Time in a bottle
Indignity Vol. 4, No. 134
Snake Is Once Again at Liberty
LOST & FOUND DEP'T.
Recently Found in America
A disused oil well (in a yard in a residential neighborhood of Shawnee Township, Ohio)
A business card from a Philadelphia "Gents Furnishing Goods" company that closed in 1881 (inside a pale green glass bottle, embossed “Barr & Brother Philadelphia" and sealed with a cork, on the beach in Corson's Inlet State Park in Strathmere, New Jersey)
An endangered soupfin shark (in Hammersly Inlet on Puget Sound near Shelton, Washington, 200 miles outside the predator's known range)
A note reading "Sorry! Need $ for drugs, won't come back" (in a Teriyaki Madness restaurant in San Fernando, California, after a burglary)
Two varieties of methane-producing microbes (in hot springs in Yellowstone National Park, and belonging to a whole separate phylum from other known methane-producing microbes)
A Taylor 512-C acoustic guitar belonging to Lisa Loeb (in its pink and red soft case, being carried by a "disheveled" person in downtown Indianapolis, after a bar owner recognized the case from Loeb's social-media post about the guitar having been stolen from the Conrad Hotel nearby)
Recently Missing in America
Two police firearms (from parked police cars belonging to officers of two different police departments, in Carmel, Indiana, in a neighborhood popular with police)
Two drive-thru menu boards (from Rita's Italian Ice restaurants in Cleona, Pennsylvania, and Palmyra, Pennsylvania)
A baptismal pool (from a church in Leake County, Mississippi, where it was also being used as a kiddie pool)
Assorted Lego sets valued at $1,300 (from a Walmart in Virginia Beach, Virginia, after two people allegedly bought cheaper Legos and replaced them with more expensive ones on their way out of the store)
A solar-powered traffic speed board (from a pole in New Britain Township, Pennsylvania)
An eight-foot red-tailed boa constrictor (in Winchester, Kentucky, after escaping from its pet carrier, two years after the snake was found crossing a street in Lexington, Kentucky, and adopted by its current owners)
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City to Lenox, Massachusetts, to New York City, August 4, 2024
★ The dim morning light and a quick check of the forecast established that last night's storms had not wrung out the storms scheduled for today. It took effort to push the ever-more-swollen wooden front door open and extra effort to get it closed again. The clouds were so heavy that the morning was cool to get out into; puddles the color of weak tea lay unevaporated in the curb cuts. The streetlights were lit along the parkway on its way out of Manhattan. Deer grazed by the side of the Taconic, and now and then as the drive went on there were interludes of brightness, but around mile 80 a charcoal gray strip of cloud sagged low. The rain from it was gone in a quick flick of the wipers, but the relief gave way to bemusement as the cars began throwing up spray from wet pavement—a warning that traffic was overtaking the real downpour. Then there it was, pounding hard enough to make a panicked BMW start straddling both lanes with its flashers on. The rain continued to the back roads. It glistened on a field of solar panels. Mist insinuated itself into the spaces between trees on the green slopes. The road rose until the mist was in the treetops overhead, then on the roadway. By the parking lot the shower had slowed to a normal pattering rain, on its way to fading out completely. Boldly patterned wings flew across the path, landing on a tree where they resolved into a nuthatch. On the way out, the backup camera on the dashboard showed blue sky. Before 4:30, though, the parkway was in twilight, and then a truly blinding storm was coming down. Traffic slowed to half speed and then a crawl, and kept crawling after the rain had become mere ordinary heavy rain. A white car sat well off the road on a grassy slope, with a tow truck nearby. The storms stretched out the drive so long that by the approach to the rental-car garage the rain was subsiding, the sidewalks a mix of umbrellas and people chancing the drips unprotected. On the crosstown walk to the subway, sun startlingly found a brownstone, casting the shadows of leafy branches against it. Not long after, full sun was shining in the cross street, accompanied by a light, persistent rain. Uptown the eastern sky was blue with plumes of white on it and even whiter shreds of fractus alight below those. Away from that spectacle, everything else was still blurry gray.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
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Tom Scocca
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TOM SCOCCA
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS in aid of the assembly of a sandwich selected from Mrs. Ericsson Hammond's Salad Appetizer Cook Book, by Maria Matilda Ericsson Hammond. Published in 1924, and now in the Public Domain and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
Sandwich aux Goose Liver à la Sausage
Sandwiches de Foie d’Oie à la Saucisse
Cut six slices of bread very thin and then cut them in an oblong shape about three inches in width. Fill with the goose liver and roll. Pinch the ends together and put on a broiler and glaze with the brown glaze, and then with aspic so that they are nice and glossy. Decorate with three bands all around with whipped cream that has some gelatine. When ready to serve arrange them on a platter in the form of a rose with parsley in the center and chopped white aspic in between each.
Filling. Take one goose liver and put it in a frying pan with two spoons of sherry if at hand, if not substitute with stock. Add one tablespoon of butter and pepper and salt. Cook the liver until well done, chop it fine and press it through a fine strainer; add some pepper and salt, stir in a saucepan on ice and add two tablespoons of stirred butter, one spoon of chili sauce, and two spoons of whipped cream.
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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