Jesse Finds a Crux

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We're in chambers this week, clearing the docket.

How are you, Judge Hodgman?

I'm very well.

How are you, Bailiff Jesse Thorne?

I'm very well as well.

I just interviewed Sharon Horgan, the co-star of the wonderful television show Catastrophe.

And she asked me some really intimate questions while I was trying to interview her.

She asked, she turned the tables.

Absolutely, enthusiastically turned the tables.

And can you give us a little tease,

a little preview of what we might hear?

My wife and I love each other very much, and we're not afraid to express our love.

Right, but you don't sit on the same side of the booth at a diner.

No, we look into each other's eyes as lovers should.

Yeah, good.

Well, I'm doing very well because I can now confirm to the podcast listening audiences of the world, or at least this podcast listening audience of the world,

that the day before Max FunCon

coming up in June 10th of this year, the day before it, the 9th, I'm continuing my, what has now become a tradition of doing a performance at Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles the night before.

Oh, that's lovely.

Many Max FunCon attendees make it their business to attend that performance.

Well, look, no one has to do anything they don't feel like doing.

And indeed, I'm going to tell you

that the performance that I am giving is the performance of my one-man show, Vacationland, which you know I toured last fall.

And I did not take it to LA last fall in part because I had done an earlier version of this show.

But I love this show.

And if you saw it, gosh, over a year ago at Largo, there's a lot of new material in it.

And I think altogether it's a much more mature one-man storytelling, talking, jokey monologue, or whatever it is that I do.

And if you didn't see it, then

none of this matters.

And I'd love for anyone within the sound of my voice who can make it their business to be in Los Angeles, California, Thursday, June 9th at 7 p.m.

Vacation Land by John Hodgman

at the Largo at the Coronet,

my favorite place to perform in Los Angeles.

And I will mention, speaking of Max FunCon, that Max FunCon East tickets are now officially on sale, Labor Day weekend in the Poconos.

Go to maxfuncon.com.

We don't reveal the lineup, but

it will be very fun, very fun,

and me.

There's a lot of amazing stuff already booked for Max FunCon East, in addition to the pleasure of joining with

your fellow charming, lovely enthusiasts in warm-hearted handshakes and hugs and imbibing of artisanal cocktails and whatnot.

There is not a, you know, I would never miss Max Fun, but there are lots of people who live on the East Coast who are not able to go out to California.

And this is your opportunity to

rub elbows, which is a long tradition

that we do.

It's a lot of elbow rubbing.

It gets very intimate.

Yeah, and a little chafey.

Yeah.

So much mupping.

You might want to bring some shea butter.

Yeah, or an unguint of some kind.

It's going to be a lot of fun, and I'm glad that it's happening again.

Should we clear the docket here?

Sure.

Okay.

Clear the docket of all our plugs.

We've got something from Hillary.

Hillary says, You got to know my husband, Rick, aka the pig,

Father Gnaw's Beast.

Yes, we certainly,

this guy's creep.

This guy's creeping into my feet again.

Yeah, man, he is all up in our business.

That's right.

You know,

I got him bugging me on Tumblr, asking me questions on Tumblr.

Weird dads are on Tumblr now?

The pig, if you guys don't know, the pig is a weird dad who

loves to eat meat of all kind and equally loves to gross out his vegetarian daughters.

And

he's a fine fella.

But he just, well, of course you know, because he just came back, he snuck into the podcast just a couple weeks ago

for a little update on what's going on there.

Dude's still eating meat and grossing out his daughters.

This guy, this guy.

So now what's up with him?

Now he's doing it on Snapchat, probably.

Yeah, right.

So Hillary says, my daughters Kim and Jen have encouraged me to write to you with another dispute.

We live in Chicago and we have a small cabin on a river in Indiana for weekend canoe trips.

For 35 years, we've been hosting these large canoe trip weekends for about 8 to 15 people per weekend.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

How long?

How long?

How long have they been?

About 35 years.

35 years.

Dudes, we're right here.

You know what I mean?

I've been doing this for 35 years.

Been on the podcast three times now.

Our visitors bring tents and camp out.

We cook out on a campfire and go canoeing.

It's a lot of fun.

Oh, well, no, thank you.

Sorry.

I'm sure it's fun for you guys.

But it's also a lot of work, she says.

Yeah, no, I know.

This sounds like a lot lot of work.

