Scheduled For Adrainment

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

This week, scheduled for a drainment.

Karen brings the case against her husband, Matt.

Part of their property has a pasture that slopes downward.

This creates a low spot that fills with a foot of water during certain times of the year.

Karen calls this area the frog bog.

Matt wants to fill it in.

Karen wants to leave that bog alone.

Who's right, who's wrong?

Only one can decide.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman enters the courtroom and presents an obscure cultural reference.

I was sitting at the edge of the marsh when the counsel came to bring me the news.

They handed me a bowl of cooked wild grasses,

and they gave me the ceremonial shoes.

Swear them in, young Danish women.

Swear them in, Danish sky.

Swear them in, cold air, I am going away.

Swear them in, swear them in, swear them in.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne, please swear the litigants in.

Karen and Matt, please rise and raise your right hands.

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

So help you, God or whatever.

Yes.

Yes.

Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, despite the fact that he has moral objections to amphibians?

Yes.

Yes.

You live in too many kinds of places.

Judge Hodgman, you may proceed.

I got nothing against our amphibian friends.

I love a frog.

I love a newt.

I love an olm.

Do you know what an olm is?

No.

It's a kind of salamander.

I don't know that it's amphibian, so don't write me letters, but it lives in total darkness its entire life.

It is so creepy looking.

I had a pet frog when I was a kid, Boutros Boutros Froggy.

Of course I knew that.

Karen and Matt, you may be seated for an immediate summary judgment in one of your favors.

I should have made the cultural reference about Poutros Boutros Froggy, but I didn't.

Can either of you name the piece of culture that I referenced as I entered the courtroom.

Karen, why don't we start with you?

Okay.

Boy, I thought you were going to go like an agricultural route, but that sounds like.

Why did you think?

Why did you think that?

I don't know.

I feel like if we were better agriculturists, we would already know exactly what to do with that.

An obscure agricultural reference?

That's not what it's called.

Obscure cultural reference.

It's going to be a movie or a TV show or a song or a book, almost always.

It felt very dystopian to me.

I got a Margaret Atwood vibe.

Oh.

Now, before you make your guess, let me be clear.

That when I said swear them in, Danish Sky, swear them in, I'm going away.

I was doing a classic obscure cultural reference game where I was swapping in something from the podcast for a different line in the cultural reference.

The first part I said was all right.

I'm sitting at the edge of the marsh where the council came to bring you the news, et cetera.

They gave me ceremonial shoes.

That's all correct.

But the real second part is, and I'm going to give you a hint now.

Goodbye, young Danish women.

Goodbye, Danish sky.

Goodbye, cold air.

I am going away.

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

Does that help?

No.

Okay.

And I will admit.

It It was the grain predictions for Benjamin Franklin's Old Farmer's Almanac, 1959 edition.

No, it's not an obscure agricultural reference.

What is your guess?

Okay.

Oh, Margaret Atwood.

Margaret Atwood.

Anything by Margaret Atwood.

Yeah.

Okay.

That'd be cool.

What about you, Matt?

I feel very stumped.

I, if I had to guess.

Stumped is not an agricultural reference, but it is sort of a landscape reference.

oh

yeah i would have to say that

it sounded very pros-ish i interesting pros-ish

like a lot of things that rhyme are prose right yes a lot of short pieces that rhyme

Especially short pieces that are sort of elegiic and and not to be literally taken necessarily.

You know what my favorite poem is, John?

No, sorry, Jesse.

We're talking about prose.

Sorry, go ahead.

Sorry, Jesse.

We're on a very specific thing here called prose.

But if

you want to sidetrack to poetry or lyrics, tell me.

It's the manual for my dishwasher.

What piece of famous piece of prose do you think this is from, Matt?

Okay, well, the whole goodbye, goodbye thing gave me the vibe of like Tolstoy, War and Peace, when he's like laying there dying and saying goodbye, but it wasn't quite right because it's the Dutch, wasn't it?

So I don't know, maybe it was some other Tolstoy where he was

doing Dutch stuff.

Tolstoy doing Dutch stuff.

Yeah.

Because apparently Danish and Dutch are the same now?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I don't know.

Whatever you do, though.

I don't know.

Hey, just

as a warning to our viewers, don't put Tolstoy doing Dutch stuff into the urban dictionary.

You don't want to see what it comes up.

I've watched or listened to every episode, and I've only known one cultural reference, and it was because you did a mountain goat song.

So I knew I wasn't.

No, maybe you should have guessed a mountain goat song.

Are you kidding?

Are you kidding?

No, of course it's a mountain goat song.

Oh, and Matt grew up.

It's listening to the mountain goat.

I know.

We failed on him.

What was the album released by the mountain goats in june 15th 1995 matt or karen any guesses wrong it's sweden sweden is the name of that album and this song is called tolland man

tolland man

and it is a song from the imagined point of view of the tolland man

who was as historians speculate the the victim of ritual sacrifice, having been killed and then drowned for some obscure reason to aid the crops or whatever.

I guess in that sense, it was probably an agricultural reference after all.

And then was discovered almost perfectly preserved in the bog in which he was drowned in 1950.

That's right, Toland Man, one of the most famous and perfectly preserved bog people in history, of which there are many bog people.

There's the Cashel man.

There's the girl of the Uchter Moor.

There's the Gala man.

There's the Boromos bodies.

There's the Kloncaven Man, the old Croan man.

And of course, Lindau Man, my very favorite, right there in the British Museum.

Why do bodies get preserved in bogs, Karen, Matt?

Lack of oxygen.

Exactly right.

Lack of oxygen.

They do not drain.

They are almost anaerobic environments.

They're cold.

You get surrounded by peat.

And also they have a particular acidity.

which preserves bodies.

And that is why I referred to the Toland man.

You don't know how much time, Karen, how much time I spent this morning paying no attention whatsoever to the notes of your case because I had to find some cultural reference for a bog person.

And I went through all of them.

I went through the Lindau Man.

I went through the Weirding Man.

I went through the Boxton Man.

You would think some people would write songs about these people.

