MR WRONG: Going to the mattresses
Indignity Vol. 6, No. 63
DO YOU REALIZE DEP'T.
Tom Scocca
CHAPTER 38 of Tom Scocca's serialized work of fiction appears tomorrow! THERE ARE ONLY TWO CHAPTERS REMAINING BEFORE THE THRILLING CONCLUSION! So right now is a wonderful time to get caught up on THE STAIRS!
COLUMN DEP’T.
MR WRONG: Writing Is Just Putting One Word in Front of Another
I HAD A really good idea for a Mr. Wrong column last night, when I was in bed, falling asleep, and I kept kinda waking up a li’l bit wondering if I should just get up and go sit at my desk in the Rumpus Room and just write the fuckin’ column, but I was in bed, half asleep, and I was in a good pre-falling asleep format, I had the pillow the right way and I wasn’t too hot or too cold, and the blanket was just right, we had the fan on, it was nice, a little Ambient sound, very soothing, it was all good for falling into the arms of Morpheus or whatever, and every time I am in that situation where I am in perfect sleep posture and I get up to go do something and then go back to bed, it’s all fucked up, I can’t get the stupid pillow floofed the way I had it, and the blanket isn’t right, and I can’t decide if I am gonna try and start sleeping on my side—and if so, which side—or on my back or on my front.
Jeez, how do they have these mattress commercials where they go, “if you are a side sleeper,” etc., I am an all-sleeper! I sleep all the ways, how am I supposed to pick a mattress? The one I have now, sleepy-time-night-night-wise, is not for me, I feel like I’m in a bowl of pudding or something, when I move, I need more support, I gotta switch it, it’s one of those “memory foam” mattresses we got at this place that I’m not going to say the name of, but the initials are IKEA. At least I didn’t have to put it together, all I did was open up the plastic bag and it exploded into full mattress-ness, BAM! There’s lotsa videos out there of people getting biffed by their new mattress because they didn’t understand how violent the reaction was gonna be when the thing slurped up all the air into its foam, all at once! BLAM! Not me, I always read the instructions, light fuse, get away!
Anyway, aside from not being unconscious, I was lying there minding my own business, comfortably and perfectly in bed wondering if I should get outta bed, and I don’t do that phone-in-the-bed thing, I think you might as well get the fuck up if you’re gonna blast your eyeballs with phone light, especially if it’s to type some crap. It was late, after midnight, but that was kinda early for me, going-to-bedwise, because usually I like to watch teevee around 11 p.m.–midnight and then get up and go to bed when my eyeballs start rolling back in my head and I am groggy and I gotta wake up to go to bed, but that’s not healthy, right? If you wake up to go to bed you are already defeating your own purpose of sleeping, because you basically went to sleep, and then interrupted yourself to fucking go to sleep.
There’s that whole thing in Science about how you have sleep cycles and over the course of a normal span of restful sleep, you go in and out the cycles, with the Rapid Eye Movement thing, and you have that part where you can’t move because you are super-duper asleep, and I think that’s when you are dreaming and that’s when you have those dreams where you’re trying to move but you can’t and you get irritated because all you’re trying to do—ha! I knew if I just dove into this week’s column and typed a buncha words without trying to remember what the hell I thought was a good idea when I was half-asleep last night, I would trip over what I was trying to write!
Yeah, I didn’t put that up at the top here, that I have been walking around all day trying to remember whatever the hell it was I thought up last night, because I was trying to distract myself from thinking about what I was trying to think about, does that make sense? It’s part of my Process, har!
Right now I am gonna type a note at the bottom of the column to remind myself what I thought of so I can put it in at the appropriate time, writerly flow-wise.
OK! I typed the note, and now I forgot what I was typing up here in this part, great, so now I have to read back what I wrote, and OK, that’s it, I’m done with that part, so here’s what I remembered:
NOTE ABOUT WHAT I FORGOT: The “Practical Writing” professor in college with the Albrecht Dürer print and a roomful of students, and we each were sitting at a typewriter. The classic Roomful of Chimps in a Roomful of Typewriters! All in aid of me bragging about how I never get so-called Writers Block, because all you have to do is start writing some stuff, and then you read it, and it might be crap, so then you re-write it. It’s probably crap!
So that note I put up there made me remember I was in bed, half asleep, and going over what I wanted to do today, and I thought about the column, and I thought about how I shouldn’t be lying in bed trying to come up with an idea to write about while I’m in bed, that’s not good Sleep Hygiene, and that made me think of how I learned to not worry about what to write because all I do is start writing, and then I come up with a Topic.
The professor had the Dürer print up on the wall, I didn’t know the title of the print, or much about Dürer beyond the “Praying Hands” piece that sorta became his Greatest Hit and inspiration for a gazillion kitschy reproductions, ugh. The first day of class, we’re sitting there like a buncha dopes, and he says “for the next five minutes, look at this image.” Then, “for the next 20 minutes, write about the image. Don’t think, just start typing, don’t fix mistakes, don’t start over, just keep writing about the image, for 20 minutes.” He didn’t tell us to like, write a work of fiction about the print, he wanted us to describe it, look at it and then type some shit. I don't remember what I wrote. Again, it’s part of my Process; don’t think! Type! Har!
So I had what I considered to be a perfectly good idea for today’s Mr. Wrong column, but then I was torn between getting up out of my perfectly set-up sleep session, or somehow remembering all this crap for the next day, and I decided I probably wasn’t gonna be able to remember tomorrow, but fuck it, I was all comfy in bed, let’s see what happens, maybe I will remember, somehow.
I don’t know how much of a column I woulda got out of just the part of taking the writing class, but voting for sleep over work paid off! My Process!
