MR WRONG: Feeling defrosted.

COLUMN DEP’T.

MR WRONG: Power Interruption

I WAS JUST getting ready to type this week’s Mr. Wrong column, and I was sad, because I hadn’t heard from the winner of my postcard contest, but then I checked my wrongcolumn@gmail.com electronic mail address, and here is the communication I received:

Dear MR WRONG,

Thank you for choosing me! I am honored to receive this deluxe postcard! I have no idea why it took so long to go from NY to MA, but a silver lining is that it made my week. I’m currently on day one of Covid isolation and you brought a big smile to my face, see attached picture! Along with a favorite memento of my time in Baltimore 10 years ago.

Additionally I must respect that you went for the “hand cancel” rate that costs extra postage but gives the card some serious class. this further made my week!

Your loyal reader,
Dave

So now Dave is happy, and I am happy that Dave got their Prize, but I am also extra-disco-bonus happy that Dave is happy! You look good, Dave! Good luck and please to enjoy mild symptoms and a speedy recovery from that nasty coronavirus, Dave! People, this shit is still very Real, don’t fuck around with Little C, exercise some prophylaxis out there!

I am gonna do another contest in the near future, but meanwhile, don’t forget, you can write me any time you want at wrongcolumn@gmail.com.

Here is a recent communication I received at that address in re last week’s Mr. Wrong column:

MR WRONG: Check your mailbox!

Indignity Vol. 4, No. 137

INDIGNITYJOE MACLEOD

This Correspondence is from Valued Reader (and Writer!) Jennifer:

These are Miranda July–level thoughts re. the uncertainty of human-to-human communications. Just saying!

Hopefully that comparison does not anger you. I have grown to like her output—a lot, to be honest. But there are other people, people whose opinions I think I respect?, who hate her output or simply find it (or the imagined Her) annoying. 

Best, etc.

Thank you for corresponding, Jennifer! I don’t know much about Miranda July except for that one movie Me And You And Everyone We Know, but I also Googled and found this thing about how they wrote a book entitled All Fours, about checking into a motel “a half-hour from her house for a few weeks, taking up with a younger married man and then experimenting with an open marriage,” and I am all about that idea, but it would be an Hotel, and I would check in with my wife, and we enjoy a Closed Marriage, no offense, and what we do in our Hotel Room is nunya business, dig? So I will accept, as a compliment, your Ruling on how I am similar to a famous and accomplished person who not errbody likes! Thank you again for writing!

Seriously, if I could live all the time in a Hotel, semi-Miranda July-style, I totally would. That is one of my Life Goals when I hit the Megamillions, which, hey, it’s a life-altering amount of loot this week!

OK, THIS WEEK'S column is Continued from last week, because I ate up my wordcount worrying about the postcard thing, So! Previously, on the Mr. Wrong Column:

All right, so I got back from my idyllic and enjoyable and refreshing and reinvigorating and revivifying and inspirational and restful and ate a lotta food and went on a boat ride on a pontoon boat (not this one, holy crap) Vacation and there was stifling, suffocating heat, and a goddamn power failure waiting for us at home on account of devastating rainstorms and a buncha trees got knocked down and so the wires that have the electricity in them got broken by this and so, no electricity. The weather, it’s crazy, it’s almost like the Climate is changing, eh? I have a lot to say about this topic, and I’m already at 837 words, so I am gonna make this a two-part column. CONTINUED NEXT WEEK.

Anyway, we had coolers packed with food and beverages leftover from our week of fun, but I couldn’t put that stuff in the fridge, because the fridge had devolved into nothing more than a giant box of food that needed to be put someplace cold. It was getting warmer by the minute, a buncha random foodstuffs in the fridge part of the fridge, fruit, condiments, assorted cheeses, but over on the totally jam-packed freezer side of the fridge, a lot of potentially thawed-out leftovers, some bags of frozen vegetables that were gonna be prematurely unfrozen, and most important of all, many and various cuts of meat and poultry that were in danger of becoming warm and raw! Ack!

I put this very sophisticated string of words for a search into the Internet:

HOW LONG FOOD IN FRIDGE NO POWER

I figured we'd have a day or two, to just, like, leave the fridge alone, don’t open it, but the Federal Government had different guidance! 

As the USDA notes in Keeping Food Safe During an Emergency, your refrigerator will keep food safe for up to 4 hours during a power outage. Keep the door closed as much as possible. Discard refrigerated perishable food such as meat, poultry, fish, eggs, and leftovers after 4 hours without power.

You know, what with the exciting Postcard Contest news, and the Correspondence, I am already over word count, so: CONTINUED NEXT WEEK

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

WEATHER REVIEWS

Bethany Beach, Delaware, August 14, 2024

★★★★ A long wing of metallic orange-pink cloud stretched in the east on the otherwise clear dome of the sky. Below it, a slightly angled slash of red cut sideways through the murky blue above the horizon. Little shorebirds sprinted on their tiny legs up and down the shining wet sand, dodging the iridescent flow of the surf. Right on the horizon, a short segment of brighter red appeared, not at all round at first but then resolving in moments into the leading edge of the perfect roundness of the sun. Now the wing of cloud was tipped with silver; the top of the disc brightened to a blazing orange and the bottom of it cleared the horizon. A smear of its color appeared on the water, solidifying into a ribbon. The birds jumped and fluttered when a wave came in faster than they could run, then, as one, they took flight for good, a little cloud of tiny forms veering out over the water. Two and a half hours later, the sun was in command, scattered and amplified by haze. The breeze made the rashguard flutter. The swells were mostly—but not all—gentle, and it was better to sink down and soak in them than to let the wind evaporate and chill the wet swimming clothes. In the afternoon, a peeping cry came from a pair of ospreys winging over the road from the library. Marshmallows blistered and went into flame in the invisible heat from the subsiding charcoal fire. Sundown was as incidental as sunup had been focal, a shapeless wash of color on the near-featureless sky over the park, making it impossible to decide where the pink from the west ended and the blue began. The brightness was failing but the colors grew ever more saturated: the wine red of a flowering crape myrtle by the park gate, the lurid orange highlights on a pair of basketball shoes, the brown of the boy's suntan and the deep blue of his shorts. The gibbous moon had a blush on it.

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.

CLICK ON THIS box to find the Indignity Morning Podcast archive.

INDIGNITY MORNING PODCAST

Tom Scocca reads you the newspaper.

INDIGNITY MORNING PODCASTTOM SCOCCA

SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.

WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS in aid of the assembly of a sandwich selected from The Swedish, French, American Cook Book, by Mrs. Maria Mathilda Ericsson Hammond, published in 1918, and now in the Public Domain and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.

Lettuce Sandwiches (Sandwiches à la Laitue)

Slice bread; spread with mayonnaise; put a leaf of lettuce on each, squeeze of lemon, pepper and salt; put another slice of bread on top that has also been spread with mayonnaise dressing, cut out with the diamond cutter, and serve.

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.

Supplies are really and truly running low of the second printing of 19 FOLK TALES, still available for gift-giving and personal perusal! Sit in the crushing heat with a breezy collection of stories, each of which is concise enough to read before the thunderstorms start.

LESS THAN 5 COPIES LEFT: 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, and is available for purchase at SHOPULA.

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