It wasn't until I got to the Toland Man, literally minutes ago, that I saw that John Darnell, our friend, who is also the Mountain Goats, wrote a song called Toland Man 1995.

And that was the lyrics of the complete lyrics, actually.

Check it out.

Mountain Goats.

So you don't win though karen though you came closest matt you came the furthest away

your dispute of course is about a bog or what you call a bog at the edge of your property in washington state is that correct do i have that correct yeah that's right and who comes to seek justice with regard to this bog i do and karen what is the nature of the justice you seek well i love my bog And I want it to stay just the way it is.

Tell me about your bog.

Tell me about your property.

Tell me about your bog.

Okay.

And tell me about how many bodies you've ritually sacrificed down there.

Because that's what I think this is about, right?

You don't want Matt to dry up the bog because he's going to find all the midsummer tributes that you've left down there.

Of course.

Well, we have a barn cat that came with the house when we bought it.

And

he gets rid of a lot of bodies.

So maybe it's his area that.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah.

So I.

Didn't know where that story was going.

We had had a barn cat when we got the property.

Oh, no, we still have him.

He brings us full barns.

He didn't drown in the bog, and that's why you want to keep it.

He's an excellent murderer.

So the bog is,

I'm terrible at measurements, but I feel like it's about half a football field wide and long.

So I'm guessing it's like 40 yards

each way.

So it's pretty good size.

Jesse Thorne, how large is a football field?

100 yards 100 yards okay so 40 yards wide uh-huh it is about square

what's that about 120 feet yes so it's 40 by it's 40 by 40 yards correct so 120 feet boy i'm wishing i would have taken a tape measure out now 14 000 square feet of bog in your property yeah

Does that seem about right, Matt?

I think that might be a little on the high side, but it's not wildly inaccurate.

What would your bog guess be?

I would put it more at...

I would say more 30 by 30.

Okay, you're 30 feet by 30 feet.

30 yards by 30 yards.

30 yards, excuse me, 30 yards by 30 yards.

All right, it's hard for me to understand this.

You're on the property now, the two of you?

We are.

All right, let's take a recess.

I want you to go down there and walk the bog.

Walk the bog with a tape measure, okay?

And then come back.

Pace off the bog.

Pace off the bog.

No.

that's a big bug that's a bigger bog than i was expecting to hear about

okay how long have you lived on the property uh about a year and a half okay

and and you and what goes down what goes on down at the down the bog how far away is it from your house um

how far away would you say it is matt uh like it is our view like while i'm doing the dishes it's what i'm looking at it's right outside of the kitchen window um and so basically we have our little side lawn that is quite small,

you know, normal side lawn size.

And then at the edge of that lawn, then we've got our fence that delineates the start of the pasture.

And that's where the land starts sloping downwards.

And then

once it's all the way down as low as it gets, that's where I say the bog starts.

As low as it gets is usually where the bog starts, I would agree.

So

it's beyond the fence, is what you're saying.

Right beyond the fence.

Yeah, but it's just.

So if I'm doing the dishes in your house,

first of all, weird for you, but let's imagine it.

I'm doing the dishes in your house.

I'm looking out the window.

First, I see a yard, then I see a fence, then I see a slope, then I see a bog.

Correct.

And the most striking feature of this bog is there are five willows in it.

They're huge, healthy, happy, weeping willows.

Okay.

And I love them and I don't want to mess with them.

And you've sent in some evidence, some photographs of your property in Washington.

This is not in downtown Seattle, I take it.

No,

Portland is only 30 minutes south of us.

So you're in rural southern Washington?

Yes.

Okay, gotcha.

And what I'm seeing, now, we'll put, if you you don't mind, we'll post these photos up on our Instagram account at Judge Sean Hodgman, also at our show page at maximumfund.org.

But what I'm seeing here is some beautiful photos of some, what look like willow trees.

And I see some sort of like

low depressions in the, in the earth, but it seems grassy.

It doesn't seem very bog-like to me.

What am I missing here, Karen?

It's only bog-like in the winter when it's raining all the time.

And I don't have any pictures of it during that time of year.

So

everything I was able to submit to you was just so that you could get a basic idea of

the size and

the general landscape of what we're looking at.

The look and feel of the dried-out bog.

And

we're calling it the frog bog, although it is sort of like the Holy Roman Empire.

neither holy nor roman it is not really a bog because a bog is a specific kind of wetland correct that has that high acidic that you know and i don't want i don't want wetlands people writing me letters i appreciate that we were speaking colloquially of the bog here yeah because i don't i don't know that a bog would necessarily dry out i think a bog is a bog most of the time i think you're correct um i i chose that name because it rhymed with frog and we do have a lot of frogs You have a lot of frogs that hang out down there during the wet and dry season or during the wet season?

We definitely see them in the fall.

They come up and are near our house.

We see them a lot.

But we hear them all,

I feel like we hear them all year, but I might be incorrect there.

Because we haven't lived here for very long.

And when we first moved here, we had a baby a few months later.

So a lot of the time that we've spent here was kind of a blur.

Okay.

Where did you move from?

Vancouver.

Vancouver, Washington?

Yeah.

Yeah, we lived there for two years, and before that, we were in Portland.

So we've just been slowly migrating north.

I'm presuming that

you're sort of rolling your eyes at Vancouver, Washington, because it is the most confusing city in the United States, in North America.

You can't have a Vancouver in Washington and a Vancouver in British Columbia.

Pick one.

Pick a different one, Washington.

Yeah, and

I actually have had the pleasure of teaching Washington state geography to seventh graders for quite a few years.

And they don't even know that they don't live in Canada.

They get so confused.

They're like, oh, Vancouver, BC?

Cool.

Yeah, that's where I live.

Very strange.

So, Karen, you want to leave the frog boggle alone because you're a conservationist at heart?

Yeah, sure.

You like the frogs?

I like it.

I like it the way it is.

It seems happy and healthy.

It's not a monoculture.

Like, it seems like honestly the healthiest part of our property.

All the rest of our property had a lot of horses on it and now has, you know, like thistles and blackberries and holly that are all trying to take over that we're having to really combat.

But none of those things are in that area.

This primorial prehistoric

bog is the healthiest part of your property, including your own home.

