Animal Crossing Examination

Welcome to the Judge Sean Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

With me, as always, Judge John Hodgman.

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Now, this week's case, Animal Crossing Examination.

Kelly brings the case against her wife, Maureen.

They both play the video game Animal Crossing New Horizons.

Kelly says that Maureen is adept at earning bells, which are the game's currency.

Kelly would like Maureen to share her profits.

Maureen is opposed.

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.

Listen to me, Coppertop.

We don't have time for 20 questions.

That's it.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne swear them in.

Kelly and Maureen, please 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.

I do.

I do.

Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, despite the narrow range of fruit trees he owns?

I do.

I do.

Judge Hodgman, you may proceed.

That's got to be an Animal Crossing reference, correct?

Bailiff Jesse Thorne?

Yeah, I can't say that I've played Animal Crossing since my senior year of college, 2003, with my friend Nathaniel Chapman in our apartment in the Beach Flats in Santa Cruz, California.

But I remember it was really important to have different kinds of fruit trees.

You need different kinds of fruit trees in this life.

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

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

Kelly, let's start with you.

Is that from The Matrix?

Or one of the movies?

Is that from The Matrix or one of the movies?

More a question than an answer.

Feels like I remember hearing Coppertop from there, but it's been a long time.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Shall we say The Matrix or one of the Matrices?

Yeah, or one of the many Matrices, yes.

One of the Matrices.

I'll allow that.

Coppertop maybe was Cornell West's character in Matrix 2.

They had an underground rave.

Maureen, what is your guess?

Yes, I have no idea.

I did not prepare for this.

There's no way to prepare.

Because you know why?

I'm like a trickster.

I'm like a tanuki.

I'm like a Tom Nook, a Japanese raccoon dog.

Tricking you.

Always mixing it up.

There was nothing you could guess.

You want to guess one anyway?

I'm going to go for specifics with The Matrix 2 since she said The Matrix in case you don't give it to her for being a general trilogy.

I love specificity.

Did you mean to say The Matrix 2

reloaded or the Matrix?

2 reloaded.

I'm going to go for the middle one.

I see.

Because I'm here at WERU up here in Orland, Maine, in a hermetically sealed room, looking through a cloudy glass window at Joel Mann, our summertime stoic producer up here.

How are you, Joel?

I'm doing very well, Judge.

Right.

So we're adapting to some new audio, not only a whole new world of social distancing, but also some new audio tech here as we record up here.

Did you hear Maureen say the Matrix 2 reloaded or just the Matrix?

Just the Matrix.

Yeah, that's what I heard too.

I mean, I heard not two.

I only heard the Matrix.

Because guess what?

Kelly and Maureen,

you guessed The Matrix, you're both right.

We both win.

You cancel each other out.

But even if only Kelly, you had guessed the Matrix Maureen, you had guessed the Matrix 2 reloaded.

I still would not have given it to Kelly.

Do you know why?

Kelly Maureen?

No.

Because you didn't name the character.

Oh.

Look, there are a lot of Matrix quotes.

Long, recognizable ones.

Kelly, I applaud you for remembering that term copper top, which is a reference to the fact that Neo, Keanu Reeves, as we all know in the Matrices,

begins life in the simulation.

He doesn't realize that he is a human battery.

So they call him Coppertop, but who calls him Coppertop?

Kelly or Maureen?

Going once, going twice?

No sale.

Morpheus?

No.

Switch!

Oh, that makes sense.

Minor character.

Yeah, Switch, like Nintendo Switch, which is what you play Animal Crossings on.

See?

And what I did not learn, Kelly Maureen,

and this is a short quote, but this is a long explanation.

What I did not know

until I was frantically coming up with a cultural reference in the dirt parking lot of WERU here in Orland, Maine, 89.9 Blue Hill, 99.9 Bangor, and online at WERU.org.

I did not know that the character Switch portrayed in The Matrix by Belinda McClory

was called Switch because they

had different genders inside The Matrix and out, at least as originally scripted.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, I know.

Cool, right?

That's so cool.

That's so cool.

Yeah,

I mean, it's why not?

I mean, well, we know why not.

It was 1999.

Yeah.

Warner Brothers freaked out.

Couldn't handle it.

But I mean, within the world of The Matrix, it would make a million times sense that you would have a character who, as scripted, switch was gender assigned at birth male in the real world of the Nebuchadnezzar, like underwater spaceship or whatever it is, but in the simulation switched to present as female.

And Warren Brothers said, uh,

no.

Boo.

But in any case, I'm sure they would do it differently now.

That was the origin.

It was so fascinating.

So anyway, here we are.

This is not about the matrix.

This is about Animal Crossing.

Who comes to my court to seek justice?

Maureen or Kelly?

I do, Kelly.

Kelly,

what is the nature of the injustice that you face?

Well, Your Honor, back in March when Animal Crossing New Horizons was released,

my wife Maureen and I both purchased copies of it.

We're both very big gamers.

We actually met gaming

and we

decided to have our own islands, but they would be like sister islands.

