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We Cannot Wholly Rely, As Though It Were Medieval Times, [on The Notion That] The Only Reality Is What We See In Front Of Us. There Are Germs. There Are Changes That Are Happening In Our Planet's Ecology That Are Happening Over Such A Long Period Of Time That We Cannot See The Changes.

-John Hodgman

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We Cannot Wholly Rely,

John Hodgman

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We Cannot Wholly Rely, As Though It Were Medieval Times, [on The Notion That] The Only Reality Is What We See In Front Of Us. There Are Germs. There Are Changes That Are Happening In Our Planet's Ecology That Are Happening Over Such A Long Period Of Time That We Cannot See The Changes.

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Creating Fake Facts Does Require A Measure Of Haphazard Research, Insofar As They Need To Not Just Be Possible, But Also Interesting.

I Navigated The World As A Hedge Maze Of Constant Fear And Worry In Which I Might Take The Wrong Turn And Jeopardize The Love Of Everyone Around Me And Everyone On Earth. That's What I Needed In Order To Survive.

Just A Small-scale Cult Of Personality, Maybe Raise A Geodetic Dome Out In Western Massachusetts And Make People Wear Jumpsuits And Give All Their Possessions To Me.

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One Can Always Come Up With Funny Lists And Jokes. You Know What? I Take It Back. Not Everyone Can Always Come Up With Funny Lists And Some Jokes. I'm Very Lucky To Have A Gift Where I Can Do That Pretty Ably.

As A Freelance Writer, I'd Be Asked To Become An Expert For Various Magazines On Any Subject, Whether Food Or Wine Or History Or The Life Span Of Veterinarians. I Was Completely Unschooled In Any Of These Things.

I Made An Impulse Buy Of A House In Maine To Make My Wife Happy And Now Have Gone Back Into Debt And It's All Started Over For Me.

My Whole Creative Career Is A Product Of The Internet. ...i'll Take That Back. To Some Degree. My Fascination With Cultural Esoterica And Trivia And So On Was Well-formed Long Before I Got My First Aol Account.

Just Because You See An Iceberg Does Not Mean That There Isn't Global Warming.

I Don't Know If You've Ever Been Shoved Into The Bow Of A Nutshell Pram, A Boat That Is Very Easily Almost Liftable With One Hand, And Quite Tippy, And Is Being Piloted By A 12-year-old, But It Is The True Feeling Of Having Your Life In Someone Else's Hands, And It's Very Precarious.

I Think, As We All Learn As A Child, You Have To Learn To Tolerate Ambiguity Better And I'm Still Terrible At It And I Hate It; Even The Word Ambiguity Makes Me Sick To Me Stomach.

I Naturally Own A Lot Of Very Old Magazines. And I Enjoy Going To Old Magazines Because The Advertisements In Those Magazines Tended To Have Thousands Of Words Of Copy In Them.

I Had The Pleasure Of Listening To Rickie Lee Jones' Flying Cowboys Album On Audio Cassette, Which Had Just Come Out At That Time Because I Am An Elderly Man.

Houdini, The Magician Who Debunked Magic, Could Not Bear To See The Great Rationalist [arthur Conan] Doyle Enchanted By Ghosts And Frauds. And So He Did What Any Friend Would: He Set Out To Prove Spiritualism False And Rob His Friend Doyle Of The Only Comforting Fiction That Was Keeping Him Sane. It Was The Least He Could Do.

I Am Not A Villain.i'm An Only-child Narcissist Monster, But I Wish No Ill, Nor Do I Wish For World Domination; What A Hassle That Would Be!

The Only Time I've Ever Been Mistaken For Someone Else Is - And This Arguable Still - When A Person Came Up To Me On The Boardwalk Of Ocean City, New Jersey And Said, "you Look A Lot Like That Guy From Computer Ads" And I Said, "there Is A Reason Because I Am That Guy," And The Guy Looked At Me For A Minute, Laughed And Said, "that's A Funny Joke, But You Really Do Look Like Him." He Thought I Was Not Me.