During these trips, Rick thinks he should get a certain amount of work credits.

He claims these credits for the following reasons.

One, it was his idea to buy the property 35 years ago, which I dispute.

Two, he had the idea for canoe trips.

And three, he does the organization, sending out the invitations, planning the activities, and so forth.

He invented canoe trips.

Yeah.

He had the idea for canoe trips.

Before, people would just canoe in a circle.

They didn't even, yeah, they didn't even think.

The main problem was they didn't think to paddle on both sides of the canoe.

Right.

So they would just go in a long arc and then hit another part of the lake.

Yeah.

Right.

Rick says that doing this high-quality think work

That's in quotation marks, needless to say,

beforehand exempts him from some of the physical labor.

He also feels that if I ask him to do a job, gathering firewood, for example, and he delegates it to someone else, that's just as good as doing it himself.

I feel embarrassed to have him tasking our guests who are helpful on their own with our jobs as hosts.

I ask you to compel Rick to do more on-the-ground labor and order him to stop passing off his jobs to our guests.

So when Hillary, Mrs.

the Pig,

instructs Rick, aka the pig,

to go out and gather firewood and do chores, he turns around and asks the guests to do it.

Yeah, exactly.

And also, he says he shouldn't have to do it in general because of the high-quality think work he's already done.

Because he invented the concept of canoeing.

Yeah.

He gave that gift.

He was the first to hollow out a cedar log.

Well,

Jesse, I have formed a fairly fast opinion.

Really?

Yeah.

I'm working on a new concept here in the fake court of Judge John Hodgman.

It's a new concept that I'm calling pre-judging.

I use prejudice to

speed up the judging process by making a judgment before I even hear the case based on the pig

clogging up my at mentions.

You can make it based on

the assumptions that you're able to draw from incomplete information.

Right.

No, I gave it a fair hearing and I've come to the correct opinion.

Jesse, do you want to guess what my opinion is?

Or do you have your own opinion?

That he needs to give it a rest.

Come on.

Right.

We already know that the pig is looking for any loophole to shove meat into his mouth at the expense of his vegetarian daughters.

So it does not surprise me in the least that he is now trying to foist

work off onto his own guests.

And,

you know, his excuse that it was his idea to buy a house in the country, just like he apparently invented camping, is like, that's pure the pig bald faced shamelessness and even if this court were to buy into the pig's shadow currency of what does he call them work work coin work credits work credits based on high quality idea work right

even even if i were even i were to say all right fair deal you guys created your own work currency the your guest shouldn't have to suffer and work because you conjured up some bitcoin of laziness if hillary asks you to do something, the pig, either do it

or say no to her face in front of your guests and see how that makes you look and feel.

No, you cannot make guests do work that was requested of you.

I mean, you're going to ask your guest, do you mind doing this?

But if your wife turns to you and says, please put this log on the fire, you don't, hey,

Tab, I don't know why his friend's name is Tab.

You go put that log on the fire.

And I certainly don't expect you to order me to gather firewood when Jesse and I come out there for a visit.

I'll be stirring the martinis.

Here's something from Rachel.

My husband, Jim, and I have a long-running dispute about improper bedding usage.

When reclining on the couch or in our marital bed, he will often place a pillow on top of his stomach or next to his body, but not under any part of him.

Similarly, he will often lie on top of blankets instead of under them.

If I'm cold and ask him for the blanket he's casually laying on, generally less than 50% of his body, he says he's using it.

If I grab a pillow in the middle of the night that's merely next to him, he will claim that I am stealing his pillows.

If he's not lying underneath the blankets or on top of the pillows as is their intended use, he's not really using these items.

Thus, they are up for grabs.

Judge John Hodgman, I ask that you order my husband to either use bedding in the correct fashion or cede his claim to these items.

Mm-hmm.

Well, there's an issue here because on the one hand,

he's propping pillows on his tum-tum on the sofa or the couch.

What do you say, sofa or couch?

Either one.

It's a classic San Francisco.

Anytime there's two words that people say, we use both of them.

All right.

So

he's popping a pillow on his tum-tum on the couch.

And then there's also the issue of in bed.

In bed, presumably while preparing for sleep.

And let's take that part first.

Do you have a take on this, Jesse, before I lay into one or the other of these people?

Well, my perspective on it is that clearly he's some sort of madman.

But I'm not sure that that's it.

