Don't Blame Me! - Surprise! I'm Not Going to My Party

Episode Date: December 29, 2022

For But Am I Wrong Melisa: New Year's Rants Meghan: Big Quicksand In But Am You Wrong: Not going to boyfriend's mom's birthday dinner Party you didn't ask to be planned Brody Jenner sexualizing his stepsister Neighbors shoveling show in a handicap space And in But Are They Wrong AKA "Rachel of The Week" they nominate: Melisa: Rep. Elect George Santos Meghan: New York Times Crossword Puzzle Write In: [e-mail] Weigh In: Vote in the weekly poll on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meghanandmelissa Buy Our Merch: https://store.dftba.com/collections/don-t-blame-me Join Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/dontblameme Follow Us: https://www.instagram.com/meghanandmelisa https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdYV7J5p/ Follow Meghan: https://www.instagram.com/meghanrienks/ https://twitter.com/meghanrienks https://www.youtube.com/c/meghanrienks Follow Melisa: https://www.instagram.com/sheisnotmelissa/ https://www.instagram.com/diamondmprintproductions https://twitter.com/SheIsNotMelissa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

hello oh wait hold on that was a good asmr let me start that over i need you to pump it really hard a little too hard i just want to hear the juices not the plastic there we go should i direct porn maybe don't ruin the iconic lip gloss noise what is this hi everyone welcome to but am i wrong starring two people who you know it's hard to say we've never been wrong considering i just said that little mama saying lip gloss and i was wrong but that is the first time it's ever happened and it never happens in the context of this podcast even though that was in the context of this podcast my name is megan what

is your name my name is melissa hi melissa hi hello how are you hello it's me we are so excited to bring you a brand new episode of this podcast where we tell you listeners if you were the hero or the villain in your story. We also talk about our own lives, our personal hot takes. And then finally, we have our final segment where we round it out

with nominating the absolute worst of the week who is the wrongest of the wrong or on a list of many wrongs of wrongs. And one of the best parts of the podcast is that you all get to vote on who you think was wrong in each segment.

So if you agree with us, you disagree with us. And then on our Friday episode, we read the results from the previous week and sometimes we have follow-ups from people who are in the but are you wrong segment where people write in sometimes we just have people with their own opinions yeah so our first segment but am i wrong second segment but are you wrong third segment but are they wrong i do feel like we should let people know that you watch the video version on patreon and we also do live streams twice a month if you're watching the video version

you'll see that megan does not have her frame tv on that she was setting it up she set it up earlier and then when she realized we were just doing audio for cnx tuesday she was like oh my gosh i'm gonna turn this off and i was like light flex and now we have the follow-up if you listen on tuesday now you're listening now and you're like or watching and you're like where why is the frame tv off well i've been thinking this since we started and then i was like i'm gonna bring it up now because why not thank you for reminding me to put it back on it's on now it is not crooked i think it definitely looks crooked in the video and that is because my computer is resting on a bunch of my i'm on an ottoman that's still it's just it is straight i mean if you line

it up with the uh tvc and beneath it you can just say see that's not crooked okay cool i did realize the other day or yesterday when i was like pouring my water in my water bottle and i like was at a step back and was at a weird angle i was like our entire kitchen is slanted mine is too it's as you know my the foundation we're in la the trees they plant trees that don't belong in places and it just kind of uh messes up everybody's foundations yep and not that i think we should just tear all the trees down but it's also illegal so uh that's also part of the reason i don't know who did this if it was like the last owner or like the person who built the house whatever they literally planted a tree on top of our sewer line like literally like right on top of

it and that was the one that we had to keep clearing out because the roots just naturally grow into it yeah i was like oh that was not logical at all so we also have to apply for potentially apply for a permit to cut it down anyways all right i you're lagging so much i'm turning the frame off okay everybody go to the patreon look at it i'm gonna give you an extra second wow that's so beautiful so nice so cool and now it's going off all right so this is but am I wrong? And this is when we either choose a hot take or something from our personal lives that we may or may not be wrong. And then the other of us that's not reading it will choose and then y'all can vote later in the week. So here's my hot takes for the new year for resolutions, etc.

Some people may say spend less time on social media. I say spend more time on social media. I think it's good for building community. I think if you curate your algorithm or the list of people that you follow, that it opens up your eyes to a lot of things in the world. It can make you feel better about yourself. It can educate you about new things. It's all about how you as a person take the information and use it. I would love to add on one thing that I wholeheartedly agree with that. People always talk about like, you know, social media, like you just are comparing yourself to people i'm like you're following the wrong people follow people you want to be nothing like like it has the same effect people that you adore like and you're happy for something like that yes

exactly people that you're cheering for yeah people you're cheering for and then people who you're like you can follow people who make you feel better about your life if so social media is toxic you know you have to do you have to out toxic toxic social media if it's toxic that's because you've made social media toxic for yourself you gotta just change it i learned so much i quote things i've helped save lives based on things that i found found online so will you elaborate on that one no um okay uh don't let people shame i know that you're gonna agree with this don't let people shame you for not reading books because people make resolutions i'm gonna read more books this year blah blah

who cares I mean if you want the books just to be an accessory where you just sit and you look like you bring a book to the beach you sit and look like you're reading so what they can be decorations in your homes we as people as a society read more than people were reading years ago because we're constantly on screens and we have to read things all the time so I feel like we're better off anyway yeah i nobody who like is like oh i'm not a big reader like i feel like people think that they just like then suddenly like sit in dark rooms and like don't do anything and are just like oh and it's like that's not the only way that you can stretch your mind better yourself learn about things like it doesn't have to be from like a physical copy of a book like

