Another Bleating Heart (March 2026 Scapegoat Blame Thread)
6And time Marches on. The shortest month has come and gone. Seems like just last week we were still in February and @cbilyak was taking the blame for everything. Maybe because it’s true, but we can’t dwell on that. @cbilyak is free, and that means we move on to a new sacrificial lamb goat. Lucky for us, @craigthom exists.
Forward, March.
- 15 comments, 52 replies
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Me?
Sorry, I’m busy with making sure yesterday’s pleasant temperature doesn’t happen again soon.
@craigthom I’d really appreciate some unpleasant COLD temperatures here, along with some snow or at least rain! There was a grass fire burning unnervingly close by yesterday. I don’t want to have to blame you for a fire raging through town.
@craigthom @Kyeh For real- wtf are you doing making it be so warm and dry in CO right now?!
@Kyeh @Pony first you guys complain about the cold and snow. Now it’s the warm and dry. Make up your mind.
@craigthom @Pony Oh, I’m not complaining about cold & snow. That’s the people out east, and even some of the southerners. But not me!
@craigthom best wishes for your month!!
@cbilyak @craigthom
Best blames for your month!! There. Fixed it for you.
@cbilyak
Are you in port or did you pop for the Wi-Fi package?
@chienfou was in Port that day then back at sea yesterday in Port today, back at Sea tomorrow. It’s a rough life.
@cbilyak
Thanks for taking one for the team! Have fun
Froward, indeed. Towards fro!
And the typo got fixed. Rats.
@werehatrack I don’t see a typo.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@therealjrn @werehatrack
As in “to and fro” maybe.
@Kyeh @therealjrn @werehatrack
It’s been edited.
@chienfou @therealjrn @werehatrack I know; I just thought it was interesting that “fro” became a part of it.
@chienfou @Kyeh @werehatrack
I don’t see any edit…
@therealjrn
Just under the picture in the lead. Where it says forward, March now. It did say froward March…
@chienfou Are you sure? I don’t see any erasure marks…
@therealjrn
Time to update your monitor to the new whiteout capable model.
@chienfou @therealjrn
Allegedly developed for on-campus use at Texas A&M in College Station.
@craigthom I really want to blame you for something today, but I can’t think of a specific bad thing. Soooooooo, I blame YOU for not having anything to blame you about.
I am confident that something will go wrong very soon, and it will be your fault.
In the meantime, you should be ashamed of yourself!
Welcome. As a not-dead-yet goat you’re in a unique position for the next few weeks
Going to blame you for the fact that the house inspector that came to look at Mom’s (vacant) house for a potential buyer left every damn light on while I was gone all last week. Idiot.
.
@chienfou he was helping the house look lived in
@craigthom
Not very well though… Maybe he has a side gig with the power company locally.
Okay, this is the perfect level of blame for an involuntary scapegoat: there’s this fly that’s been buzzing around in my house for 4 days now & I’ve just missed getting it multiple times.
Grrr!
@Kyeh
Maybe you could reach out to one of your meh neighbors and borrow a tarantula for a few days!
@chienfou @Kyeh Do you want to borrow my electric tennis racquet I got 2 of them from meh!
@chienfou @therealjrn
A tarantula would be fun, but I think I will get this damn thing eventually. I probably should buy one of those electric tennis rackets next time. There was one time I had a LOT of flies (shudder) because of a rat that had gotten into my basement & died, and stank to high heaven! I found instructions online for a homemade fly trap made from a big pop bottle. It was gross but it worked really well.
(And I finally found the mummified rat in a corner of the basement beneath a pallet.)
@chienfou @Kyeh
I hope meh sells these some day.
A Bug-A-Salt gun!
https://www.bugasalt.com
@chienfou @Kyeh @therealjrn My husband bought one of those bug-a-salt rifles years ago- I had to forbid him from using it in the house. He was a little too trigger happy- there were grains of salt everywhere.
@Kyeh @Pony @therealjrn
Same outcome for my BIL… sis wasn’t too happy
@chienfou @Kyeh @therealjrn don’t fly traps smell like something died?