What I wonder is in your ruling, whether that in itself is enough to justify removing his claim to these bedding items.

And furthermore,

why does she need to grab an extra pillow in the middle of the night?

What's she doing with it?

Yeah, right.

I think that we're more or less, as usual, on the same page because we are

both white dudes and we know best.

Straight white dudes.

I forgot how good I had it for a moment.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You're right.

Good point.

And as a straight white dude who is married, I can say, and just talking about sleeping in bed now, we've discussed this before, and I'm going to say it again, really and honestly.

People, no matter how much they love each other, should not sleep in the same bed.

I mean, I'm talking about sleep here.

I mean, if people want to really sleep, just sleep is it's not, it's not good to sleep with another human rolling around and making noises and doing things all night long.

And you're no comfort to them either.

You know, really, you know, as to that was my big takeaway,

watching iClaudius again

the other week.

My once every five years viewing of the great 70s PBS phony Rome soap opera, I Claudius, and that in ancient Rome,

the married people wouldn't sleep together.

They had separate bedrooms because they had big old houses.

And then they were also hugging and kissing people who weren't their wives.

That's why ancient Rome times is good.

Each of those separate bedrooms had its own teenage boys.

I almost got nostalgia for ancient Rome,

but I forgot that nostalgia is a toxic impulse, no matter what the dudes at Stuff You Should Know say.

In any case, sleeping in another bed,

regular run-of-the-mill sleep is as alone as you are going to be in your life.

You are totally alone with your thoughts and should be and with your weird dreams and your reinterpreting and resting and relaxing.

And sleep is very personal and weird.

And once you get older, it's even more

fraught because once you get older and you start to appreciate that every time you close your eyes, you are rehearsing for your increasingly impending death.

It's not easy to fall asleep.

So you take comfort where you can get it.

Now look, maybe you're going to call me a madman.

I like to have a pillow beside me in bed that I can kind of hang on to and raise up my arm and my ruined shoulder doesn't hurt so much.

Or maybe I'll put a little pillow between my increasingly skeletal knees so they don't knock.

But even if I didn't have a functional reason for this extra body pillow situation,

I might just have some irrational, personal, I don't know what reason.

We need to have the things we need to have in order to go to sleep.

And your husband needs his blankie and his wubby to go to sleep.

So leave it alone.

Get more pillows.

Buy a blanket of your own.

And for Cthulhu's sake, y'all, everybody get king beds.

That's the only way to do this.

It's the only way.

It's the only way.

I mean, it's an indulgence, perhaps, but unless you want to Ricky and Luciate and sleep in twin beds, which is also acceptable,

you want to keep a marital bed, get a king bed, then everyone's got all the space they need and get all the things you need and get all the things

and be tolerant of all the things that your partner needs and

live with each other and don't steal stuff from each other.

Now, I don't want a lot of letters, by the way.

I know I'm going to get them, but I don't want them.

I don't want a lot of letters after this from people saying how wrong I am and how much they love snuggling with their partners in queen beds or even double beds.

And I don't want those letters because they're gross.

And

I don't care.

You do what you want in your bed for reals, but it's fine.

But you have to acknowledge that sleep is a solo exercise and you need what you need, even if you're going to be sleeping on top of blankets for whatever weird reason.

Now, if the dude is awake on the couch

or the sach

and he's just sort of sitting there on a blanket for no reason.

And the wife says, I would like to have that blanket.

I am tired.

And it has now been nicely warmed by your butt.

And he's conscious and he's just hanging.

For him to say no is simply gross and impolite.

So surrender blankets in a couch situation,

but stop stealing pillows in a bed situation.

That's my ruling.

Here's something from Sean.

When should the happy birthday song be sung, before or after the candles are blown out?

My brother and many of our cousins say the song is sung before the candles are blown out.

That way, the person's face is lit by the light of the candles and the song climaxes with the blowing.

My mother and a few of her siblings say that the candles are blown out first as a natural beginning to the song, but this just leaves people singing in a dark room, which is sad.

I don't know.

You should look up sad in a dictionary.

That sounds like an amazing party to me.

Please issue an order stating that the birthday song is sung first.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sure.

Exactly.

You got it.

I'm sure you'll be glad to know, Sean, that your mother is really wrong.

And I don't know why there's this.

You say it's her and a few of her siblings.

Say that the candles are blown out first before singing.