So we decided to help each other out as we built these islands.

At the same time, we ended up coming down with COVID very shortly after we bought the game.

So the game became very important to us.

It was the only thing that we could do from our beds for the month that we were very, very, very sick.

I am so sorry.

I mean, obviously Animal Crossing New Horizons has been important to a lot of people's lives during this time of social isolation and staying at home.

Never mind having COVID.

Would you feel comfortable describing what the experience was like?

Sure.

We had similar experiences, but I'll let Maureen tell her own.

I have lupus.

So for me at the beginning, I was like, is this a lupus flare?

But I pretty quickly got very sick.

I did have some difficulty breathing and needed an inhaler and had to use a CPAP machine, which I had never used, just during the day to kind of get some oxygen in at times.

I was one of the first people I knew to get H1N1 back in the day and at the time I said this is the sickest I've ever been outside of lupus.

I would definitely say COVID beat that.

It was very painful as far as the coughing was very hard, difficult to breathe, the headaches, all over fatigue.

It was it was definitely a very rough illness.

For lots of people who get COVID-19 and are diagnosed, you know, who recover at home, as you did more or less,

what people don't know is that the recovery is extremely prolonged.

Yes.

And you're uncomfortable for a very, very long time, that it really takes quite a bit out of you.

Yes.

I would say even now we are still two degrees recovering.

I still have some difficulty breathing.

I still need an inhaler.

And I would say that I've definitely not gotten my sort of pre-COVID strength back.

And of course it triggered a lupus flare too.

So that was fun.

Maureen, was your case of COVID as severe, would you say?

It was not.

Great.

I find in Kelly's favor.

Thank you very much.

This is the sound of the gabble.

I mean, it was horrible.

No, mine was more mild for sure.

I had a lot of joint pain.

I had very, very bad fatigue.

I had a lot of gastrointestinal issues and headaches.

I had less the shortness of breath, the classic shortness of breath and coughing, which I think really takes the cake, but it's not the illness Olympics.

And I understand from my briefing here that you are in St.

Louis, Missouri.

That's correct.

Yeah.

And how is Missouri doing, in your opinion?

Ooh, very bad.

Governor Parsons is kind of like, open it it up.

Yeah.

That's how I feel.

I've got a message from Mike Parson, Governor of Missouri.

You know what Missouri is called, right, Jesse Thorne?

Oh, what's that, John?

The show me state.

Mike Parson, you got shown.

Kelly Maureen, it's not a joke.

Not a joke, it's not a hoax.

Not at all.

People are sick and suffering.

You got shown.

I'm sure he listens to this podcast.

Right?

Probably that's true.

Kelly Maureen, I'm very glad that you're recovering as best as you can.

I hope you're as okay as possible.

Thank you for joining us on the Judge Sean Hodgman podcast.

I'm glad that you have enough personal, physical, and emotional reserve

having faced this disease and continue to face it.

I'm glad you have enough emotional and physical reserve to get really petty and come on a podcast to fight about

Animal Crossing.

I'm glad there's still that space in your life.

Hey, Joel Bann, you ever play Animal Crossing?

No idea what you're talking about.

Okay.

Maureen, tell Joel what Animal Crossing is and why it's so compelling.

Okay, Joel, there is Tanuki who's going to give you a loan to build a house to make friends with the neighboring animals, and they will sometimes give you presents.

Wow.

Joel.

That sounds like fun.

Do you know what a tanuki is?

Nope.

It's a Japanese raccoon dog.

Well, there you have it.

Famous in Japanese and Asian folklore in general.

Embodied in Animal Crossing by the character of Tom Nook, who is the

kind of the godfather of the Animal Crossing world.

Accurate.

He owns a shop.

He loans you money that you have to repay by working for him.

And you play, and you can correct me, Maureen and Kelly, where I get wrong, because I have not played or seen any of this new Animal Crossing.

All my information goes back to Animal Crossing City Folk circa 2008 on the Wii.

But you play a human living in an open-ended world full of anthropomorphic animals,

and basically you build a life for yourself.

You get a house, or you get a mortgage for a house from Tom Nook,

predatory lender.

You furnish it with stuff you buy from Tom Nook.

I mean, if he's a tanuki, he's literally a predatory lender, right?

Yeah, that's right.

They are

predatory animals, right?

I think they seek prey

and

they seek high interest rates.

Everyone knows, right, Jesse?

Yeah.

And this all happens in Missouri?

Correct.

All right, Joel.

Getting a little too feisty across the glass.

It all happens in the video game.

In the video game,

you make money which is called bells instead of dollars they have bells

by working and by raising what Kelly by raising fruit trees by

raising turnips

and in particular playing the stalk market

S-T-A-L-K

yes Yes, Your Honor.

So essentially, you purchase turnips from your local turnip vendor every Sunday, hopefully at a good price, preferably below 100 bills.

And then you have two options.

You can wait on your island and watch the turnip price fluctuate throughout the week and hope you get a really good deal.

