MR WRONG: A bone to pick
Indignity Vol. 6, No. 78
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COLUMN DEP’T.
MR WRONG: They Mashed All the Holidays Together but You Still Can't Get a Big Turkey Skeleton for Your Lawn
ON THE INTERNET today I noticed there are not any inflatable lawn ornaments for Thanksgiving that depict a skeleton turkey. I didn’t go wild searching for it, I just thought about it today, now that Halloween is over, and we are in the season with all the annoying crap people put on their lawns to be wacky, so they go to Home Depot and get the same stupid 12-foot tall plastic skeleton like everybody else gets, and then they leave it up all year because, I guess, it’s kind of an investment, so you might as well make it year-round, your stupid “unusual” and “Unique” and “irreverent” giant skeleton like five other people on your block, so right after Halloween you put a big Santa Claus hat on it and you are hilarious or something, oy.
Meanwhile, in Communist China, Red China, The People’s Republic of China Commies, folks are working their ass off in factories making computers and radios and television sets, and trying to make knockoffs of NVIDIA chips and stuff, but some working stiffs over there are punching a pay-clock at the plastic skeleton fabrik. What the fuck? I mean, seriously, I would be like, “What the fuck is the matter with these people on the other side of the planet? What the fuck is this shit?” Plastic skeleton for what?
Look, I put “inflatable turkey skeleton” into Google or it mighta been the other one, Duck Duck Go, and the results are all pretty much on top for Amazon, and it’s replica human skeletons wearing pilgrim outfits and human skeletons wearing turkey getups, and human-skeleton turkey jockeys but there aren’t any skeletons of turkeys.
Why is this? Also, I am not going to ask an Artificial Intellect that thinks it’s super about this issue, I am just wondering, mostly because it’s already jumped to Xmas at my grocery store and at the Walgreens I never go into because it’s crappy and was way better when it was a Rite-Aid.
The supermarket has end-caps of Stove Top Stuffing and all the Thanksgiving crapola, but the seasonal aisle is all red and green bullshit already, sigh. It’s irritating that I have to go out in public to make groceries and they are—and you know who THEY are—already shoving goddamn fucking Xmas in my face, you know?
Thanksgiving is a way better Holiday than Xmas, because there are no gifts and no doomed baby god or whatever, it’s just a buncha debunked historic garbage stories and then the real meaning of the Holiday, eating! Also, football and whatever football is counter-programmed against, or however you’re supposed to say that, anti-programming? Anyway, “Puppy Bowl”–type stuff, like for Super Bowl, the other important Holiday in my calendar.
I also searched “turkey skeleton lawn decor,” and it’s all this stuff with simulated roast turkeys, and skeletons, but zero turkey skeletons. They have chicken skeletons! Why? They have those, clearly supposed to be chickens, with the thing on the top of their head, I don’t know poultry anatomy, but the thing on the top of some chickens is the “comb,” right? Turkeys don’t have those, they have a wattle, underbeneath the beak area, and they don’t have the somewhat flabby-spiky thing on the topside of the head, they just have a thing called a snood, which is just sort of a lazy little flop-over. Anyway, Jesus Christ, how much more can I reflect on this injustice? Why no lawn-skeleton turkeys? Why do I care? I don’t want to see turkey skeletons, but on the other hand, why no turkey skeletons? The plastic human skeleton factory in China would probably be OK with adding it to their product line, right? Wait, is there a tariff?
P.S. A wacky internet joke site has an item about a Home Depot turkey carcass, and like, I get it, and “ha-ha,” but that’s just revolting. Thank you.