@chienfou @craigthom @therealjrn
I put it in the basement, so I didn’t have to smell it.
Unblame, I hope? Not trying to jinx it, but tomorrow morning I’m scheduled to get the surgery that was preempted ingloriously by my Election Day Kidney Stone Adventure of 2025. Unless the Universe finds yet another way for things to go wrong, I’ll be in the OR by 8AM and out to Recovery around Noon. The surgeon is keeping me there overnight, and I should be sprung to head home early Friday afternoon. If the procedure accomplishes its three main goals, I’ll be relieved of a constant irritation that has limited my mobility and certain choices and activities for over a year now.
Updates will happen once I become certain of the progress made.
@werehatrack Sending good vibes and a little prayer for the successful outcome!
🛏
Checked in, all systems go. Just waiting for them to hook up all the stuff.
Maybe something will go right this time.
@werehatrack I talked to your surgery staff last night. I had them put in a speaker dock as a surprise. Enjoy!
Surgery happened. They’re keeping me at least overnight.
Oh major blame! Just when we got my mom with dementia to the point where she was tolerating the senior living community we moved her to last year. I get a call from her early this morning. She was very confused and told me water was everywhere. It rained last night and I first thought she had left the balcony door open. But she handed the phone to her neighbor. The water heater line broke in the apartment above her! Being in the middle of the building, her unit took the brunt of the damage. Kitchen and living room is flooded. They are going to move her to a temporary unit across the hall for at least a month while repairs get done. She’s staying with me tonight.
Prayers requested to deity of your choice. For me that we don’t kill each other.
@ironcheftoni Oh, NO!
@ironcheftoni that’s terrible!
Blame-can’t mention his name because he never lies, but he keep saying drug prices are going to go down-my order of Ozempic for my type 2 diabetes this year and last.
Shipped on Thursday, March 5, 2026 with FEDEX
Ozempic pen 1mg dose
$632.98
84-day supply
Placed on March 27, 2025
Shipment 1 of 1 Delivered
Ozempic pen 1mg dose
$126.00
84-day supply
@Felton10 I refuse to take the blame for what that liar does, but I will continue to blame the people who have him the opportunity.
@craigthom So in 2026 I will be paying 9 times what I paid in 2025, over $ 2,000 total for one medication. Do I want to pay it no, can I afford to pay it-yes, but many won’t and I’m assuming that most of the them are living paycheck to paycheck and voted for you know who and can’t afford it and will stop taking the medication with predictable results. You reap what you sew.
@craigthom You just had to ruin the eclipse for a lot of us using your cloudbuster …
Thankfully, I knew what you were up to and slept through it.
I blame @craigthom for the Los Angeles traffic. Johnnie’s Pastrami ain’t gonna eat itself!
@cfg83 if you’re stuck in traffic then you’re part of the problem.
@craigthom That’s it, now you asked for it.
/showme anthropomorphized goat stuck in traffic jam yelling “I blame society!” at cop named “craigthom”.
@cfg83 Here’s the image you requested for “anthropomorphized goat stuck in traffic jam yelling I blame society! at cop named craigthom.”
I blame the scapegoat for being behind on my recovery.
On the other hand, I really enjoy the peaceful slow life of blaming my expanding waistline on hobbling (though I can actually walk again, no one has to know that).
@pakopako All the better for committing the perfect crime!
/showme Anthropomorphized goat with cookie crumbs on face saying “I didn’t do it, I can’t walk!” to upset people holding empty cookie jar.
@cfg83 Here’s the image you requested for “Anthropomorphized goat with cookie crumbs on face saying I didn’t do it, I can’t walk! to upset p…”
BLAME!
This one has layers.
While I was in the hospital this week, a missive from my credit union arrived in the mail. It stated that my credit card would expire at the end of the month. The letter was dated Feb 28, implying that the card would expire either that very day or on March 31, while the card itself had an expiry imprint of 04/2026. This seemed very odd.
The letter went on to say that due to inactivity, the card would not be reissued. This seemed exceptionally odd, as that particular card is the one I use most.
