MR WRONG: Diamonds are forever
Indignity Vol. 6, No. 67
WOW DEP'T.
Tom Scocca's serialized novel THE STAIRS is now complete! Read it now in its entirety only at Indignity!
COLUMN DEP’T.
MR WRONG: I'm a Faithful Baseball Fan so They Don't Care If I Like How They Run the Baseball Games
ALRIGHT, WHERE were we? Yeah! As we established in last week’s Mr. Wrong column, I am mad at the baseball stadium because they (and you know who They are) fucked it all up with all these kludges, the ballpark, Oriole Park at Camden Yards (nobody calls it that) used to be this pleasant balance of architecture, signage, and metallic accents, and now it’s like the strip in Vegas with a buncha glaring TV screens and giant LED signs crowding out the old lines of what was formerly a serene expanse of greenery and brick.
However! I will still pay money to go see a ballgame there, because they are presenting Major League Baseball, I was gonna go there anyway! They haven’t made these changes to retain me as a patron, they’re doing this shit because they are trying to get more people to attend baseball games, and they think the way to do that is to Football the Baseball, with, among other things, a newer louder Public Address system, and frequent exhortations on the giant screen to GET LOUD. They do this sometimes during the second inning, I swear, I just climbed the stairs all the way up to my seat in the 300 level, the nosebleeds, if you will, and I got settled with my drink and my snack, the score is 0–0, and now I’m supposed to GET LOUD, nah, this ain’t football! It’s not cold out, I don’t need to stomp my feet and holler to stay warm, I am here to observe the National Pastime and relax! Of course I want to root-root-root for the Home Team! Of course I will stand up at appropriate times to cheer or holler at the umpire for being a criminal with a marginal call against the Baltimore Orioles! Of course I will yell “O!!!” during the “O” part of the National Anthem, which is a thing they do here! Of course when the O’s hit a home run I will stand up and cheer, and “high-five” any complete stranger who approaches me for a celebratory “high-five” even though I really don’t dig “high-five,” I do it for the Ritual aspect of my visit to the ballpark!
I won’t get mad at misguided fans who start “The Wave” when the Home team is pitching, I just won’t participate in “The Wave”–ing. I won’t stand up for the playing of “God Bless America” because it is not the National Anthem, but I will stand up for the Seventh Inning Stretch and clap my hands in time to the abbreviated version of “Thank God I’m a Country Boy,” which is basically more important at Oriole Park at Camden Yards (nobody calls it that) than “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”
I take a proprietary interest in things that happen at Oriole Park at Camden Yards (nobody calls it that) because my gambling dough goes into supporting the stadium! I didn’t vote for this, but here’s a fact:
From lottery proceeds, $532.5 million went directly to Maryland’s General Fund to help pay for public schools and state operations. Another $149 million in lottery profits was allocated to state initiatives supporting public transit, the Maryland Veterans Trust Fund, and upgrades to the Camden Yards Sports Complex.
That quote is from a web site called “nottinghammd dot com,” and I am not putting it here properly as a linky-link so you can link to it, because there’s some weird box that keeps trying to load on the page, and the Mr. Wrong column does not want to irritate as it informs! Service! If you want the link you can reply in the comments—if you are a paying supporter of Indignity, of course, thank you very much—but if you don’t pay to help Indignity, I ain’t mad at ya, I will send you the link if you want it, just email me at the address down at the end of the column.
Again, yeah, the continuing investments I make in my Retirement Plan—aka the lottery and attendant scratch-offs—give me additional Moral Authority to complain about Oriole Park at Camden Yards (nobody calls it that), and my other qualification is that I have a partial season ticket plan, the cheapest plan, yeah, and the cheapest seats, yeah, but still! I used to go to a minimum of 13 games a year here in Baltimore until this season, when they changed the plan I used to buy and made it into a 20-game plan, which I did not ask them to do, nor did I want this, but they did it, and they told me that I could “sell back” as many as six games worth of tickets if that was too beaucoup, but of course (get ready for a Baseball Reference), the big Roger Maris asterisk here is that if you “sell back” a ticket, it goes into your account as a sort of deposit for next season! Yeah, if it’s too many games for you this year, they lock you in to too many games next year, plus the games you “sell back” because it’s too many games, so I’m no Math Major, but the net result is you fucking end up with too many games!