Got it.

I understand.

Matt, why don't you want to leave well enough alone?

What's your problem with the bog?

Okay, my problem with the bog

is

a couple of things.

But once it starts raining any amount,

it immediately turns into just a muddy kind of nightmare down there.

You can't walk anywhere near anywhere down there.

When it's dry, can you walk that ground?

Carefully.

Yeah, it's very uneven because when it dries out,

you feel like you're going to break an ankle walking down there.

Right, I presume because the earth is moving around and it's in its bog form, there's some ooze that happens.

Yeah, absolutely.

Listen, bog experts, just you got to grant me some wide berth with this, okay?

I know you're going to be writing me, I know that bog fans are going to be writing me some letters, but you know what we're talking.

I'm going to keep referring to it as the bog.

It's in its boggy state and its non-boggy state.

In its non-boggy state, it's uneven.

It's uneven ground.

It's sort of, it's sort of treacherous.

And when it's in its boggy state, what happens, Matt, when it's rainy?

So when it's rainy, it is just really, really thick mud with a little bit of water over it.

And it makes it impossible to do any sort of mowing down there at all.

So the grass...

Why are you trying to mow the bog in the first place?

It's a bog.

Well, there's grass that grows through that whole area.

And it gets...

Just because grass exists doesn't mean you have to mow it.

This is true.

One of the things that I worry about, especially in the spring as we transition from the bog season to the dry season, is that we have grass that's then over six, seven feet tall and it dries out and creates a whole lot of fuel down there.

That if someone were to toss a cigarette butt out from the road, that it could it could cause a pretty big fire.

So I like to try and keep it at least somewhat mowed, somewhat low to the ground.

Six, seven feet tall grasses?

Easily.

What are you living in the land of the lost?

What is going on in outside

in southern Washington?

I think it's a different variety of grass because it is that tall.

It goes way over my head.

Not that I'm particularly tall, but

it's only the grass that's in that area that even gets that tall.

All the rest of our pasture grass, you know, grows to like two feet and it's tall.

So, you're telling me, Matt, and you're familiar with these photos?

Yes.

Right.

You're telling me that this picture of the bog that I'm looking at, or the bogland, in the sunshine when it's dry, if you don't mow it, when it gets wet and it grows again, this whole area is going to be overgrown with six-foot stalks of grass.

Yeah, I um, so I cut that

um

before

the rainy season.

I cut it completely down as low as I could get it with

the tractor and the brush hog.

And yet by

early spring, that grass was

over my head.

Listen to these people, Jesse.

They got a tractor and a brush hog.

Do you have a brush hog, Jesse?

I got three.

What?

For your property

in Los Angeles, California?

Yeah.

Do I need to get two?

You're going to need four if you want to beat me.

Well, it's not a competition, but as long as I win.

I have six tractors.

What?

Wow.

All right.

Very exciting to have all these tractors and brush hogs.

And of course, I guess if you need to mow, if only for one reason, which is to reveal the hidden corgi in the bog.

Because you sent in this other photo from the bog point of view of your house.

If this were a horror movie, this would be what the monster of the bog would see as it's plotting your demise.

But of course, you're being defended by this hidden corgi in the bog.

Bog dog.

Bog dog.

Who's this bog dog?

That's Mare Bear.

It's a cute dog.

And if you don't Moe, you would never see that corgi, right, Matt?

Yeah, absolutely.

We have, so I kind of, we had just kind of three rail pasture fences, and I put a wire fence on the inside of the entire area so it would be fenced in so the dog can play there.

So it's kind of like our at-home dog park.

And when that grass is that tall, all you see is some rustling kind of

Jurassic park

coming through there.

And when Mare Bear comes back from playing in the tall grasses into your home, can you see Mare Bear or do you just see the outer coating of ticks that cover your dog?

You know, we've been talking about ticks a lot lately.

Neither Matt or I have ever seen a tick with such a dog.

I don't know if...

are there ticks

in Washington state?

We do have them, and I've seen them on branches and on other dogs or bushwhacking,

but we have a lot less of them in the western part of the state.

There's a lot more of them in eastern Washington.

Not enough people watch the tick.

That's how Hodgman ended up out of a job.

Oh, wow.

It was a great show.

That's...

Oh, you're really pouring salt into my tick wound there.

It's a great show.

Unlike certain networks, Amazon is not erasing its programming out of spite.

You can still watch the tick and the tick season two on Amazon Prime.

The black-legged tick, it says here, is the most common species found in western Washington.

While the American dog tick and Rocky Mountain wood tick can be found in the eastern portion of the state, and you're in southwestern Washington.

Correct.

Yes.

And Mare Bear stays up to date on her preventative flea and tick medicine.

Let's take a quick recess and hear about this week's Judge John Hodgman sponsor.

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All right, so the bog is hard to mow.

It's a fire hazard if it is unmowed, right?

Is that what you're saying, Matt?

I believe so.

Sure.

Who am I?

To second guess someone who owns a brush hog and a tractor, all joking aside.

And what would you like to do with this bug?

Just cement it over?

No, no.

I like how it is.

It's really nice.

I love the willows down there.

It's a great area.

I would love to just bring in, you know, just a Starbucks and a yoga studio.

Yeah, just 10 or so dump trucks of fill dirt and level it out a little bit, kind of grade it so it's not such an extreme slope and just kind of bring the level of the ground up a couple feet and so it's it's a little bit drier and a little bit more

stable and

smooth so that you can walk on it, play on it, have the kid run around on it and not fall into a pit.

So you live in the country now and you've obviously taken to it.

I enjoy it.

You have a tractor and you have a brush hog.

Yes.

What is a brush hog?

It's kind of like a giant terrifying version of a lawnmower where the blades are a lot heavier and it's like four feet wide

deck and it's it hooks up to the back of the tractor and it

you can mow down trees, bushes,

just about anything.

And this is obviously something that you had with you in Portland that you just moved with you.

No.

Oh, no, okay.

So you lived in the city of Portland, then you moved to Vancouver, Washington.

Then you moved.

Are you moving more and more rural, would you say?