Or you can be bold and meet other people who are playing Animal Crossing and see if they have a better deal to sell and then sell your turnips on their island.

So, Kelly and Maureen, the stock market is kind of at the center of your debate, correct?

Yes.

All right.

You have separate islands.

That is to say, you each have your own sort of world.

You are not collaborating, correct?

Correct.

Not directly correct.

And so, Kelly, what is Maureen doing in the stock market that brings you to this court?

Well, Maureen is very, very good at playing the stock market.

Buy low, sell high.

Exactly.

She immediately dived into that area of the game.

She was able to network with other random players and go onto their islands and sell for very high.

Right.

She also does something called time traveling, which allows her to buy turnips multiple times per week, for our week, and sell them multiple times.

So she's a bit of a trickster as well.

Wait a minute, Maureen, are you a Time Lord?

Are you a Doctor Who?

I am the Doctor Who of Animal Crossing, yes.

What is time traveling in the game?

It was previously quite frowned upon by the Animal Crossing community, and there was a character who would come yell at you when you do it.

It's when you change the clock on your

console.

So for me, I change it on the Nintendo Switch.

Because the game operates in real time each day.

It's set to your console clock.

So I'm like, all right, I'm going to to change my clock till tomorrow so that I can play tomorrow today instead of going to bed like a normal human being.

So

you're hacking the system.

Yes.

You're putting a glitch in the matrix.

Oh no, it came full circle.

You're seeing two cats instead of one.

Because if I understand this correctly, You can only purchase turnips on a certain day, and you're tricking the program into thinking it's that certain day day after day after day.

Correct.

Correct.

All right.

And you say this was previously frowned upon by the Animal Crossing community, which, correct, I would frown.

I'm frowning.

Sorry.

Frown.

If you're a Doctor Who, you're supposed to be out there saving the day, not hoarding turnips.

But.

Yeah, I bet Doctor Who doesn't even have two or three turnips.

I'd say maximum Doctor Who has five turnips.

But Jesse Thornton, can I tell you something?

At some point, Jesse, you and I really should have,

maybe we should do this someday for a Max Fun Drive special episode, like bonus content for members only.

Because you, Jesse Thorne,

are

an expert in men's garb.

Yeah, true.

I would really love to sit down with you and hear your opinion and reaction to the clothing of every Doctor Who.

Because some of them get a little wacky.

Yeah, I'm my boy for that.

It's old.

That's good, right?

The sixth Doctor Who

not only wore sort of like a cricket sweater and white pants and trainers everywhere.

He dressed like a cricket batter all the time, but he also wore a tan jacket with red piping around the lapel, and on the lapel, he pinned a stalk of celery for no reason.

Wow.

Could have been a turnip.

That's like Prince Charles will wear a thistle on his lapel because he's

king of Scotland or whatever.

Sure, I don't know exactly how it works.

Sorry, Britons and citizens of the United Kingdom, but it was a celery stalk.

That just indicates that probably that he likes to make sure he gets his fiber.

Yeah.

You know what, Jesse?

I'm going to send you a picture of him wearing this celery stalk right now.

I just, I can't.

And by the way, everybody, stop emailing me.

Everyone's time traveling to email me angry letters right now, even though this hasn't even been released yet.

Because I said the sixth doctor, it was the fifth doctor.

Sorry.

Peter Davison.

Stand by one second, Jesse.

I'm going to send you a link.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Wait, this guy's from, is this guy from All Creatures Great and Small?

Yes.

He's the junior vet in All Creatures Great and Small.

So in the television show Doctor Who, does he play Tristan Farnan from All Creatures Great Great and Small, but

he becomes a Time Lord?

Or does he play one of the other characters from All Creatures Great and Small who's become a Time Lord?

The BBC never aired the final episode of All Creatures Great and Small

because it was too controversial.

Because Tristan was made into a Time Lord at the end of it.

It was a Time Lord.

Like, that is not in the books.

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Anyway, you're a time traveler, Maureen.

You're not using your powers for good.

You're using your powers for acquisition.

You're hoarding up turnips at a low price, selling them at a high price.

What was the animal that would come and yell at you?

He was a mole, I think.

He was Mr.

Rossetti, like reset.

Like, hey, I caught you reset in your game.

But did they take that feature out?

Is that now just part of the game?

Now that all norms are shattered and society is basically collapsed, they're like, do it, do it what you need to do.

Yeah, I think they were like, you guys need this.

We're not going to yell at you anymore, which we took as permission.

And by we, you mean you, Maureen.

I mean me and every other time travel, because it's quite popular right now to be a time traveler.

Well, as long as everyone's playing by the same rules.

So, Kelly, I don't understand what the dispute is here.

Maureen is playing the game her way, hoarding turnips, time traveling.

Sounds like a lot of fun.

How is this frustrating you?

Sure.

So at the time,

I felt that we were having and sharing a very collaborative Animal Crossing experience, both as a partnership and as people with COVID recovering.

And

the first time that she actually made the bells, I will admit it was with my help.

They were very low on my island and she was able to sort of sell them very high on her island.

