Kankakee art student, grifter and narc-a-doodle Pat Oswald Splattposts to Redditopixly begging for volunteers to help with his “nonprofit” app project that’s really for profit.
He interviews three people remotely – all three he rejects even though they were well-qualified – simply because he is a sadistic moron who gets a high off hurting people’s feelings. The empathy is small with this one. Size matters.
Taking a different approach, Pat posts to Fakebook and the X-Parrot begging for free art, a fancy computer and people to tell their friends about his new, non-existent gadget in the making.
After asking a bunch of people if “this is still available?” he starts to get a few replies from people who are a little too nice.
“Hi, you asked about the computer?”
“I don’t like that machine. Can you give me a bigger hard drive?”
“I’ll show you my hard-drive! Click.”
“Yes, the art is available! I’d like to help out.”
“That drawing will suit. Can you make it a little bigger?”
“If you want it, pick it up. Otherwise I will sell it.”
“Come on man, it’s for a good cause!”
“It’s already framed. I put a lot of time into that picture. Time is money and mine is valuable, yes mine. Waste my time again and I’ll send you a bill!”
A “This person is no longer available” message promptly appears at the bottom of the chat window.
Pat messages 89 more people, but his calls and texts go unanswered.
Undead Greg Schneissder walks by Pat’s house, pounds on his door, busts it down.
“Got anyyy braiiins?”
Pat gives Greg the stinkeye, waves him away with one hand.
“Poopies?”
Pat reaches for his shotgun, however the zombie walks away before the non-existent warning shot could be non-fired.
Greg wanders over to a neighbor’s apartment and stares into his window, fixated on the television game-show.
“We surveyed 100 women and asked them, what about men—“
“Farts!” the contestant answers after slamming her hand down onto the set-piece.
“What about men do women find most attractive? Let us seeee…FARTS!”
“AAAANT!”
A big-ol’ X covers the screen and Greg giggles at it, slowly pointing his left arm or finger, he doesn’t remember which.
As Mr. Splatt barricades his newly broken door to keep out zombies, a newly formed text appears on his phone (not to be confused with Newly Formed Turds).
“I thought I’d never hear from him!” Pat thinks aloud, as he makes a mad dash for the door.
After moving the heavy boxes, metal sculptures and broken computers, he opens the doorway to let in his delivery.
Too late!
“Heres your free crap!” the Fakebook freebie group member yells out to Mr. Splatt.
“What? Pat shouts as the dump-truck lowers a whole load of manure all over his front lawn – and him.
“What the truck? The landlord is going to freak out!” exclaims a neighbor.
“Yummm, turds!” Undead Greg cheers as he makes his way towards the pile o’ pig poo, sits down, takes out a fork and a spoon.
Bourbonnais multiplex clerk, neckbeard and communal narcissist, Damien Hurlbutt, has caught word that his estranged former wife Lori is coming into Kankakee County for a doctor’s appointment. He is deathly afraid of running into her because he is scared she might confront him about his history of verbal abuse toward her, tarnishing his squeaky-clean image. He heads over to his brother Robbie’s apartment to ask him and fellow con man Pat Splatt to come up with a sneaky way into avoiding her.
“I’m back!” Damien tells his younger brother and fellow narcissist, Robbie.
“I’m front!” Robbie snickers back.
“I am leaving town for a week or longer. I am telling my boss at the cinema and then hitting the gas. My ex-wife is coming back into town and I am scared.”
“Scared?” Robbie replies in his typical faux-Elvis voice.
“Yeah. Sssh, don’t tell anyone. I really look good online after I smear campaigned her to all my friends, even to that famous couple until they had told me to stop messaging them, sending them presents and mailing them weekly postcards. I had sent them a drawing I made all by myself after our friend passed away since I had talked them into letting me send them art instead. I swear, they are really impressed! Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!” Damien exclaims with glee as he rubs his palms together.
“Just man up and deal with it!” Robbie Hurlbutt tells his older brother Damien.
“Come now. That is not how you talk to a fellow Men’s Rights Activist! You know that!” Damien says on the defense to Robbie.
“I hope you get the time off approved.”
“Okay, okay, okay, okay…” Damien repeats ad nauseum, not knowing his little brother Robbie is already out of earshot.
“Ding-dong.”
“You’re wrong!” Damien snickers beneath his breath to the person at Robbie’s door.
A half-grinning Pat Splatt opens the door and struts inside.
“I popped the question!”
“What question?” Damien asks.
“Heyyyy…where did you meet her?” Robbie replies and looks away.
