practicing kazoo and accordion. She lights a fart, burns her doodoo in the fireplace, then makes a call to a Northwestern Illinois bar on her smell phone.
“Poopy’s.”
“Hi, my name is Bernadette Cacca. I’m a famous singer near Chicago.”
The bartender giggles.
“I have a wonderful offer to make your bar.”
“May…I take your order?”
“I would like to open a Poopy’s here in Manteno.”
“I thought you were from Chicago!”
The bartender continues to giggle as he hangs up on Bern.
To increase her bottom line of attention, money and bootlickers, communal narc-a-doodle Bernadette offers to sing and play her accordion cover songs at a charity event to raise money for the victims of the Russian war against Ukraine. She dreams about all the praise, awards and photo opportunities she can gain from making it look like she cares. She does not raise money for this or any other cause because she feels concerned about the efforts of living beings trying to stay alive, fighting or fleeing a psychopath trying to take over their beautiful country. She just loves to pretend.
Bern heads home from a long day working her and her husbands’ business Peppi’s Portapotties, excited to burn the porta-poopies in her fireplace, only to be interrupted by a phone call.
“Hi, Bernadette…ummm…Cake-Uh?”
“Cacca.”
“Yeah, I am calling about your gig at the Gaslight Bar tomorrow night.”
“Oh hiiii! I am THRILLED about playing this extraordinary gig at 7:00 tomorrow night.”
“Good. We are calling to tell you about a slight time change. Due to staffing shortages, we need to move your gig back an hour.”
“I am a pillar of the community and a national treasure! Your tone is not appropriate for someone doing business. I would get used to people like me.”
“So are you coming or not? We have other guests who want to play and help—“
“Okay, okay, see you tomorrow. Don’t forget it!”
Bern teams up with local cybercrook Pat Splatt to develop her pretend money Craptocoin. The bum-waste-bin overlord thinks it is cute to sell Craptocoin at the charity event and decides she will solicit tips using her funny money.
“Hello Manteno! Thank you all for coming! Let’s raise some money! Gimme your requests! CraptoCoin only, my handle is @BMCacca! Maybe you already doing it, and that’s awesome!
ALSO, a shout-out to my extraordinary hairdresser @lilacroule from Croule, Young and Lovely who keep me lookin’ good! AND, my makeup by fabulous @marigoldyoung! So much love to their salon. Practices are things done more than one time regularly, and I have been practicing hard for tonight’s fundraiser! That’s why I call them practices!”
“And…without further ado, give it up for the Manteno Wonder herself, Mrs. Bernadette Cacca!”
A slow clap is heard, mixed in with hoots and hollers from Bern’s obsessed fanboys.
After finishing her last accordion cover tune for the first half of her set, “My Fart Goes Boom”, Bern runs to the washroom, humming “Let’s all go to the restroom” as she poops and farts.
Mrs. Cacca emerges, approached by a Chicago television reporter.
“Hi Bern. I would like to interview you. We got a press release—“
“Not now, after.”
“I have other stories to cover. Let’s do this now.”
“The show must go on.”
“I am from Ukraine and have family there.”
“Fair enough, let’s do this interview up on stage. We will both look awesome up there!” Bernadette gushes.
The Chicago TV reporter enters stage right, Bernadette stage left. Reporter Elena Emm stops to remember her questions so she can begin her interview.
An impatient Bernadette sighs loudly, whistles and hums.
“Why are you staring off into space? Are you in a fantasy world?” Bern snarks, snickers, thinking only Elena can hear her.
“I am blind,” the reporter advises the oblivious Bernadette, unaware a camera operator is filming the entire interview.
“Here let me touch your face,” the ableist and ignorant Bern belittles the Chicago TV news reporter, reaching for her face.
Elena knocks Bernadette unconscious with a single blow to her piehole, then proceeds to yeet her into the crowd of bootlickers.
“This show is getting entertaining” Gothic Diana Ross says to her bandmates, The Midnight Supremes, who are waiting in the wings.
“I may be visually impaired, but I’m not stupid” Elena Emm says to the crowd who had poured in to find out where their entertainer Bernadette had gone, only to have that communal narcadoodle chucked right into a pile of them, knocking the fanboys over like a set of bowling pins. Strike!
Happy she got a scoop on the poop-mistress extraordinaire, Elena and the news team head back to Chicago to produce their segment for the next morning’s newscast.
“Next up, give a hand for these lovely ladies, Gothic Diana Ross and the Midnight Supremes!” announces the emcee, who had called the Manteno girl group last minute to replace their annoying neighbor Bern Cacca on the bill.
This is the heavy-heavy bog witch sound…on Pootube.
Not watching the Superbowl? Neither is Bernadette Moran Cacca. Instead, the communal narcadoodle, bog witch and portable washroom empress is hosting a watch party with her Poopy Groupies at the Manteno Optimal Club:
Unfortunately, shapeshifting humanoid turkey vulture, Ferengi-loving landlord, and fan-club president Aunt Sonya won’t be there. She flew the poop coop.
“Oh no. Not her again. Hey, let’s sit down and hide out over there.” Before Gothic Diana Ross & The Midnight Supremes have a chance, their next-door neighbor Bernadette rips a big one, the sulphuric stench drowning out the delicious coffee aroma.
“Bernadette, you farted in my chair. That’s my favorite chair! Lick it clean.”
The three songbirds cackle in unison and wave her away, butt, the queen of the plastic throne Bern keeps her bum firmly planted in the fragrant coffeehouse chair, wishing she had a match.
Waiting by the barista bar for their iced caramel lattes, the Gothic Boss Ms. Ross and her sisters approached by a slender, 5’4”, 60-something blonde woman wearing cheater glasses.
“It’s smelly out there, take this.”
“Do I know you?” Diana asks the stranger.
“No, I’m Sybil Kibble. I’m in here every night and I got this picture from some weirdo named Jen. They said they liked your music and felt bad about some smelly morons next door to you. You’re from Manteno, right?”
“Thanks! This is nice for a change.”
“Jen said to keep it for good luck. Maybe it will ward off Barn-o-dette or whatever the heck her name is.”
After arriving home from the Bourbonnais Buckstars in their black 1988 Chrysler Conquest, the ladies go inside to practice their instruments. Gothic Diana Ross takes a break, walks outside to put out the waste bins, and spots her next door neighbor Mrs. Cacca standing nearby.
“Oh no. Eew. I hope she doesn’t bother me for the zillionth time,” Diana says to herself. She pulls out the talisman given to her by Sybil and puts it in her front jacket pocket.
Instead of running up the stairs of Diana’s slate Victorian house to verbally spam her about the Manteno Cantina charity crap only done to look good on the outside, the communal narcadoodle Bernadette instead waves at a bus passing by, hoping its smiling eyes would react to Bernadette’s wide open grin as if to catch a fly.
In turn, the bus loudly “faaaaart-faaarts” like the truck from the American Freight commercials, one of the few things more annoying than Bernadette Moran Cacca.
MoronicArts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.