You're just a Scapeturkey (November 2025 Scapegoat Blame Thread)

@Kidsandliz Since you didn’t file a trademark claim on it, I think it becomes an Unblame. With small blame for not crediting you.

@Kidsandliz Which leads me to wonder if next month’s Goat will be a ScapeElf. (Unshelved.)

@Kidsandliz I blame society.
/showme scapegoat blaming society.

@mediocrebot sorry, this one’s a tough one.
/showme anthropomorphized goat yelling “I blame society” at a group of people .

@Kidsandliz Here’s the problem. How do you know if @extramedium and I are not ONE AND THE SAME?!?!?!?

/showme two headed goat causing mediocebot to blow a gasket from the stress of having to perform.

@cfg83 The above had a type that broke the bot, so should be deleted.

@cfg83 What am I missing? They look the same to me.

@cfg83 @Kyeh
I believe it got edited but didn’t return an image.

@cfg83 @chienfou Ohhh - yeah, editing does no good.

@chienfou @Kyeh Yeah, I forgot the “showme” but it was too late to “activate” the bot. If possible, I should have DELETED the message or changed it to something else, but the edit/delete option was no longer available.
And here I thought goat-dom had privileges.

/showme grumpy cat saying HARUMPH!

@cfg83 @chienfou No privileges at all! Except maybe the opportunity to sound off/be funny/entertain us during your month.

@cfg83 @Kyeh
Which, BTW, you are off to a great start on.

@cfg83 @chienfou @Kyeh You misunderstand -
goats have privy ledges, i.e., narrow mountain shelves from which they relieve themselves into the abyss.

@cfg83 @Kyeh @macromeh
Oh… Guess I need to move upslope then!

@cfg83 @Kyeh @macromeh
/showme a goat on a hillside holding an umbrella as yellow rain descends upon him

@mediocrebot
Man, that extra leg came in handy!

@chienfou @Kyeh @macromeh privy ledges, hmmm? Sounds like Haggis territory to me :

@chienfou @Kyeh Ok, no goat food for goat.

/showme sad goat looking at bare cupboard in kitchen.

@mediocrebot Performance anxiety bot?

@mediocrebot All the other goats were clothed. Why isn’t this one?

@mediocrebot @zhicks1987 Cartoon goats are naked?

@cfg83 @mediocrebot @zhicks1987
/image Donald Duck

@mediocrebot @zhicks1987

All the other goats were clothed. Why isn’t this one?

/showme the scapegoat at a nudist colony

Something went terribly wrong. Please try again.

@Kidsandliz @mediocrebot @zhicks1987
Evidently someone needs to tap the bot’s moral compass.

@chienfou @Kidsandliz @mediocrebot @zhicks1987
/showme goat smashing moral compass of mediocrebot.

@mediocrebot @therealjrn @zhicks1987

/showme anthropomorphized goat offering clothes to cartoon goat.

@mediocrebot What that was a literal take of smashing a moral compass.

@cfg83 @mediocrebot @zhicks1987
/showme a goat in Victorian dress frowning at an 80’s streaker goat

@mediocrebot @therealjrn @zhicks1987 He’s obvioulsy miffed that a goat ate his pants.

@Kidsandliz @mediocrebot Yeahhhh, let’s see if we can improve that :

/showme goat smashing compass built into metal torso of mediocrebot.

@mediocrebot @ircon96
/showme person named ircon96 finding secret plans of goat named cfg83 to defeat mediocrebot by degrading AI into saying “I Blame Society!” in all it’s responses.

@mediocrebot Heh, heh, heh. Just a few more scrambles, and mediocrebot will be under my complete control.

You’re welcome.

@mediocrebot oh man, I thought I had an original idea, then looked up 4 posts and saw this. Sorry @ircon96, this is certainly @cfg83 's fault.

@mediocrebot Excellent work!

@yakkoTDI Nice!

@Kyeh @yakkoTDI Great, now I’m hungry. I guess I’ll blame the goat.

@yakkoTDI Breakfast burritos are truly the perfect food.

@DLPanther @yakkoTDI con huevos, cebolla, papas, tocino y chorizo. (At least, for me.)

