MoronicArts Classics: Nobody’s Home

After yet another long week calling up strangers at work, patients in hospitals and people just trying to cook supper for their families, Kankakee bill collector Sybil Kibble is feeling stressed and irritated. She works as the team leader collecting dubious debt for Kankakee’s most shady debt-collector Credit Recovery Associates (CRASS), and she’s tired of people hanging up on her.

“Out of dog-food again! Dang, I just bought some at Schmucks! How did I eat all those Alpo cans so fast? They must be making them smaller now.”

Image: green-toned cartoon showing a blonde woman at a computer. Text on monitor reads "Collect-o-matic."

Needing someone with whom to vent, Miss Kibble goes over to visit her best friend and next-door neighbor, Mrs. Pearl Jo “PJ” Hulbutt who is busy meditating. Sybil barges right in and startles PJ who nearly bangs her head on the table, then tells her to “calm down!”

“Ah my boys have not come around lately. They don’t appreciate their mother and all I do for them! Have you seen that Kitty Bee lady? Her hair is pink now!”

PJ rambles on complaining about person after another. “Have you talked to your father?”

“I stopped talking to him years ago. You ask me that every time I come over. Why?”

“My father was not so nice. It says in the good book we should forgive people and pray for them to change.”

“He’s dead. His new wife was just as abusive, I hear she has an extra room. Why don’t you call her up? I am sure she would like the company. She’ll probably ask all kinds of questions about me! Go up to Chicago and spend a month or two to see what it’s like. Just call her after I leave.”

“No need to go overboard with your remarks. They are entitled to their beliefs as well. As a person with a daemon latched onto her body at the age of two that never leaves me alone, I understand fear and misunderstanding. I’ve been judged for my demeanor and nosey words my entire childhood but I still care and help others. I define me not other people.”

image: black and white cartoon of a blond woman outside a building, crows encircling her head as she screams.

Livid, Sybil Kibble stomps back to her home, and eats her last dog bone; much tastier than the word-salad her neighbor had spit out. Meanwhile, PJ hops on a bus to find more people to annoy:

“Why are all these people getting at the bus at once?” PJ Hurlbutt asks aloud to a bus full of strangers, looking around for someone that cares. An enquiring mind wants to know. PJ repeats her nosey nonsense and adds more crap to her routine. “Look at that lady with the green hair. Does she know those tattoos are permanent?”

“I’ll tell the mayor,” Dorian James deadpans, making a cheeky grin while adoring his boyfriend Ant’s half-sleeve.

Sybil calls a bunch of friends, hoping to hang out.

Pyramid-scheme-peddlers Doris and Leona Krabalsky’s phones go straight to voicemail.

Sybil drives her white Chrysler LeBaron to investigate why people are ignoring her calls and texts.

Slowing down through the I-57 underpass, she seeks the Kankakee troll Leona. Nope, she’s not home. 

Out of desperation, Ms. Kibble calls her hairdresser Lila Croule at her home-based salon, even though it’s a week too soon to get her face-frame cut, but sorry; more voicemail jail.

Sybil continues North toward Peotone to find her sharp-tongued stylist Lila Croule, hoping to trade barbs about moronic customers. After she parks her reliable box-mobile, she rings the doorbell at Lila’s front door. No answer. The RRRRRRGH of the lawn tractor stops and Sybil spots Lila trimming the edges of the grass using her $1000.00 hair shears, completely tuning out Ms. Kibble.

image: full-colour cartoon of a purple-haired woman riding a purple lawn-tractor, holding up a pair of shears. A blond woman peeks over the wooden fence.

“I hope these folks don’t visit my grave one day, since they don’t bother me while I’m alive! Hmmpf.”

As she drives back home to Kankakee, Sybil sees her subordinate Dale Davis jogging on the sidewalk, beeping his watch repeatedly. Dale waves to Sybil and beckons her to come hither so he can confess her love, and she just drives on by. Her stomach turns. She then drives to Major’s Supermarket to buy her favorite meals: buys 50 cans of Alpo, with which she drowns her worries at home, glad to be away from the rest of the Moroniverse.

image: yellow, black and white cartoon of a blonde woman wearing glasses, eating dog food.

Bernadette Cacca Gets Yeeted

“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.

“You look so good on the outside”

— Cold Cave