In this corner: The Manteno Wonder, Communal Narcadoodle and Portapotty Entamanure Bernadette Cacca! In the other corner: a useless real-estate scammer! It’s a battle of nitwits to try and waste each others’ time!
Backside: When communal #narc and #Manteno Optimal Club president #Bernadette Moran Cacca graduated high school she wanted to be a wrestler. When her wrestling career as the Manteno Wonder failed, she joined the army. She kept getting put on poop burning duty and got a dishonorable discharge…from her butt.
Bernadette was in such a hurry to become a regular that she tried to run over one of the regulars at the coffeehouse. She wanted to get the runs. Gotta mine that #craptocoin and N.F.T.s: newly-formed turds for her charity singing and kazoo playing which she does only for the photo opportunity. Looks are deceiving because she makes a good dog-and-pony poop show pretending she cares. She only loves poop.
Credit Recovery Associates (CRASS) Accounting Chief Konrad “Kon” Teirant is having trouble balancing the assets against the liabilities, even after having cooked the books to a carbonized mess.
Mack E. Avelli
Chief Executive Officer Mack. E. Avelli calls in Konrad to hold a meeting.
“Kon, if we cannot make ourselves look good to our investors, we are going to fail as a company. I don’t need you to be honest about it, I need you to make us some more money. Just get it done.”
“I’ll think up something. You won’t be disappointed.”
“Good,” the fifty-something Mack says to Konrad and starts texting his 22-year-old wife Judithann, who ignores his message because she is too busy flirting with daemons.
It is midnight here in Kankakee.
The fire alarm sounds for the third time this week at the Kankakee’s Best Low-Budget Apartments, complete with strobe lights, sirens and a man’s voice repeating the same message over and over again.
As the residents of this sorry apartment building wake up and use the washroom, Moronic Half-Assets (MHA) takes the elevator up to each floor in the tower.
“It is midnight and you know what time that is! Come on, guys, let’s all dance! Didn’t you see that four-page flyer we left on all of your doors telling you to exercise more? We knocked on your doors because we had nothing better to do! Resident deejay Konrad is on the ones and twos!” exclaims property manager, narcadoodle and Vaudeville clown Madeline Topolla-Teirant.
DJ Konrad Teirant picks some records out of his crate, and begins spinning and scratching, rapping over the music.
Resident Tyrell Fowler — out in the hall wondering what the racket is about — explains to Konrad “dude, you cannot scratch 1950s love songs,” and walks back into his unit.
“Let’s get out the glowsticks everybody!” Madeline says as she pulls them from the fire-hose compartment on the wall.
Robbie sings Elvis tunes as he dances away, doing moronic martial arts moves on the in-between.
Robbie Hulrbutt
The MHA troupe packs up their party-gear and heads upstairs to the next floor in the tower.
When the crew are all done waking up their residents, they head downstairs to the office and turn off the alarms. Finally those poor residents can get some sleep.
“Here is your check, Kon. We will write it off as a business expense here at the complex.”
“Great, I will bring it to CRASS tomorrow,” Kon tells his wife Madeline and they head home in Robbie’s clown car. Elvis has left the building.
“Oh good, I got it,” a resident says sitting in her bed, as she reviews the video she recorded on her phone.
Konrad Teirant heads into the CRASS office, strutting along the halls with a turd-eating-grin across his face as he makes his way over to the office of his supervisor, Mack E. Avelli.
“Kon! You have a great smile! You should smile more often.”
Kon hands Mack the knife…errrr…check.
“Oh good! Now you can keep your job!” Mack tells his subordinate Konrad.
Kon says nothing and heads back into his office to cook more books.
Meanwhile, the CRASS phones light up like a Christmas tree. However the increased call volume is not from debtors calling back the CRASS collectors.
“I saw that video on the news, your accounting dude and his buddies woke some poor folks up in the middle of the night hosting some hokey rave party? What were you thinking?”
Beep.
“Hey, this Trisha Cobb, better known as Gothic Diana Ross. You know, from The Midnight Supremes? We saw what you did when we watched the news. That’s not cool.”
Beep.
“Hello, this message is for Mr. Avelli. I am Geoff, an auditor with the firm Deltoid & Tush. We were asked to contact you about your accounting records. We are stopping by in an hour.”
“Kon, how do we cook the books now? Ya better cook them good this time,” Mack shouts to an empty room. Since he was up half the night, Kon took the rest of the day off to go home and now he is fast asleep, sawing a forest.
Oh man, the main inspirations for Scary Barry and Terry Reynolds are people I hope you never encounter.
