A Very Special Indignity Image Roundup
Indignity Vol. 6, No. 24
BEFORE WE BEGIN DEP'T.
Tom Scocca
Before the next chapter drops Friday, get caught up on THE STAIRS, Tom Scocca's serialized work of fiction!
BUSINESS DEP'T.
One More Indignity Image Roundup
GREETINGS! THIS IS Tom, your Indignity Editor Emeritus. If you're reading this, you're probably by now an established reader of this version of our email newsletter, which brings you Joe's MR WRONG column every Thursday and a chapter of my serialized novel THE STAIRS each Friday, accompanied by archival sandwich recipes—and lately, for readers who scroll past the main item, by certain other material as well.
When the mood or opportunity strikes, Indignity may also appear on an unscheduled day with a previously unplanned item.
When last we talked business, back in November, I was turning off the subscription billing for the previous, full-time, paywall-augmented version of Indignity, because I took a full-time job at CNN. I am still at CNN, and Joe is in charge of Indignity, and everyone's old subscriptions remain turned off, unless or until Indignity resumes full-time publishing.
However! Now that we have settled into our revised publisher/reader relationship, we would like to encourage you to sign up for a new paid subscription to the current Indignity. This is independent of any previous paid subscriptions you may have had.
Indignity will remain free to all, with no paywall. But our publishing platform, Ghost, still does cost money, as do various other items that we continue to rely on to bring you a high-quality newsletter experience. If you're able, please do help us defray those costs.
Some of you have already been using the tip button to express your appreciation of Indignity. Thank you very much! Now anyone who wants can set up a regular payment to help sustain our work, for less than the cost of one sandwich per month. Unless you have a really cheap sandwich hookup.
One expense that will now be coming off the books is our professional-grade Getty Images account. Our one-year subscription, purchased for a full-time newsletter and priced accordingly, concluded this month with one last monthly payment of $262.50. That bought us our final 11 downloadable and publishable images of the year, the end of our annual photo budget.
Here, then, in salute to the power of the dollar, is one last Indignity Getty Images roundup, on the theme of BUDGET.
Thank you for reading—or at least looking at the pictures of—the Indignity Getty Image Roundup! We remain grateful for your continued interest and support.
Enjoy previous installations of Indignity Image Roundup.
OLD BUSINESS IS NEW BUSINESS DEP'T.
TOM AGAIN! While we have you here: Indignity remains a partner with the Flaming Hydra media cooperative. And Maria Bustillos, the Flaming Hydra in Chief, remains committed to using the cooperative to demonstrate that electronic books can be sold outright to libraries, to be perpetually available to the public, rather than being tied to limited-term licenses from their publishers.
Because an independent ebook project needs independent books, we're working on an anthology of my previously published work, to be produced as a library ebook and also offered for sale in a print edition, as we did with 19 FOLKTALES.
Part of why I've been able to keep writing so many things for so long, though, is that once I've published a piece, I usually forget all about it. So if there are any pieces I've written that you, the readers, particularly enjoyed reading in Indignity, or on Flaming Hydra, or on earlier antecedents to this publication like Hmm Weekly or Hmm Daily—or, thanks to Maria's indefatigable efforts to track down and clear derelict publication rights, even on the late, martyred Gawker dot Com—please let us know what they may have been, so that I can reread them as if for the first time and we can add them to the list.
Yes, that's right: if our agreements hold, the Gawker arrangement means "On Smarm" will be in the collection. But that one only seemed like it was book-length. It needs company, and we need you to jog our memory, if you can. Please put your suggestions in the comments, or email them to indignity@indignity.net. Thank you very much.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, March 22, 2026
★★★ There was no flood of mature sunlight to warn of how late the household had slept and of how the warm weekend day was hurrying by, just a tentative cloudy gray. Past midday, the light finally strengthened to near sunlike, if scattered and glaring. Warm dampness and currents of chill eddied around each other irregularly and to ambiguous effect. People were less attracted to the real, unsteady spring than they had been to the confident false one. Those who were out wore puffy coats, scarves even—or also shorts and t-shirts and one sleeveless top. Or tweed. Anyone's guess about what it felt like seemed as valid as anyone else's. "Are you hot?" a woman by the swings on the playground called to a child. The late afternoon turned back into a cloudy day, but when a light rain started falling near sunset, it was falling from a pink-flushed, disturbed sky with blue showing through.
New York City, March 23, 2026
★ Things started dark and wet, and the rain stayed on past its scheduled departure. The darkness became mere dimness for the middle of the day, only to get dark again. Cold individual raindrops spat out of the sky, and at some point they gathered to make the pavement wet again. It would have been reasonable just to get out the parka again, but the day itself wasn't reasonable, so the heavy hoodie would do. All up the apartment tower opposite the grocery, windows were open to let the air in, chilly though it was.
New York City, March 24, 2026
★★★ Shapes and colors were high-definition. People wore sunglasses with winter coats. Really flannel under a hoodie under a jacket was enough for the inland miniclimate. Unfiltered sun reflected off a glass tower and shot down the mouth of the subway on 33rd Street, coming blindingly off the glazed tiles on both sides of the stairway. Stones in the concrete gleamed blue inside people's primary, west-pointing shadows in the multidirectional light. Even over the last rise before the Hudson, the knit hat could stay in the bag. The high office windows looked over on buds glowing red on skinny rooftop trees. The Chrysler Building stood stamped and burnished. A manhole and steel plates stood out in the roadway 21 stories down, and the different crosswalk stripes showed off their different shades of wear. Gulls cut between buildings, wings sharpened by the brilliance. Temperatures in the 40s in the shade of 10th Avenue with the wind blowing felt colder than temperatures in the 30s had been in the sun. The light seemed to be settling down for the day, but then uptown, all the way across the Park and through the trees, a whole west-facing facade of glass was blazing cadmium yellow.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
Here is the Indignity Morning Podcast archive!
TOM SCOCCA
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS for the assembly of sandwiches selected from Choice Recipes, by Order of Eastern Star, published circa 192o and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
CREAM CHEESE SANDWICHES
Mix equal quantities cream cheese, chopped pimentos, and chopped walnuts; add a little mayonnaise dressing and spread on thin slices of buttered bread.
HAM AND CHOW-CHOW
Chop cold boiled ham or tongue very fine and add one-third as much chow-chow pickle; blend together and add a little of the mustard the pickles are put up in. Spread between slices of buttered rye or white bread.
RUSSIAN SANDWICHES
Butter very thin slices of white and brown bread, having one-third of the slices brown bread. Chop stuffed olives very fine and moisten with mayonnaise. Spread the olive mixture, and one side of the white bread with thin layer of cream cheese. Press together two slices of white bread with one of brown in the middle.
If you are inspired to prepare a sandwich inspired by these offerings, be sure to send your experience and a picture to
SELF-SERVING SELF-PROMOTION DEP'T.
