MR WRONG

MR WRONG: It's that time again

Indignity Vol. 6, No. 76

COLUMN DEP’T.

MR WRONG: Daylight Saved Me a Column

DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME does something this Sunday, and look, I know that it’s “FALL back” and “SPRING forward,” o’clockwise, that’s not the part that I can never remember, it’s the part about if we are going to be “saving” the Daylight, in the Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), or Daylight Savings Time (DST) or if we are going to be in Eastern Standard Time (EST), because that’s where I dwell, in the Eastern, zonewise. The more I explain this crap to myself the more complicated it gets. To me, anyway! I know it’s all relative!

The only things I know for sure are that 1.) The President of The United States of America (POTUS) has some angle on this, but I don’t give a shit what POTUS says, I can’t listen to that guy anymore in this Economy, it’s enough already, he should hit the showers and go concentrate on golf, that’s what time it is.

Also-wise, there’s 2.) Bars in places where closing time is like 4 a.m. get to stay open for an hour longer if they want. That sounds great, huh? A bar full of 2 a.m. drunks get an extra hour? Urp!

Furthermore and unfortunately not in conclusion, some of the people in this country are changing their clocks, and some aren’t, and like, does anybody really give a shit about this any more? Do people depend on clocks and watches to determine their time coordinates or do they just look at their fucking cellular telephone device? Your phone will tell you what time it is!

Does anybody really know what time it is? The clock in my microwave oven doesn’t, and I am not bringing a Microwave oven that’s smarter than me into my house! I will tell my microwave oven what fucking time it is, thank you very much! Or I won't tell it!

So, like, OK, there will be less Daylight anyway! Less hours of sunshine (unless it's cloudy, which is just mean), because of our planet, and the Solar System and stuff, there’s the angle of the Earth, which is round, by the way, in case you are a dipshit, please learn about Science.

Personally and for me, I wish they (and you know who They are) would just always call it Eastern Standard Time, you know?

It’s just different, we’re not Saving! Everybody knows that! Or Falling, or whatever, we’re just agreeing as a Society to move the clock so we can be in more Daylight during one of ’em, I guess the Daylight Savings one, and then when it's spring and summer, it’s regular Eastern Standard, because the daylight is so abundant it's sloppin' over both sides of the a.m. and p.m., right? I'm sad already and we haven't even gotten to the shortest-daylight day of the year! Argh!

The only reason I am annoyed with the EST and the DST and the EDT is sometimes you gotta deal with somebody who is in another time zone for something! I want to be accurate about what time it is, and I always go like, “Dear Sir or Madam, I will contact you at 9 a.m. EST, thank you very groovy, sincerely, etc,” but when I go, like, “Hey now, the virtual Zoom office pizza party will be at 12:30 p.m. EDT, or DST,” the DST or EDT part always makes me wonder if it registers with anybody, so sometimes I just go EST, even if it isn’t, because I know people know what that is, and nobody’s gonna calculate what Daylight Savings Time it would be, extrapolated from Eastern Standard, timewise. It's my time!

Daylight Savings Time is my friend, because it’s a lock for a column topic twice a year, but Jesus fucking Christ, who cares! Argh! Time keeps on slippin’ eh? Insert your own Classic Rock time reference in the comments*!

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The MR. WRONG COLUMN is a general-interest column appearing weekly. No refunds. Write Wrong: wrongcolumn@gmail.com.

WEATHER REVIEWS

New York City, October 25, 2026

★★★★ The green out back was spotted now with yellow. The cat, never having had even her own vaccinations explained to her, raced from end to end of the apartment, agitated that the humans could be so logy on such a fine, sharp day. The warmth outside, in conjunction with the heaters, meant that all the windows, even the stubborn big one, had to be opened. A squirrel sat at the edge of the lawn in the Park, paws on its chest, so stiffly upright that it was tipped a bit backwards. Another squirrel flowed out along a high limb of a pin oak to the end, made a little rustling leap to the planetree branch that met it, then resumed its smooth progress inward and downward, over every undulation. The paths were full of people, dogs, bicycles, strollers. Turtles were basking again or cruising through the leaf-flecked water, their wet heads alight with tiny sunbursts. A woman in a dress, scarf, and boots posed for a photo holding a colored sycamore leaf in front of her face. Trapped leaves were steeping their tannins in a wet depression in the rock. People lined up on the southeasternmost shore of the Pool with cameraphones to catch the wall of brightening color opposite.

