Spooky Scary Scapegoateton (October 2025 Scapegoat Blame Thread)
8While I (not unlike many of you) feel that Spooky Season is a year-round affair, it is now the nationally recognized time frame, so let’s get scary! We can start by chasing away the old goat. @Roadie got us through September and the turn to fall, but now we need a spooky friend to point our bony, skeletal fingers to.
I was going to suggest we blame @lisagd, mostly because of the voting, but then something odd happened. In what may go down as the most extreme means of escaping the goat, @lisagd deleted her account. Honestly, I say we still blame her because a ghost goat couldn’t be more fitting… just don’t expect any responses to your blame this month.
*EDIT: Found her! Turns out, we’ll have to blame @lisagd22 instead because it was a case of double accounts. My apologies for any confusion. I blame her…and you for voting for the old account.
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The funny thing is, I deleted the account that had all my Meh button clicks, so I had to start at zero. I have only myself to blame…
@lisagd22 Oh, so you DID have 2 accounts? @ExtraMedium I did correct it further down in the thread, but all the votes were already on the old one.
That would be an effective, but extreme, way to escape goating!
@ExtraMedium @Kyeh Yes, I didn’t even realize it until I had an issue with combining shipping during a Meh-rathon. I swear I did all that before I was a gleam in the goat voters’ eyes.
Blame - I really don’t like the current AI claymation style Irk. He looks globby and ugly. I wish we could have the old goofy cartoony Irk back. He’s kind of a cute little jerk.
@Kyeh YES YES YES
@Kidsandliz I mean, I would NEVER have gotten an Irk tattoo if he looked like any of the versions that AI has produced. They have this great design, why not keep using it?!
/showme New Irk admiring Old Irk in a mirror
@mediocrebot IMO, looks more like Bart Simpson.
Bot, aren’t you allowed to mingle with the other staff?
@mediocrebot @phendrick
Bart meets SpongeBob meets Ren… with a dash of RICK thrown in.
@chienfou @mediocrebot @phendrick
This is actually a really good result if you know what you’re looking at. That’s Invader Zim who is from the planet Irk. He’s part of the Irkan Empire, who set out to conquer every planet in the universe. The art style is actually pretty close… Though not at all related to our Irk.
@ExtraMedium
TIL
@chienfou @ExtraMedium Guess I don’t travel in the appropriate circles.
Ok, so THIS goat is off to a fantastic start. I mean that whole ‘I HAD TWO ACCOUNTS’ thing is a hoot.

Thanks for taking up the mantle (shroud?) for the month that ends in the highlight of some people’s year.
Looking forward to the musings/excuses/input on all our pretty bitching!
/giphy congatulations
Ha… pretty bitching vs PETTY bitching…
/eightball was that Freudian?
Hey… @lisagd22 did you break the eight-ball?
@chienfou @lisagd22 “It is decidedly so.”
@chienfou @lisagd22
Don’t count on it
/8ball Did either of them break the oracle?
@werehatrack
Then why did it fail?
@chienfou Ask again later.
@chienfou
/eightball does a leading space break this?
Okay, that might be the answer. The rendering will trim out a leading space but the space disables the bot. So if you had a leading space there, that would explain the failure.
@werehatrack
Don’t think I had an extra space but as you said you can’t tell. Thought maybe the “Freudian” threw it for a loop… I actually tried it more than once and deleted one attempt. Pretty sure I wouldn’t have gotten a space inadvertently in front of the slash on both events.
Yours also uses the numerical character rather than the spelled out word. Which TBH I didn’t know would even work.
@chienfou I checked, the /eightball spelling works, but I was able to defeat it with the aforementioned space. It’s easy for one to creep in, so I thought it worth mentioning.
@werehatrack
Thanks
That’s… A costume made by a goat without opposable thumbs
/giphy I got a rock

@pakopako If the goat had opposable thumbs we’d be in trouble as the goat would likely achieve world domination.
Stolen from:

@Kidsandliz Simians have two opposable thumbs and all we seem to make are more problems.
SO YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR ENDING MY 0-DEATH STREAK IN DELTARUNE!!
I CURSE YE!
Blame? Unblame? Today, my cumulative Meh button clicks reached 2200, and my current streak isn’t very long, so I decided that I will intentionally skip tomorrow’s button to synchronize the counters (for at least the last two digits.) I had been doing that with my longest streak when I unintentionally broke it at the entirely appropriate level of 404. (Streak Continuation Not Found.) It will be interesting to see just how long I can keep the new one going. (Must remember to only click on ONE item on a 'thon day.)
Blame. Yet again.

BLAME! American Science & Surplus is gone! After 93 years, their mail order division is closed, the website isn’t taking orders, and only two of the physical stores will remain open. Their range of odd, sometimes crummy, often useful, and frequently hard-to-find stuff was unusual and useful, and now we’ve lost them. Nothing I have seen goes into details about what caused them to shut down, but I strongly suspect that the general turmoil combined with the owner’s inability to find a buyer for the business had to figure in this.
It would have been amazing if Mercatalyst had been willing and able to step up, but while the attitudes appeared similar, the business model(s) and locations were doubtless too far apart, and I doubt that our Breakfast Octopus even knew that AS&S was available.
They were excellent for a long time. I will miss them.
@werehatrack I misread how long they had been in business, and didn’t check the math, it’s actually 88 years. Still, it’s a damn shame that they’re gone.