“Hey Pat, my ex is coming into town and I am feeling lukecold about this. I was wondering if you could help come up with a scheme—“
“Damien, I just got engaged!”
“I know, I know. My ex is due in sometime this week. I would like to gingerly bow out of town but I have to work. What do you suggest I do?”
“Hey, can I sing at your wedding, Pat?” Kankakee’s number one Elvis impersonator, the one and only Robbie Hurlbutt asks.
“Do you know anything besides Elvis?”
“I can sing lots of oldies.” Robbie replies.
“Do you play any metal?”
“No, but you can book me really cheap. I will throw in my groovy dance moves for free.”
“I’ll consider it.” Pat says to Robbie.
“So where did you meet her?” Robbie asks.
“The dating app OKStupid. Hey, I’ll show you guys a picture.” Pat gets out his phone and opens up said dating app.
“Who’s Daniel Sprague?” Damien asks.
“Oh, that’s my profile,” a half-embarrassed Pat replies as his gawky, straggly self shows the Hurlbutt brothers the obviously-stolen photos of the handsome, athletic man in the photos with the gorgeous hair and eyes.
The Hurlbutts smile and ask to see his new girl.
“Her name is Alix. She’s from South Africa.”
“When did you meet her?” Damien asks.
“Oh, a month ago.”
“She came to Kankakee?” Robbie asks?
“No.”
“Hey Damien, let’s work on avoiding your ex,” Pat says to change the topic and the three work on scheming.
The next day arrives and so does Damien. Unlike Pat, Damien rings the bell and waits. While he waits, he taps his foot and jiggles the doorknob a dozen times. Make it a baker’s dozen.
“Well doesn’t that put poop in your soup?” Damien asks Robbie.
“Say what?”
“My time off did not get approved. I have to work. That means if my ex-wife comes into town, and visits the theater, she could say something bad about me if I am mean to her! What do I do?”
“Weren’t you saying you had heel spurs, just like the former president?”
“You know, the Moon landing may not be real but durn it, my bone spurs are!” Damien sternly replies.
“You deserve a long, hard week off.”
“You know, that’s right. I’ll just call in.”
“What do you do at that theater anyway?”
“Oh, make copies of tickets and give them away. And make color copies of things I print out…all on the company’s dime. Why not? They’re paying for it.”
The brothers share a giggle and Damien drives home to his neckbeard nest to sleep on the floor.
Damien dials his supervisor, Cinema-13 owner Konrad Teirant, on his ten year old flip phone to call in “sick.”
“You will need to be examined by a doctor and have a written excuse for each day you are out. Company policy.” Konrad says to Damien.
Upset and surprised by this rule, Damien makes an appointment to be seen. The office cannot tells him he cannot in until next week.
“Phew!” Damien says aloud after he hangs up his ancient flip phone and writes down his doctor appointment.
Damien drives over to Robbie’s apartment, where Robbie, his roommate Andy Skandees and Pat Splatt are all dancing and watching children’s entertainment.
A bulbous Damien sits down on the basket chair and nearly falls out, while Pat stares angrily at his phone on the couch next to Andy, who is relaxing in his white tank top and cargo pants.
“She says she wants to come meet me. In person. I keep telling her I am busy. She says she is on her way to Kankakee in a week-and-a-half for a business meeting via way of Chicago!” an unhappy Pat exclaims.
“Why don’t you want to meet your girl? Andy asks.
“Reasons,” Pat replies.
“Did I tell you my story about the poop elves?” Damien asks with a large grin on his face.
“Way too many times…” the rest of the room answers in unison.
“Oh, I forgot.” Damien lies.
The Kankakee storm rages on, and then changes to sun five minutes later.
Damien spends the next week off work, feeling glad he does not run into his former wife out and about, especially at work. It is review week coming up and he is deathly afraid of this time of year, as he is every year. Damien lives to impress, and will not even let his peers throw him a birthday party because he is not the one doing the impressing. If anyone would care enough to surprise him —not that they would — he would take over the check, (in a not-so-polite-way) and insist on paying on it himself thinking that would somehow impress them.Damien only does this for image, as he only cares about himself. He just wants to look good to cover up his lack of empathy.
Damien goes to the doctor’s office the following Monday before returning to work at the movie theater that night. After all, he had just spent a week off for his heel spurs!
While waiting for about an hour for his fifteen minute exam, in walks a familiar-looking woman, along with a much older lady. Damien looks up.
“Oh gawd.” Lori says to her friend after briefly looking over at Damien and then back at her friend.