I Believe That The Federal Government Should Be Laying Down Broadband Like Eisenhower Laid Down Interstates.

As A Live Stand-up Comedy Performer, I Have The Benefit Of Choosing Real Entrance Music.

It's Not A Secret Family Like I Have A Beautiful, Gorgeous Wife In Tokyo; I Have Another Mom And Dad. I'm The Kid And I Have Another Mom And Dad In Atwater Village, Los Angeles.

That Catharsis Is Really The Core Of The Incredibly Personal Comedy Of Louis C.k. Or Marc Maron Or Whatever. And Look - I Find It Fascinating That I'm Sitting Here Talking About Some Of These Things, And Not To Low Tones, And My Kids Are In The Other Room. I Have To Trust That If They Hear What I'm Saying And They Have Questions About It, I'll Be Able To Answer It, And That's Fine. But That's Part Of The Scariness Of It - The Reality Of Opening Up My Own Life And My Own Feelings.

Comedy Does Offer An Avenue To Television And Film Careers For Untelegenic People That Great Drama Does Not.

I Believe That By Releasing "passing Interest/low Keepsake-value Literature" From The Burden Of Physicality, You Are Actually Releasing The Words From Their Worst Liability: The Price And Inconvenience Of Actual Bookness.

I'm Not A Particularly Religious Person, But That Feeling Of Getting Transmissions From Someplace Else, Even If It's From Your Own Consciousness, Is Very, Very Real. To Me, At Least.

My Memories Of Literary Agenting Are Of A Very Happy Time And There Are Surprising Reminders Of It Coming Back Now.

This Is Something That The Nimblest Standup Comedians Learn, Over Time, To Handle Gracefully. They'll Go Between Prepared Material, Then They'll Respond To What's Happening In The Room And Weave It Back Into The Prepared Material And So On.

When You Think About It, The End Of The World Is A Little Bit Like Death: We All Know It's Going To Come Eventually, And As We Get Older, We Feel We See The Signs More And More Distinctly.

I Would Definitely Make Eggs For The Rest Of My Life If I Could.

That Which Is Hard To Do Is Best Done Bitterly.

So Much Of Creativity Is The Feeling That You're Either Getting A Gift From Some Other Dimension Or Some Other Part Of Yourself.

Panic Is An Incredibly Catalyzing Creative Force. And Almost Out Of Sheer Necessity, I Found I Had To Talk About Myself And My Real Life As It Is Effectively Lived By Me.

We Cannot Wholly Rely, As Though It Were Medieval Times, [on The Notion That] The Only Reality Is What We See In Front Of Us. There Are Germs. There Are Changes That Are Happening In Our Planet's Ecology That Are Happening Over Such A Long Period Of Time That We Cannot See The Changes.

Hosting A Tv Show Is A Full-time Job In Which Success Is Defined By It Never Ending.

Even In My Own Life, There Are Memories I Have That Are Difficult To Explain - Happenings That Are So Odd And Unaccountably Weird, That It Is Difficult To Imagine They Were Not The Result Of Prolonged And Frequent Contact With Aliens Throughout My Life.

There Is A Need For Expertise, For Real Expertise. I'm Not Doing Much To Help That Cause, But I Think We Can Find The Healthy Balance Between Intellectualism And Anti-intellectualism. Jocks And Nerds May Come Together, I Believe It.

For Many Years, People Would Say, "only Child? Must Have Been Terrible," And I Wanted To Say, "you Are Mentally Ill, Because It Was The Greatest." You Got All The Attention. You Never Had To Share Anything. No One Ever Ate Your Food. No One Ever Took Your Toys. But The Unintended Consequence Was That I Didn't Appreciate That Being Universally Loved Was Not Only Not Required For Happiness, But Also Not Possible.

