Cognitive Dissonance Podcast from patreon

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Episode 392: Build a New Cons..tituen...sit

🕑 Added 2017-12-23 23:19:30 +0000 UTC

Comments

Meadhands

Since I always listen to these late, I didn't have a chance to answer your start-of-show question, but I'll leave it here anyway for posterity: The worst Christmas dinner I ever had wasn't about the taste so much as the circumstance (though the food was surely bad, too). See, my family used to do a rotating Christmas dinner, with each of my mother's siblings taking it in turns. So we'd be at our house one year, then our Uncle's house the next, aunt's the next, etc., cramming 20-30 people into one house for a meal (we were all upper-middle class for the most part, so this wasn't unbearable.) One year the rotation goes to my Uncle Chuck and his wife Diane. Chuck's a fine guy, but spineless, let's his wife do whatever she wants with the money he makes, including stupid, wasteful, selfish shit. They're in retirement crisis now since they have almost no money left and he's about to hit 65, and this Christmas was the first sign that this was eventually going to be the case. See, when the invitations get sent out, Chuck and his wife had the gall to declare that each family must pay per plate upon arrival, something like 5-10 bucks a plate. Right on the goddamn invitations. My parents and aunts/uncles were outraged, also confused why they didn't just ask if they could pass responsibility on to someone else that year since money was tight. Whatever the case, my parents simply refused to go and, being young at the time, I didn't go either. Which is probably fine, since Aunt Di's 'famous' mostaccioli always tasted like noodles smothered in ketchup anyway. My other aunts/uncles went and ate her food and simply refused to pay. We, uh, don't do the rotating Christmas thing anymore.