people do other other other things as well this is for people that have a hard time saying no things, sign up for a marathon, not to set like some goals to prove something to yourself, but to give you an excuse to get out of things. So I can't go out to eat today because I'm fueling for my training. I can't hang out today because I'm going to the gym. I can't do whatever because I have to go to sleep and get up early to train. Doesn't matter what it is. You have an excuse to get out of anything. And then the day of the race, just say you have cramps or something. And then you sign up again because you want to prove that like you can do it and it's just cyclical wow and also it gives you an excuse anytime someone is like do you want to go to olive garden and you're like

i do i do yeah i need to carb load i need to carb load for my marathon and then you can also just wear band-aids on your nipples all the time just be like i'm protecting for the chafing that's a good it's a very good idea i do think it is kind of expensive to sign up though right some there's free ones if there's also if there's a charity you can be yeah because you get sponsors and so you can be like raising money for things it's like a you know it's a good way for people to yeah it's a good way for people to give you money to donate to something they get a tax write off and then they don't necessarily have to feel bad like are marathons just adult lapathons yes if it's one that gets back to charities yeah i think we should get back to uh lapathons

just running the children the children had one a few weeks ago and i just wrote a check for each one of well i could pay online this year and i was like y'all don't have to do it if you don't want to but they did it because they wanted to i was like i just wrote blank everybody got 30 oh nice i was not good at the running part of the lapathon your knees turn inwards you know we're not all built for the same thing no i'm certain i'm built i'm built for impersonating demi lovato and camp rock i am not built for running yeah we all have our things stop engaging with toxic people because you want to be nice or feel like you have an allegiance or an obligation to then fuck it and move on i feel like possibly we wouldn't have a show if everybody enacted this

but yeah so don't enact it too hard but if you're going to not enact it throw some drama in there like give us a good give us a good storyline give us a good plot yeah play more video games and i mean like even just like sims i play marvel strike force play more it's good for your brain it's good for your minds and if somebody's like oh you're just childish or whatever this is science science says that we need to be more interactive with things to help our brain juices flow so whatever yeah spend that energy keeping kids off of alt right subreddits that's let us play video games and peas um i saw a post that said i haven't seen any person say that 2023 is going to be their year great i think we've all learned that you got to take this one second at a time i'll probably go

through like 20 different moods by the end of today while we're recording and to be honest like most resolutions are just something that capitalism is pumping into us anyway so that you can go spend money at the gym spend money on this diet spend money to buy things for whatever your hobbies are. Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it. My resolutions this year, it's not really resolutions because I started enacting it this year, but it's to be more childish. I want to enjoy things that I enjoyed as a child. So I'm going to start taking gymnastics. I'm going to play golf. I'm going to play tennis. I'm going to, you know, when you were a kid, you just did all these activities just to enjoy them. They weren't for a purpose other than enjoyment and learning a new skill

and teamwork i could care everything i named is an individual thing so you don't really need a team but fuck real resolutions and be more childish i'm with you on all of that i have strong feelings about resolutions in the sense that like i think we should be self-reflecting like you know throughout the whole year and if it's like holding a gun to your head something you have to change about yourself like if it's not something at the forefront of your mind and it's not something that you've like seen occur in your life that you do want to like make a difference and a change with like i just think like not fucking worth it like you know what i mean like it's like the same thing i feel about shopping where it's like i like to go shopping when i know what i want and i know what

i'm looking for but otherwise you just go shopping and you're like i don't know i'm here maybe i'll buy something and it's like that's it's not it's not going to be your new favorite item of clothing it's not going to be the resolution that that sticks in that sense and um i like you know setting goals as they are relevant to my life right and it should be again something you do all year long and then finally a resolution that we can all stick by is people put your toilet seat down when you flush this is something that i feel very strongly about for some reason recently there's been a lot of videos that have been coming up in my life where I'm seeing when people don't put their toilet seats down, how many juices are splashing. I thought we all knew this. I

remember when I was a child and there was a 2020 report on this. And I thought this is something that we all knew, but apparently it's not. When you don't close the toilet after you use the bathroom and you flush, it shoots up to six feet, both up and down and like horizontally and vertically in a circle in the sphere like you're shooting piss and shit particles everywhere when you don't put the toilet seat down and then if you don't have your toothbrush covered you're just putting that into your mouth whenever you open something from your cabinet you're touching it and grabbing it and pulling it out like any surface that you touch in your back when you're sitting there watching your face and you put like your towel down on the sink and you pick it up

and you dry your face off you're just smashing piss and shit into your face and so put your toilet seats down in 2023 that was the same energy as sucking dick and cock but i there's this there was this tiktok that like went viral like went around that was like doing a science experiment test like should we like what should you do with that and it was like yeah you should and i commented on it and i was like what did people think the lid was for and all these people are like you know to like sit on afterwards like your pets don't get like drink the water i'm like what like what the fuck like do you uh-huh and if you think of like the old like original toilets that aren't flushing there's a reason why there's a large drop well like to where your shit's going your

literal shit is going it's a large drop and i just can't even fathom it and like the toothbrush thing like our last place our bathroom like our toilet was like in our primary bathroom was like a little we had a toilet little room and then the rest you can shut the door you know very nice in that sense and that even gave me a larger peace of mind but disgusting all right it's your turn so my hot take is against big quicksand somebody somewhere made quicksand out to be a peril a obstacle that we were going to have to face in our daily life and i would like a back pay in compensation for the anxiety and the trauma that i have endured through my entire childhood thinking that one day me or someone that i loved it was inevitable that they were going to be

