I want to wax philosophical for a minute about candles.

You can just call me John Wick.

You can’t hold a candle to the candle-related jokes I’ve made.

Boy, that might be all of them.

I don’t know.

I’m a good match for candle humor.

I should be fired.

Candles.

It’s a candle episode.

Here we go.

I think I said here we do at the end of that intro before the theme song.

That’s fine.

Here we do.

Here we do.

Here, indeed, we do.

Yes, indeedly doodly, we do.

Candles.

I like candles.

There was one year where, because I like candles, I got a bunch of candles as birthday gifts.

My family, I think my kids, got me a whole bunch of different scented candles, like apple cinnamon and pumpkin and whatever.

Like fun, good, yummy candle flavors.

And I used to light candles in my office all day when I worked from home because, you know, it’s fun.

It makes you smell good.

It was nice.

Great.

Whatever.

At some point over the past few months, I read one too many articles about candles being generally bad for you.

One was like some thread about like how to explain common household issues and people were talking about how black and, I guess, sooty their air conditioner filters could get or their mini split filters could get.

And the, I think it was an article about a Reddit thread.

And the explanation was from every single person in that Reddit thread, oh, you must light candles all the time.

And each time people would be like, yeah, that’s what I do.

And they’re like, yeah, they’re making your things gross.

And then, of course, the Redditors were like, and whatever’s not ending up in your AC or mini split filter is ending up in your lungs.

Now, I’m not that concerned that my candles are killing me, but they might be.

So I haven’t been lighting my candles.

And I was looking for a minute at candle warmers, you know, that you put the thing on there and then it like melts the wax but doesn’t burn it the same way.

So maybe a little healthier, less sooty, I don’t know.

And as I was looking at them, I’m like, oh, that’s just like my mug warmer.

So instead of buying one, I, you know, in the morning, my coffee cup sits on my mug warmer.

And in the afternoon, I put my candle on there and it’s fun.

It’s not as good as burning it, frankly, at least the candle I’ve been doing this with most recently is one of those candles where it doesn’t seem like the wax goes all the way down to the base.

It’s like above the base, if that makes sense.

There’s like, there’s a gap.

There’s an air gap.

And so it’ll be fun because the entire candle will melt, like all the wax will melt into this ooey, gooey, liquidy thing that’s pretty transparent.

And then at some point when I’m done, I’ll remove the candle from there and it very quickly actually re-solidifies into that solid transparent, nope, opaque, I know words, to that solid opaque mass of wax.

And like I said, it’s not as good as burning it, but it’s also, it goes more slowly in terms of using up the candle.

And I mean, my family never minded the candle smell, but they would always note it.

They’re like, is something weird?

And then they eventually, over the course of several years, they realized, oh, whenever I have that feeling, it’s because daddy’s burning a candle in the office.

But now that I am using this melty approach instead, people don’t notice it as much because it’s a fainter smell, a subtler scent.

Fainter smell, subtler scent was the name of my autobiography before I burned it all.

Anyway, like a candle, I guess.

Vanilla Ice once mentioned waxing chumps like a candle, which I guess I appreciate.

That’s almost wordplay, vanilla.

Vanilla Ice, also probably a good name for a scented candle.

But anyway, that’s what I was thinking about today because I was, you know, not burning a candle at both ends, but melting it on my coffee cup warmer.

I’m so proud that I didn’t buy a candle melter thingy on Amazon since it’s basically exactly what I have.

Now, there are cooler ones that I thought could be interesting.

I guess they might be warmer ones.

But there is another style of candle warmer that’s not just the coffee cup heater thing.

It’s got a lamp part as well, like a shade part that points down at the candle.

And I thought maybe that would be compelling, right?

Now we’re, if the candle is higher in its base, maybe this gets to more of the smell goody part sooner.

I don’t know.

Smell goody is a technical term.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on candles.

I hope you enjoyed them.

And if I did a magic trick with candles, I would say candelabra cadabra.

Thank you.

Good night.