So that's where she learned the trick.

So what you're saying is turnips, you sold turnips from your island to Maureen at a low price.

She turned around classic pump and dump.

Yes.

Sold them for a high price.

And she made a lot of bells as a result.

Yes, and she did give me a portion.

That turned her into the wolf of Turnip Street.

It did.

It did.

And I was, you know, just kind of accepting of it.

And I took my portion of the profits and continued to pay off my mortgage.

We then began to where I was able to gather and craft things for Maureen that she couldn't because partly she was busy making turnip or buying turnips and selling them.

And so I felt that we had a sort of collaborative experience, much like in our real lives, where we share an income.

We do share a lot of the same hobbies.

As I said, we did meet through gaming.

I feel that if she's going to continue to make these acquisitions, which is something she loves to do and something that I'm not very good at doing, and in fact, do not like to speak to strangers on other people's islands,

that she should split some of the profits with me, especially as I am busy.

creating things for her and finding her things she likes.

I don't believe it should be 50%.

I will say that.

What's an example of something that you've created for her that she likes?

So in the evidence I submitted, you'll see a picture of our Animal Crossing avatars on a shell set, sort of a pearlescent outside cafe area with a fountain and a table, and it's sort of a cute little area.

And I created all of those for her.

So we're going to share these images, obviously, on the show page at maximumfund.org, as well as on our Instagram at judgejohnhodgman on Instagram.

I just need to I need to acknowledge the caption of this particular piece of evidence.

The caption is important evidence showing how cute we are in game.

And I absolutely have proven your case.

Yeah, it's definitely a dorbs.

Yeah, incredibly cute avatars.

But what you're trying to show here, Kelly, is these pearlescent shells.

Is that something you made in the game?

Yes, I made the entire furniture set for her as a gift or as part of my imaginary, I guess, exchange.

The partnership I believed.

You basically have your avatar swallow a grain of sand, then you time travel forward far enough, and then you vomit up one of these shells.

Exactly.

Is that true?

No.

No, no, no.

No speculative on my part, admittedly.

So these these are two cute, for those listening, these are two very cute, adorable avatars having a little afternoon hang

by a table made out of an iridescent sand dollar that was created

by Kelly in the game and sitting on little beautiful iridescent shelled stools, also created, I guess, by you, Kelly, right?

Yes.

Right.

And whose island are you on?

Are you having this little party?

This smile party?

It's on Maureen's.

This is Maureen.

Okay, Maureen, I got it.

You're partying on your island with stuff that Kelly made for you,

and you don't want to give her any bells.

You don't want to share the bells that you've made in the tournament market.

Is that correct?

Well,

kind of.

Let me ask you a question, Maureen.

How many bells you got?

So I currently have 42 million.

Oh.

Being a bell millionaire is inherently immoral.

Yeah.

Right?

I was afraid you were going to have a billion.

42 million, though.

Getting there.

How many bells do you have, Kelly?

I currently have a little over 1 million.

This is a disparity.

Would you agree, Maureen?

A little bit.

Do you know what I find millionaires, or in this case, multi-millionaires, are really good at doing?

No, what?

Justifying their existence

and also explaining why they should be rich.

Why should you have 42 million bells and why should you not share them?

with your wife, Kelly.

So I have 42 million bells because once you complete the game and you have completed the content because they update for different holidays they're always putting out new content but when you time travel you burn through it pretty quickly so what i'm trying to do to entertain myself in animal crossing now is decorate my island and i've created like additional humans to live on the island and i'm upgrading their houses so they have like a little beachfront cafe and a little like place for my friends to go so they can look at clothes and tell me what clothes they want.

And I will send them the clothes.

And you're spending bells on this.

So I'm spending a lot of bells on this.

And this is on your island, Maureen.

And it is on my island.

What you're saying to your wife is, I can't share any bells with you because I'm too busy spending all my bells creating a perfect society without you.

Well, now they're holding on.

Creating new friends.

There was was an incident, Your Honor,

where I decided to redo my island one night and I didn't want to lose the things that I had.

And I asked if I could store them temporarily on her island and she did charge me rent.

I would like to clarify why I charged rent if possible.

All right, Kelly.

Go ahead.

It's because she did not move her items from my island for two weeks and it was affecting my in-game rating.

I thought it would make her hurry.

It's hard for me to describe the look of confusion

and concern and even disgust on Joel Mann's face right now.

I think they should go out to Metinicus and see how many turnips those bells will buy.

Talking about Betinicus Island here in Maine?

Yes.

Yeah, that's all they got over there.

They're lucky if they have a turnip.

Tinnicus, a very depopulated island in Maine, very remote.

You know, Joel expressed some confusion about why this is a game.

Since what you're describing is like, I have to pay my mortgage.

She left her stuff on my room for too long, so I charged rent.

Like, this whole virtual world is just full.

of what we would call some of the most mundane real-world problems.

Is it fun, Kelly?

It's actually very fun.

I would argue, especially that in this time, those mundane problems are kind of nice.