The MR. WRONG COLUMN is a general-interest column appearing weekly. No refunds. Write Wrong: wrongcolumn@gmail.com.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, November 8, 2026
★★★★ The clouds were a gray surface above and the honeylocust leaflets were a gold surface matted in the roadway. Then came an idealized sky of puffy white on blue and a brilliant light on the past-peak foliage. More leaflets were strewn all over the lobby and trailed up at least two flights of stairs. The thinning orange-pink oak treetops surrounding the Park let the yellow leaves behind them atop the rock face show through. On the ground, the oak leaves lay in deep loose drifts with elm leaves in among their tangled points. Children crunched through planetree leaves pursuing a soccer ball. Turtles were basking in the afternoon sun but the ducks standing with them on the rocks had their faces turned to leeward and buried in their backs. Sweetgums had thrown their magenta contributions in with the foliage display underfoot. The first-turned of the handsome hilltop sugar maples was now bare; the green of the slowest-turning one was flushed pink on the morning side and had gone scarlet at the very top where it caught all-day sun. The one intermediate between the two was a lit yellow lantern.
New York City, November 9, 2026
★★★ Pink patches flushed along the bottoms of the clouds, and amber light momentarily found the upper stories of the buildings before swiftly fading. The clouds loosened into a composition of gray and glowing white with blue between, then tightened again overhead till the blue showed only around the distant edges, then came apart once more into bright-edged and chimeric shapes as two or three ghostly raindrops fell. Traffic stirred the downed leaves and the wind kept them moving. The late-day light caught the building tops again and anchored there this time, to stay as long as the scheduled sun could last; the fewer clouds of day’s end flushed pink once more.
New York City, November 10, 2026
★★★★ Flattish, oblongish white clouds briefly reticulated the sky, then spread out and were replaced by smoother fragments of cloud-sheet, a rapid set of changes that had almost no effect on the aspect of the day below. The construction mesh over the scaffold at the window made it look as if a fog lay in the street, and the floor was gritty where stray brick dust had blown in. By afternoon the sky was cloudless behind dark flecks of leaves borne aloft. The ginkgo droppings on the path into the Park were thick enough to justify banking up around them on the grass. A noise like a sudden sharp downpour proved to be the ducks of the Pool, come up on shore to browse and all rattling and rummaging in the leaves at once. House music spanged from a glowing speaker borne on a motorized wheelchair hastening up the hill. A rim of peach light spread evenly around the whole horizon.
New York City, November 11, 2026
★★★★ The colors were depleted and the light was flattened, so the drabness of the fallen leaves was momentarily covered over with metallic shine. The corner honeylocusts were down to black pods on black branches. It was warm enough for short sleeves on the way from the hot apartment to the subway stop, but down in the canyons of Midtown things were considerably chillier. The sun that did make it through the buildings landed in unexpected places and soon moved on. People were still willing to sit at sidewalk tables after dark down in the Village, with the help of heat lamps.
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS for the assembly of sandwiches selected from Home Helps, A Pure Food Cook Book by Mrs. Mary J. Lincoln, Lida Ames Willis, Mrs. Sarah Tyson Rorer, Mrs. Helen Armstrong, and Marion Harland, published in 1910 and now available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
DATE SANDWICH
(Mrs. Lincoln)
Wash dates in tepid water, dry and stone them, remove scales and the inner skin near stone, if it be tough; add an equal amount of finely chopped walnuts, and moisten with soft butter or cream, till it can be spread on slices of bread. Cover, press together and cut in triangles. Combine figs and pecans, or raisins and almonds, in the same way.
EGG SANDWICH
(Mrs. Lincoln)
Mince hard eggs very fine, mix with minced olives or cress, or parsley; moisten with softened butter or mayonnaise; season to taste and spread between sliced bread. Or combine yolks with an equal amount of potted ham.
CHEAM CHEESE SANDWICHES
(Miss Willis)
Cut thin rounds of rye bread, add enough rich cream to cream cheese to enable you to whip to a consistency to spread nicely, adding enough English mustard to make a golden color and flavor nicely. Spread inch thick on the bread. Grate over it a quarter of an inch of cold boiled ham. Place a few shreds of olives over this and serve very cold and fresh. Double cream whipped very dry and stiff may be used instead of the cream cheese.
If you are inspired to prepare a sandwich inspired by our continued offerings, be sure to send along a description of your experience and maybe a few photos to us here: indignity@indignity.net.
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