One hundred per cent miserable, and equally evil as her counterpart Barry, there is no pleasing Ms. Terry. She gets joy out of seeing others suffer. She’ll bite the hand that feeds her and once you’re sore from the fresh wound, she’ll bite it again to make it hurt that much more…
Imagine going on a trip overseas to study, experience different perspectives and have fun. That was my hope in the summer of 1999. when I took classes through my university for a study-abroad program in Italy.
What comes to your mind when you think about traveling?
Being forced to share a room with strangers who hated me was the last thing I expected.
Scary Terry was one of the haters. Much older than me, Terry made it a point to harass and belittle me. One time she woke me up and called me “whiny” because I was, you know, groggy like most people who just got up?
And then there was the time Terry told me to cover my legs. I have an autoimmune condition which affects my skin. get over it. Terry, if you don’t like it, then don’t look at it. Find something else to do in Italy than harass a fellow student.
I did smile when Terry had the audacity to talk trash about me at dinner, in front of all the other students from the United States. They told her to shut up and said they did not want to hear it. Neither did I.
Sadly, this Terry person (yes, the real name is Terry, different surname of course) majored in education. I feel bad for any student of Terry’s. No wonder we have some awful teachers in the school system.
When I got home from Italy, I told my family about the abuse I endured from her and her cousin, with whom I was forced to room. Since I did not grow up in a supportive family, they invalidated me by acting like it was no big deal. My feelings are valid.
To help process the trauma from repeated verbal abuse by Terry and the cousin, and the gaslighting I faced when i went home, I created my character Terry Reynolds. I will discuss the cousin in a separate entry.
Taking your road test is nerve-wracking enough. Imagine living in a small city where the sole proctor is a malignant narcissist, taking joy in seeing people fail. Meet the inspiration for Scary Barry Reynolds.
Barry (again, real first name) loved telling students “YOU FAILED” in a stoic tone, with a hint of an evil grin.
And now we get to learn about the psychic attack crap. Back in 2001 (No not 1991, sorry Greg Snyder), I received this junk mail:
Imagine greeting your proctor as you enter the car “Hi Barry” only to be screamed at, likely out of fear “How do you know my name?” And then told “I. Don’t. Like. That.”
Barry may look like Leon Kowalski from Blade Runner, and act like him. It goes without saying he would fail any empathy test. Maybe I should run the V-K Test on him and watch him fail. I just won’t ask him about his mother.
After failing my road test five times with Barry, I passed my test when I took it in another city and of course a different proctor. I had called his supervisor, per advice of my driving instructor, who failed to address the problem, saying “he makes his quota.” Yes, some doctors graduate at the bottom of their class. What do you call them? Yeah, a doctor. .
When I first got the spam, I thought it was for EarthBound cheat codes. Think again.
These morons tried to sell a psychic attack self-defense e-book. The spammer only accepted a check mailed to them, and then they promised to email you the electronic book after they got your check. Yeah, sounds legit.
The email was so funny, I had to save it, and use it for something.
Around the time I got the Defense Against Psychic Attack spamvertisement, I spent a lot of time on message boards chatting about metaphysics. Fans of Dragonball Z asked how to make “PSI Balls” and some even made videos pretending to “psychic attack” people using them. I thought the whole darned thing was so funny, it needed to prompt a story idea. Most of my ideas sat dormant in a different series, which I merged into MoronicArts.
“In my kingdom, they won’t know how good they’ve got it. Rules are important and I will make sure everybody follows them:
“We will only have one language, English, because I don’t understand any others nor do I care to learn.
All cars will be silver, no exceptions, no decals either.
Everybody will be required to brush their teeth four times a day, use a water pick and report back to me.
Want to see a therapist? Good. All sessions will be recorded and sent to me to make sure you’re not complaining about the supreme leader. It’s MY kingdom, MY RULES.
Everybody will be required to wax the hair off their face. No exceptions.
Only baggy clothes will be worn by everyone.
People will only be allowed to collect practical things and read non-fiction.
We will have three national TV channels, nothing else: HGTV, Fox News and baseball.
Nobody will be allowed to wear underwear or stick their tongues out. In my world–“
“Lady, this is a handicapped spot.”
“I’m only gonna be here for a minute! Calm down!” Carla remarks to the traffic cop out her car window.
“Move your vehicle now or I’m writing you a citation.”
Carla slams her beak on the horn and peels away from the Bradley strip mall, then flies down I-57 hoping to not get caught because in her insecure little bird-brain nothing she does is ever wrong.
“I’m very busy burning the poops from last night’s port-a-potty job, raising money for the Manteno Optimal Club this weekend, and devouring unsuspecting gentleman callers next time I go to my swamp.”
“Get him out!” “Get him out!” Carla screams at the baseball game.