Damien is now shaking with fear. He immediately dials up Robbie. It goes straight to voicemail. He calls Andy. Same thing. He calls Pat.
“Hey, man. It’s an emergency.”
“Be right over. I am charging you double-time.”
“Fine.”
Damien flips over his bronze-age phone and waits, tapping his fingers, whistling audibly.
Thirty minutes pass and Damien has not been called back to see the doctor, neither has Lori.
Pat Splatt walks in, cowboy boots a-clomping.
“Hi Damien. What’s going—“
“Look, Pat.”
Damien points across from him, to his former wife and her friend.
“What do you want from me?” Pat asks.
“That’s my ex wife! I thought her appointment was last week! You gave me the info.”
“So what. Things change. It happens.”
“Hey, you sound familiar!” says one of the ladies across from him.
“Hey-hhmm-hhuhhh—hmmm—what?” a melodramatic Damien replies.
“No not you, that guy next to you.” the elderly lady replies in her Cape Town accent, appearing to be about 72.
“You mean Pat?” Damien snarkily replies.
“Pat? I thought your name was Daniel!”
“Alllll-iiiiixxxx?” a stunned Pat Splatt replies.
“Yes, sonny. It’s me. I had told you I was coming into town. But you hadn’t wanted to meet me. I wonder why not? You do not look anything like your picture. The engagement is off.”
“Well neither do you!” Pat exclaims.
“Calm down everyone!” a staff member shouts from behind a window.
The group of people waiting wonder how any of them would get any calmer by a comment like that.
Damien is eventually thrown out of the office and Lori is called in next.
Needless to say, Damien does not pass his yearly review at Teirant Cinema-13. Poor Damien. If only he had just tried to be nice. But then again, he would not be Damien.
“Fifth time today. Who is this moron?” Kankakee student and barista Ant D. Yu asks his partner.
“Hang up.” Dorian James says to Ant.
“Brandon’s Imbecile Machines. That’s it – I am blocking these fools.”
A knock is heard and Ant checks the peephole. The uninvited guest pounds the doorknocker.
Ant greets the visitor: “Oh, hi Sybil.”
“Hey Ant. Do you have any dog food? I am hungry,” the Credit Recovery Associates (CRASS) bill collector inquires.
“No Sybil. I told you before. We do not have a dog. But thanks for stopping by.”
“Okay. I did not know if you guys change your mind.”
“Have a good day Sybil.”
Ant closes the door, a disappointed Sybil Kibble heads back to her McMansion down the street. Her pleas for free dog food have all been met with disappointment. As she walks into one of her three garages, she checks her caller ID:
“BRANDON’S IMBECILE MACHINES
KANKAKEE, IL”
Sybil sees that this entity has called twelve times in the past three days and because of this, she blocks their number from calling again. She then heads inside and munches down on some dry doggie chow.
Manteno singer Gothic Diana Ross, leader of The Midnight Supremes, is busy pulling up her black fishnet stockings when her phone lights up.
“Who is this?” Di thinks to herself and checks her screen.
“Brandon’s Imbecile Machines? Block.”
The Midnight Supremes all cackle in unison.
Brandon Dixon, owner of Brandon’s Imbecile Machines, is getting frustrated by the lack of response to the new phone campaign for his lifted truck lot.
Ant Yu gets a call from an unknown number. He is in the habit of screening his calls and lets it go to voicemail. The next day, he checks his messages. Since “Brandon” had asked him to return his call without having given him a reason, Ant deletes the crapage and blocks the time-waster’s number.
Sybil gets a voicemail from Brandon and deletes it. Gothic Diana Ross does as well.
Brandon is again frustrated by the nonexistent return on his low-budget marketing investment for his overcompensated vehicle lot.
After seeing this commercial many times on PooTube, he calls up Kankakee huckster Pat Splatt.
The two team up with Elvis impersonator and covert narcissist Robbie Hurlbutt, to try and spam people all over Kankakee.
Pat Oswald Splatt, or POS for short, develops a Fakebook virus to steal accounts for Brandon. It is disguised as a video featuring a picture of Sybil Kibble eating dog bones. Robbie Hurlbutt had covertly taken it using his mobile phone when he had briefly worked at CRASS.
“Check this out, Robbie and Brandon!”
With a cheesy grin, Pat shows off his newly minted virus, disguised as a video, which he plans on sliding into Fakebook Martplace instant message boxes all over Kankakee County.
“Kankakee bill collector eats dog food for lunch” reads the caption below the fake video that is really a virus.