Okay.

So especially at the time, I would say that it was

just sort of bonding and nice to talk about mortgages and also to be able to pay them off.

As millennials, that's something that both of us have to think about a lot.

Maureen's contracts, her jobs at the time, had been paused due to the pandemic.

And I was actually on disability at that time for my lupus.

And so it was sort of a tough financial struggle at the time as well.

And so I think there was this nice feeling of being able to live a very comfortable virtual life.

Yeah.

Okay, I got you.

It's a kinder form

of capitalism, one in which there is the potential to succeed.

Would that be fair to say?

Yes, I would definitely say that it is a much kinder form.

One extremely kind form of capitalism would be no capitalism at all.

Yes.

Socialism, redistributed wealth.

Right, Kelly?

You're what Ayn Rand would call a moocher.

Maureen's out there

moving her money around, playing the market,

having the interactions with the strangers, which, by the way, I don't want to have either.

She's earned these 42, arguably, she's earned these 42 million bells.

And now you just want to confiscate that wealth?

Who are you?

AOC?

By the way, I love AOC.

Incredible.

We do too.

Your argument would be, Kelly, that Maureen should give you a percentage of her bells because you're married, right?

Also because I felt that reflecting our marriage, I was also contributing to the partnership.

Right.

You're giving her all these iridescent shells.

Now, Maureen, do you take value in these iridescent shells?

Is this just garbage that you're storing on your island rent-free?

Because you don't want to hurt Kelly's feelings.

That's a great point.

I have a lot of your items on my island that I'm not charging you rent for, but just kidding.

I love them.

They're wonderful.

They bring me joy.

All right.

You are getting value.

I mean, like, you wouldn't have these shells because all you're doing,

you're like Lynn-Manuel Miranda as Hamilton and Hamilton, and Kelly is like David Diggs as Jefferson.

You know, she's creating.

You just want to move your money around, right?

I will say that since I time travel, I do collect rare materials to make recipes with.

And recipes and DIYs are what you get to make the shells.

So I'll be like a season ahead, like, oh, I've got acorns.

Would you like an acorn wreath?

So, I do sometimes give her things as well.

And do you accept, Kelly?

Do you accept these misbegotten gains?

I do, I admit it.

They're very pretty and they look very good on my island.

There is no ethical capitalism,

Maureen.

You're out there cheating.

You're cheating.

You know that you're cheating.

Right?

Wait, John, I have one.

A tab, all tanukis are bad.

From where I sit, Maureen, you're out there.

You're

it's an accepted cheat at this point, but you're cheating the system.

I mean, you are a super capitalist, right?

You're just acquiring wealth and you're using your wealth to gain more wealth.

And exponentially, you get more and more wealthy.

You're using every loophole to your advantage.

You're hoarding wealth from your very wife.

Tell me a reason why I shouldn't order an Eat the Rich Edict.

Oh my gosh, that's so funny because my flag is actually Eat the Rich.

You have a town flag,

Maureen.

You have a town flag that says Eat the Rich on it?

I do!

Ironically, she does.

That is pure performative progressivism.

Rich, eat thyself.

Why do you have a flag that says, eat the rich?

Are you a motorhead fan?

No, because in real life, I'm a pretty big anti-capitalist socialist.

But.

This is getting delicious.

IRL.

You agree that capitalism is a rigged system, perpetuating greater and greater inequality of wealth.

I do.

But when you get on your island,

you love hoarding those bells, don't you?

Sorry.

Hold on.

I do.

Yes.

I appreciate your recognizing that you are under fake oath and telling the truth.

That's fun.

Roleplay is fun.

Role play is fun.

Yeah, playing a different version of yourself, maybe one that goes against some of your principles in a game-like environment.

That's a that's an emotional release.

I get it.

Yeah, like when you pick the mean answer in Dragon Age.

Yeah, it's like when you pick the mean answer in Dragon Age.

That's just what I was thinking.

Yeah.

Yeah, Joel, it's like when you pick the mean answer in Dragon Age, you know.

Yeah, part cheesy.

Right.

So, Kelly, how much bells do you want?

You know, Your Honor, I'm honestly just looking for a percentage.

I don't need 50%.

Maybe 25%.

25%

tax.

Yes.

Right.

In consideration of shared income, IRL,

and in consideration of stuff that you make.

Yes.

Just a basic bookies vig.

Exactly.

25%.

You want 25%

off the top right now or 25% of what she has and 25% everything going forward?

Yeah, is this an income tax or a wealth tax?

Yeah, there we go.

Thank you.

And are you prepared to take the wealth tax all the way to the Supreme Court?

Well, I thought that's where we are now, the Animal Crossing Supreme Court.

Oh.

Who do you think I am?

A finger-wagging mole?

Animal Crossing has

its own court system.

I'm not part of that.

Judge Hodgman is the court in the court of Seaman,

the man-faced fish that lives inside your Sega Dreamcast.

I'm comfortable with a continued portion throughout time.

It doesn't need to be every run, maybe once a month.