And another thing, the Orioles are not good at baseball this season! Ack! OK, you know what? We’re going to Part Three on this, to be continued! Go O’s! Also I apologize if you do not like Sports, I swear, next week we’re done with this shit! Go O’s! Again!
The MR. WRONG COLUMN is a general-interest column appearing weekly. No refunds. Write Wrong: wrongcolumn@gmail.com.
Bethany Beach, Delaware, August 9, 2026
★★★ "Ten o'clock, ten o'clock, 90 degrees at ten o'clock," a man marveled on his way out of the farmers market. The weather app, which would disagree with the bank thermometer all day, had it only just clearing 80, but with the air dead still and a hard glare coming from all sides at once, the higher number seemed more plausible. The mushroom guy was just about out of mushrooms and was speculating about retreating somewhere for a Bloody Mary, since the other vendors had him parked in. From the beach, the horizon was sharply drawn despite the haze; the retreating waves were beige and too erratic to ever get securely and comfortably behind. A few noon clouds interrupted the sun long enough to keep it tolerable, and a breeze arrived to help shift the haze. Three vultures floated against a pillar of cloud. A chunk of jielan flew out of the wok and landed, translucent green, in a patch of sun on the linoleum. The heat clocked out as early as it had clocked in, leaving a bright easy stretch into evening, while the insects sent calls twanging after calls: some falling into pulsing rhythm, some lurching along and then cutting out.
Bethany Beach, Delaware, August 10, 2026
★★★★ An osprey drifted in a patch of dusty blue above maroon-blazing crape myrtle. The waves were cool and gentle and glossy, so congenial to humans that they were even more congenial to jellyfish: whole and symmetrical and undulating in the underwater sunlight, or floating in loose shreds. Pale blooms of disturbed sand looked as if they might be still more jellyfish until the real ones drifted in for comparison. One by one, the people in the water, vigilant or not, felt the pricking and itching. The afternoon was fine for walking up to the bicycle shop but the ride back down through town all the way to the drugstore left a sweat spot coming through the chest of the t-shirt and black crumbs of the handlebar foam coming off on sweaty hands. In the ordinary and calm-seeming late afternoon, grumbles of thunder started sounding from the south, and for a while it was hard to tell where the haze-thick sky might or might not be turning gray. There was plenty of time to retrieve the swimming things from the deck out back before the gray became dark and certain and a gust flapped up the corner of the rug out there up and down. A heavy but short burst of rain came, an outrider of the real storms, according to the radar map. Wind whistled through the screen porch and lightning flashed in white bolts and violet or pink glimmers. Gulls rode the gusts out of what seemed to be sheer enthusiasm. The neighbors' American flag, its stripes coming apart a little at the end, lurched and whipped on its staff. The wind or the thunder boomed. The trolley sloshed through the standing water left by the first shower, clear plastic sides lowered around the empty interior. Yet more lightning came as jagged seams over the whole visible sky, like cracks in an eggshell, but the radar now showed a weak spot in the ferocious leading edge of the storms, lined up so it would slide right over the town.
Bethany Beach, Delaware, August 11, 2026
★★★★ The haze was ice-colored and hard to look at in the direction of the sun. High tide and the storm had thrown the jellyfish up on the sand for a conscientious early-morning dad to clean up. There was nothing of them to be seen in the easy swells, save one stray translucent scrap, but then a nagging pain announced itself in one ankle, just above the foot. A while later, in the wait for two or three last good waves before going ashore, something tough and stringy wrapped around the other ankle—sturdy as seaweed, or fishing line, or a wayward hair weave, but accompanied by a sudden prickling that excluded all those less upsetting possibilities. Slowly thickening clouds made the shadows fade out. A gull stood a few feet from the beach chair, looking around ruffle-headed with a blankly inquiring mien. Dolphins passed from north to south and pelicans sat far out on the water with their heads jutting up like more dolphins' fins frozen in mid-swim. The forecast chance of showers melted away into a humid but persistently sunny afternoon. Now and then a new round of phantom prickles would twine around the more stung ankle again. With the bicycles facing into the pink glow around the descending sun, a breeze rushed over the ears till it was louder than the crackle of stray gravel under the tires.