There's clearly a rift, and I would imagine

a rather ill-tempered rift between your mother and some of her siblings, because she and whoever's on her crew are cuckoo.

No.

The time-honored tradition.

Honored not only because it is old, but as you point out, it's simply good stagecraft.

Light the candles, like in the kitchen, turn off the lights, enter the room,

sing,

place the cake down, birthday boy or girl, beams happily in tiny candlelight, as you suggested.

Finish the song, wish,

blow,

and then write your royalty check to Betty and Mildred Hill, who wrote the happy birthday song.

But you don't have to do that anymore, because now it's in the public domain.

That's the only thing that has changed.

about the tradition.

Otherwise, you're absolutely right, Sean, and your mom is absolutely wrong.

Here's something from Kristen.

I have a dispute with my husband, Ryan.

think he's wrong to refill his soft drink when we eat at fast food restaurants.

There are a few reasons I disapprove.

One, he did not pay for the second drink.

Two, I think pop is unhealthy and should be enjoyed sparingly.

He vehemently disagrees and says that as long

as

there is not a sign saying no refills, it's okay for you to refill your drink as you leave.

After the initial shock of seeing him do it once and never having seen an employee scold him, I have ignored his behavior.

I have led by example by only drinking the one cup of pop we paid for.

Our son is getting older, and I'm afraid that after he's finished his pop, instead of acknowledging that the drink is gone, he'll ask my husband to refill it with stolen liquid diabetes.

Judge Hodgman, please order my husband to drink only the pop that he paid for.

Oh, I cannot hear that word again.

I know, geez, a lot of uses of the word pop.

Even as a San Francisco who calls it soda pop.

And is that, I can't remember, is that what they call it there or is that

affectation?

I think it's just,

I think in, I think there's not a, I mean, calling it pop specifically, that's, that's a regionally specific thing.

Right.

Well, we were talking to Rhea Butcher recently, and as a, as a native of Cleveland, she calls it pop.

Yeah, but I, I think San Francisco is such a, such a regional melting pot that I would not have looked askance upon someone calling it pop or soda or soda pop or Coke generically, as some Southerners do.

But I would have looked askance at someone just saying the word pop over and over and over, like reading this paragraph just made me do.

Yeah.

Well, and also, I mean, I think, Kristen, before we even get to this issue of whether it is legal to refill

your soda or tonic cup, to use an old-timey New England term,

from the fountain soda dispenser at a fast food restaurant, let's just say, Kristen, you put your finger on it, the dude should not be drinking pop.

He's a grown man and certainly not be going back for a double dose.

It's terrible for you.

And, you know, I really

it really hit home to me when Tom Sharpling of of the Great The Best Show quit drinking what he called sodi pop

because

he just said to us, it's like, I'm not a child anymore.

And I was like, oh, right.

Yeah.

Only children.

I mean, children need to stay away from that stuff as well, but it's very hard, very hard to justify routinely drinking sodi pop

when you're a grown man, especially if you are, if you have a child who is following your example.

I'll tell you something that Tom and I share.

Both Tom and I are not alcohol drinkers.

Right.

And it really leaves you in a bind if you're trying to, if everyone else has a special drink and you're just drinking a glass of water, especially if you're at a place where you have to like order it.

You know, if you're at a restaurant, it's not a big deal and they just pour everyone a glass of water.

But if you're at a counter or a bar or something like that and you have to ask for a glass of water when everyone else is having a quote-unquote adult beverage, you can feel like a real goofish.

But I feel like we live in the golden age age of carbonated water yeah um I mean I'm not sure there's never been a better time there's never been a better time to home carbonate or road carbonate your water yeah you can get well you know

you can get carbonated water or plain water out of those fountain dispensers yeah and you can even I mean like

look this

all of my admonitions aside, and I like the line about liquid diabetes.

The truth is, I routinely drink toxic swill that is called a diet soda of many different kinds.

And it is a dark,

I know that it is terrible, terrible, terrible for my body.

I'd probably do better drinking the sugared version.

But I do it, I do it anyway.

And I also know that there's occasionally a time when

a really good

cola

maybe even one from south of the border that was made with cane sugar instead of syrup can be adjusted to the thing.

All things in moderation and the court recognizes the sovereignty of Ryan's own baby body and it's his right to fill it up with whatever garbage he wants to.