We Estimate That There Are Perhaps 20,000 Prehistoric Hunter-gatherers Frozen Up In Those Glaciers. Now, If They Simply Thaw And Wander Around, It's Not A Problem, But If They Find A Leader - A Captain Caveman, If You Will - We'll Be Facing An Even More Serious Problem.

I Never Stopped Feeling Abject Terror Until I Got On Television And Went On A National Ad Campaign And Realized, "i Will Be Able To Feed My Children. I Have Somehow Averted The Destiny That Awaited Me, Which Is Endless, Crippling Debt Forever."

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By The Way, If I Have My Own Cult Of Personality With My Own Geodetic Dome In Western Massachusetts, I Will Have A Hurt Yurt For Anyone Who Crosses Me.

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I Would Be Good For Maybe Not The Center Square But An Upper Square On 'hollywood Squares.'

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I Think In American Culture, We Put Value On Economic Success But Tell People You Don't Have To Be Economically Successful To Be Happy.

For A Long Time, I Would Write Without Music, Because I Thought It Was Distracting Until I Appreciated That It Actually Unlocks A Certain Unconscious Productivity Vault In My Mind.

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I Am Not An Internet Superstar. I Am, Ironically Perhaps, The Most Old Media Superstar Of All Time. My Fame Is Due To Broadcast Television.

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I Think For The Foreseeable Future, The Truth Is Going To Be Awful And Funny All At The Same Time.

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I'm A Personality - Like A George Plimpton Who Effectively Plays Himself In A Bunch Of Different Roles, Or A Paul Lynde-type Character.

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I'm An Older, Wall-eyed, Overweight, Tweedy Writer Who Has Been Lucky Enough To Be Asked To Play Various Iterations Of Himself In A Certain Realm Of Popular Cultutre. That Gives Me Great Joy And Excitement, But I Don't Go To The Media Saying, "and I'm Also The World's Greatest Actor."

I Have A Lot Of Cultural References That Have Amassed In My Brain Like Shrapnel Over The Years That Are Meaningful To Me.

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Writing For Me Always Requires Trickery. Tricking Myself Into Sitting Down, Letting Words Tumble Out Until You Find The Good Ones. It's Sort Of A Trance. And When A Piece Is Done, I Have Little Memory Of How I Wrote It, And Zero Confidence I'd Ever Be Able To Do It Again.

By The Time I Was Writing The Second Book, My Life Had Changed Rather Dramatically, Thanks To The Intervention Of Television, And I Needed To Find A Way To Discuss That. Otherwise The Big, Fake Book Would Not Be True On Some Level.

All Books Should Be Trilogies; I Mean I Think We All Agree On That.

So I Am A Product Of The Internet, And To Some Degree A Product Of This Sensibility Of Constant Cultural Reference.

I Think That I'm Reaching A Point In My Life And In My Career Where Soon It Will Be Important For Me To Get Out Of The Way And Let Younger, Hungrier, More Interesting People Do What It Is That I Do. Maine Is A Wonderful Place To Hide, Because No One Ever Looks For You There. And The Goal Of Every Person In Maine, Whether Native Or From Away, Seems To Be To Mitigate As Possible All Human Interaction. So It's A Good Place To Disappear In.

I Have An Unfortunate Compulsion. I Really Would Rather Not Do It, As It Is Very Nerve-wracking And Un-fun. But When It Works, There Is Nothing Like It.

Terry Gross Has Never Had Me On Her Show And You Know, It's Her Show; She Sets The Agenda And That's Not Hodgman. But I'll Still Listen To It.

I Don't Care If I Tell That Story And John Roderick Gets Up Afterward And Yells, 'i Hope You Enjoyed The White Privilege, Mortality Comedy Of John Hodgman!' That's Me!" I'm Going To Play A Sad Handsome Family Song At The End And I Guarantee You Everyone Is Going To Love It Because, Sometimes, You Need A Grown Man Or Woman To Tell You What You Like.