essentially swallowed by the earth and and or the fact that i have had to log in my brain how to get out of quicksand when i couldn't pass tests in math you think that maybe if i hadn't had so much fucking brain power absorbed by trying not to get killed by quicksand i would have stayed in college i would have gotten a degree maybe i would be a a rocket scientist like it this plagued me my whole life and might honestly be the cause of my initial anxiety. Like, I just think that whoever came up with this, like you're fucked up in the head. And I just want to talk about this because I Googled how many people have died by quicksand. No, I Googled how many quicksand deaths per year. And it is basically impossible to die by quicksand in the way that it has been

depicted in movies and how we've talked about it it's because it's denser than the human body so you can get stuck in it but you don't get stuck down to the bottom you float to the surface our legs are this is from britannica our legs are pretty dense so they may sink but the torso contains the lungs and thus is buoyant enough to stay out of trouble so physicists have calculated that the force required to extract your foot from quicksand at a rate of one centimeter per second is roughly equal to the force needed to lift a medium-sized car that seems scary one genuine in danger is the person who's immobilized in quicksand could be engulfed and drowned by the incoming tide so there you go that makes a little more sense but this is not to say that like people

haven't died from quicksand but it's other it's where the quicksand is located it's all the other extenuating circumstances but someone on quora which you know is obviously fact verified that they were like i think this is just what parent like people told kids to prevent them from trespassing, that they were like, at any moment, you could be sucked into quicksand. And even Googling quicksand, it's like there's thousands of videos of people being like, how to get out of quicksand, a quicksand tutorial, like all of these things. And I just want to know who is reaping the financial benefits of the fear mongering of quicksand. All the 80s, 90s and early 2000s movies made it seem like this is something that we were going to encounter in

everyday life I saw a video of some people that like were just getting in it for fun and as long as you keep your little feet moving you don't sink and even when you don't when you do sink it's so slow like you can't get stuck in it like it's a tourist attraction in some places it's just like I thought that I was going to have first of all I thought I was gonna have to cross a bridge with a bridge toll and solve a riddle to go to work every day and I also thought that i was going to have to be like i can't go around this quicksand i have to go through it like i thought that this was going to be a daily occurrence you want to go to target you got to pass you got to pass some quicksand and you know what they did not did not tell us about which i

think that they distracted us with quicksand because they didn't want us to know about sinkholes sinkholes are fucking scary and deadly and and common and and horrific and i don't know who's on the quicksand payroll but they are somehow financially benefiting from us not knowing that the real villain here is singles you're right you're right the council of quicksand they have it out they need to report for their crimes like it's kind of disappeared from media at this point so i feel like somebody did did knock down the council at some point in the last maybe 10 15 years i would i would like to talk to those people as well yeah maybe they can help they can help take down big milk big printer we need to get big kale on the case yeah

gotta call her up i just remember going to the beach as a kid and like especially at night just being riddled with fear that i was like walking back to the car and i was like i'm gonna get sucked up by quicksand and then the second that i reached any sort of like tacky kind of sticky mud i was like i'm a goner this is it yeah yeah i remember when i lived in texas going to galveston beach which is disgusting it's like black but not in the way that's like black sand it's just filth and i it looked like what quicksand had been depicted at and i was like yeah that's what it is this is terrifying i die so fuck you big quicksand and i also would really like to know if anybody has actually encountered quicksand in their personal life

and you didn't go to it like as a tourist attraction i mean i would even like to know if you went to it as a tourist attraction because okay but i would like to know if you actually if you've ever encountered it but there's no shot that anyone's ever encountered it in the wild yeah all right so uh let's take a break all right we're back and now it's time for but are you wrong and that's when y'all write into but am i wrong pod at gmail.com and share situations that you might have been right or please keep it to 300 words or less and if not you'll get an email back saying tighten this shit up make it right make it twice i like that here we go writer number one hi megan and melissa i've

been listening to the podcast since the beginning and want to thank you for truly being my biggest role models through my teens well thank you how'd you turn out i i guess as i finish reading we'll get a little insight i 22 she her have been with my boyfriend 23 he him for a little over two years now and i'm wondering if i'm wrong for not going to his mom's birthday dinner we both live at home and so i eat dinner with him and his family quite often recently i've tagged along for a couple dinners out his dad has made a point of separating my bill from theirs each time which makes sense but adds to this feeling that I'm overstepping. I have always been insecure about whether I spend too much time at their house one to two times a week and if they like me. Recently, my boyfriend's

dad asked him to make a reservation at this expensive restaurant for his mom's 60th birthday. My initial thought was that this would not be a dinner I'm invited to since it's a special occasion including his mom's two sisters and I'm not family. However, my boyfriend and his dad both assumed I would be coming. When asked, I was surprised and said that I wasn't sure because I have an exam the next day. This is true, but not the real reason why I said no. His mom was not there for me to ask and I feel awkward bringing it up now. For context, I do not have a good relationship with my mom or stepmother and struggle with anxiety, depression, and beliefs that I'm a burden. Was I right to exclude myself from the dinner so it could be just family? Or is