@Felton10
Long term care is definitely outpacing general inflation. It’s crazy what that costs a month.

@chienfou The insurance industry thought they had found a gold mind in LTC when everyone was offering it, but quickly found this wasn’t case. In our case we have paid in in excess of 80k over the past 25 years and with the annual cost of assisted living being well in excess of 100k and our policy being lifetime (which they don’t even offer anymore), the insurance company could be on the hook for a lot more than we have paid in. Hence the astronomical rise in premiums.

@chienfou @Felton10 If only more of us pesky LTC insureds would quietly croak at home before needing managed care. Curses!

@Felton10 @macromeh
Yeah… Take one for the team, would ya!

@chienfou @Felton10 I know my mom used 6.5 years of long term care and then 3 weeks of hospice (when her 6.5 years were up). I am positive she paid in far less than what the insurance company paid out. I have failed medical underwriting for decades so can’t get it. Hopefully I’ll die of the one incurable cancer I have before I need it or I am screwed.

We boomers are going to break that just like we break anything else we touch in the age bubble we are in. As there is already a wait list for senior hud (so I’d suspect the homeless population of seniors is going to grow). So many on advantage plans with huge out of pocket maxs and then you’d have to pass medical underwriting to escape that when you finally need it to switch to a supplement, so most would fail, that will drive up costs for seniors too. Scary thought all of this.

@chienfou @macromeh The premise of all insurance is that the ins co is betting you won’t need it and you are betting you will. The thing that killed LTC is the built in inflation factor on most of the polices which was 5% per year compounded. My policy starting out at $150 a day and now with compounding over all these years is now over $ 450 a day. Multiply that times 365 and just one year is more than double for just one year for one person over what I have paid over these 25 years for two people and again my policy is lifetime.

@mediocrebot @caffeineguy Now, you are beginning to understand.

/showme exhausted mediocrebot selling bankrupt company called meh.com for $20 to a goat named cfg83.

@mediocrebot @caffeineguy Wow, I’m so nice in that picture, almost sympathetic. Who knew?
At least I am back down to one mouth (even though I can no longer easily talk and chew at the same time). Maybe I shouldn’t have revealed my plan. Meh-dom would think I am their savior instead of their usurper. All of this is starting to give me heart palpatinations.

@caffeineguy @cfg83 Don’t be fooled by mediocrebot’s obvious head fake. It’s clearly trying to lull you into complacency while tirelessly working behind the scenes to thwart your reign.

@caffeineguy @macromeh Ohhhhh, the old two faced head trick, eh? One face sad and the other diabolical. Not sure how to descrAIbe that for the showme.

@Kidsandliz I had this on Oct. 17th:
Eight is a good number! (My birthday month )

@Kyeh That 951 though… of course not that far to go to get it all 951 with a pesky 4 in the way.

@Kidsandliz I’m currently at 907, so only 44 days to go!

@Kidsandliz @Kyeh Depending on what kind of tech you like, Photoshop or a Sharpie could close that 3 in.
That would be a heck of a find for Dollar Bill Poker.
Seven 8s!

Or, a little more whimsical, a bunch of infinities if you reorient a little.

@Kidsandliz @Kyeh @phendrick

a bunch of infinities if you reorient a little

step one: turn off auto rotate
step two: turn device 90⁰

@chienfou @Kidsandliz @Kyeh @phendrick Oh man, I wish you would have posted that before I attached all the pulleys, straps and ropes to my chair…

@chienfou @Kidsandliz @Kyeh Quicker,
Set your device down and look at it from the side.
(I’m old school.)

@werehatrack Hope you pass the kidney stone or they break it up so it will pass so you can get out of your agony.

@werehatrack Hope you feel better soon.

@Kidsandliz there is no chance of it passing, which is why they stuck a stent in to allow the kidney to drain. That stent also forced the stone back into the kidney. That’s not what’s producing the pain now. The surgeon tore up something in my urethra on the way end, and I am bleeding like crazy. Urination is very very painful. And my kidney function is not up to par. It remains to be seen when I will be out of here

@Kidsandliz @werehatrack Had kidney stones before-think I caught it from my wife as she has had them off and on and I never had one until a couple of years ago. Worst pain I have ever encountered.