But there is something a little bit galling to me about this

that you're complaining about your husband filling up pop twice.

You're going to a fast food.

It's already

bad, bad deal.

So let's let's let's set aside the health issues of

gulping down a lot of sugar water and instead look at this issue of whether it is okay to refill from an open soda fountain in a fast food restaurant.

And when I think of it, I'm thinking very distinctly and cheerfully and happily of the In-N-Out burger at Los Angeles International Airport because that is my favorite place to get fast food because you get to watch the big planes land.

Jesse,

when you are at In-N-Out

at LAX and you get your seltzer water

from the soda fountain.

You drink it.

Do you go back up and refill it if you want?

Yay or nay?

I think that generally speaking, restaurants either have the fountain behind the counter,

or they have a specific posted refill policy.

Right.

If they have neither of those things, my presumption is that refills are free.

Jesse Thorne,

straight white dudes, do it again.

I completely agree with you.

Yeah, if the soda fountain is behind the counter,

Ryan should not be going back there.

But if there is no posted, no refill sign,

go have at it.

And Kristen, you're wrong.

I'm fairly confident, and I will happily get emails correcting me on this.

But to me,

there's a clear trade-off that the restaurant has chosen.

And the thinking, I believe, is that the trade-off of removing the task of pouring soda fountain drinks from the counter person's workload creates faster service, shorter lines.

Faster service means higher volume, which offsets the cost of the often unused free refill option.

Not everyone takes advantage of the system.

And the fact that the profit margin on selling sugar water is so high, anyway, my guess is Ryan could down 19 gulp buckets of his favored corn syrup solution before it even began to hurt the bottom line of the restaurant.

So I think if it's not posted, he should go and do it.

But the safest thing, of course, would be to say, what is your policy on refills?

And he probably isn't doing that because he's afraid they're going to say, our policy is, please don't do that.

And he's like, oh, I got tricked.

Or, oh, you got me.

And he probably is afraid to ask.

And because he's a baby.

You know what genuinely makes me uncomfortable?

No.

And it's a pattern that I see sometimes in these.

It is where someone objects to their partner or someone close to them's behavior.

And it's clear that there's just something deep inside them emotionally that they're objecting to.

And so they're listing just a variety of different reasons why it might be wrong.

They don't really seem to 100% believe any of them.

They're just or maybe they just find it like clearly this woman finds her husband's behavior embarrassing.

Yes.

Fundamentally.

And it.

Like she's just listed a few things about it that are embarrassing to her, you know?

That could convince someone

on a podcast.

Yeah, like she could say,

if she were being honest, she might simply say, my husband embarrasses me.

On some level,

he's gross.

Like, the objection is that, is not that the rules prohibit any of these things or that it's genuinely wrong to enjoy drinking a cola.

Yeah.

You know, it's not generally a great idea to have a lot of sugary treats, obviously.

It's not healthy.

But, you know, I like to have a soda once in a while, as you do, as anyone does.

And

it's more just, she's just like, oh, I just,

it's gross and embarrassing to me.

Here's a bunch of reasons.

I am much more convinced by someone who seems to sincerely believe one reason.

Like if I thought that she really thought that he was stealing soda,

I would be much more convinced.

Or if she had...

She'd rang an alarm bell.

Or if she had said, I'm worried for my children that they won't have their father because my dad, because my husband drinks so much soda that it's going to shorten his life or something.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne,

I got to say, you just found the crux,

not only of this, but of a whole, you're right, a whole category.

If it's the case that you simply find

your spouse's behavior embarrassing,

it becomes very simple.

Just say, please don't do that.

And if he says, I'm doing it anyway, then Kristen, I would say, if you've said to him, please don't do that.

And he said, I'm doing it anyway.

Then I would say, say, Ryan, don't be a creep.

And also, Kristen and Ryan, just communicate with each other and ask what the refill policy is.

We'll be back with more Judge John Hodgman in just a minute.

Hello, I'm your Judge John Hodgman.

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The Judge John Hodgman podcast is also brought to you this week by Made In.

Let me ask you a question: Did you know that most of the dishes served at Tom Clicchio's craft restaurant are made in, made in pots and pans?

It's true.

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It's the stuff that professional chefs use, but because it is sold directly to you, it's a lot more affordable than some of the other high-end brands.

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And I know that she can, you know, she can heat that thing up hot if she wants to use it hot.