Once a month, you're going to take 25%

of Maureen's wealth.

Is that what you're saying?

Be specific.

If we both agree that the services I've provided and also in the name of our wonderful marriage, yes.

Well, we don't both agree, right, Maureen?

Why is 25%

confiscatory?

Because

of the rent incident, I was not under the impression that it was, you know, an arrangement where I was receiving goods for bells.

I thought that I was returning that with other goods that I gave her.

So

I think it's just

taking advantage of the situation.

Did you have a conversation about what it would mean to have different islands when you chose to play separate islands as opposed to one island?

Absolutely not.

The only conversation that we had was,

boy, I'm sure glad we each have our own console and that we can play with our own islands anytime we want and decorate them however we want.

You guys have two Nintendos?

Yes.

To be fair, we both had them before we were married.

But then you got two different animal crossings.

We did.

Wow.

This is, John, it's possible that this is the next level in your two beds, two bedrooms argument for married couples.

Two beds, two bedrooms, two Nintendos.

Yeah, you're right, Kelly.

That's a good point.

Kelly, how does it make you feel when Maureen doesn't doesn't share bells with you?

I admit I'm hurt.

Tell me more.

Well, one thing I will say is that Maureen's parents also play the game.

And when I asked them initially about this question, they also said that they share their income because they have always shared their life together, which I thought was a very sweet and romantic sentiment, Maureen.

And I will say that it hurt my, it hurt my feelings a little bit.

How do you respond to that, Maureen?

How does that make you feel?

Uh

well my bad.

I'm very sorry, but we have never shared income in any other video game before.

Most sincere apology ever, by the way.

I love you very much.

You're the light of my life.

If you want some bells, I can give them to you, but just not like, you know, an obligatory every run because that puts pressure on me.

You hear what she's saying, Kelly.

You have to beg.

Yeah, I do.

I hear that.

Do you share your income in real life?

Yes, we do.

Right.

Share everything else equally, right, Kelly?

Yes, we do.

We even wear the same shoe size.

But you have two different Nintendos.

We do.

There is precedent for not sharing certain things.

Even wear the same shoe size.

It's adorable and adorabler.

Yeah, we share clothes and shoes and everything.

Do you ever dress up like those old lady twins that used to walk around downtown San Francisco all suited and booted?

I would like to.

I've mentioned that.

I used to live in San Francisco, so I would like to do that.

Who were these people, Jesse?

There were these two lady twins.

I'm going to look it up.

Yeah, send me an image.

I'm Googling San Francisco old lady twins.

They had matching perms.

The Brown twins, Marianne and Vivian Brown, were two American identical twin actresses who also appeared on television talk shows and television commercials.

They were icons in San Francisco, known as the San Francisco Twins.

They had identically bright, snappy outfits and hats atop meticulously coiffed hair.

Matching perms.

That's the secret.

Matching perms.

Will you text me an image?

Yes.

Great.

I'll look at it in my chambers in a moment.

Kelly, unless I were to intercede.

and order some redistribution of wealth.

Is it your position that you would stop helping Maureen source DIY recipes?

That you would stop making shells for her?

That you would withhold these goods?

I'll admit that I would not stop.

Right.

Right.

You just can't help being ground down by this system.

Maureen, she loves you.

She's going to make those shells even if you don't give her some bells.

I know.

I'm very lucky.

She's making shells for no bells.

Is this how you treat the love of your life?

You hoard up those bells?

Apparently.

If I were.

She made me pay rent.

That was one thing.

That was one.

Ugh.

Do you know how much money she charged me?

No, how much?

What was it?

Just one million bells.

Yeah.

Should have been 42 million bells.

I see that now, Your Honor.

Maureen, you sound just like an IRL millionaire.

Oh, no.

Do you know what I mean?

But it's a video game.

Oh, one of my employees looked wrong at me once, so therefore I will never help them again.

Mean.

It's like the mean answer from Dragon Age.

You picked it.

I do pick them sometimes.

Yeah, I can tell.

All right, so if I were to find in your favor, it would be whatever.

You would only give bells to your beloved wife if she asked the right way.

What would be the right way?

Maureen, do your imitation of how kelly should ask you for bells that would work hey babe i need to build a bread a bridge can i have two million bells okay sure

i don't believe that

don't you want her to be obsequious

groveling i would not make her do that so you're just saying if kelly asked you for a few bells

to work on a project, you would invest in that project, like Shark Tank.

Correct.

I just don't like the pressure of being obligated to share like every run is how I feel right now Kell you want to ask Maureen for some bells right now on air um Maureen I have a small project I'd like to complete it will be 42 million bells may I please borrow those

uh no all right I've heard everything I need to in order to make my decision I am going to go to my own private island of my mind, which is located not in Animal Crossing, but underneath this plastic conference table in the studios of WERU, where I hope it'll be slightly cooler because we have the AC off at my request.

It's better for the sound.

I'll cool off, I'll think it over.

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

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Maureen and Kelly, how many other of these video game machines have you got?