Yeah,

that seems to be the trend for sure.

Look, I don't know a ton about living in the country, but I do know what happens in the movies.

Young couple from the city moves from Portland, Oregon, buys a homestead out in the country of southeastern Washington, gets themselves a fancy new tractor and a brush hog, decides they're going to be of the earth, and then they start tampering with nature.

They fill in the bog with fill dirt in order to cover over nature, and then nature takes its revenge and sends a haunted bog man after them in the middle of the night.

Isn't that what's going to happen?

It sounds as plausible as anything else, I think, with this bog.

Karen, you seem like you want to say something about it.

I think you hit the nail on the head.

Matt is from the city.

He grew up between Olympia, Washington, and Portland, Oregon.

I'm from Wyoming and grew up on seven acres.

And other than the lawn that was right around our house, we just left everything else alone.

Right.

And that's what I want to do here is, yes, we have our lawn that we keep mowed.

And I'm even fine with a lot.

You're saying that Matt's Matt's cidified and he wants to come out and tame nature and you want to respect nature.

Correct.

How do you respond to that, Matt?

Well, I would quote my father-in-law, Karen's father, and say that man is allowed to leave a footprint is what her father

said to me.

You sure you want to quote that?

It's not my, it's not my philosophy on life, but I think that it already has a road running right through it where the field used to be.

And what's creating the drainage problem is actually the road.

The water's running off the crown of the road, which is sloped towards that field, and it's not draining out along towards the creek that's down the road away is where it naturally would drain towards.

So it's pooling right there.

There's actually a culvert.

So you're saying that this is a human-made problem that you're trying to resolve.

Absolutely.

Judge Hodgman, read the Bible.

God gave us dominion over beast and bug.

Yeah.

Also, Genesis 19.7.

I don't know if that's a thing, but I'm pretty sure what it says is you don't need to worry about road drainage.

Just put your roads wherever you want.

Yeah, there's a lot of weird stuff in Deuteronomy.

I bet that's in there.

Man, it's okay.

What does your father say, Karen?

I don't.

Something about like man is supposed to leave a mark.

I don't, I look, I'm sure you love your dad, but that feels very problematic problematic to me.

How would you describe your dad?

A Mark-Levin man?

Well,

he had an excavation company.

You see, Karen, it's supposed to happen.

Strip mining is supposed to happen.

Man is supposed to leave a mark.

You've got to destroy the earth to show God you were there.

Karen comes from bog building stock.

I'm sorry, I don't mean to pick on your dad, but that's a real, that's a real,

that's a real statement, I gotta say.

I just want to get to the bottom of it a little bit.

Yeah, clearly stuck with Matt.

He's

well, I just, since we were talking about your parents' property and the philosophy regarding that and land management, I was just kind of pointing out that I don't know if that is the land management philosophy that you're trying

to go with.

Yeah, I don't know.

It just felt relevant to me.

Well planned.

So

your suggestion then, Matt, is if it's a drainage issue, can't you repair the drainage?

Can't you create a drainage solution rather than a fill-in solution?

Yeah, and that's kind of what I want to do is that, I mean,

it's actually, there's a ditch that runs next to the road, and the field's actually lower than that.

So I don't want to raise it up a ton.

What I want to to do is just raise it up enough to create flow to that ditch and to the culvert that's right at the neighbor's driveway at the bottom of the field.

All right.

Yes.

I understand.

You know, being an accidental landowner myself, I understand about half of what you're talking about.

I'm just going to pretend that I know what you mean.

I think I know what a culvert is.

That's fine.

The goal here is to sluice off the gunk into the neighbor's driveway.

Yes.

Absolutely.

Sluice the gunk to the neighbors.

That's right.

Have you talked to any professionals, Matt, about this ecosystem that you're looking to change?

No, I have not.

I kind of try to DIY things as much as possible.

And it's not like it's a protected sort of wetland.

It's not...

There's no real flow through there.

There's no protected species down there.

It's just grass and mud.

We know there are a lot of frogs that live there.

Well, that's all the frogs that we have around here.

They're all Pacific tree frogs.

So I'm not going to mess with the tree.

So

they'll be fine.

Do you know that the trees will be happy

in this new ecosystem?

I don't.

I do worry about damage to the trees, but I mean, although moisture is still going to be there, it's just hopefully going to be lower in the soil and not on the surface as much.

That's your hope.

Yeah, that's my hope.

And it's a hope based on your professional understanding about how water drains through soil and soil types and that sort of stuff?

Well, I would say that, I mean, we have a basement in our house and we have two sump pumps down there.

Right.

And they run constantly throughout the rainy season.

So there's plenty of water running under the property.

The water table is fairly high.

And at that down there,

it's going to, I mean, there's just flooded underneath the soil.

It's, it's going to be fine.

So if I were to say, okay, go for it,

fill that bog, how, how would you do it?

What would be job one?

Oh, it's going to be a big job.

Job one would be,

I would probably do a little research and make sure the willows are going to be okay.

And then I would start

grading a path for trucks to get back there.

And then I would

call up some dump trucks to come dump some fill dirt.

And then

I'd be getting to work with the tractor.

It would take weeks.

Have you graded a path for dump trucks before?

No, I've not, but it'll be fun.

Like, I like learning new things.

What are you going to use to grade the path for dump trucks?

The brush hog?

I have a box scraper for the tractor, and

it does a pretty good job at smoothing things out.

Our entire south pasture was all just muddy horse tracks, and I re-graded the whole thing, took some of the hill out, and it worked out pretty good.

So I'm feeling good about

my grading abilities.

You know what?

I give you an A.

That's my grade for your grading abilities based on the fact that you're able to discuss it with a certain amount of knowledge, which I cannot.

Karen, it seems like you have a pretty, pretty handy, handy partner there when it comes to moving dirt around.

Do you think Matt can do this or no?

Yeah, I think he can do anything.

This is not an issue of...

He wants to undertake a project that I think is over his head and he's going to drown in this bog.

This is an issue of, I think he can do it, and I'm afraid of what happens if he does.

Correct.

Lots of times, he comes up with, like,

you know, oh, I would like to do blank, you know, he gets project ideas in his head.