my judgment being clouded by my insecurities and declining is rude disappointing am i wrong for not going i would say you're wrong if you just assume that you should go but you were actually invited and since you're invited then it might have been a little bit rude to say no but also you have your own trauma that gives this that gives you a reason to feel like a burden and so were you wrong for saying no not necessarily but I understand that you had an excuse and you felt like a burden but because you're invited I just feel like it might have been a little bit rude especially if you've gone to dinners before where it was just regular dinners and not anything to celebrate somebody's birthday I just I and like this might just be I mean I can definitely say that this is probably

like my own like life experience in the in-between uh or coming to this is that like i would feel a little weird that like i'm being invited to go out to dinner with like boyfriend's family over like regularly and it's i'm being invited to like existing plans and then like they're like they're separating my check and then i'm assuming they're paying for their kids too that would just make me feel a little weird unless it was like oh we're all gonna go out to dinner we're all like paying our own way we're doing whatever blah blah blah like you and your boyfriend are like you're splitting your half they're splitting their half but if it's like just individually you that to me is just kind of gives like the uncomfortable I'm crashing someone's like like I'm in middle school

and I'm at my friend's house for dinner and I feel like it's like oh well we didn't know you were staying let's scrounge up something else it just if it was in add on to added plans I could totally see how that might add on to your previous mom issues stepmom issues like I could totally see how that would compile and then make it feel like oh wow I kind of feel like a burden here but also at the same time I think it just really depends on what your relationship is so like if it's like oh we all want to go you can afford to go to dinner spend money to like for yourself for dinner and you like want to go and this was something you all decided you want to do together that that I think is totally like that like yeah like everyone pay their way whatever that is but I think like

I wouldn't have assumed I think the fact that you assumed that you weren't invited to like him asking you to make reservations I probably would have assumed I wasn't invited either because I think it's weirder like you said I think it'd be weirder to assume you were invited if it that wasn't how like the conversation sounded like but I don't know I don't think that there's like any kind of way you could have won in the situation because I think it would have also probably been weird if you ask the mom like are you sure like do you want me to go because like what can she say like she can only like really say yes so that's hard especially when it comes to anxiety like the I find it really hard with the the things that I can't just like ask direct questions about which

helps call my anxiety like I have to like pick up on like social cues and nuances and I was like well I can't I'm not a fucking reliable narrator like I like that's where my anxiety brain comes in and this seems like one of those and then I also think even asking your boy like he'll be oh no everything's great like don't worry about it or whatever it is but I do think that you know when you have your own baggage with your own like personal shit that can cloud your judgment but I also think it kind of gives you like a cheat sheet for red flags so I wouldn't I wouldn't go so far to ignore it and assume every every other interaction that you have is is not people making you feel like you're being excluded or you're being a burden or whatever that is like I wouldn't

use that as your default kind of assumption but I also wouldn't over over correct to the point where like you are putting yourself in situations that you don't feel comfortable in because you're telling yourself that like it's all in your head that people are feeling like they shouldn't make you feel like that in general and they might not be making you feel like that but I do think that like whether you feel it because they're doing it or because your brain is doing that to you I think that you should be in situations that you're enjoying and you shouldn't just force it if you're feeling like a burden so I don't know I guess depending on how close I was with them I probably would have like done the same I've been like oh no just family like I like I'll step out

and unless someone like really insisted and like made it really clear that they wanted me there I I don't think you're wrong for that part all right your turn okay I'm 28 she her my friend 28 she her had her third born son on my birthday last year about two and a half months ago she expressed wanting to have a separate party for him with all of our friends as her and her husband's family would be in town for his birthday weekend and she was concerned about being overwhelmed with that many people she also expressed how she'd like to celebrate me since we had the same birthday i expressed that wasn't necessary but i would love to attend to celebrate her son since then we have had two conversations where she asked my opinion on what day would make sense

given everyone's schedules we've also discussed how this party was fully intended as an alternative way for us to celebrate her son and in no way about me last week she mistakenly texted our group chat with an invitation to what apparently is my surprise party upon receiving this text i texted her and said that i was not comfortable with this and that i have other conflicting plans that day that don't allow me to attend the entire duration of the event she immediately backtracked and said it'll just be a laid-back hang and that she'd love to see me for however long I'm able to come by,

but that she, quote, she'd rather have the focus be on me since her son won't even remember, despite me stating that I am not comfortable, nor do I want to party. I then reiterated these feelings to her and she said she understood. Since then, I have learned that she has not texted

the remaining invitees to correct the invitation. I've also learned she's left out other close friends of mine. Am I wrong for being frustrated in considering not even attending. If you attend, like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This surprise parties are like engagements. You need to know that the person you're throwing a surprise party for like surprises, a would like a surprise party and is either knows a little bit of what about what's going on and is going to be like an excited anticipation is it is it not like

am i reading too much into it or you need to perfectly craft this in a way where you aren't like hurting their feelings to mislead them that it's not going to happen but that they are going to show up to the surprise party and have the time the energy the capacity to do it like i only think surprise parties work when you're telling someone you're going to do something that requires like the same amount of glam prep like mental conversation and like social level like it's not like oh come over we're just like going to do i gotta go to the dmv and then you arrive and it's a surprise party no no no no no like and you don't even you don't even check the first box which is someone who wants a surprise party don't go yeah i'm a control freak and i hate surprise

parties you are wow megan wow i i've uncovered two surprise parties that have been planned for me i'm also a snoop which you might not know and i can tell when people are acting weird around me and i know something's up and so i would be mad about this especially when you said you didn't want like she's specifically going against your wishes you said you didn't want to do anything on these days. If you want thing, you're like, Oh, you know, I want to do something, but I don't want to step on your sons, blah, blah, blah. Like I get that. But, and then they're like, surprise, it's actually your party. Nothing. That would be a totally different story, but you've explicitly said that you don't want to do this. So you are not wrong. I would be mad.

