Shelter is a basic human need. However RealPage begs to differ. Their script-kiddy algorithm enables corporate billionaire mega-lo-landlords who – through their love of money above all else – make rent go up exponentially, like a luser trying to 0wn pWN n00bs.
They also conveniently forgot that they could become suddenly disabled from a stroke, heart attack or natural disaster, because, you know, we are all human and it can happen to ANYONE. Now how would you, Mr. Row-lex and Mrs. McMansion pay YOUR rent?
In the Divided States of Dystopia, we hereby award each and every individual RealPage landlord, owner, and property management company collective Moron of the Year trophies for 2024! Enjoy them, you earned them, now own them. (But you can’t take them with you – or can you?)
“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.”
A thump is heard, likely from the bird deflecting against Mrs. Cacca’s Albion, Indiana home. The buzzard has landed.
“Are we going out stalking?” shapeshifting humanoid buzzard Sonya asks her family as she transfigures from vulture into subhuman.
“I need to cut down on my stalking bill,” Carla tells her sister-in-law and bird-of-a-feather, Sonya.
“I’m walking away from you now. This is unacceptable and won’t be tolerated,” Sonya berates Carla and flies off, doing donuts in the sky over a body of water and its surrounding structures.
Sonya eggs a guy on to throw a cat in the river, literally. She had been laying eggs by the water because she was bored and began chucking them, demanding the male stranger go murder the poor animal. Poor kitty was living at the bar on the river, surviving on the food in the trash there and the odd chicken tender or bit of burger the customers were giving him. Seriously, who the heck hates cats, let alone wants them dead?
Sonya’s distinct poopy smell, it lingers, wafting through air after she drops off some more friends at the pool.
A medium-skinned trio stroll along, new to Albion. “It smells like warm milk and trauma.” Gothic Flo deadpans.
Gothic Diana Ross scoops up the fluffy munchkin after having witnessed Mrs. Moran’s histrionic menacing.
“Sonya, the Indiana Attorney General is prosecuting animal abuse cases to the fullest extent of the law so I will be turning you in.”
“It’s just a rotten cat, ya stupid nincompoop!” Sonya screeches, mad because caught. Then she poops.
“Fee Fi Fo Fum. I smell the turds of a big moron!” Gothic Diana Ross and the Midnight Supremes chant, enjoying their mockery of the apathetic fool who tried connive a kid to murder that adorable little fluffball. Gothic Diana Ross takes the kitten to the vet clinic where she had just interviewed to get him some help. She names him Kevin.
Shapeshiftin’ Sonya flaps her wings in frustration and anger, squawking like a parakeet. Then she flies away.
“Another one of these? What is Sonya on, anyway? There is no cat pee smell outside my door!” the young lady thinks aloud as she grabs the lunacy letter her landlord left on her door. “Why always Friday? I had a long day at work and am too tired for this codswallop. She needs to get a hobby!”
Gothic Diana Ross sees a familiar face.
“It’s Kitty Bee from Kankakee!” Diana cracks a smile and the two exchange some dap.
“Whatcha doin’ in town?”
“We came in because I had an interview.”
“Ah nice. On TV?”
“No. A job interview.”
“Nice. Where?”
“Over at that vet clinic by the college. That…um…self-defense school? What’s a PSI Ball anyway? Those ads blew up our TV!”
“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.”
MoronicArts 
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