And most of the time, I don't worry about them because either it's a project that I also think is a good idea, or it's one that I know he's not actually going to do.

This one concerns me because I think he actually wants to do it, and I really don't want him to.

Before we go on to your feelings about it, what projects has he proposed that he has done and what projects has he proposed that he has not done?

One of each, if you can think of them.

So, um,

he

has a

he's a he loves to buy and sell vehicles of all sorts of kinds.

Sure.

So, right now he's got a little diesel jetta in the garage that he's like completely taken apart apart and is basically building.

And I'm fine with that.

I think it's super cool that he's going to have an old diesel jetta.

It's going to be a great commuter car in the time that we've been together.

What year is the Jetta, would you say, Matt?

Oh, it's an 0-1.

Oh, okay.

So not like a 90, not a 91 hatchback?

No, it's an 0-1 turbo-diesel jetta.

I thought it might have been my friend Anna Henchman's car that I learned to drive manual on in college.

But no, that would have been a fun coincidence, but I I guess not.

Okay, so he's working on the Jeddah now and

you think that he'll complete it?

I think he will.

He has had, I think.

That's a good Matt project.

That's a good one.

Right.

I think he's had five or six different boats in the time that we've been together.

And he's only finished one of them.

We've only had one of them on the water.

So he currently has a boat.

I don't think he's ever going to finish that.

I'm fine with that.

What counts as finishing a boat?

Getting it so that it can float, being able to put it on the water.

Right.

Okay.

What's the boat you have in the water currently, Matt?

It's not on the water.

I just have a tiny little like aluminum rowboat.

It just needs some paint.

Like it would float if you stuck it in the water.

So by that, by that metric, it's already done.

There's just nowhere to sit.

Did you?

Did you weld this together yourself?

No, this is just like it's a 60s classic little Klamath robot.

It's just for fun, just

extra thing to work on.

What else do you have going on in your lives?

You have this

child, this corgi, and this cat that you all have to take care of.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Why does Matt have nothing else to do with his days but scavenge old aluminum rowboats and work on jettas and dream about paving over bogs?

So here we're coming to the crux of it.

He also,

sorry.

No, I'm glad.

I'm getting heated.

He also has

about

seven

different

two-wheeled motorized vehicles of

various.

I want to make a list of the stuff that Matt has.

Hang on.

Yeah.

And I brush brush hog, tractor with road grader.

Several boats, only one of which you will admit to owning, which is a seatless aluminum Klamath rowboat.

That needs paint.

That needs paint.

It only needs a coat of paint.

But it's a classic.

But it's a classic.

And then also, what did I miss?

Oh, yeah.

Disassembled Jeddah.

And now, what are we talking about?

Mopeds, scooters, dirt bikes,

motorcycles.

So, again, a hobby that I'm fully in support of.

Sometimes, you know, he goes out and rides.

And

here's the thing: he has lots of hobbies.

I'm super happy for him for that.

My hobby is staying at home with the baby.

So

not a hobby.

I know.

So if he then also takes on this other project, it's just more time that he's going to be outside working on this project.

And I'm going to be alone with the baby.

And remind me how old this baby baby is?

14 months.

All right.

Matt, do you think the baby could help?

I absolutely think.

She's a little shaky at running the tractor yet.

She can't quite walk.

So I think once she can walk, she'll be fantastic hand at that.

Put her on a dirt bike and have her do the surveying.

I like that.

What was your life like in Portland in the city?

Were you together then?

Yes.

We were...

our lives are totally different.

I mean, we met both ours.

Oh, really?

It was totally different?

Because it certainly doesn't sound like you've got the vibe of a city person who went to the country and is just going buck wild, going deep into country stuff.

Well, we've both, like, we, we, both of our bands are playing the same house party, was how we met.

Um,

and like, what was the name of your band?

Uh, mine was Necessary Means, uh, like Big Lebowski reference for a band name.

Yeah, all right, I like it.

And I was in Race of Strangers.

What kind of songs did you play?

Mountain goat songs or what?

Just kind of like ours were kind of like silly, generic rock and roll sort of songs.

I was playing the trumpet, kind of just adding some horns to this band.

Mm-hmm.

Before you were filling in bogs, you were filling in the back line

on the horn section?

Yep, that's right.

And race of strangers what did they play um kind of like

i don't know like kind of more grungy rock songs um i played the violin

yeah we were in two rock bands in portland i played the trumpet obviously and i played the violin that makes sense that tracks yeah i was in a punk rock band at the same time and and she was in like another band we were just we were a crazy kid we were running around doing whatever you do in the city you know John, in the space between Portland, Oregon, and Olympia, Washington, you're actually required by law to be in a band.

I think so.

It's what's known as the Slater-Kinney corridor.

Yeah,

you wanted to escape

the tyranny of having to be in at least two bands and finally get some room to breathe and fill in a bog.

Was this

your mutual dream?

to move out to the country or did one of you lead the way, Karen?

I think it's mutual yeah i'm i'm from the country especially i i don't want to raise a kid in the city like i want her to have the same kind of childhood that i did which is just you know running around free and in the dirt and making

in the bog and never being seen again gotcha not being caught in the urban morass of olympia washington

Karen, it seems to me that your primary argument is you don't want to lose your husband to the bog.

That's well stated.

And Matt, I ask you, like, you're going to grade this path for the dump trucks.

Can you, beyond that, you're just going to be, you said calling dump trucks, which I guess is something you can do in the country.

Just pick up your phone and go, hello, dump trucks.

Yes, dirt, please.

Once it gets filled in,

how much more labor-intensive is it going to be?

How do you respond to Karen's concern that you will be absent during the bog project?

I appreciate her concern on that front, and I think that's totally valid.

I do have a lot of projects, and I would like to point out now, though, that I'm not working on any of my projects.

The big project I'm working on right now is building a pavilion and outdoor kitchen for Karen

right now, which is a big 24 by 24 structure, 24 feet by 24 feet structure,

and a big cement pad for it and getting water and electricity run out there.

How the heck did you get so handy?

Cement pad?

