who's on judge mathis today? #184
a books/snacks/softcore letter i am going to stop neglecting, i promise!!
before we get into it, a bit of housekeeping: ok so, remember forever ago when i sent that email asking you guys how many emails from me were too many (because i was getting a lot of feedback that i was sending too many and that made me itchy and self-conscious)?????? a lot of the responses were along the lines of “idk who judge mathis is, i don’t care about the recaps, i only want your recipes for soup” and i get that (i truly don’t but whatever, babe). at the time there wasn’t a solution to that problem that didn’t involve my having to do WORK i.e. start a whole new separate newsletter, but now there is. there’s a new feature that supposedly allows me to categorize these emails? and, as a recipient of said emails, you get to decide whether you want to subscribe to mathis recaps, books/snacks/softcore butthole-related sex nonsense, both, or NEITHER.
i’m not sure how it all works but i am sure you’ll figure it out without my help because i have faith in you and also i’m gonna turn the replies off. i will go back through the archives and put everything in its proper category, which will take approximately one million years, but who cares. i am thrilled to do it, if for no other reason than i hate harassing people with shit they don’t want. as ever, if for whatever reason this doesn’t work or you don’t know what to click please don’t tell me. i am a talking dog who makes jokes, not tech support. i still use a fucking fax machine!
plaintiff: nicole from calumet city, illinois. nicole is wearing the kind of thing i wish i had the confidence to wear, a screaming neon pink mock-neck blouse with a fluttery peplum. first of all, we gotta be done with peplums, right? every few years there’s a fashion hate crime perpetrated against fat people that takes years to go away, and as soon as it does it’s immediately replaced by something so much more heinous that it makes you want the old bad thing back. as soon as we were spared the wrath of the “cold shoulder shirt” they started attaching butt bibs to the bottom of every fucking thing. who asked for that????? who needs a piece of errant fabric hanging off the back of your shirt just waiting for you to get diarrhea on it???????????? also, it’s very hard to look good in a peplum. tits too high? you look like you’re weirding an oddly proportioned mini dress. tits too low? the seam is scraping against your goddamn nipples all fucking day. literally no thank you! anyway, nicole looks great in pink.
defendant: mark from hazel crest, illinois. you know, i once dated a dude from hazel crest. whatever bad thing nicole says this dude did? he’s guilty.
the complaint: nicole began dating the defendant after they met online, but he ended up being a pathological liar, and now she’s suing him for three unpaid loans
what does she want: $725, which might not be worth it if the studio wasn’t, like, a twenty minute drive from her house; uh oh, a countersuit: mark would like $1000 for defamation.
how it went down: nicole says she met mark on a dating site where he’d presented himself as “the perfect man.” what doth a perfect man make? he said he was a retired cop who ran a successful business, he owned two homes, and he’s a great dad to his four children. you know what’s wild? it’s never like “he was perfect because his profile was hilarious” it’s always “HE OWNS TWO HOMES” and maybe it’s just me but two homes doesn’t mean shit if 1 i can’t live for free in one of them and 2 you’re an unfunny boring asshole! sell one of the houses and buy a fucking personality, man.
anyway, none of that matters because apparently mark in addition to being perfect mark is also “a pathological liar.” nicole says none of those things were true, chief among them that mark doesn’t have four kids, he has eight. hoo, boy. also he doesn’t have two homes, or even one home, he and a roommate share a single room in someone else’s home. let me ask you something right now: what compels someone to lie like this to a person they intend to physically meet? lying on the internet, i get. but lying to someone you are eventually going to invite into your offline life??? i don’t understand that! as painful as it is to admit one’s flaws for the users of plenty of fish dot com to scrutinize and laugh at, is it not exponentially worse to walk back a shitload of lies face to face with a person you ostensibly would like to bone????????
mark starts off by telling the judge he’s sorry he ever met this woman, let alone dated her, because she is “crazy.” well, here we go with that dismissive bullshit. it’s a fucking smokescreen and greg knows it and asks mark to back up his claim. mark says “she just woke up one morning and told me to get out” and greg says “that’s not crazy! what part of ‘get out of my house’ is unclear to you?” mark tries it again (“she just sat up in bed and flipped out on me!”) and greg says, “well, maybe she had a dream you were always gonna be broke” and i laughed so loud i woke up jackie.
nicole lists the loans she gave mark: $200 toward car repairs, then $500 toward a new car, and an additional $25 for “clothes.” judge mathis tries to clown her but in this house we support extreme pettiness! in his defense, mark says that he believes nicole has cursed him, then he plays a voicemail she left on the day she kicked him out in which she does say “i’m a witch, don’t play with black magic, i’m gonna bind you and your whole motherfucking family if you don’t pay me my money.” the voicemail is much longer than that and it’s bleeped all to hell, long story short nicole is not fucking playing with mark’s “lil’ broke motherfucking ass.”
greg, of course, cannot stop laughing at this, mostly because nicole looks like a preacher’s wife and not the kind of person who would cuss you down to the ground??? but he’s on her side, which maybe means he’s scared of witchcraft, too. he asks mark what the messages she left have to do with this case and mark says he’s had a string of bad luck, lost both his jobs, boo hoo hoo since nicole left that voicemail. you can sue somebody for bad luck??????? somebody get me a lawyer!
the ruling: greg asks mark how nicole defamed him and he says she left comments on his business facebook page (lol) that discouraged his customers. he hands the judge a bunch of printed out facebook sheets™ and nicole left a comment that said “you owe me $725 when are you going to pay it” and maybe this dude has never been on the internet before because that is literally the mildest comment i’ve ever heard? greg tells mark it’s only defamation if he doesn’t owe her and right on cue nicole produces some printed out text messages™ in which mark says “per our agreement, i will pay you back” and verdict for the plaintiff, who i hope rode back to her house on a broom.
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “ma’am he wasn’t lying, he did have four kids. four kids at each house.”
*bangs gavel*