There Is No Metaphor For Death. All Comparisons Are Odious, But I'll Do One Anyway. We All Have These Moments Of Harsh Clarity Where We Realize That Something Is Gone, Whether That Is Youth, Whether That Is Someone We Care About, Whether That Is Where We Literally Lose Someone We Care About To Death. Or We End A Relationship That We Thought Would Last Forever, Or Have One Ended For Us. We All Have These Moments In Life Where It Seems Impossible To Fill Up The Time That We Have Left For Us, And Yet We Have To Do It Somehow.

I Am A Marginally Employed Person Who Can Escape With My School Teacher Wife To The Waters Of Maine For Much Of The Summer.

Anyone Of Conscience Could Come Look At My Book And See It As An Esoteric Oddity Or Be Intrigued By It. It Could Happen Either Way On A Thousand Different Little Decisions Each Individual Might Make.

I Really Wouldn't Censor Myself. But Because It Was On Such A Slower Scale, I Would Throw Things Out, And I Indulged The Personal Stuff As Little Flashes Of Truth. Little In-jokes For Anyone Who Was Paying Particular Attention.

I Still Have A Fondness For Books. Many A Time I Will Be Antiquing, And I'll Say, 'what's That Old-timey Curio Over There? What Is That, A Candlestick Telephone, One Of Those Old Pull-chain Toilets? Oh No, It's A Book. I Used To Help Make Those Things! I Will Buy It And Use It To Decorate My Chain Of Casual Family-dining Restaurants.

My Type Of Humor Is Me Not Caring Whether People Know What I'm Talking About Or Not.

Once You're Out In A Place Where There's One Sheriff For The County, People Have To Learn How To Get Along With Each Other And That Means Going To The Dump Illegally And Dumping Your Garbage And Hoping The Guys Don't Call You On It And Being Terrified Of This To Your Core Until You Realize After Many Years That The Guys At The Dump Don't Really Care Where Your Garbage Is Coming From.

You Know, I Began My Life As A Creative Person Writing True Things For Magazines And Telling Some Very Honest, Straightforward Personal Essaying For This American Life, But Until Someone Forces You, With A Deadline, To Really Observe Your Life - Unless You're Motivated To Do It Yourself - There's So Many Stories That You Miss.

I Was Always Fascinated With The Way That Things Pop On The Internet - The Ways You Build Communities And Create Little Stories And Ideas That People Play Around With And Send Back To You.

As You Know, The Thing That I Know The Least About Is The Topic Of Sports.

Do Not Listen To The Killjoys Who Tell You Never To Eat Oysters In Months That Do Not Contain The Letter R: May, June, July, August, Octoba. You Know.

My Fame Is Due To Broadcast Television.

Tonally, There Was No Discussion; I Just Don’t Know Any Other Way To Do It. I Don’t Want To Make People Feel Bad, And I Don’t Want To Make Their Problems Into A Joke. I Do Love Telling People When They’re Right And Wrong, But For The Most Part, It Was Always Going To Be About Real Fights Where People Have A Real Difference Of Opinion And A Real Dispute. I Want To Make Jokes, But I Also Want To Make A Decision That Is Fair.

A Stopped Clock Is Correct Twice A Day, But A Sundial Can Be Used To Stab Someone, Even At Nighttime.

I Think There Are Very Few Invisible Musical Instrument Players Out There Who Can Claim The Chops And Sheer Perseverance Of Björn Türoque, The World's Perennial Second-place Air Guitar Champion. Whoever This Dan Crane Might Be, He's Captured The Mad, Seductive Spirit Of The Arbitrary Skill Contest Perfectly, And Rocks It Hard Into The Hot Finnish Night. There Is No Number Of Umlauts That Do This Jekyll And Hyde Of Air-rocking Justice.