“Mom?”
“That didn’t even dawn on me. How about you and I take a little break, have some mother-daughter time, maybe we can do each other’s pedicures?”
“Eeeeew!”
“Don’t talk to me in that tone of voice!”
“Stop squawking at me!”
“No-wrong!”
“We always get into fights because you find that one thing about me to complain about.”
“You’re too sensitive, honey.” Carla gaslights.
“I have this awesome piano gig at the Manteno Cantina tonight. Wanna come see me play?”
“I know, I know, I know. So you’re not coming with me?”
“Yeah…no. That’s my final answer.”
“You mommy will miss you.”
“Good. Go have fun! Gotta run, because I got the runs!”
Bernadette hangs up her smell phone and flushes her washroom toilet again.
Carla of course calls Bernadette right back and leaves a voicemail:
“DON’T YOU HANG UP ON ME AGAIN! FINE! I will fly out to Groom Lake without YOU. We have all been wondering where your Aunt Sonya went but I guess you don’t care. When I find her, I will tell her how YOU mistreated me, and how little you’ve cared about her since she left town. You aunt cares an awful lot about you. And I love you an awful lot. Bye honey.”
Bernadette sees that she has one new voicemail from her mother, and immediately deletes it without listening. Then she poops.
Visions of vacationing in the desert by the lake, fill Carla’s grandiose head, devoid of vision. Lighthouses greet the boats passing in the night, scores of grey aliens cheer outside their ships of the space kind and wave at Ms. Moran, as she approaches the gate of the Dreamland ranch.
The next morning, Carla flies out from Indiana and Southwest toward Nevada, taking breaks to circle around with other vultures in the thermals to rest her wings. They land in Dulce, New Mexico helping themselves to a freshly dead cow, taking the back entrance and chowing down on as much carrion as they can after exiting. Within minutes, they fly away to some trees in the next town over to clean off their outstretched wings.
Carla then flies solo up toward Nevada looking for her Groom Lake vacation spot. Confused by the lack of water, beaches and boats, she stops at a diner in Rachel to ask directions.
“Dry Lake? What the heck is that?”
Disappointed by the lack of water in the Nye County surrounding area, Carla flies toward Homey Air Force Base to find her long lost sister Sonya where she was rumored to have last been seen.
Tired of flapping her wings, Carla walks over to the gate. Signs reading “No drones,” “Photograhy Prohibited,” and “Warning: US Military installation. Unauthorized entry strictly forbidden” are plain to see. She struts over to the guard shack and demands to be let in.
“Ma’am, did you read the sign?”
“My sister is locked inside and I need to rescue her.”
“Do you have ID, ma’am?”
“I have no idea where in there she is, no.”
“Do you have a driver’s license? Passport? Military identification?”
“Come here. COME HERE! I need to show you something.”
“If you don’t have proper identification, I will deny you entry.”
“I am Carla Moran. You DO know my sister, Sonya Moran, do you not?”
The camo dude just laughs.
“If you don’t leave the premises, I am going to have to call police.”
Narcissists want to buy your time…so they can waste it…over and over without paying.
Gothic Diana Ross is busy minding her own business at her specialist’s waiting room up at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. A routine follow-up appointment, Miss Ross would rather be home having fun singing with Gothic Flo and Gothic Mary, instead of waiting in a crowded room full of strangers.
An hour passes by and Di still has not been called.
“Hey, I’m Greg Schneissder. Are you from Manteno?”
”Ummm…” Diana rolls her eyes and looks away from the undead Greg,
“I saw one of your shows, you ladies are so beautiful and talented.”
“Pat is one of the coolest guys around! I hang around him and Bernadette Cacca.”
Diana freezes from panic, already nervous awaiting her lab results.
“Don’t. Mention. Bernadette.”
“Oh why? She is the the nicest person around! And so famous! I see her picture in the paper a lot. She’s a celebrity. Wasn’t she on that Human Body Odor Channel show?”
Diana rolls her eyes.
“How can you say anything bad about her?”
“Stop.”
“I am gonna complain. You are harassing me now. Nobody talks bad about Bern Cacca!”
Di looks at the lady across from her.
“I am sure he was just trying to help.”
“Really? Just…no.”
“How do you know?”
“Just leave me the feck alone.”
“I am gonna just leave. I can’t be at this office where people talk badly about other people!” Greg whinges as he storms down the stairs.
“Deeanna?”
“It’s Diana…grrr.”
Diana grabs her patent leather sack and follows the medical office assistant to be roomed.