If I had to save my children's life, I could not pour a cement pad.

I'm an electrician by trade.

We have to do a lot of different stuff besides just play with electricity.

So I've picked up a lot of stuff.

My family were contractors and framers.

Right.

It's in the family yeah we've always kind of wanted to i apologize for the calumny that i that i put on you try even though even though you played trumpet in a

in a big lubowski theme band in portland oregon you are not merely a hipster who had the dream of becoming a gentle person farmer You have this, you have handiness in your bones and in your family, just as Karen has country in her, in her bones and in her family.

So I apologize for painting you in that, even though you did play in a punk rock band and a Big Lebowski themed band and Karen played violin in a rock band.

Yes, Jesse Thorne, you wanted to say something?

When I lived in Portland, I played in a band called Concrete Pad.

It's a great name for a band.

I played cello.

Well, I was going to say, what did you play, accordion?

Timpani.

Yeah.

Marimba?

Yeah, Marimba.

Oh, Glockenspiel.

I played a little bit of Glockenspiel.

Right.

And a double harp.

That's one harp on top of the other yeah you can only play it while driving a while riding a penny farther motorcycle to get up high enough it has to wear an overcoat to pass for a single harp

well it definitely sounds within your means matt to do this how long is the project going to take to the bog fill-in project um i would estimate that that project i mean i work during the week so really the only time i have to work is on weekends um so i i'd say it'd probably be about a month of weekends.

A month of weekends after you finish the outdoor kitchen pavilion?

Correct.

And when's that going to be completed?

I'm hoping by mid to late September.

What's your weekend child care arrangement?

Karen.

Good question, Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

Karen.

You're going to cook outside all winter long?

Oh, it doesn't get cold here.

So yeah, it'll protect us from the rain, and that's all that happens in the winter.

Our house is

really small on the inside, so we can't really have people over.

So, we are building this so that we can host dinner parties and stuff.

And yeah, we'll be able to use it year-round.

But it'll have an outdoor kitchen.

Yes.

Ooh, that's incredible.

Yes.

And how will you keep the bugs out?

Or do you not have bugs there either in this paradise that you live in?

This tickless, bugless paradise.

We don't have a bug problem in the winter, but we have talked about

getting netting that we can kind of that'll be like magnetized on the edges so that's the only solution, magnetized netting, which is my band in Portland.

If I were to rule in your favor, Karen, what would you have me rule?

Um, just just leave that alone.

It's a he is able to mow it in about July.

By then, it's dried out and he can mow it, and that's that's fine.

I don't even think it needs that.

But other than that, leave it alone.

And Matt, if I were to rule in your favor?

Yeah, I would want the go-ahead to

get that project rolling after the current one is finished.

So, Karen, you are the child care for the weekends.

Yeah.

Is this an agreement that you agreed to?

Oh, it's totally fine.

And it's not like he's outside all weekend.

He always comes, we always have dinner together as a family.

And he always does the bedtime routine with the baby.

He never,

and so it's really not that bad.

And I'm pretty lucky that I am a teacher, so I'm home with her all summer.

Right.

So I just, I just get a lot more time with her.

But I

want him to be able to also have a lot more time with her.

She's only going to be this age this once.

We're not going to have any more kids.

So this is his one opportunity to be with her.

And that's more important than

anything else.

Do you disagree?

Is filling the bog more important than spending time with your infant daughter?

No, I don't think filling the bog is more important than spending time with Fern at all.

No, I agree with her there.

I guess, yeah, it's not like a necessary thing, but I definitely would like to see it happen.

Do you feel by filling in this bog, you're leaving your daughter a legacy that she can enjoy for the rest of her life, and therefore it's worth not seeing her father on weekends for a period of time?

In some ways,

I don't know if I go quite that far as her legacy, but I think that it's a space that she would enjoy.

And I think that she would have a good time playing there for years to come.

And that could be worth a month of weekends.

When you come in and she looks up and she goes, who are you?

You're going to say, I'm your daddy.

You have never met me because I was leaving a mark, a filled-in bog for you.

Her first words are going to be, bogman.

Bog man.

All right.

I think I've heard everything I need to in order to make my decision.

I'm going to go into the outdoor chambers pavilion that I just had constructed by competent people like Matt.

I'll be back in a moment with my verdict.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Karen, how do you feel about your chances today?

I think I feel pretty good.

I felt super confident coming in, though.

And yeah, I still feel confident.

I think that it's clear that that area is beautiful and it's managing itself just fine.

Matt, how about you?

I'm not super confident, but I'll be cautiously optimistic.

Why is that?

I feel you made my case about the dangers of

untended yard debris.

We'll see what Judge Hodgman has to say about all this when we come back in just a minute.

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I'm Jordan Morris.

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Judge Hodman, we're taking a quick break from the case.

What's going on with you?

Well, of course, Jesse, the animated show that I co-created with our friend David Reese is still available.

Both seasons are on Hulu.

Season one, 10 episodes.

Season 2, 10 episodes.

It's a lot of fun.

A lot of your friends are there, including occasional guest bail of Gene Gray.

Check it out at hulu.com or go to Hulu on whatever streaming device you use and just search for Dicktown.

Don't worry.

If you Google Dicktown, you'll find Dicktown, and I mean our Dicktown, not the Dicktown you're afraid of.

Plus, speaking of Gene Grey and David Reese, I've mentioned it before, but I'm going to mention it again.

Check out Jean Gray on twitch.tv/slash Jean of the Grays every Sunday.

She's doing her Church of Infinite You show at 1 p.m.

It's wonderful to have on on a Sunday afternoon.

She's so terrific.

And David co-hosts the Election Profit Makers podcast with his old friend John Kimball and mine, but they went to elementary school together, he and John.

It's hard to laugh about politics, but they make me do it every week, and I enjoy it so much.

And it reminds me to check out mobilize.us and to find political engagement in candidates and causes that I care about.

Mobilize.us will offer you opportunities to volunteer for campaigns near you or ones that you are particularly invested in.

And we're entering into a very serious midterm fight.

It's time to get off the sidelines.

Voting is not enough and advocate for the values that we believe in through the people who are doing the good work of running for office.