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It's an immensely useful piece of kitchen toolery.

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Let them know Jesse and John sent you.

You know, we've been doing my brother, my brother, me for 15 years.

And

maybe you stopped listening for a while.

Maybe you never listened.

And you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years.

I know where this has ended up.

But no, no, you would be wrong.

We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing.

Yeah, you don't even really know how crypto works.

The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on my brother, my brother, and me.

We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening.

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Yes, episode 59.

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Same episode, actually.

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Episode 64.

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We still haven't learned everything yet.

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Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Here is something from

Khalid or Khalid.

10 years ago, I asked my friend Mark for a list of book recommendations considering his background as a lit major.

Christian.

Crassine, let me just jump in here.

Yeah.

It's an automatic win.

Right?

It's DJ Khaled.

All he does is win.

So why are we even...

Is it possible that it's someone else named Khalid?

You know, the bad news for you is, wow, all DJ Khaled does is win.

I believe DJ Khaled's name is K-H-L-K-H-A-L-E-D.

Oh, this is Khalid, which is K-H-A-L-I-D.

I too got excited it might be DJ Khaled.

That's why I initially pronounced it that way.

And Khaled's, and Khalid's song, unfortunately, is you win some, you lose some.

So let's figure out which one this is.

Ten years ago, I asked my friend Mark for a list of book recommendations, considering his background as a lit major.

Crime and punishment was on the list.

I went ahead and read it, even though classic prose has always been a challenge for me to comprehend.

Upon finishing, I called him up to talk about how intense the story was.

Turns out, he hadn't read it.

What makes matters worse was that when he recommended it, he explained at great length the theme and circumstances of the book.

Frankly, this stung a little.

Okay.

I request that the judge order Mark to finish the book or at least qualify future book recommendations with the statement, I recommend insert book here, but haven't myself read it.

I I know your previous rulings on demanding someone read books, but I feel that there are appropriate times for doing so, and I hope that this will be one of them.

Wow.

Mark.

He recommended crime and punishment, described it, and then later admitted that he actually hadn't read it.

And his friend actually read it.

Yeah.

Went ahead to him on his word.

This person

achieved one of the great achievements of Western culture reading Dostoevsky when he didn't have to.

That's right.

I have failed to read Dostoevsky on multiple occasions when I did have to.

Yeah.

As far as I'm concerned, Khalid, your friend Mark deserves to be murdered with an axe.

I got you.

No, no, no.

Don't murder him with an axe, please.

That's just the plot of the book, Crime and Punishment.

Yeah,

I think that you're right to feel a little bit stung.

The court urges all people to be truthful when it is not hurtful or a burden, and it certainly would not have burdened Mark or you to simply say, I hear this is good.

I don't know why

he misled you.

And I absolutely order him to read this thing as punishment for his crime.

But

I won't award any further damages because you have ascended, as Jesse said, you read a work of classic literature on your own.

You have reached a new level of adulthood.

And you have left him in your dust.

And you got to enjoy a haunting classic of Russian literature.

And to be honest,

you know, what could he have said?

It's pretty hard to spoil that book.

It's right there in the title.

First there's crime, then there's punishment.

But there's a lot to enjoy.

And so you tell him, I force you to read the book so he can ascend to your level of grown-upness.

I'll tell you,

my friend Jenny is a 19th-century literature specialist.

Oh, she's a time traveler?

Yes.

And she's a fan of

bullseye and often will converse with me about cultural things that have happened on my public radio program.

And I'm glad to converse with them

about them with her.

And I have so little to offer her on the subject of 19th century literature.

Like the closest I have ever come to reading a classic novel for pleasure was one time when I went to a used bookstore to find a copy of Anna Karenina because my wife wanted to read it.

Yeah.

I purchased a copy of Moby Dick with good intentions.

And people love that book.

People love it.

Yeah.

And

I'll get to it one of these days.

But, you know, I went to an alternative sort of hippie-dippy program in our high school.

And so we didn't read Moby Dick.

We read 100 Years of Solitude twice.

Yeah, I mean,

I went to an arts high school in San Francisco.

So you just read Beloved over and over and over.

Yeah, there you go.

Right.

Yeah.

I'll read books.

You know what I'm enjoying very much?

What's that?

Fantasy novels.

Really?

Yeah, because I, and, you know, I'm a big nerd

in film

in film worlds and comic book worlds.