Got new Coleco visions?

No, we're not that cool.

No, if you're asking for real, we have like a PS4,

Xbox One, and some like older gen stuff, and some portable systems.

A nice man sent me one of those PlayStations so I could pretend to be Spider-Man.

It was a lot of fun.

That's a great game.

Great.

He's Spider-Man.

He's jumping around, shooting webs.

You wouldn't believe the stuff this guy does.

I love that game.

You got any hot tips for Zelda?

Because my friend Jordan gave me his Nintendo Wii U, and I've been playing Zelda and I don't know I guess I need some recipes or something.

Oh Maureen's good at Zelda.

Oh you're playing Breath of the Wild?

Yeah.

I was like if you're playing Skyward Sword I have no help for you.

You need a good controller.

Was there really one called Skyward Sword?

There was.

There was.

Wow, what an awkward name.

No.

Yeah, and you had to like hold the Wii remote in the air, point it up.

It was very uncomfortable.

How do you feel, Maureen, Maureen, about your chances in this case?

I'm feeling pretty bad right now.

Yeah.

Kelly, how are you feeling?

I'm going to reserve judgment.

Yeah, we'll see what the judge has to say about all this when we come back in just a moment.

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

So, Bailiff Jesse Thorne pointed out that your

two Nintendo's, two islands

lifestyle is in line with this court's precedent of encouraging a certain amount of physical and emotional independence within a marriage, which is specifically

you don't have to sleep right on top of each other if you have the means to get a king-size bed to it.

And ideally,

you could each have separate bedrooms.

connected only by a slender slate walking path over a reflecting pool.

That would be an ideal bedroom for me.

I don't think that's true.

I love spending time with my wife, and it's just a fantasy that I have from time to time.

And what we're talking about here is a fantasy that you have from time to time.

You know, you're cute in-game.

That's been proven by evidence.

And though we've not met in person, I don't believe.

It's been really fun to talk to both of you.

You both deserve better

from the governor of St.

Louis, governor of Missouri, I mean, Mike Parsons.

You deserve better

in your state government.

You deserve better in your federal government, to say the least.

You deserve a functioning federal government that mobilizes information and resources in a coordinated way across the nation to respond to a not just national but worldwide health crisis that affected you both personally.

You deserve better.

You deserve better in the real world than an economic system that is obviously unfair and favors the wealthy.

As I was explaining to Joel Mann, every game of monopoly ends in tears because it is presented as a game, as a capitalistic game of fair play, where everyone starts at the same spot on the board, but the first person to randomly accrue any wealth whatsoever

exponentially grows wealth until the rest are crushed and ground beneath their feet.

Ha ha, fun for a family.

Very representative of what happens in capitalism as it is practiced today.

And I'll be honest, you know, I consider myself a capitalist.

I am a small business.

I don't create iridescent shells.

I create words and ideas that I put out into the marketplace, and I hope people value them and pay me for them.

That's the only way I understand how to live is to have work like you, Kelly, that I can put my hands on.

Small-scale stuff, making pretty shells and giving them away or selling them away, whatever makes you happy.

I don't understand the high finance of this of the turnip market.

I'm never going to play those markets.

I don't get it.

And if it weren't for a lot of luck in my life and a lot of privilege in my life, I would have been ground down out of existence.

My funny jokes or whatever.

Nothing.

I've got a lot of good turns in my life.

Never mind the fact that I was born looking this way and I was born to a stable family that had that had some not generational wealth behind it, but economic stability.

Right?

I think we all understand

in the midst of this crisis that we all deserve better.

And I think one of the great awakenings of this moment is that a lot of people who never thought that they were going to be laid off, a lot of people who the system sort of favored as it worked every day, a lot of people who were never going to have to get food stamps, a lot of people who were never going to have to get unemployment insurance, a lot of people who were never going to have to seek disability, suddenly had to.

And they realized how faulty the system was.

They realized that the system that other less privileged people were interacting with every day was not helping them or anybody.

And meanwhile, these turnip billionaires are floating above the earth,

whining.

This would you sound like, Maureen, like Elon Musk, whining

about how,

California isn't being nice to me because I can't make my electric cars fast enough because people are dying of COVID.

Gross.

Gross.

Maureen?

Gross.

Yes!

That was just a rhetorical, Maureen.

Okay.

In real life, you both deserve better

than what has happened.

We all do.

We're all human beings.

But sometimes

you pick the mean answer in Dragon Age.

Games

are a place to explore fantasies.

Games are a place to play a role.

Games are a place where it can feel good to actually pay off a mortgage.

When IRL, paying down a mortgage, paying off a student loan, is often a seemingly impossible feat.

given the structure of even a functioning economy such as what we had prior to March.

You made a decision to have separate islands.

That was a lifestyle you chose to explore in this game.

You could have had the same island.

Look, maybe you can't and Animal Crossing.

I don't know, but you see what I'm saying.

Made a decision to have separate islands

to play the game in different ways.

Is Maureen

a monster in Animal Crossing?

Yes.