“Once people click on this pretend video, the virus will send you and I the users’ login credentials. We will start by replying to Fakebook Martplace ads. That way we will find suckers really easily.”
Pat, Robbie and Brandon share evil grins.
“I based the virus off code I used to program a broken 1989 Atari emulator, accidentally broken on purpose. Those were my script kiddie days, back when I used to try and own noobs.”
“You are a noob, Pat.” Robbie snickers.
Pat launches the virus and Robbie gets ready to collect the login credentials so he can pool them into a spreadsheet.
Days go by…nothing.
Pat tests the virus and it is operational.
“Are you sending the virus out, Pat? I am paying you to do this.” Brandon asks.
“I am sending but nobody is a-clickin.”
“How about we step it up and generate a whole bunch a windows?” Brandon asks Pat.
“Good idea.”
Pat modifies the virus code to replicate multiple windows featuring Sybil Kibble enjoying her canine cookies, Sybil stretching at her desk and a close-up of Sybil from behind. The recursive windows end up crashing some computers, however most machines fail to get infected at all; the ancient technology powering the virus gets caught by even the most basic pop-up killer.
Brandon storms in on a sleeping Pat Oswald Splatt, dreaming of opening up his very own click-farm, curled up in his computer chair listening to a Robbie Hurlbutt video on a loop.
“That’s it, I want my money back! I made nothing off your crappy viral marketing campaign!”
“Who-what-um-who is this? Hello?”
“Quit the drama! I want my money back!”
“Oh, hi Brandon.”
“Don’t hi Brandon me. I need my money back and I need it right now!”
“You will get your money back alright. Your bank charge failed because you had no money. You cheap fool!” The smug Pat exclaims at Brandon, falling out his squeaky metal chair.
Brandon laughs at Pat, pointing and mocking.
“Oopsie.” Pat giggles, gets up and chases out Brandon, who is now left to his own devices.
Poor Brandon and all those unsold compensation-mobiles.
“Aw, man. I have these diet coffee beans for sale and nobody wants to buy them. All I get are panhandlers asking for money and free coffee. Got any ideas, Pat?” Kankakee street schemer Doris Krabalsky asks local spammer, Pat Splatt.
“Let me introduce your idea on social media! I have a proven strategy that will certainly win for both of us!”
“This bossbabe is in to win it!”
“I will get cookin”. Pat logs on Instaphoto and begins to look for accounts with thousands of followers or more.
“Look at this account. Lots of videos, but the most liked ones are so weird. The hot videos not so much. Oh, look at this account! Sterling Heights with no culture. I will keep looking” Pat says at a local cafe, as he combs the accounts to target with messages like this:
“Diet coffee colon cleanse – new product to promote gut health! No calories! Ask me how!”
Pat can be heard on the phone with Doris. As Pat puts his phone on speakerphone, a cafe customer catches on to what he is doing and plays the Monty Python Spam song out loud from her tablet. “Where are you?” Doris asks Pat.
“I plan on making big money here. We can make lots together. I can hire people, get them credit and then fire them, not planning on keeping them anyway.” Doris and Pat share a chortle.
Pat looks for Instaccounts to spam inbetween his looking at girls on the dating site Tindling. “She’s not too hot. Swipe left. Ooh look at this Insta account. It has 100k followers.” Pat calls people who did not reply back to his oodles of spams ableist slurs and homophobic slurs as insults. Doris thinks it is funny. The cafe patrons share dirty looks aimed in his direction.
Pat’s Sixerr and Paybuddy accounts keep getting declined. Pat cannot seem to figure out why. He thinks the internet is for spam and that he should be able to help his customers make money under his influence over people.
“It is all good. Don’t worry. It will all work, Doris. Gotta run.”
Pat checks his Instaphoto account. A message pops up: “your account has been terminated for illegal activity.”
“Oh crap! I will just create another account.”
Pat logs onto Instaphoto. “Please enter a credit card.”
Pat tries all his cards. Declined.
The wheel starts spinning. He cannot log on. A young lady approaches him.
“Can I get you something to eat?”
“No.”
“Drink, then?”
“No.”
“We have detected via our IP that you have been perfoming illegal activity. The police are on their way.” The barista informs Pat.
“You, you WOMAN!”
“No use trying to leave, our nice tall ladies guarding the door will stop you. Oh good, police came fast! Yayyyyyy!” The barista claps her hands and the entire cafe erupts in laughter and applause, except for Pat Splatt.
MoronicArts 
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