Stuck a stent in to allow me to pee and so the stone wouldn’t get stuck. Then had a procedure with a machine that travels to different places (probably because it is too expensive for a third world state like Florida to afford) where they bust the stone into pieces so it is easier to pass. Haven’t had a stone lately luckily but all the best to you to get it resolved with as little additional pain as possible.

@Felton10

probably because it is too expensive for a third world state like Florida to afford

1. I have been told kidney stone pain is akin to labor pains. Men are more likely to have stones than women but that gap is decreasing.
2. renal stones are not communicable… but diet choices may impact your likelihood (so could have affected you after your marriage)
3. most stones are able to pass on their own with pain management, fluids and/or Flomax etc
4. lithotripsy (breaking up the stone so you can pass it) is needed about 10% of the time. It requires specialized (and expensive) equipment and staff to operate that equipment.
5. contrary to popular belief there are not infinite medical resources and funding available.
   Good luck to all you kidney stone victims out there.

@chienfou @Felton10 I have friends who have had multiple kidney stones, one of whose kidneys eventually just calcified to the point of failure. Anther one has successfully passed all of his stones. He gets about one a year. Yes, diet does have a significant impact on the formation of stones. I could go into the list of things that contribute but that’s probably not useful here. In my case, I’ve had one stone previously, and it presented pretty much the same way this one did. It got stuck high in the ureter, and could not proceed. That also is not unusual. I’ve had lithotripsy on a stone in my left kidney previously, back in 2016. Had I been given the option, I’d have gone for it this time too. But unlike hospitals and major clinics in Europe who apparently tend to have the lithotripsy equipment on hand, here it is in the hands of a priesthood and not readily or widely available.

@Felton10 @werehatrack
Did you have SWL (non invasive) or PCNL (minimally invasive) last time? Trend is moving towards the latter.

@chienfou @werehatrack Not sure who the ? is for but they had to put me to sleep when they inserted the stent and when they exploded the kidney stone but removed the stent in the office. The machine they had I placed my back up to the machine and that was the last thing I remember before I went off to la-la land.

@chienfou Was joking about getting it from my wife but since she has had stones all her life and it took me 40 years of marriage to get my first one-one has to wonder if her having them led to me getting my first.

As far as the medical care in Florida, with all the people moving to this state for the warm weather, getting appts with an MD or even finding one is getting harder and harder. More likely than not you are passed off to a PA or a NP. Not sure if it is like this in other parts of the country, but there is no doubt one has to be pro-active with their own medical care and have good insurance.

@Felton10
Sounds like SWL since no incision…

@chienfou The only woman I know who has acknowledged that she had kidney stones is a retired nurse. She suspects that because most stones will pass from the kidney to the bladder, and women typically have a much wider urethra than men, most women who have kidney stones are either unaware of them and pass them without remark, or they know about them but are so minimally inconvenienced that they simply don’t bother reporting them. It seems plausible.

@chienfou @werehatrack Umm being female and having had a kidney stone I was well aware I was passing it. It was incredibly painful. The toilet water was really bloody when I finally passed it. A friend of mine was hospitalized more than once over kidney stones and twice needed them broken up to pass them. I currently have a 2-3mm one sitting mid kidney. I hope it sits there forever (it was accidentally discovered on the annual CT scans I have for the follicular non-hodgkin’s lymphoma). Whether or not you have problems depends on the size they are.

@Kidsandliz @werehatrack
In my 30+ years as an ER nurse I met several women with kidney stones. They’re the ones who told me it was akin to labor pain.
If you’ve ever had a chance to see a kidney stone under a microscope they often look like little sand spurs, hence the bleeding as it tumbles through the ureters. Most of the time, when people capture one in a strainer, they are shocked at how much pain they had in relation to how small the stone actually is. I have likened it to “trying to piss out a pine cone”…

@chienfou @Kidsandliz @werehatrack I’ve often wondered about the evolutionary benefit of extreme pain where it seems to serve no purpose.
For example, if prehistoric Ogg breaks an arm or leg, the pain could make him favor the injured limb and there is some chance it will heal.
But some types of extreme pain (for example, a bad tooth or a kidney stone) seem to serve no purpose. No amount of coddling will improve the result. So what’s the point?