It also advised that if I had any questions regarding the non-reissue of the card, I should call [unfamiliar phone number redacted]. This phone number matched nothing that I had on file for my credit union, and also did not match the number on the back of the card.
At that point, my Phish Alarm was going off at a fairly high level. Accordingly, I called the main customer service number for the credit union, and after an overly long Discussion with the Artificial Idiot voice system, I was finally tossed into the twelve-minute(estimated) queue for an Agent. When the system finally delivered me to said Agent, she looked at what was visible to her and said that I should call the CS number on the back of the card. I then asked if the phone number in the letter was actually one of theirs, and she was able to confirm that it was. So I called it.
The next Artificial Idiot voice system was slightly easier to convince to toss me to an Agent, and after a relatively brief wait, the Agent determined that there was nothing visible from that end which showed any problem, and advised me to call a different (known to me) CS number to see what the problem was. So I did.
After treaty negotiations with another Artificial Idiot voice system, I got to another Credit Card CS Agent who was able to discover that the flag which was causing all of the issues was “bad address”. (This is from nominally the same entity that sent me the letter which was successfully delivered to said Bad Address.) But from their side of the system, they couldn’t fix it, I needed to talk to the Main CS side. Yet another phone call.
The Artificial Idiots apparently had decided that I needed to get Extra Helpful Hints instead of an Agent, so the treaty negotiations took even longer before I finally got redirected to somebody who could actually look at and fix whatever was wrong. Fortunately, I go an Agent who was smart enough to know that even the slightest mismatch in spelling or spacing of the parts of an address would generate an error at times, and she spotted the fact that in the main part of my account, my address suffix was spelled out as “Lane”, while on the Credit Card side, it had the standard USPS abbreviation “LN”. Changing this was a nontrivial task For Security Reasons, but [UNBLAME!] she got it fixed.
Oy.
@werehatrack So who the hell actually likes those damned phone systems? No customer I’ve ever talked to! Yet somehow businesses have been sold on the idea that these are great for customer relations. To me, it’s a great reason to look for another company, but options for that are dwindling.
If they’d give me a human to start with, it’d save me time and free up their damned telephone queue. Their limited menu options rarely match what I’m calling for.
Please, everyone, I’m looking for new Board members for my AIAIAI (Anti-Irritating Artificial Intligence Annihilation Institute).
@phendrick @werehatrack
The people who write fewer paychecks to increase their own bonus size.
@phendrick @werehatrack if they have you a human in the first place they’d have to pay that human, and they’d have to field more calls, because fewer people would hang up in frustration.
@craigthom @phendrick @werehatrack for future reference, these systems are programmed to detect voice inflection and even cursing. Call the AI a stupid bitch, can sometimes get you to the agent queue faster.
@craigthom @phendrick @werehatrack
Huh. I used to like to use gethuman.com but they’ve changed it up into an app rather than just a list of phone numbers…stupid bitches.
BLAME. Now I have to unpack all the boxes I had to pack to move. And either I am sick with something or all the fallen insulation that the landlord never cleaned up well (see photos in last month’s blame thread) is making me sick.
@Kidsandliz I’m not there and I can’t see how you’re reacting, but I’d expect that it’s a combination of stress, unknown-substance dust, Pollen Season I, and probably two or three more things. Let’s hope that none of them are persistent, and that the unpacking process is more akin to a treasure hunt than triage.
Take your time, take breaks often, and if you Just Need Somebody To Talk To, you’ve got my number.
@Kidsandliz if you keep putting it off, you’ll be packed for your next move.
@craigthom So true… although there are a few things I do need to find as I need them now.
SOMEBODY STOLE AN HOUR FROM ME LAST NIGHT!
It was gone this morning and I needed it.
I’m sure it was the goat, so Blame.
@phendrick You, too? This needs to be reported.
@phendrick @werehatrack HOLY CARP!! It was a crime spree. I am missing one too.
@phendrick @werehatrack @yakkoTDI A large, coordinated gang must have been involved with so many of us who have been robbed from all over the country!!!