It begins to rain, the clouds taking a massive whizz all over Northern Illinois. Thankfully Diana merges her black 1988 Chrysler Conquest onto 90/94 safely and avoids rush-hour traffic to head south on I-57 toward her home in Manteno. Mind clear from a clean bill of health, the slender gothic beauty slides into her canopy bed, the silky black sheets comforting her as she drifts off to her internship in Hell.
Two hours later, Diana wakes up in a panic, startled by a moron who thought it would be cute to crawl into her bed.
“You know Diana, your music would sound better if you articulated your words better.”
A stunned Diana looks over.
“You forgot to lock your door, hon.”
“Get the freak outta my house and my bed!” Diana screams at the top of her lungs and chases out the bored poopy-burner and communal narcadoodle, next-door neighbor Bernadette Moran Cacca.
“How dare you talk bad about my beloved Bernadette!” Gregory Albert Schneissder screams at Diana about the crowd-pleaser for whom he created the Fakebook account “BMCacca Fannn.”
Diana slams the slate door to her Victorian Gothic home.
Gregory slithers over to Bernadette and the pair head upstairs to Bern’s bedroom.
“Can you just, like, not fart in front of me?” Greg asks his date Bernadette Cacca during their date netting some flicks while hoping to chill.
“No, honey.”
”You don’t fart on stage at those charity events where you sing and play kazoo requests to raise money for the Manteno Optimal Club and for Ukraine.”
“No need to gas-sleight me!”
“You gaslit me!” Greg retorts.
“No, I mean, I need to fart. Farting is healthy. I will implode if I don’t rip ‘em when I need to.”
The swamp-witch Bernadette lifts her leg and her bum goes boom.
A wild Gothic Diana Ross appears in the foreground.
”Heave-ho! Where are your enablers now? Bwa ha ha ha ha!” The Gothic Boss Miss Ross interjects as she yeets the communal narcadoodle Bern halfway down the staircase, and the Midnight Supremes chuck her bum-licker Greg, spocking the pallino down the stairs.
“You left your front door open…” Diana addresses the undead mess spilled all over the basement floor with a smile.
”What did those stairs do to deserve that punishment?” Gothic Mary jokes as the Midnight Supremes leave in amusement.
“Attention. Attention. This is a drill. Shelter-in-place now. I repeat, shelter in place now. This is a drill. Shelter in place now” Area 51’s resident alien deejay announces over the intercom.
People run amok. Had they read their emails sent earlier in the week, most of them would have stayed at their workstations instead, per their inboxed instructions, news and alerts.
The chaos wakes up Damien Ulysses Hurlbutt, captured test subject living in the Alternative Fuels Division, Flatulence Branch pries loose the door from his cell and wanders over to a control room. He makes a mad dash to the first unlocked computer he can find, credentials still inserted. Then he farts.
After logging onto to his uTube account, neckbeard Damien goes to the channel of his ex-wife Lori, immediately downvoting as many of her videos as he can. You can’t fix stupid. Then the bulbous, bald, bearded bum looks for videos of people sniffing m’lady madame’s feet. Yum!
One of the guards spots the communal narc-a-doodle-doo Damien, quickly dons a safety mask, then hauls him back to his cell. Padlocking his cage, Security adds a deadbolt for additional protection for the workers from the world’s biggest source of natural gas.
The Information Security Team destroys the compromised machine, to protect national security from the leakage both info-wise and anal, then maintenance gets ready to throw the chopped-and-screwed computer parts into the dumpster.
“Aren’t we having fun yet?”
“There’s no room for all this crap, what shall we do?”
“I dunno, remove some of that HAZMAT first.”
“Bingo!”
Maintenance comes back with a dumpster full of hazardous, radioactive Lawd-only-knows-what – plus a few dirty socks throw in for good fun – then chucks it all into Damien’s cage.
“Who-wha-whey-whyyy—“
“These are your new friends, Damien.”
The crew shuts the new 4000 lb gate and walks away happy, knowing they won’t hear, see, nor smell Mr. Hurlbutt anytime soon, except for the poor tech who comes in every morning at 0500 hours…
Just think, she could have that whole lonely moon, err, planet to herself. What a waste NOT to send her on a rocket there! (Or a trebuchet, her neighbors are not picky).
Kankakee drugstore clerk, covert narcadoodle and self-proclaimed Number One Elvis Impersonator Robbie Hurlbutt spies his number one crush Gothic Diana Ross riding the bus. Hoping to impress her, like a peacock shaking his tail-feathers, Robbie flexes by doing pull-ups on the railing. Diana looks away, trying to hide her laughter.
Robbie continues flexing at the bus station, dancing around like a moronic fool as the rightfully uninterested gothic beauty Diana falls asleep, waiting for the Midnight Supremes to pick her up.
MoronicArts 
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