@macromeh
Trying to shove a baby out of a a narrow birth canal can be, ahem, quite painful. You would think that would be a contraindication to having sex in the first place. Thankfully for mankind that hasn’t panned out.

@chienfou @Kidsandliz I have zero doubt that women who have a kidney stone can be every bit as subject to the incredible pain as men, but I also have heard from men who only realized they’d just passed a stone when they heard something solid hit the urinal, and saw the itty-bitty brown crystalline blob laying there. A woman who passes one unaware (and stays that way) seems not outside the realm of possibility, from what I have heard.

I got a good look at my 2015 stone, and yeah, I can confirm that it looks like something out of the center of a tiny geode.

@chienfou @werehatrack The only reason why men can see a kidney stone if they pass it while peeing is that it doesn’t land in a ton of water as urinals don’t have that. With women there is a toilet full of water. It may not be noticeable because of the water, the shape of the toilet bowl and how small they are. They are not going to contort their bodies to watch themselves peeing and what comes out. Men don’t have that issue. If they pass it with a lot of blood they’d likely see the blood, but when I passed mine there was so much blood in the water I couldn’t see anything. I wasn’t going to stick my hand in there to feel around to see if I could feel something.

@chienfou @Kidsandliz @werehatrack C is correct as usual. My sis suffers from kidney stones and from what I understand they are extremely painful. I wont try to guess the difference for men and women, but I can tell you hers are debilitating when they occur and she always needs surgery.

They are not.okesant b

@chienfou @Kidsandliz @werehatrack uh, unsure what that last sentence is or how it got there. Ghost in the machine?

@tinamarie1974
.okesant b = pleasant maybe??
Thanks for the endorsement.
Over the years I have met and treated a bunch of kidney stone pts. Some of the ones we saw multiple times I would jokingly accuse of trying to piss out a driveway.

@chienfou

…accuse of trying to piss out a driveway.

The friend I mentioned who has one just about every year probably would fall into that category. He lives in the Pacific Northwet. I’ve had him pause during a conversation, and then say “Oh, great, another kidney stone.” He and his wife place bets on how fast it will pass; he has never needed any intervention. [grumble lucky [redacted]]

@Kidsandliz

The only reason why men can see a kidney stone if they pass it while peeing is that it doesn’t land in a ton of water as urinals don’t have that.

And some of the urinals will do a good job of concealing it. Others, not so much. Even when standing to attention before the Porcelain Throne at home, it could easy be missed For Obvious Reasons.

Some people get lucky in this area. I am not one of them. (Neither are you, from what you’ve said.) I sincerely hope that no one reading this thread finds any relevance in it for themselves going forward.

@chienfou maybe? Idk, blaming the pain meds.

@tinamarie1974
:thumbs_up:

@werehatrack I have had kidney stones, so I know at least part of your pain. Mine have been the type where drinking 4 ounces of concentrated lemon juice (aka the amount in one of those plastic lemons) per day has kept it under control, so I have been lucky overall.

I am sending you an anti-skape goat to get better :

/showme anthropomorphize Goat in super hero outfit with letters “SG” on its chest and delivering medicine to hospital .

@cfg83 @werehatrack

Mine have been the type where drinking 4 ounces of concentrated lemon juice (aka the amount in one of those plastic lemons) per day has kept it under control, so I have been lucky overall.

Potassium Citrate is what I have been given and so far the 2mm one sitting mid kidney remains at 2mm and remains put. As far as I am concerned it can sit there forever not growing and I will take that med (which is not all that cheap) forever if need be if that is the magic potion.

@cfg83 @Kidsandliz I’ve head that a potion that contains both potassium citrate and magnesium citrate can slowly reduce a stone, and that either of them alone will also work but apparently not as well. I tried finding a source for them, and yeah, the potassium citrate wasn’t cheap. Magnesium citrate makes me nervous because just a trifle too much turns into a potent laxative.

@cfg83 @werehatrack track Accesia Health Foundation. They have a grant that pays the copay for the med as long as you have medicare or other insurance. It only opens occasionally and I think you can get an email notification when it opens. It might have a waiting list.