More People Have More Access To More Readers For Less Money Than Ever Before In History. It Means A Lot Of Dross; But It Means A Lot Of Very Talented People Can Find And Nurture A Readership In Ways That Were Not Possible Twenty Years Ago. From A Creative Perspective, That Is All That Writing Is About.

Truth May Be Stranger Than Fiction, Goes The Old Saw, But It Is Never As Strange As Lies.

My Hope When I Wrote The First Book Was That I Would Get To Do It Again. But It Was Not Entirely Clear That That Would Happen.

What I Collect? Interesting Jobs. Always To My Thrill And Excitement, But Ultimately To My Exhaustion, I Collect Interesting Jobs. If An Interesting Job Comes Along, I Take It; That's Why I Do So Many Things. I'm Lucky To Be Able To.

This Is One Of The Defining Sorrows Of Books: That We Cannot See One Another.

I Don't Wish To Brag, But I'm Very Intelligent.

I Used To Enjoy The Anonymity Of Being A Literary Figure And Occasionally A Public Radio Figure.

Here's The Thing: I Am Not Only A Creature Of Civilization, I'm An Asthmatic Person. I Will Only Live So Long As I Have Stockpiled The Proper Inhalers. I'm Effectively A Cyborg. You Know How In Jurassic Park, They Bred Those Dinosaurs With The Lysine Deficiencies, So If They Ever Got Off The Island, They'd Die? That's Me.

I Don't Watch Television. And Certainly Not Ads; I Loathe Advertising.

Elwyn Brooks White Was A Very Maine Personality Which Is, "i Hate Everyone And Everyone Stay Away From Me."

My Career As A Magazine Writer Was Largely Prefaced On The Idea Of Curiosity, To Go On Adventures And Weasel My Way Into The Lives Of People That I Admire.

I Had Some Very, Very Fond Memories Of The People I Worked With And The Authors I Worked With - And I Won't Mention Any Names - But As I Have Been Traveling Through Rural Maine Over The Past Few Weeks, One Of My Favorite Things To Do Is To Go Into Bookstores On The Side Of Rural Routes And Paw Through The Old Copies Of Tom Clancy And Trevanian Books They Have In There For Weird Old 1970s Thrillers That I Haven't Read Yet.

When A Good Friend Gives You His Or Her Book, You Don't Want To Read It, Because You're Afraid That It's Not Going Be What You Hope It Can Be.

Part Of The Transaction Between Writer And Reader Is The Pleasure Of Building A Community And Encouraging People To Play Along.

Borges Was Unapologetically Smart And Equally Sentimental; A Proto-geek, Blind To Distinctions Between Low Pulp Fiction And High Criticism, Experimental But Never Arch, And Always Playful, With A Humor As Dry As Dust.

I Realized That We're Now At A Point Of Self-reference With The Internet Culture That There's Almost No There Left, You Know? It's Important To Make New Things. It's Important To Make Culture, Rather Than Simply Reference It. I Love A Good Cultural Reference, And It's One Of The Great Joys In My Life, But It Has To All Be In Balance With The Core Job, Which Is To Make Something New. And That Sort Of Brings Me Around To Why I Started Talking About My Fondness For Marijuana.

Stories Hold Power Because They Convey The Illusion That Life Has Purpose And Direction. Where God Is Absent From The Lives Of All But The Most Blessed, The Writer, Of All People, Replaces That Ordering Principle. Stories Make Sense When So Much Around Us Is Senseless, And Perhaps What Makes Them Most Comforting Is That, While Life Goes On And Pain Goes On, Stories Do Us The Favor Of Ending.

It Would Be Rather Naive To Imagine That Oprah Doesn't Have An Earth Evacuation Plan. You Know Richard Branson Does - His Is In Plain Sight.

My Biggest Superhero Of Writing Is Jorge Luis Borges, The Argentine Fabulist. He's An Amazingly Perceptive Writer, But Also Willing To Make A Joke.

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