The MR. WRONG COLUMN is a general-interest column appearing weekly. No refunds. Write Wrong: wrongcolumn@gmail.com.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City to Aberdeen, Maryland, to New York City, July 26, 2026
★★★★ The playground flag hung limp in the mild morning air, above the splashing unoccupied fountains. The light discriminated among the varied whites and off-whites of the fore-edges of a row of books lined up against a window. Streets and highways alike were open and bright. Wildflowers speckled the road edge with color. The finish of an immaculate boat twinkled on its trailer. The clouds gradually evolved from near-invisible oval smudges into real ones. Sun shone on the stump of the old triple oak, where different-sized ants scurried among the still-fresh sawdust. The rings added up to something well past 90 years, with surely the rest of a century lost in the rotten heart of it. The woody vines alongside, sawed off with the trunks they'd climbed, were wider than a whole finger joint, or two, or an entire index finger. A storm-wrecked branch of paulownia lay near the edge of the woods, still laden with green and sticky fruit. As the northbound Turnpike traffic started to clog up, a pack of bikers came roaring along the lane stripes. The approach to New York was dulled by clouds but on the sidewalks of the city there was blue overhead through the trees and a cool wind blowing along. The cat glared through the black mesh of her bag as she jostled along the cross street on the journey back toward the old familiar indoors.
New York City, July 27, 2026
★★★ A bright and promising morning grew gradually grayer and stickier, but then the forecast showers were pushed back to the afternoon, making room for a sunny reprieve. The only thing wrong with the balcony in the shade was the incursion of hunting mosquitoes. The breeze was refreshing but not strong enough to run them off. If the rain ever was going to come, it wasn't indulging in a depressing, time-wasting preface. "I've been waiting all day—when is it coming?" a woman's voice complained from down on the street as the sky finally darkened. The shade along the rock face of the Park was deep dark green. The eastern sky, glimpsed through the mass of trees on the way up the steps from the Strangers' Gate, was a collection of still-bright fragments; the sky to the west was dark gray shaded with brown. People kept sitting out on the hilltop lawn even as the first halfhearted pop of thunder came. Fireflies flashed golden in the shrubbery. Wind hissed in the leaves on the downhill trail. During the quick up-and-down loop in and out of the Park, the dark clouds had crossed the zenith. A few drops fell as the key was heading into the front door lock, but the gray kept drifting on, with no real release, until it started lifting in the west to reveal late-day yellow. Then the thunder strengthened, the yellow gave over to a less theatrical gray, and full rain came down at last.
VISUAL CONSCIOUSNESS DEP'T.
Celebrating the USA at CVS
More consciousness at Instagram.
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS for the assembly of sandwiches selected from Daily Bread: Tested Recipes of the Ladies of Fergus County, Montana, by the The "Home Workers" Society of the First Presbyterian Church Lewistown, Montana, published in 1907 and now available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
SANDWICH DRESSING.
Yolks of 2 hard boiled eggs, 1 teaspoon of made mustard, one-half teaspoon of pepper, 1 teaspoon of salt, 2 tablespoons of vinegar, and 1 large tablespoon of olive oil, chop the meat fine, mix dressing with the meat, and put between the bread. — Mrs. Eldridge.
SANDWICHES.
Chop equal quantities of cold boiled ham and chicken and season with melted butter, made mustard, and pepper to taste. Butter bread and spread between. An end of ham may be used up in this way. Ham must be thoroughly boiled, changing the water several times and adding a little brown sugar during the process of boiling. — Mrs. Erickson.
ALLOWANCE OF SUPPLIES FOR AN ENTERTAINMENT
In inviting guests it is safe to calculate that out of one hundred and fifty, but two-thirds of the number will be present. Allow 1 quart of oysters to every 3 persons present, 5 chickens (or what is better, a 10 pound turkey, boiled) and 15 heads of celery are enough for chicken salad for 50 guests. One hundred and thirty sandwiches for a hundred people and 6 to 10 quarts of lemon jelly for each hundred. For a company of 20, allow 3 chickens for salad, a gallon of ice cream and 4 dozen rolls.
One can of deviled crab will serve about 7. One can of shrimp, with celery, 5, no more; 1 and three-quarter pounds of almonds, about 30. For cream for coffee allow about 1 and one-half quarts for 30 persons, and 1 pound of coffee, which will make 5 or 6 quarts, for 25 persons.
In purchasing beef for beef essence or tea for an invalid, have it cut from the top of the round or middle of the rump, as these contain the most and best flavored juice.
Don't use an egg until it has been laid ten hours, as the white does not become set until then and can not be beaten stiff. Eggs for poaching or boiling are best when thirty-six hours old.
POTTED LIVER.
Boil about equal quantities of beef and liver until you can stick a straw through it, remove all bits of fat and sinew and chop very fine. Then melt as much good butter as you can spare, add pepper, salt, spices to taste, and mix hot with liver and beef. Mix thoroughly and pack in jar. This will keep a long time and makes nice sandwiches. — Mrs. C. H. Baylies.
NASTURTIUM SANDWICHES.
Butter thin slices of graham bread, cover with crisp nasturtium leaves, on which place a layer of hard boiled eggs finely minced and chopped nasturtium seeds. Season with salt, spread lightly with mixed horseradish and mustard. Press down firmly on each a layer of buttered bread, cut in triangles, in the center of which make a small hole and insert the stem of a nasturtium bloom, so the flower will rest flat on the sandwich. Have all the material quite cold and serve on plate garnished with nasturtium leaves and blossoms. A very dainty summer sandwich. — Mrs. J. M. Vrooman.
If you are inspired to prepare a sandwich inspired by our continued offerings, be sure to send along a description of your experience and a photo or three to us here: indignity@indignity.net.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
Here is the Indignity Morning Podcast archive!
TOM SCOCCA
SELF-SERVING SELF-PROMOTION DEP'T.
