MR WRONG: Contagious holiday spirit

COLUMN DEP’T.

MR WRONG: It’s Cold and Flu Season and Covid Season

I HAVE COVID, goddammit, so for The Holidays I am living the Lifestyle of the Sick and Contagious! This worked out in a convenient manner for me schedule-wise.

Christmas Eve is really the big moment as far as trading gifts and making merry, observing the WPIX-TV 11 Yule Log, then staying up late with The Pope for the big show, so Xmas Day is always chill, usually Dinner and a Movie, and since Little C didn’t make itself apparent until Xmas Day, my low-energy activities were the same, Entertainment and Feasting, watching the Knicks Play Basketball, but they occurred within the walls of my castle, albeit in a Covid stupor. Other than being sick as a sick dog, I have no complaints!

Well, OK, I have a complaint. I did my duty as one of the Afflicted, and announced to every and anybody I mighta been in contact with in the days before I knew I was Contaminated that I tested POS, and I got people comin’ back at me all about like, sorry you’re sick, but it’s good that this year’s model of Covid is easy, what the fuck? It’s fuckin’ Covid, every dose hits different! This shit don’t play! There are people going to the hospital! Next are you gonna tell me the kids these days don’t know what Covid is, and you used to walk three miles in the snow to get your Covid? It’s Covid! Respect the Disease!

I just got up after a three-hour nap to write my column, that is my level of Dedication to you, the Gentle Reader of the Mr. Wrong Column! Always Be Columing! I have been feeling better, so I got crazy and went for a walk, all of one mile, and when I got home, the Comfy Chair got me, and like, I am Recuperating, so I don’t give a fuck, naptime! Three hours! I’m sick, plus my brain doesn’t work, or, like, it works, but it’s very Relaxed, I think that’s the best way to describe it. Normally my brain is active, not necessarily Productive, but highly active!

Yesterday I was sitting on the couch and the teevee wasn’t even on! I was just sitting there, having Covid, waiting for the next thought to occur in my brain, waiting, with no anticipation, no worries, existing. I gotta admit, it’s kind of a pleasant feeling, other than the swollen throat and eye-socket headache and congested lungs that burn with every wracking cough, and the all-over tingly body ache and energy level so low that it takes five minutes to decide to sit up from the couch and grab the remote to turn on the teevee. I wonder if this low-energy thing is what it’s like to be a Centenarian? There are no Urgent Matters, you know? I felt very much like one of those ancient Tortoises, like, I did all my stuff that I needed to do, I wasn’t that sick that I couldn’t take care of my basic non-tortoise needs, it’s just that it took me an hour to get up and go get a glass of water and take some aspirin after the idea popped into my head, and it didn’t even really “pop,” I guess, it just sorta fell in, slid in? Dropped? Plopped! The idea plopped into my brain! Anyway, it took its time, to alert me: Thirsty. Eyeball sockets burning and throbbing with pain. Aspirins good. Then I’m like: Yes. An hour later I get up and go in the kitchen. Mission Accomplished, a productive segment of Existence!

I have the luxury of not being so sick that I’m in a hospital on an Iron Lung! Plus, I have a roof over my head, and if I’m cold— like when I was watching the Knicks, I got so cold I had on sweatpants and three layers of tops and a hoodie and a hat on over top of the hoodie and warm slippers that I got for Xmas, all under a wool blanket—I am fortunate enough to have the cashflow to allow me to point the space heater at my legs and crank that sucker full blast! Blessed!

Anyway, this column takes the place of my usual column exhorting you to get a fucking Flu Shot and go wash your hands. I got a flu shot, but I didn’t get around to getting a Covid shot, because I got a li’l bit Covid-jaded, which is dumb! I kept putting off scheduling my shot and way in the back of my head I was thinking I had a nasty dose of Covid before they declared a Pandemic, back in 2019, then I got all the shots, then I had Covid like, over a year ago, but it was super mild because I was in the tail end of a vaccination and I even did overkill on it and got a scrip for Paxlovid, and so this year I got cocky, and I got Covid. Protect yourself at all times!

The MR. WRONG COLUMN is a general-interest column appearing weekly wherever it can appear. No refunds. Write Wrong: wrongcolumn@gmail.com.

WEATHER REVIEWS

New York City, December 27, 2023

★ The damp and neutral air coming indoors was damp and raw outside. The showers had wetted down the cigarette butts on the sidewalk where they lay. Within a block or two, the tip of the nose got chilly. Everything was colorless and grimy. A little spitting rain began, but it was hours before it ever amounted to anything.

BLUESKY DEPARTMENT

THE READERS OF Indignity continue to supply us with Bluesky codes, for people who want to try the still-beta Bluesky social networks. If you haven’t already gotten a code from us, email indignity@indignity.net and we will award Bluesky codes to those who respond, one per reader, first email, first served.

SANDWICH RECIPES DEP’T.

WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS for the assembly of sandwiches from A Calendar of Dinners, with 615 Recipes (stealth title: The Story of Crisco), by Marion Harris Neil, Published in 1921, now in the Public Domain, available at archive.org for the delectation of all.

Pimiento Cheese Sandwiches
2 tablespoonfuls Crisco
1 cupful diced cheese
1 teaspoonful cornstarch
6 tablespoonfuls milk
1 teaspoonful salt
1 can pimientoes
Paprika to taste
Graham bread

Put cheese into double boiler, add Crisco, cornstarch, milk, salt, and paprika to taste and stir and cook until smooth, then add pimientoes cut into small pieces. Spread between buttered slices of graham bread.

Sufficient for twenty-five sandwiches.

Rice Sandwiches
1 tablespoonful Crisco
1/2 cupful rice
1 sprig parsley
1 blade mace
1 strip lemon peel
2 tablespoonfuls chopped cooked ham
2 tablespoonfuls chopped cooked liver
Salt and pepper to taste
Bread

Boil rice in plenty of boiling salted water, add parsley, mace, and lemon peel. When quite tender strain off water, take out parsley, mace, and lemon, and stir into the rice, liver, Crisco, ham, and seasonings. Cut an even number of slices of bread, spread mixture when cold on one-half, and cover with remaining slices of bread. Trim and cut into diamond shapes.

Sufficient for twenty sandwiches.

If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net.

MARKETING DEP'T.

The second printing of 19 FOLK TALES is now available for belated Holiday gift-giving and personal perusal!

U.S. Postal Service media mail delivery takes an estimated 4 to 8 business days. For Eastern Orthodox shoppers, the author stands ready to hand-fulfill orders as they come in, even at the cost of dealing with that one clerk at the neighborhood post office whose whole thing is trying to start a fight with everyone who steps up to her window. Happy holidays!

HMM WEEKLY MINI-ZINE, Subject: GAME SHOW, Joe MacLeod’s account of his Total Experience of a Journey Into Television, expanded from the original published account found here at Hmm Daily. The special MINI ZINE features other viewpoints related to an appearance on, at, and inside the teevee game show Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, available for purchase at SHOPULA.

FLAMING HYDRA will launch in January of 2024. The FLAMING HYDRA Holiday Preview Spectacular, a rich sampling of the writing and art you’ll enjoy as a subscriber to the forthcoming daily newsletter, is available now for your inspection. FLAMING HYDRA is the work of 60 world-class talents, but that’s just one reason to subscribe. FLAMING HYDRA is a 100% cooperatively owned, ad-free publication with no owners and no investors; just a bunch of writers and artists working together and splitting the proceeds equally.

INDIGNITY is a general-interest publication for a discerning and self-selected audience. We appreciate and depend on your support!