Is she as bad as Tom Nook?

No.

Yes, capitalist monster in-game.

Progressive activist out of game.

Good balance.

She deserves, don't you think, Kelly, the right to play the game that gives her the most pleasure, however perverse that pleasure may be.

She not only is making a lot of money on a financial market, but is frankly exploiting your labor, Kelly.

She's frankly taking shells from you, knowing that you would keep making them even if she didn't ever pay you for them or reimburse you for them.

The symbiosis of your relationship in this game is sadly more resonant of the toxic

symbiosis between labor and capital.

in the real world.

That's why Joel Mann doesn't ever want to play this game.

Dude has a mortgage.

Joel, I don't want to get personal with you, but you've had a mortgage in your life, right?

I have one mortgage now.

I don't want another one.

Right, exactly.

Not even a fake one.

Sold to you by a folkloric raccoon dog?

I wouldn't be able to sleep at night.

No, I know.

But that's okay.

That's how you have fun in the game.

Maureen is having fun in the game.

And now that it is clear that she wants to continue to have this exploitative, accumulative, capitalistic fun in the game, even at the expense of her wife's feelings.

Now that that's clear,

now that you both know this about each other,

you'll have some interesting conversations outside of the game, perhaps.

But in the meantime,

I want Maureen to play the game that she is playing.

And Kelly, I want you to play the game that gives you pleasure.

So for that reason, I cannot approve a 25% confiscation

of Maureen's wealth,

which would be applied at some

obscure timeline from time to time.

I mean, Kelly, let's face it,

you didn't have a very clear program.

You didn't have a plan for that.

That's fair.

But in honor of someone who had a plan for everything and still does,

Elizabeth Warren,

2% wealth tax annually.

That's what you get, Maureen.

2% wealth tax.

That sounds fair.

840,000 bills.

I order you to transfer annually.

Or, you know, 2% of your total wealth transfer annually to your wife.

Because you move that money around.

But you didn't build that iridescent sand dollar table.

You benefit from her as well.

So I order a transfer immediately of 840,000 bells from Maureen to Kelly for the fiscal year 2019 into 2020.

We will reevaluate next year if we're still playing this game.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Judge Sean Hodgman rules that is all.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Kelly, how do you feel?

I feel like it was a very fair verdict.

I liked his plan, and this is why I brought this to Judge John Hodgman.

Well, Judge John Hodgman, he has a plan for that.

Maureen, how do you feel about the verdict?

My fear is that it will apply to Animal Crossing years and since I time travel, I will be transferring this amount of money about weekly, but otherwise I feel very good about it.

I'm talking about Judge John Hodgman years.

Regular years.

Do you remember that Saturday Night Live sketch where Steve Forbes Forbes was trying to convince them that he wasn't pitching the flat tax because he was Steve Forbes, but rather because he was Teve Tobes, who just happened to support the flat tax?

It was just a little tax plan thing I was thinking about and just smiling to myself.

Teve Torbes.

Kelly Maureen, thanks for joining us on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

I echo my bailiff's thanks.

Before we let you go, I rarely do this, but I'm going to go ahead.

You sent in as evidence, quote unquote, your Animal Crossing Instagram account.

So I'm going to say instagram.com slash queens underscore crossing.

Queens underscore crossing.

Check it out.

And good luck in real life and on this plane of existence.

Thanks very much to both of you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You too.

Another Judge John Hodgman case is in the books.

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Yeah, I mean, that's the hard thing about this time is that you feel

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Thanks, everybody.

In a moment, we'll have Swift Justice.

First, our thanks to Brianna O'Sullivan and Emily Joanne Holasek for naming this week's episode, Animal Crossing Examination.

If you'd like to name a future episode like Judge John Hodgman on Facebook, we regularly put out our calls for submissions there.

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And this week's episode was edited by Hannah Smith.

Our producer is Jennifer Marmer.

Now, Swift Justice, where we answer your small disputes with a quick judgment.

Eva says, My colleagues and I are both Spanish teachers, but neither of our first languages is Spanish.

They pronounce the Panera part of Panera Bread Company with a Spanish accent.

I think it's really pretentious.

What say you, Judge Hodgman?

So they're saying Panera.

Panera.

Panera.

Panera.

So, interestingly,

Kelly Mariner in St.

Louis, Panera Bread, I'm going to say Panera Bread,

was founded in 1993 as the St.

Louis Bread Company.

Guess what, Joel?

They wanted to go national.

And literally the creator said, I want something that we can take to Portland, Oregon, or Portland, Maine.

Good idea.

Right?

Yeah.

That is a national strategy to reach white people.

Okay.

So they renamed it Panera, which means bread basket in Spanish.

Bread Basket Bread.

That's a little history lesson, but basically I'm going to say, just say Panera.

I agree.

Panera, no es bueno.

Too pretentious.

It is what it is.

It's a fast food company.

Panera bread.

That's it for this week's episode.

Submit your cases at maximumfund.org/slash jjho or email hodgman at maximumfund.org.

No case is too small.

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

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