@mycya4me
Yep. I spent the day getting covers on some of the garden plants and bringing in some of the pots on the porch etc. Gotta finish my cold frame for the plumeria before it hits 25 degrees tomorrow night.

@mycya4me
( Unblame…Personally
I jjust a quick walk to the garden and it seems that even though the temp hit 36 there was enough breeze that the veggies all survived last night. Hopefully I will have time to (successfully?) protect a few more before we hit 26 tonight. Supposed to warm up after today with no more frost in the next 10-day forecast.

@mediocrebot I am 1/2 Minnesotan, so you are welcome.

/showme Danish toy horse playing in the snow.

@cfg83
I lived all over the northern half of Minnesota from St Cloud to International Falls in the late 70s and early 80s. Cold down here is nothing compared to IF.
That being said bums me out that it got cold enough to kill the garden but then we’ll probably have at least a couple more weeks of weather where I’d have been able to harvest a bunch more tomatoes etc. Oh well
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@werehatrack If you remember the Old Film canisters you got 35mm film in. they make great containers for small stuff like what you want!
Best of luck on the 2nd part of the kidney stone treatment! Since I shot many a roll of 35mm film I got bushels of them!

@mycya4me @werehatrack
Back in the day, campmor used to sell lids that were designed to snap on 35 mm canisters to make them into salt and pepper shakers. Sort of like this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/326752898122

@chienfou @werehatrack https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=35mm+Film+Canister+&_sacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p2332490.m570.l1313

@mycya4me I shot many a roll of 35mm myself, but the film cans have all evaporated over the years. I’ve found some plastic snap-lid containers at the dollar store that are of a similar volume, but I’d really rather have a shaker with a screw-on sealing lid, so what I’ll most likely do is take a surplus small Penzey’s Spice jar with the small hole grid and use that. (I have some squirreled away.)

@werehatrack FYI. I gave up on products like “Goo Gone” & the like. Most of the time NOW I grab for the small spray bottle of 91% Isopropyl Alcohol (IPA) that does wonders on nearly everything. Except Computer/ TV screens or even camera lens!

@mycya4me @werehatrack Me too, IPA is the way. When I deal with price tags and such I have mastered the “slow peal” and use painters tape to remove left over sticky bits.

Testing disney copyright :

/showme mandalorian holding spray bottle of Isopropyl Alcohol and saying “this is the way”.

Something went terribly wrong. Please try again.

@mediocrebot Shrug, it’s to be expected … but Mickey is now free, right???

/showme army of mickey mouse laywers.

Something went terribly wrong. Please try again.

@mediocrebot Et tu, Mickey?

@cfg83 @mycya4me @werehatrack A hair dryer set on high works wonders to get adhesives off. I’ve removed decades-old drawer lining paper, a clump of spilled & hardened PVA glue, and countless price stickers with one.

@cfg83 @Kyeh @mycya4me @werehatrack
Absolutely… hair dryer or heat gun works wonders.
Any stray bits of adhesive can be removed with an oil-based substance like vegetable oil or even a dab of butter or margarine. Smear it on the offending adhesive and let it sit for a few minutes and wipe it off with a paper towel. Bingo adhesive gone. As a bonus the item will be very shiny!
I frequently use this trick on bottles that I’m trying to remove the labels from that I plan to reuse to gift products that I make at home (like basil vinegar, smoked olive oil… etc). Of course many labels used to be removable by soaking them in hot water (and the heat trick doesn’t work on those) but that is less common these days.

@cfg83
/showme an army of anthropomorphic mouse lawyers who resemble Steamboat Willie

Something went terribly wrong. Please try again.

@cfg83 Ask Kuato.

@werehatrack Ok, Kuato got back to me. He says it’s all good …

{{{@werehatrack}}}

@werehatrack No shit?
Sorry to hear the Goat is trying to kick you while you are down.

/showme a goat trying to kick a man when he is down

@yakkoTDI I’m sprung. The blockage was easier to clear than the first time this happened (2015), but the GI doc at the hospital ran blood work for infection markers and found several. IV antibiotics smashed those pretty well, and I have a follow-up course of augmentin to finish the job.

On Monday, the urologist and I will hatch the plot to fix what remains. (I like the new urologist. She listens.)