It seems like they're still going to have a party regardless if you're there or not. if you want to go cool if you don't want to go which you don't don't go like you don't need to go anywhere just do whatever your other plans are and don't try to rush anything and you know let her know that you appreciate her caring but like you're caring too much and not caring about my actual wishes but in a nice way yeah like it's not a kind gesture if it's not a gesture you want And so like, you don't owe her shit about going of like, oh, well, she planned all of this. And like, you know, she really like whatever. It's like, I mean, she did a shitty job. She didn't like even invite all of your friends and also like didn't respect your wishes. And so I'm like, why would I thank you for a shitty, like a shitty thing you did that you can mask as a good gesture in your head? yeah it sounds like that she's doing it more for her than she is for you and i have my one of my best friends sarah her son's birthday is the day after mine and i i would go up to where she lived

for my birthday every for like three or four years and like i didn't want like a lot to go happen for my birthday for that because i was like he's a kid he's gonna enjoy this like i enjoy my birthday but he's gonna enjoy this way more but she always like did things just with me um separately and I was like this is cool these are things that I enjoy we go get a foot massage or something and she'd have like a separate cake for me and things but like that's I just wanted to not be in LA so that was what my birthday was but you know people that understand you and get what you actually want yeah i'm like very against these uh inferring things into people's words and what they say as opposed to just like i'm here to take people at face value like if you tell me you like

something i'm gonna think that you like it if you i'm not here to if you're playing a mind game with me i am not participating and like you're just gonna have to go with like the obvious and so yeah fuck this don't go you would not be wrong at all all right writer number three hi megan and melissa this one isn't about a relationship rather social media i recently made a tiktok about how i found it weird that brody jenner said on national television that he got a half chub after seeing his at the time stepsister kim kardashian in a bathing suit or in a bikini it has had a substantial amount of views and likes but now over half the comments are telling me it's not weird and writing a lot of comments i'm so confused please tell me if i'm wrong p.s i admire you

both so much and have been a fan since the start i feel like i've grown so much by learning from and with you both thank you thank you for your kind words no you're not wrong because brody jenner's what like 40 how old is this man well so is she i know but i'm i'm gonna say why i'm saying this specifically i still think i just want everyone to know that that was not me disputing that it's weird i have thoughts on this that are actually so timely that i like a conversation mott's and i had yesterday 39 why is a 39 year old man talking about half chubs like you're a grown-ass man why are you saying the outside thoughts i mean the inside thoughts outside um how old were they when so he was like 11 12 when caitlin and chris got married so he was in

he probably at that point didn't really consider her a sibling and so didn't see it as something gross but it is gross like y'all have blood related siblings together too and so as a kid okay you know you have this hot older person maybe but like still disgusting and you don't quite understand the sibling dynamics but you're 39 years old why are you saying this out loud it's gross like it's really gross and i'm guessing the people that are disputing you are people that have these same thoughts about their step siblings don't see anything wrong with it i mean as i've mentioned before this is like on porn websites this is like a top it's the top category is people having relations with their step family members so this is something that is

constantly thought about but if you have those thoughts keep them to yourselves at your big ass age not every thought needs to be an outside thought like i also think everyone defending it is probably the repeat viewers of that porn yeah no this is like uh-uh uh-uh no no no gross gross gross gross and also if i'm not mistaken chris had like they would see the edit before it came out and so the fact that nobody was like hey like wasn't it because it was on keeping up the kardashians i'm assuming that it was on keeping up the kardashians or the new show that's on hulu regardless i think in both cases i know and currently but i'm pretty sure in keeping the kardashians they also got to see the edit first like the fact that like nobody protected like

the fact that or not even protected the fact that this was so normalized makes me go ew what weird things weren't said on air like that's so like yucky and like how the dynamic is like that's just someone should have corrected you an adult who like was you know if this was like a thought you had when you were younger like someone should have corrected you pretty early on and like so you understood this and so you weren't being a you know a fully grown adult saying those like that shit and it reminds me of last night Monsignor watching friends and it was the episode where denise richards is the cameo she plays ross and monica's cousin and i was like i just need people to understand i need writers to understand that incest is not a storyline on a 30-minute

sitcom it's literally just not like the fact that i was like so he goes on to like have a child with rachel and like we ship them at the end i go we should have if i was rachel i'd been like you tried to kiss your fucking cousin no like never never like i i am done with you and we are just supposed to move on for the next episode there's just a new little bit there and i think what happened is in the writer's room if someone was probably like uh and they go well i think you know i wouldn't kiss my cousin but hey my cousin's not denise richard it's like ew but kissing cousins is a saying like i don't i don't think it was like frowned upon until i think it's a newer thing that's being frowned upon i mean there's been presidents that have married their

cousins so but even in how it's like done in the show where it's just like ah ha ha like it's the the punch line of it is that like it's half like people are thinking it's weird but then other people are not thinking it's just it's a thing of like this was normal and then it got to the point where this isn't normal so we're gonna laugh about it now and now it's just like i can't even say that's completely disgusting because again a lot of people are still into it so writer you're not wrong but oh and i did want to touch upon the part and maybe not touch upon it's not the right word to see to use in this instance but allegedly according to ray j chris was the one that reviewed and edited the sex tape and put it out to the masses so if that is true then what chris is