I love fantasy and science fiction.

Certain things I obviously get into

that I've discussed on the program before, Game of Thrones, that sort of thing.

But even when I, even when I read Game of Thrones, I only read it because

I was indignant that they were bringing out a TV show, a fantasy TV show, and I had never heard anything about it.

And they clearly had not cleared it with me.

So I needed to check and see what it was all about.

And I love those books.

But

I would never really read a lot of fantasy and science fiction for pleasure.

But I've been asked to host the Nebula Awards, which is one of the big science fiction and fantasy awards that they bestow upon not just novels, not just short stories, but also novellas and novelettes.

And I'm looking forward to learning what a novelette is.

But so I decided, you know, I'm going to read as many of the nominees as I can.

And boy, oh boy, things have changed since I was reading them Chronicles of Pride.

And I read,

not that there's anything wrong with Chronicles of Pride.

You know, it's a solid B.

People will be mad.

But I, but that's on me, Jesse.

But I just read the fifth season by N.K.

Jemison.

And

it's amazing.

It's an amazing piece of work and so much fun to read.

And I won't go into a whole lot, but I highly recommend reading it.

I'm not choosing the winners, so I can pick my favorites.

But, you know,

it's a world, a fantasy world in which certain people have magical powers.

Specifically, they can cause or prevent various catastrophic seismic events, and they have a certain amount of telekinesis.

And there are reasons that this is a big power in this world, and they can kill with a thought if they have to, right?

And essentially, they're like, they're like Jedi.

But she opened my eyes to the fact:

if you were lived in Star Wars, Star Wars,

if you lived in Star Wars land,

the Jedi would not, they would not be your pals.

You'd be terrified of them because they have magic powers and can kill with their, they can kill with their minds and so in this in this one these characters who have this power are required in this world

to

prevent a lot of natural disasters from happening and they're they're a part of the society but they're hated and despised and it's really interesting there you go read a book everybody they're good it's no animal it's no crime and punishment but i'm trying

As for me, as a kid, I read my fair share of Dungeons and Dragons Dragonlance novels.

You got cred.

Here's something from Ashley.

I did not play Dungeons and Dragons, by the way.

Did you actually read the novels?

Just read the novels.

I never read them.

I probably read four or five, at least.

Did you see the Dungeons and Dragons movie with Jeremy Irons and Marlon Wayans?

No, I did not.

By then, I think I knew that I was old enough to understand that that was something I should definitely not watch.

Hey, we're back with the unfunny flop house.

Jesse and John.

Here's something from Ashley.

I host open mic readings for the creative writing department at the small women's college where I teach.

My husband complained that I spell Mike as M-I-C rather than M-I-K-E.

He argues that my spelling is incorrect and annoying.

I find that most people use the C spelling when advertising open mic events, and it is the most logical spelling, given that it is short for microphone.

I'm an English teacher, so it's important to me to be correct.

Particularly on a poster that will hang in the hallway of my department.

Judge, please resolve our disagreement.

All right, Jesse Thorne.

I turned to our friends at Merriam-Webster, the dictionary company.

Hi, Emily Brewster.

And I did some research.

Both spellings of Mike, that is short for microphone,

are acceptable spellings.

One is older than the other.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne?

M-I-C or M-I-K-E?

Which is older?

I'm going to say that M-I-K-E is older.

Ah, straight white dude does it again.

Let me mansplain this for you.

M-I-K-E has been in use since 1924, according to the Dictionary Company.

So, your husband has history on his side, for sure.

But we don't call

soda phosphate anymore, or even tonic.

We change things in our language, and so an equally acceptable abbreviation for microphone, M-I-C has been used as shorthand for microphone since 1961, and there's a reason why.

Mike, in Merriam-Webster's word popularity ratings, which I did not know existed until today,

M-I-K-E is in the bottom 30%

of popular words, whereas M-I-C,

slightly more popular in the bottom 40%.

And that's because while M-I-C is a little ungainly, daring you to pronounce it MIC,

I think it's far less confusing because it uses the letter from the thing that it's abbreviating.

And by now, I believe, far more accepted than saying on your poster,

open Mike Night, unless your event is one of those amateur surgery clubs that are springing up in bars, and it's Mike's night to volunteer.

Here's something from Luke.

I'm writing to follow up on the recent ruling you handed down over putting the toilet seat down after going to the bathroom at home.

