MR WRONG: Hot mail in the cooler
Indignity Vol. 4, No. 154
COLUMN DEP’T.
MR WRONG: Readers Write the Wrong
I FORGOT WHAT day it was today, which is Thursday, for real, but on account of the recent Monday Holiday, I thought today was Wednesday, so I was not thinking about how I needed to type a new Mr. Wrong column!
Sidebar: I did not realize the name for Wednesday was all about Mercury, and here it is Thursday, but Today I Learned all about Germanic Mercury and stuff.
OK, so, I have some of correspondence for you, from you, the Gentle Reader, which will do quite nicely for a Hey-Wha-I-Forgot-I-Hadda-File-A-Column-Today episode of the Mr. Wrong Column! Here we go, the first one is in reference to my dismay about how the poor schoolchildren of the state of Maryland had to go Back To School in friggin’ August.
JOE MACLEOD
Dear Mr. Wrong,
I agree! about school in August. You'll be horrified to learn that here where I live in Los Angeles, where kids, and teachers too, all used to reconvene for school after Labor Day, now the fall semester begins mid-August, this year it was August 12! I am SO glad I don't work in LA Unified these days (and for a host of other reasons too). What they've done is make xmas/winter break 3 weeks instead of 2 (kids LOVE it, parents hate it of course), and take the whole week off for Thanksgiving (that one I think is a Good Thing actually)—then added back that time to the front of the calendar.
All that said, whether August brings us intense heat changes from year to year—but September is always a scorcher!
Preparing for 97 degrees later this week,
Albert in LA
Wow, I am 100 in sync with Albert about how Thanksgiving should be a week, because it is an important Holiday in terms of thinking about the reality of the history of The United States of America, so there should be lots of Observances and stuff, but also it is about eating, and I like the idea of multiple days observing food! Thanks for writing, Albert!
JOE MACLEOD
This next letter is a letter in reaction to my reaction to a previous letter, which normally I would not run, a bounce off a bounce, but there’s more movie recommendations in it, so I now present it as a Reader Service!
I did not mean to imply that you would take up in an open marriage in a motel room a la ALL FOURS. Okay, now that that's cleared up: If you have ever enjoyed the movies of Mike Mills (whose movies I love), I find that Miranda July's Stuff covers similar territory, and yet, in a much more daring way, because her characters are so unrelatable as to be practically alien. I hadn't appreciated that about her, before. Mostly, I found her characters to be, well, alien!
Jennifer
OK, this final letter is also Reader Service related, based on my Unsolicited Testimonial as to the quality of the Coleman 100 Qt Xtreme® Wheeled Cooler with Five-Day Performance.
JOE MACLEOD
Dear Mr. Wrong,
First, let me say that the Mr. Wrong column is something I look forward to every week (not just blowing smoke up your ass—I love it!). I read with keen interest the columns you wrote about the power outage and what you had to do to save your food, because this kind of shit happens to lots of people, and when my good old fridge that had been reliable for many, many years died suddenly the year before last, I tried in vain to save the food that was in it, and in the freezer part of it, by putting the contents in coolers with hastily purchased ice.
The new refrigerator I ordered from Lowe's was promised to be delivered the next day, so I was hopeful. Then, when THAT one turned out to be defective, and the replacement couldn't be delivered for three more days, my hopes fell quite a bit. The coolers I had, and were able to borrow, were definitely not your three-day keep frozen variety. I had never heard of the Coleman 100 Qt Xtreme, but had probably never had any occasion to need one before either. It definitely would have been a gamechanger for me!!! I was able to salvage the fridge contents, but the freezer stuff had to go. I did cook quite a bit that weekend, and gave food away to people who would use it quickly.
So, thank you so much for your columning—you make my life better!!! And, because I will now be investing in a Coleman 100 Qt Xtreme Wheeled Cooler, you have potentially saved me from future food disasters—not to mention my friends I will tell about this! [SMILEY FACE WITH HEARTS FOR EYES EMOJI]
Best wishes, Roxy
ps. I'm sending you a pic of my old fridge. I bought it used for $150, and had it for over 30 years. It made me kinda sad to see it go, because they don't make them like that anymore. My daughter had put a Peter Rabbit sticker on it when she was little—it's under all the pictures my grandkids drew, magnets, and other assorted stuff. Heat had started to escape from the bottom front of it, too, and my cat seemed to like that [CAT WITH HEARTS FOR EYES EMOJI]
Roxy, thank you for the kind words in re the Mr. Wrong column, and thanks for the shot of that awesome avocado Montgomery Ward icebox, may it Rest in chilly Peace. Also, thanks for not blowing smoke up my hindquarters, I think that would be an OSHA violation or something here? I hope you can find that a good cooler if you need one, and I would like to remind errbody that the Mr. Wrong column doesn’t get any money for recommendations for solid and dependable products such as the Coleman 100 Qt Xtreme® Wheeled Cooler with Five-Day Performance, but also, don’t fall for the hype and get one of those crazy-heavy and overpriced YETI rigs, just saying.
Thank you for reading the Mr. Wrong column, and extra-special thanks to Albert, Jennifer, and Roxy for writing 90 percent of this week’s column! Talk about Reader Service!
The MR. WRONG COLUMN is a general-interest column appearing weekly. No refunds. Write Wrong: wrongcolumn@gmail.com.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, September 4, 2024
★★★★ The lozenge of light on the floor cast through the doubled glass of the raised window was greener than its companion patch of single-pane light. An almost invisible layer of cloud took some of the keenness off the blue but couldn't stop the strengthening sun. Walking fast, even in the shade and the breeze, raised a very minor sweat. A pedicab slalomed to the right around a taxi and to the left around a trail of horse droppings. Reflected light swelled out through the gates of the Metropolitan Club. Men were wearing suede shoes. Ducks sent wakes and rings of ripples across the shiny surface of the Pond, while a night heron crouched over the weed- and litter-choked shallows, then flapped, croaking, to the opposite shore. People sat on the rocks eating from takeout bowls.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
HERE IS TODAY'S Indignity Morning Podcast.
Tom Scocca
Click on this box to find the Indignity Morning Podcast archive.
TOM 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.
Club Sandwiches (Sandwiches a la “Club”)
A club sandwich is a heavy one, made either with egg, tongue, ham, or chicken. If with egg, butter the bread that has been cut very thin; lay a nice leaf of lettuce on the top; then a fried egg; then, on top of that, another slice of buttered bread. Trim the crust off all around and cut in triangles. If ham or tongue, slice, and put in between.
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.