So check it out, mobilize.us.

What do you have going on, Jesse?

I host the comedy podcast, Jordan Jesse Jesse Go, with my friend, comedy writer and double Eisner Award nominee this year, Jordan Morris.

As he pointed out to me, the E in ECOT.

That was a whistle of extreme.

I'm extremely impressed.

Like, wow, we, double eyes.

That guy's got double eyes, double eyes noms.

Got double eyes.

I got to go out there to the award ceremony at San Diego Comic-Con.

Oh, it was a great time.

It is a classic freewheeling conversation comedy podcast.

My apologies for that, but we've been going for quite a long time, won quite a number of awards over the years.

I think you might actually enjoy it.

If you need a place to start, we just have Patton Oswalt on the show.

You just have Patton Oswald and Jordan Jesse Goh?

Absolutely.

He's got a new comic out.

Run, Don't Walk is what I say.

That sounds like a very fun conversation.

I'm going to go

and download it right now and listen to it.

Who's funnier than Patton?

Very few.

Very few are funnier than Patton.

Is that the name of his new comedy album?

Yeah.

Very few are funnier than me.

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We'll be back in just a second on Judge John Hodgman.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman re-enters the courtroom and presents his verdict.

Karen,

Matt, your father/slash father-in-law is wrong.

Sorry, dad, dad-in-law.

Is it man is meant to leave a mark or is it okay for man to leave a mark?

I heard him say it's okay for man to leave a footprint.

It's okay for man to leave a footprint.

That is one of the rarest declarations of excuse for destroying the environment that I've ever heard.

And I know that he doesn't mean it that way, but it just really resonated with me.

I mean, I don't know what maybe he means.

Maybe he does mean exactly that way.

It's okay for man to leave a footprint.

I mean, because you know, when you, when you, when you walk on the trails, the preserved trails of Acadia National Park or any state park or whatever, you know, the rule is leave no trace, do not leave a footprint.

And I would argue not only that we'd be a little better off

if a bunch of men felt a lot less concerned about leaving a physical mark upon this earth,

but also

man, and I'm being very gendered here because that's Karen's dad's phrase.

Man,

people,

they don't leave a lot of marks in the longer term.

I mean, we're just, we've destroyed the planet.

I mean, that's a big old mark.

That's a big old mark that we left.

And we left it for a lot of guys, in particular, if you ever walk through a Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, you look at the giant tombs and palaces that they built to themselves in death and you realize, oh, these were guys who were truly believing that they were so important upon this earth that they would be, that they needed to leave this phallic obelisk upon the earth as a testament to their unforgettable manhood and their presence on this planet.

And guess what?

They're all forgotten.

They're all forgotten.

We can work really, really hard to destroy this planet.

Short of blowing it up, though, we will go before the planet goes.

There is no mark that we can leave upon the earth that I think does anything better than make our lives, our personal, small little lives, slightly more convenient for us.

There is very little physical mark we can leave upon the earth that makes it better for the earth.

Makes it a little better for us, usually in the aggregate, makes it worse for the earth.

You know, look,

I'm not saying that we ought just to sit around and twiddle our thumbs and do nothing and let nature consume us.

Nature will take care of that.

I'm just saying that as a philosophy,

it's not one that aided you in this particular courtroom.

You're half remembering of what your father-in-law said to you.

I mean, look,

I'm sure he's a terrific guy, but that really, I gotta be honest, left me a little gob or whatever smacked.

It's okay to leave it.

No, you wanna, because the truth is, there is one place where

humans

do leave a mark in a way that is potentially very, very beneficial.

And that is not scarring the earth literally and physically, but influencing the people around them.

And in particular, if you have children, your children.

There is an accrual of influence upon the earth.

The only immortality,

there is no immortality, but the only thing close to it is the values that we pass along.

to other people, whether they're our own children or just younger generations that we mentor.

where humans can not only leave a mark, but a mark for betterment,

as opposed to, I'm going to dig a hole here, or I'm going to cut off the top of this mountain,

or I'm going to fill in a bog, or I'm going to build a road over this perfectly good lowlands that I'm going to turn into a bog because I didn't do drainage properly.

This isn't to say that these things shouldn't happen.

This is just

a statement of

reaction to that comment.

So Matt, I'm not sure that exactly helped you in your case here.

And Karen, I hope that I haven't hurt your feelings about your dad.

Maybe your dad means that it is okay for a person to influence the world around them in other means other than digging a thing or filling in a thing.

Because the things that you dig and that you fill in,

they're not going to last.

None of it's going to last.

We're all going to be erased.

We're all going to be erased

in time.

So what do you do, as Gandalf says, with the time that is given to you?

Well, do you fill in this bog or not?

I think that Matt has a real point in that this bog may be great for frogs most of the time,

but if it grows to be untamed six-foot dry grassland, it's not going to be fun for frogs when the bog is on fire.

And that's a compelling argument to me.

I mean, Karen, do you think that that's a good faith argument that Matt is making, or do you think he's just making something up because he wants to get his brush hog out there?

No, that's true.

That's a genuine concern of his.

Now, Karen has argued that you can mow out there anyway during July, that it may be difficult, but I'm glad that you're doing it.

I'm glad that you are keeping yourself and your neighbors safe from fire.

I am not averse to the idea of investigating how to, quote unquote, improve this land, to make it more usable for the humans that are temporarily inhabiting it, and to make it easier to maintain, to prevent fire, and to correct the error of the bad drainage of the road.

All of that, I think, is a fine project to consider.

But I would not suggest that you go and do it just the way you would take apart a jetta and put it back together again.

You know, if you fail to put that jetta back together again, you're already dealing with man-made waste on this earth.

If you rebuild that jetta, then you have reclaimed something from the waste process.

If you fail to rebuild that jedda, then you just got junk in your own garage.

And everyone's entitled to have junk.

A man is entitled to have junk in his own garage.

I'll say that, that piece of gendered wisdom.

But if you mess around with the land, it's going to have implications that are bigger than,

I never put together that jetta.

I don't know what those implications are.