So

do you remember what your ruling was there, John?

Yeah, put it down.

While proper etiquette in that case was very obvious, I've come across situations where I'm not sure that it's actually better to put the seat down.

Oh, how dare you, Luke?

Allow me to explain my weird system.

That part's not in there.

I just read that into it.

No, I know, but that's a good t-shirt for the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Many bars in New York have unisex bathrooms, which are often the worse for wear.

On weekend nights, I feel like I'm putting the toilet seat in danger if I leave it down, since the drunk man in next in line might not take care to raise the seat again before he relieves himself.

However, it still seems rude not to put the seat down in case the next user needs to sit down.

Please help resolve my moral quandary.

Well

This court is very impressed by your gallantry, Luke.

And I think you have

discovered an area in which my law does not cover, which is

the bathroom at a bar late at night.

I think you're right, Luke, to leave that seat up in that case.

Because

it's...

it's

in a unisex bathroom?

I think it's more likely to stay clean that way.

I'm deeply ambivalent about it.

You know, you know.

It's basically a matter of numbers.

Go ahead.

State your ambivalence.

Obviously, my natural bias is to favor social convention over

complicated and overwrought schemes.

Right.

And for that reason, I feel that the chance that someone might mess up the toilet seat does not outweigh the combination of social convention and the actual regular reasons that you would leave the toilet seat down, which is to say that ladies always use it.

Right.

But here's what I would say.

And there's a very specific place.

Unisex

bar bathroom.

Yeah, if it weren't a specific place, it wouldn't be a complicated scheme.

He's not saying that his scheme is better.

He's truly saying, have I gone mad?

Am I beyond the pale?

I don't think

that this litigant is beyond the pale.

No.

And I don't think it's insane or unreasonable

to have come up with this system.

We put the seat down

out of courtesy for the next user,

especially the user who may have to sit down

so that they do not accidentally sit inside the toilet.

And yet,

we're now in a situation where you know dudes are going to be peeing all over that seat.

100% chance dudes are going to be peeing all over that seat.

And I just think that the chance that there's also an increased chance in a bar-type environment where people are enjoying intoxicants, that they might sit in the toilet, an increased chance that they might sit in the toilet as well.

But not 100%.

I am so convinced that dudes are going to pee all over that seat

that

I think Luke is right.

I know it's gross.

If you see something, wipe something.

Well, that's our last case on this week's Judge John Hodgman.

We get to end on that.

Strong clothes.

That's a compelling aphorism.

But there we are.

Finally, we found an opportunity to show that two straight white men can have,

within a realm of nuance, different opinions.

Yeah, you might be right.

You're probably right.

You're definitely wiser than I am.

No, no, no.

Bailiff, Jesse, for heaven's sakes, we're both incredibly wise and people need to hear.

Yes, that's why we're two straight white men.

Actually,

we're both the wisest.

Okay.

Maximumfund.reddit.com is where you can join us on Reddit.

Join the Maximum Fund Facebook group to join us on Facebook.

If you have a case for Judge John Hodgman, go to maximumfund.org slash JJ H O.

Rush, I hope you will.

If you're on the fence about it, you know what I would ask you to do?

Just send it in.

I'll read it.

I will put it into a folder saying maybe this one for the podcast, maybe this one for a docket, maybe this one for the New York Times magazine short column net that I write.

And

maybe I'll respond.

Maybe time will get away from you and I won't respond.

But I read them all and I really enjoy them.

And I'm very grateful to you guys for writing in.

And you can write in other things too if you want.

It's Hodgman at maximumfund.org.

Or if you don't like using electronic mails, there's a web form, which is where, Jesse?

MaximumFund.org/slash J-J-H-O.

Our show is edited by Mark McConville, produced by Julia Smith.

If you want to come to Max FunCon East, maxfuncon.com tickets are on sale right now, this very moment.

If you want to come, get them before they sell out.

And again, I'll be appearing at Largo presenting my one-man show, Vacation Land in Los Angeles, June 9th, 2016.

And there are a couple of other

cities that I had to miss last fall, and I'm going to be adding those on to my schedule as well.

So please go to johnhodgman.com slash tour if you ever want updates where I'm going to be physically in the world, we'll talk to you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

If you see something, wipe something.

I like it.

I like it.

It's solid.

All right.

Talk to you later, humans.

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