reviewing edits for whatever the new kardashian show is called i don't think she cares that much as long as it's gonna build buzz and make headlines i have to assume it was also the older show because they weren't weren't step siblings they're not step siblings currently they were then right so I assume it was but I still think she had editing thing what what's Brandy's relationship with Ray J they're close okay so here's the thing I don't I that makes me think okay well you know it's by proxy like I I I trust or distrust people by proxy and if you and Brandy are still close I I mean you could be lying you could not be lying i just think that the person who looks the worst here is is brody and i would be mortified

especially like i'm pretty sure like he's married with like kids now like if i was his wife i would be like that's just like so embarrassing also this is old that's what i just typed it in and it said uh this is an article from 2014 and it says for on e-news and it says brody jenner clarifies controversial joke about kim kardashian i just wanted to give people a good laugh he was 33 when he made that statement still disgusting so it was still disgusting and i also just i think if you're an adult and you want to joke about something that's like you know off like just like kind of icky or whatever that is like do it on your own time a don't do it on national tv and also don't do it when you have younger siblings who are there watching you and then paying

attention to like your dynamics and like what's okay like that's like i just i really don't like that because the two the kendall and kylie were younger than that and that's his their blood sibling and like they're the ones in between and look at me defending kendall and kylie but like that's no no no no no no don't confuse the children yeah all right well next okay hi megan and melissa i21 she her live in a very cold and snowy area this week we had a snow storm that accumulated to about 19 inches holy shit i live in an apartment complex and spend my morning watching the snow when i noticed two individuals were shoveling their car out however they were putting all of the snow from their car in front and behind the car next to them the car

next to them was parked in handicapped parking. Essentially, they were blocking in this car more than it already was, making it nearly impossible for them to get out. Am I wrong for reporting them to the apartment complex for this? It felt very ableist whether they intended it or not. Side note, I asked some friends and they said I should have tried talking to them first, which looking back, I can see how I was wrong for not confronting them myself. However, I am not confrontational and felt more comfortable going directly to the apartment complex this feels like a fucking intro to how this person ended up in the bad place like swear to god like you could have fucking this is eleanor shell's drop like this is this would

have been in the montage of like why did i end up in the bad place even like the being in a parking spot adds on another level but like even if it wasn't that like that's a fucking dick move Yeah, you're not wrong. And as far as your friends saying talking to them, you never know how people are going to react. You don't know if you're actually safe in that situation. I have a question. Are your friends people that identify as men because they have a lot more, you know, ways to feel safe in situations like this? because i personally wouldn't feel safe saying anything and so i think you did the right thing i wholeheartedly agree this is similar to how i feel about like road rage where it's just like you're not you have no power and you're not safe and that that person knows your car they know your license plate all of that shit you know where you live these people know where you live and so like That's not not like that is that is nowhere. I am a confrontational person and I'm not going to be the kind of confrontational I would with someone who I like share walls with or who knows where I live.

like that's that's just a safety thing that's not a non-confrontational thing um and i would assume that uh those people are yeah i would wonder if they are um men or sheltered and somewhat delusional about safety so all right i'm gonna take another break and we are back for our final segment but are they wrong where we each nominate the absolute woe of the week the rachel of the week and we publicly shame them on our podcast because that's a podcaster form that's what they deserve so my pick for this week is representative elect george santos of new york so the new york times did a piece an expose if you will about this man he was elected recently in the midterms and flipped a blue district in new york

Tourette. Well, he lied about pretty much everything in his life. He lied about the jobs he had. He said that he worked at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. Never did. He said that he graduated from, and I apologize if I'm not pronouncing this right, Baruch College. They have no record of him graduating. He said that he had an animal rescue group called Friends of Pets United, which he claimed he was taxed from, IRS has no record of this, says that he had a company called Devolder, a family firm that manages 80 million in assets, yet there are no clients. He also said in a WNYC interview that he lost four employees at the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016. After the New York Times reviewed the obituaries, none of the 49 victims worked at this

allegedly fake company. When he was 19, he stole a checkbook of a man that his mother was caring for and made fraudulent purchases, including shoes. He confessed and was charged for the crime, and he's still wanted in Brazil because he just left. This man also attended the January 6th speech for Donald Trump. So he's also a election denier. So his team, his lawyer released a statement on his Twitter and it says, George Santos represents the kind of progress that the left is so threatened by. A gay Latino, first generation American and Republican who won a Biden district in overwhelming fashion by showing everyday voters that there is a better option than the broken promises and failed policies of the Democratic Party. After four years in the public

eye and on the verge of being sworn in as a member of the Republican-led 118th Congress, the New York Times launches a shotgun blast of attacks. It's no surprise that Congressman-elect Santos has enemies at the New York Times who are attempting to smear his good name with these defamatory allegations. As Winston Churchill famously said, you have enemies, good. It means that you stood up for something sometime in your life. Joseph Murray, ESQ. Well, so he didn't deny anything that none of this was true, which is telling of itself. Also, that quote isn't from Winston Churchill. I mean, he might have said that, but it's from Victor Hugo that wrote The Hunchback of notre notre dame according to politifacts so right i mean obviously why this is rachel the week