You're a lot more knowledgeable about your land, and frankly, about land than I am, both you, Matt and karen um so i'm not i'm not the city kid coming here to tell you guys what to do in the country you know you've proven to me that you know more about all this stuff than i do i'll never throw down a crunky pad i'll never understand exactly what a culvert does even though i even though i i have one

i i defer to both of your expertise

and i obviously emotionally defer to Karen's feeling that you should just let nature be nature as much as possible.

There's no inherent nobility in getting out there and mucking around with it.

But that said, I don't think

it's a dumb project.

I do think that Matt's instincts and desires are good, but I don't think it's a project that you should just go out there with your brush hog and your road grader and start messing around with

before you consult with people who are even more expert than you are.

I mean, I would talk to an arborist about those willow trees.

I would, I don't know what resources you would go to

to find out about what the ecological impact of filling this bog would be and whether it would even be successful in what you intend to do.

You know, I don't know what happens when you fill in a bog up to that ditch level that you have next to the road.

Maybe it stays dry forever, or maybe it just becomes deeper mud, or maybe it catches on fire.

I don't know.

I'd walk the land with someone who really knows the land really well.

And if you've got the number to call a bunch of dump trucks, I bet you got the number to call some environmental consultants who'd be more than happy to talk to you about what the impact of this would be.

All of that said, the most important thing here is that you don't give all of your weekends away to mopeds and scooters and jettas and

pavilions, even if Karen is asking for that outdoor kitchen pavilion, which is going to be amazing.

Oh, an outdoor kitchen would be the greatest thing in the world, especially if you don't have any bugs.

You live in a paradise like Southern Washington, where they don't even have deer ticks yet.

Looks like, I don't know, maybe not.

Ah, what fun you're going to have.

But I would say, you know, the next project should not be filling the bog.

The next project should be finding out what happens when you try to fill the bog and what's the best way to fill a bog and picking the time to fill the bog.

And while you're going through that consultation process,

spend more of the weekend with your child.

You're obviously both really good parents and you've already named your child.

You let it slip.

Normally I don't ask the name of children, but if I remember, it's Fern.

Is that correct?

Yes.

Yeah.

You've already named her after a lowland, low-light plant, a bog plant, if you will.

Yes.

Whatever work you do in the bog has got to honor the bog and it's also got to

honor the bog and what it is meant to be.

and not to destroy an environment potentially that is doing some work that you may not be able to see.

And it's got to honor Fern in that you are not taking time away from the most important mark you will leave on life, which is your influence and your values upon your child.

Right now, she's just

not even

14 months.

Yeah.

Karen, she doesn't even know that Matt exists right now.

She doesn't have no idea, barely any idea.

But Matt, be careful because she's going to start noticing you soon.

You don't want to miss

the fern for the bog, if you will.

It's a very famous saying that Karen's dad says.

I just want to be clear that the verdict is technically in Matt's favor.

I'm sorry.

But it is contingent upon two very important things.

One,

true consultation

with environmental experts and people who know how to fill bogs to make sure that this effort is worth putting in.

with absolute right to abandon it if you are advised to leave it alone.

And two,

spacing out this project long enough so that Matt has time to provide you with the parenting backup that you require on the weekends.

So, is it a compromise?

I'm sorry to say.

Probably yes.

Is it technically Matt's favor?

Yes.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Judge John Hodgman rules that is all.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Karen, it sounds like you lost.

How are you feeling?

You know, I don't feel like a loser.

I feel pretty satisfied with the ruling because Matt will not be able to just dive into this project.

He has to consult some experts first.

And I think that I will have a little say in next steps as well.

So I feel good about it.

Matt, how do you feel?

I feel good.

I think that I got a lot of good advice and it was a very insightful verdict.

I appreciate Judge John Hodgman's opinion there.

Matt, Karen, thanks for joining us on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Thank you for having us.

Thanks for having us.

Another Judge John Hodgman case is in the books.

In a moment, we'll have Swift Justice.

Our thanks to Twitter user atironymaiden for naming this week's episode Scheduled for Adrainment.

If you want to name a future episode, make sure to follow us on Twitter at Hodgman and at Jesse Thorne.

You can also hashtag your Judge John Hodgman related tweets, hashtag JJHO.

You can join us in conversation on Reddit at maximumfun.reddit.com.

Evidence for the show?

Posted on our Instagram account at instagram.com slash judgejohnhodgman.

You're going to want to see this bog dog.

Follow us there.

It's a really handsome bog dog.

Our producer is Jennifer Marmer.

Our editor is Valerie Moffat.

Now, Swift Justice, Twitter user at M Salamander asks, when visiting friends or family who don't know what motion smoothing is, is it wrong to secretly disable it on their television sets?

Motion smoothing, Jesse Thorne, if I understand this, is a very controversial

thing

among sineasts.

It's a feature on new televisions where the television manipulates the picture to make the motion seem more smooth, hence the name.

But instead, it makes everything, including great works of cinematic art, look like they were shot on a sound stage in 1985.

They make everything look like they were shot on video in 1975, like it's all iClaudius or whatever.

It makes beautiful footage look like daytime soap operas.

And you will find film nerds on whatever discussion board you can find getting so mad about motion smoothing.

So I guess Ms.

Salamander is one of these who has gone home to visit friends or like their, their, their parents or whatever have motion smoothing on and they just want to, they want to switch it back secretly.

They hate motion smoothing that much.

But what I say is, don't do anything secret to your parents' televisions.

They probably don't even know how to turn on the TV.

It's not their fault.

They're just wanting to watch their stories.

They don't know about motion smoothing.

Just sit down with them and say, hey, would you like it better if it looks like this, beautiful, or like this, cheap garbage?

And then they'll say, it's their TV.

Don't mess around with someone's TV without

asking.

Have you got a dispute about film and television?

Send it to us.

Maximumfund.org/slash JJ

H O.

You can't have a dispute with film and television because film and television can't speak for itself.

Also, I would say any disputes about bogs or swamps, I'm still into bog and swamp justice.

Of course, we're willing to hear disputes about anything.

Go to maximumfund.org/slash JJ H O and share your disputes with us.

We'll talk to you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

MaximumFund.org.

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