New York City, October 26, 2026

★★★★★ Leaves stuck up bright gold against the vivid blue. The spreading gold in the big honeylocust mostly made the green look brighter and the dangling seed pods look blacker. The old fall and spring deception was at work, so that the same air that was inviting outside felt discouragingly cool indoors. A fluffy-tailed poodle or poodle mix passed from shadow into sun and lit up with the absolute white of phosphor in a black-and-white television, so that minutes later it was confusing to see the same dog in the more equalized light of the Park, its coat oatmeal-colored at the brightest. An artist with a paintbox easel had joined the phone photographers at the brilliant vista spot by the Pool. The foliage developing under her brush so far was greener than the real display. The sun was too low for bathing but people lay out in it nonetheless. Honeylocust leaflets covered a small stump in convincing imitation of sawdust. A few glossy buckeyes or horse chestnuts lay in the shelter of a mulberry tree.

New York City, October 27, 2026

★★★★ A child toddled down a stoop, wailing, paused to allow an adult to put a coat on it, then toddled off wailing again. The foliage out back had made the jump from gold-touched to gold, and whole branches of the honeylocust out front had done the same. Color was breaking out everywhere: rust-colored accents showed among the row of trees on Central Park West; the inland sea oats were so ripe their hanging brown heads looked almost purple. The hickories had jumped out ahead of everything else, so that little formerly inconspicuous saplings, planted by gravity or squirrels, stood blaring schoolbus-yellow in the understory. One, with a finger-thick trunk and drooping leaflets wider than a hand, looked as if it had been spray-painted where it stood. Light shone through a reddening tupelo onto a carpet of sycamore leaves, raising a rose-gold glow.

A patch of sky divided roughly along a top-left to bottom-right diagonal between gray cloud cover mottled with brilliant white, and translucent cloud cover mottled with gray, with blue showing through the thin parts.

New York City, October 28, 2026

★★★★ The sky, once dawn finally lit it, was a warm, delicate pink, one more layer of color up behind the leaves. Then the cloud cover was shaded and luminous, in smooth contrast, then general and dull, and then gone, leaving a few tiny and near-transparent cloud-traces. The air was not too humid but the smell of smoking stuck to it. The sun made it though most of the day—much more than forecast—before the clouds re-formed. In the Park now the sumac was just reddening into bronze. The carpet of leaf fall smoothed out the boundaries between lawn and dirt path, pavement and gutter. The spectacles of color were subtleties now; in place of the row of phone-photographers at the water's edge there was one person fishing. He whooped as he reeled in a heavy, green-gold-tinged catch. He'd been waiting for it, he told it, as he snapped its picture. Acorns hit the sidewalk outside the Park with the hard, mean sound of flung gravel.

SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.

WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS for the assembly of sandwiches selected from Hilda's "Where is it?" of Recipes: Containing, amongst other practical and tried recipes, many old Cape, Indian, and Malay dishes and preserves: also directions for polishing furniture, cleaning silk, etc. and a collection of home remedies in case of sickness, by Hildagonda J. Duckitt, published in 1908 and now available at archive.org for the delectation of all.

SANDWICHES (PLAIN MEAT).

Cut very thinly slices of bread and butter from a square loaf baked in a tin, and place very thin slices of ham, tongue, biltong, or game between them; season with salt and mustard or pepper; press them on a board with the blade of a large knife. Cut the crust off evenly, and divide them into oblong squares.

Ordinary cold meat sandwiches are much improved by the meat being minced , and hard-boiled eggs and a little parsley, both chopped fine, being mixed with the meat, and placed between the bread and butter. Many people dislike the mixture of mustard and butter, so it is generally best to omit the former. A sprinkling of pepper, if liked, is an improvement.

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.