in my opinion because he's just a liar that has been elected and you know what the republican party won't probably won't do anything about this because they want to hold on to the lead as majority in the house of representatives but everything he did is a lie that is insane yeah like i'm i ah it just kept getting worse and worse and worse the pulse nightclub thing i would really love for them to address like you know if you have enemies you're doing something right so tell us how lying about that tell us how that what you're what you're doing right there explain lying about everything so to you lying about your whole life your whole career about innocent deaths that's doing something about having an animal yeah show me who benefited

show me what the group that came out of that was you have a fake business that you have no clients for but somehow you're managing 80 million dollars all this is a lie and you got elected on a lie where like i'm sure the republicans really felt like they were checking off a few boxes of like we don't hate gay people we don't hate minorities like look at him he's been elected this is what y'all want to stand for okay i just like sir at this point just be like you know you kind of did a favor in the sense of like look how ridiculous and how horrific you can be while still getting elected look how you can lie scam cheat and do it in ways that like regardless of your political party you would find egregious and also pointless the jig is up you did

it now now let go back go to brazil and do your whatever your sentence for whichever your whatever whatever it is that they want you there for like like unless it's they're there and they're trying to pull it i'm not entirely sure if the policing or criminal uh justice system there so i would hope it's for your actual crimes not for who you are so like this is just like you did it now now you can't actually do it but you did it but you can't do it melissa this is insane right like anna delvey like do you think this means anna delvey's gonna like run for president or something like i mean she's not american so but so lie say that you are but she could run for another position that's you know not president because you don't have to be president to be

governor i mean you don't have to be like born a natural born citizen to be governor oh yeah what's it called when you've uh you know you've become a citizen but you're just not a natural born citizen like uh arnold schwarzenegger he was your governor at one point i'll be back yeah we called him the governor we called him the governor the governator it was a national wide term everyone knew about it oh okay that is unhinged and like really i just think that like with that level of detail oriented like being that detail oriented being that committed to the bit being able to like just go through and do all of these things like i think your skills and your talent are absolutely being wasted by being a opportunistic bigot like and i just think like

you should come together with the man who created fire fest in anna delvey and you should do an mtv reality show or you should make the new oceans movie and that should be a part of your uh restorative justice for paying for the crimes that you have caused like i don't need you to sit in a jail cell i think you should contribute to society in a way that will prevent you from being a repeat offender or getting re-elected yeah i think the i think the restorative justice here is you should be tasked to write a heist movie or an elaborate lie or the next uh what's that called um that movie with leonardo caprio where he lies and it's like catch me as catch me if you can yeah yes but then there's another one oh because with that one because i was based on a

true story and he became like an fbi agent or something i forgot cia something i forgot what it is or or uh molly's game started a whole the the like but the other it's not walter middy that's like a fucking wholesome movie it's it's gwyneth paltrow leonardo caprio it's it's really good it's a guy it's name the talented mr ripley the talented mr ripley yeah like that is what you should be using all of this your powers conniving lying energy for entertainment blockbuster hits not political gain right what if that's wild they should study his brain for science like that's but he had to have also people working with him to corroborate this and since he flipped a district i'm sure the republican party knew about this because they were probably gunning for him to

get this yeah but that just means that you've got all these other people who like you have to then hire people who are at the same level of like keeping up with these lies as you like you should all be studied and like you should all probably be on a list like a watch list yeah oh fuck okay well wait so you said new york times was the one who did i'm sure i think i know yep i think i know where you're going next if that's what you're asking so good on the times for that not so good on the times for this so i don't know if anyone saw the day that we're recording this this is the second day of hanukkah but yesterday which was the 19th was the first day of hanukkah And the New York Times had their crossword puzzle that they released and it was in the shape of a swastika, which any day of the year, anti-Semitic, horrible, awful, shitty.

on the first night of Hanukkah is like anti-Semitic squared it seems even more targeted it seems like the celebration of anti of your yearly anti-Semitism this is your event to shine like so this is like literally been fact-checked by Snopes I saw this at first on Twitter and the context that was provided that is listed in Snopes by email, a spokesperson for the New York Times said, this is a common crossword design. Many open grids and crosswords have a similar spiral pattern because of the rules around rotational symmetry and black squares. First of all, I need you to not with a word salad about your answer to this, like rotational symmetry and black squares oh um if this was like so common and like there's a difference between

something being a common occurrence and being offensive and something of like well our hands were tied there's only so many ways that we can do the crossword puzzle and here's what i think i think if you're switching up how they look you know you've you got the i know i know you've black squares you got to position them in all those places if you are trying to find a new design or rotate between designs and the one you're doing is like it looks a little much too like last week's it's either between that and one that looks like a swastika just make it look like the previous week just make it look like any other one cares nobody doing you're not doing the cross crossword puzzle for what it looks like you're doing it for the answers and the thing is this

is the third time it's happened in recent years exactly and if you're trying to do this for aesthetics i'm just gonna say right now a swastika is not so cute that's that's not so cute for the aesthetic at all especially and i i just want to clarify so that the the swastika was a different symbol that was taken by hitler and so there are other cultures but this is the new york times yeah this is new york new york has one of the highest i think it might even have the highest population of jewish people in the entire united states but it is high if it's not one it's number two or i guess east coast but it's new york second largest religion practice in new york city yeah it's new york yeah like i think actually in the world so the crossword puzzle editor

