It was me. Sorry.

We are a society of blame.

It always feels better when we know who did something.

If a kid comes home with gum in her hair, we gotta find out who put it there. If we get anonymous flowers in the mail, we cannot rest until we figure out who sent them (And when we find out it was our girlfriend instead of a secret admirer, we try not to look disappointed– not that this helps me make any point. This isn’t even about blame. In fact, I should just delete these parenthesis. But I’m not going to, and now you already forgot what this paragraph is about. Fuck.). If someone gets pregnant, everyone usually asks who did it.

Our brains have to make sense of it all. And if we know who it was, we can make up some story to explain away the predicament. “Oh, It was Javier who murdered that squirrel in the playground with that shank he made out of pen parts and duct tape? Well, his parents are going through a divorce.”

First we find out the person responsible. Then we or the person make up an explanation for the action. Then we decide whether the action is acceptable. The mixing and matching of the explanation and person is very important in our blaming process and the resulting response.

For example, an entire town’s dictionaries are found burning in the middle of a street. They’ve been robbed from all the town’s houses and sit there melting into ash.

The townsmen panic. They first want to know WHO did it. WHO was it? They must blame someone!

There are two suspects found with ink on their fingers: Michele Bachmann and Vanna White.

The reason “She couldn’t stand the idea of seeing another letter” means something totally different for either suspect. It makes sense for either one since one sees letters every day and one has a hard time forming sentences. However, for one suspect with this reasoning, the burning of the dictionaries might even be forgiven. This is why the WHO is so important.

There’s always gotta be someone. Someone to blame. Someone ELSE to blame. Not you. Not me. Someone else.

That is the problem with living alone and being an independent person. I am so tired of not having anyone else to blame. When I get a late charge for paying my bills after the 20th, all I want to do is find out who was responsible for paying the bills this month and then see if his reasoning is good enough. But there is nobody to make suspect but me, and my reasons are never good.

The other day I got pulled over by a nice policeman for talking on the phone while driving. It was the morning after a Taboo Tales show, and an audience member was telling me how great it was.

“But officer, I had a show last night, and I needed to hear some validation.”

That reasoning wasn’t good enough for the officer AND there was no other suspect in sight. I wanted to blame Obama or blame my parents. But, I couldn’t. Dammit, I couldn’t. I had to send in a check for $160 yesterday because it was truly my fault.

Double Dammit.

That’s why I would like to be in a relationship. I want to be able to blame the missing quinoa or the lack of garbage bags or the busted hot tub on someone else (I also just want a hot tub.).

But I can’t. I am forced to take responsibility for my own actions, which seems foreign in this society. Debt crisis? That was the banks! No… it was Wall Street! No… the mortgage brokers. Definitely not the government. And cancer? Nope. Not our fault. It’s not the society that thinks maltodextrine should be in every cracker and shampoos should be filled with a ton of chemicals we’ve never heard of. No way. Nope. Not our fault. In fact, that cancer thing nobody understands. Mystery. Too big to blame it on anyone. Just do some more charity walks and everything will be fine.

Fuck that. I’m gonna make it cool to take responsibility. So, I’m gonna say it here: I sometimes pay my bills late because I don’t really keep that shit on a calendar. AND… I was talking on the phone while driving because I’m an insecure narcissist who needed some validation from a voice on the other end. And I also contributed to the failing economy because I’m really cheap and I refuse to spend more than $20 on any item of clothing.

Damn it feels good to take responsibility. Try it. AhemGeorgeBush.

This post is randomly political. I didn’t mean for it to be since I try to steer clear of that arena. As you can tell, my bank crisis and George Bush references are pretty old. It’s been a while since I watched the news. There has been a president elected after Bush, right? I hope this shit is still relevant. Is Michele Bachmann still around? I thought I saw her burning dictionaries the other day.