Bethany Beach, Delaware, August 12, 2026
★★★★ A gray morning—and a sprinkling one, according to the people who went out in it—let some sun through briefly once the lifeguards were on duty. The water would have been an ideal contrast to hot sun if the latter had done its part. Instead wind whipped at the swim shirts under enduring clouds. The sand was as softly damp as unbaked shortbread. An osprey flew straight in from the water, not high up, working to keep a decent-sized fish under control. The tail of the swim shirt was as wet getting up from a long sit in a beach chair as it had been settling down. At last the sky began turning blue, away from the sun at first, and then the edge of the cloud shadow slipped south on the ocean, leaving the water shimmering bronze as it departed and bringing people advancing on the surf. The afternoon temperature was nicer than it had been for any other pirate mini-golf game in memory, but by the back nine the sun was coming down heavily. After dinner there was just enough light left to hop in the bikes for a quick ride through the cool humid streets, with dark flights of birds sounding on the pink-lit sky and the drifting smell of cookouts.
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS for the assembly of sandwiches selected from Davis' Sea Food recipes, by the Frank E. Davis Fish Co., 8 Central Wharf, Gloucester Mass., published in 1910 and now available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
THE recipes in this little book have been selected or devised with special reference to our own products, and an effort has been made to have the quantities right for our special packages. We have included methods of using each of our products, and aimed at getting as much variety as possible rather than trying to state every possible way of using each article. Many additional ways or variations will readily occur to the thoughtful cook.
LOBSTER SANDWICHES
Cut the lobster up fine, mix with salad dressing, and spread on thin slices of bread, crackers, or toast. If at hand a lettuce leaf laid next to the lobster adds to the attractiveness.
CRAB TIDBITS
This product should be served cold just as it comes from the can on tender lettuce leaves, either plain or with Mayonnaise Dressing, vinegar, or a lemon. It may also be used for sandwiches mixing either with mustard, Mayonnaise Dressing, or Mousse D’ Anchois.
SHRIMP SANDWICHES
Mix minced shrimps with mayonnaise and a little lemon juice. Spread between thin slices of bread and serve on lettuce leaves.
TUNNY SANDWICHES
Mix well with salad dressing or mayonnaise adding a few drops of lemon juice. Spread between crackers or bread which need not be buttered. A lettuce leaf laid over the lower slice before filling will add to the flavor.
TUNNY SALAD
This makes a fine salad, resembling chicken in appearance and flavor. Take one can of the Tunny, breaking the fish apart with a fork, but do not chop. Add a liberal quantity of coarsely chopped celery. Cover liberally with a rather tart salad dressing. Serve on crisp lettuce leaves.
SALMON SANDWICHES
Three-fourths cup salad dressing, one cup and a half minced salmon, season to taste. Mix dressing and salmon to a paste; slice bread very thin and spread with the salmon paste. Cut into fancy shapes and garnish with watercress or parsley. These can be made two or three hours before serving, by placing closely together and covering with a damp napkin. The salmon paste will keep indefinitely.
LOBSTER SANDWICH FILLING
This is one of the most classy fillings for sandwiches. Place between two slices of bread or crackers. A lettuce leaf cut to the same size of the sandwich, and placed on top of the filling, adds much to its appearance.
SARDINE SANDWICH
Take each sardine, cut off tail, split and remove the bone. Put the pieces in a little lemon juice and let stand one-half hour. Drain thoroughly and spread on toast between fresh lettuce leaves with a shake of paprika. One small box will make six sandwiches.
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.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
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TOM SCOCCA
S_BST_CK IS BAD AND YOU SHOULD QUIT DEP'T.