is will shorts and so he was played the puzzle master on brooklyn 99 oh yeah yep so he is the editor of the new york times crossword puzzle and he said that the puzzle simply quote-unquote started this grid in the middle and worked its way out again people are now just telling us how to design a swastika as the reason why it's not shaped like a swastika like it's just so wild to me that they're like well it's this is how we did it and i'm like i know the issue is that you did it not how you did it it's the fact that you did it the idea was to simply create a fun whirlpool shape well you failed and then you published it like it's absolutely absolutely unhinged and just so everyone knows like melissa said this is not the first time they've done this enough that there's

a literal tweet from 2017 from the new york times games saying yes hi it's not a swastika honest to god no one sits down to make a crossword puzzle and says hey you know what would look cool first of all i really don't like how blasé that response is from an official account and it's even more embarrassing when that was in 2017 and here we are in 2022 and the same editor this has not been his first offensive thing. In 2019, New York Times had to issue an apology after he chose to use the racial slur. It's a slur for a person, a Mexican or a person of Mexican descent. That was a word used in the crossword puzzle. And the clue to that was pitch to the head informally. I think it's a baseball thing as well. But there are a lot of things that the

predominant definition has changed to be slur bigoted and we as a society have thus removed the other the other definition it has gone we've changed what that is like i didn't know if i heard that term all i know is the offensive one i don't know the other one that is the one that is colloquially most common because we have dialed back the use of it in other ways because the offensive use is like so like so horrific that nobody no one wants that to be a mix-up and there's no need for that to be like oh i'm sorry you're offended i didn't mean that i meant something else it's like let's just come up with a different fucking word then and he admitted that he saw the derogatory definition when he researched the word but claimed he had never personally heard

it and explained that as long as a word also has a quote-unquote benign meaning it meets his editorial stanzas for publication he defended the use of the word and noted that he published and stands by the benign meanings of the terms another one which is a racist term for specifically targeted to people of chinese descent but is now also become to anyone who is asian as well as another term that i literally have never heard of but we're gonna look it's asian as well or and there's an italian one too okay yeah and the other ones and that he stands by his choice to do all of these and i'm just saying that looking at all of these words i could not unless i go on to dictionary.com tell you what the definition that is not racist is i couldn't tell you the benign

definition yeah and i'm gonna bet this man in his big old age has heard the offensive offensive definitions more and knew those first and this feels like intentional that it's like how can i put a slur in here and then be like oh no no like there's no fucking way that you know all of these words with this meaning that is this benign meaning that nobody uses anymore you know that but you don't know that they're also used as slurs huh oh and then he's so in his response to the slur neither joel who i guess is also on the team nor i had ever heard the slur before and i don't know anyone who would use it maybe we live in rarefied circles i just don't believe that i don't not believe people that grew up with all in the family on tv that was a show that called out

these things didn't know what it was i just don't believe that no and also like if you had never heard that they were slurs before the initial time that you google and you see that those words also mean that you would be like oh my gosh no no i would never do that because right now you're saying that like oh it's no big deal no no you think the slurs are no big deal so you've heard them before so that's why you think they're no big deal if you if it's something you don't know you're not gonna just be like fuck it i'm i'm i don't give a shit about it like i'm sure it's fine you're no no no no you're confident in your decision making because you made the decision knowing it like right okay so um very rare very very rare do i agree with megan mccain on things

and i personally have someone well because she she was tweeting about this and like all like lots of places are tweeting about this is fucked up because let's be real they're the the right really fucking hates the new york times and is like wants to cancel them and i don't like being exactly i don't like being on the same side as some republicans i don't like looking i had melissa i accidentally clicked on fox news at first they were reporting this and i was like oh no no no go back but i was like here's the thing a broken clock could be right twice a day and at this moment i'm not trying to cancel new york times i'm not saying fuck the new york times they're a fraudulent they're not they're not reporting facts they're like no no i'm just

saying that you've got a racism issue in the uh the crossword puzzle department and um i i think you need to redo that from from the from the top down yeah yeah there was a woman that that quit back in 2020 because she felt like she was just the token female perspective it's just embarrassing at this point where it's like oh like everyone thought it was fine and i'm like okay i would like to see your holiday company christmas card like show me just for just for science let me see all these people who thought it was fine because either you all look exactly the same and that's the issue or you really are actually actively harming your co-workers and not creating an environment where they feel comfortable telling you that so fucked it's fucked all these people

suck like people are working overtime on just like sucking like come on it's the holidays like take take take the day off like chill watch a fucking movie drink some hot chocolate like why like oh my god you're doing you're you're doing like summer trifling activities in the dead of winter aren't you cold aren't you tired hibernate truly but don't hibernate too much because then we're not gonna have anyone to talk about in this segment well that is it for uh the episode right that's it well we hope you all enjoyed leave a review on the podcast app if you feel that the burning in your loins you know you could share what your uh who your rachel of the week is on the podcast app like you can share it in

your review you could also do that on our instagram comments share with us any and all of the above we have the fisting friday episode that comes out tomorrow with the results from last week's episode this episode is out on thursday and you know it's the holidays so we have a little bit we we are doing the mini hibernation like we're doing a little bit we're a little more relaxed with our timeline so the votes will either go up on friday aka tomorrow if you're listening to this the day that it was uploaded or sometime before monday and they were up for 24 hours you can check the stories and then also just go to the highlights and there's instructions on how to vote and vote and we are looking forward to seeing how you all feel about this very much so i feel like i've been

out the loop for like a month i know i feel like i'm like what's going on everybody how are we doing okay we'll circle back goodbye but am i wrong is a production by me megan rinks and me melissa demonts plus diamond imprint productions. Post-production by Coco Lorenz. And production assistance by Melanie D. Watson.