MR WRONG: Leave it to beaver
Indignity Vol. 6, No. 54
NOW HOLD ON A MINUTE DEP'T.
Tom Scocca
CHAPTER 33 of Tom Scocca's serialized work of fiction appears tomorrow, which means NOW is the time to get caught up on THE STAIRS!
COLUMN DEP’T.
MR WRONG: It's the Wildlife's Home, I'm Just Visiting
THE MR. WRONG column is on vacation. Vacation! However, here you are (I hope), reading an exciting new Mr. Wrong column, because the ethos, if you will, of the Mr. Wrong column is to Always Be Columning, and today’s Mr. Wrong column is being typed in a cabin hard by the banks of the mighty Schroon river, in Upstate New York, where, I am happy to report, the weather has been mostly okay in terms of it not raining, and super OK in terms of rest and relaxation and stuff, by which I mean eating and drinking and sitting on an Adirondack chair in the actual Adirondacks counting squirrels.
It’s very satisfying, sitting around under a nice blue sky with fluffy clouds over a body of water. There’s trees and mountains and stuff, and it’s very restful for the eyes to not have to look at a computer screen or a phone all day. There’s birds flying around, and there’s even beavers swimming in the river. I’m not sure how I feel about that, I mean, I don’t know if the average beaver is vicious or anything, but I’m not trying to get near one, so I think it’ll be peaceful if I leave it alone when I go out for a paddle in my inflatable kayak, which I recommend for your own vacation, I mean if you go someplace where that’d make sense, I’m not talking about bringing an inflatable kayak to Vegas and blowing it up to put in the hotel pool, I’m taking a The Great Outdoors kinda situation. They’re not noisy or anything, which I appreciate. The beavers, I mean, not my inflatable kayak (also quiet). I guess beavers are all right, I hope. These are the thoughts one has when one is on vacation and one is not wondering if it’s time for a post-breakfast sandwich.
Anyway, I am typing this installment of the Mr. Wrong column during my vacation because I think it is part of the duty of a Columnist to file on the regular. Sometimes I make two columns in one sitting and then that way I am not forced to “work” on my vacation. I’m not like, a maniac who has to do stuff all the time, in fact, I might not even really right now be writing my column, see? This might be an exercise in creative writing or something, right? It’s not, though, I really did take a break for a few minutes to bang out another episode of the Mr. Wrong column, I can write this thing in my sleep, in case you can’t tell, har!
Being on vacation makes me feel grateful that I can even take a vacation, you know? It also makes me really not miss having a Day Job in an office. I was in an office the other day and I walked by the office microwave in their break room, and I looked inside to see what kind of folks worked in the office, and it was exactly like I figured, typical office folks. The microwave was super scuzzy inside, all kindsa food-grime, disgusting aged particles from microwave-exploded food splattered around on the walls and ceiling, a real grisly crime scene. Yuck! If I hadda use this microwave I would have to make sure my food that I wanted to heat up was well-covered because I would make myself sick wondering if some ancient chunk from all of yesterday’s lunches was gonna break loose and fall into my soup or whatever, barf!
OK, enough about the office microwave at the office I don’t even work at, I’m on vacation.
The MR. WRONG COLUMN is a general-interest column appearing weekly. No refunds. Write Wrong: wrongcolumn@gmail.com.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, June 21, 2026
★★★★★ The arriving summer felt very slightly more humid than spring had but was otherwise identically clear and bright. The sky was still hazeless and well populated with clouds. On the way across the park past the ballfields, the hot grass smell made breathing a little laborious. Inside the museum, daylight flooded over the sprawl of the handmade miniature city, backlighting the viewers at the far end into bleary giant shapes craning and pointing at the marvelous precision. Afterward the real buildings showed off their ornaments or their dubious architectural choices. A cloud enhanced the shade along the edge of the East Meadow while sunbathers of all ages, genders, and sizes aired themselves in the open. Pigeons crowded into a fenced-off patch of grass to forage like a herd of stout gray cattle. A shattered wooden bat with a logo reading "Hickory" stuck out of a trash barrel. A live ensemble was playing "I Feel the Earth Move" in the gazebo of the community garden. Fire escape shadows stretched across the face of a building; drab bricks gleamed; a drift of tiny golden blossoms underfoot called attention to their once and future companions waiting to fall from the golden raintree. The tables outside the new Georgian restaurant were forbiddingly full but there were plenty of seats indoors still. The moon was something close to a half, one way or the other, and it had a golden cast against the the white clouds.
New York City, June 22, 2026
★ A noisy squall of rain manifested out of the gray morning sky and then stopped as swiftly as it had started. The light fluctuated between dim and dimmer but for a moment something that was almost sun brightened some of the branches across the avenue. More showers came and went unconvincedly, followed at last by a lone roll of thunder and the real thing. A chilly breeze smelling of rain blew through the bedroom window, and the rain itself blew through the front windows heavily enough that the sills needed mopping up. The closed windows and the humidity combined to settle the question of whether it was time to turn on the air conditioner. Opening the balcony door to check for relief brought only the sound of more rain.
New York City, June 23, 2026
★★ People carried furled umbrellas. A small child wore big yellow rain boots reaching up toward the hem of a long Jalen Brunson jersey. Out on the balcony, mosquitoes were hunting. The drizzle was too quiet to hear but the droplets covering the leaves testified that it was still coming down. The forecast offered no definitive break in the rain, just shifting probabilities. It was not too rainy to stop the ninth-grader and his friends from roaming the parks and streets after the Regents exam, but it was rainy enough that his hair was plastered down by the time he got home. Along the edge of the Park, the thrusting horns of bottlebrush buckeye panicles were erupting into wispy, white-filamented blossoms. The Pool was turbid and the sheets of duckweed had curving gaps in them. Below the clouds the western sky was bright and tinted amber, a slightly warmer color than the globe of the lampposts shining by the darkened cinder track. A wet mat of wood chips with a half-circle trench around it marked where an elm had stood till recently. Nearby, low clusters of grimy-looking mushrooms sprouted by the toes of a flat dinosaur footprint of dead wood, all that remained of its elm neighbor from sometime before.
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS for the assembly of a sandwich selected from Consolidated Library of Modern Cooking and Household Recipes, Vol. IV, by Christine Terhune Herrick, Editor-In-Chief, author of The Little Dinner, The Chafing-Dish Supper, etc., and associate author with Marion Harland of the National Cook Book, with a list of contributors which includes many of the famous chefs and cooking experts of the United States, published in 1905 and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
Supper Sandwiches
Get half a pound of cold boiled ham or tongue; chop it fine, and put it into a basin with a tablespoonful of chopped pickles, a teaspoonful of mustard, and a little pepper. Put about 6 ounces of butter in a basin, and stir it quickly with a spoon till it forms a kind of cream; add the chopped meat and seasoning, and mix all thoroughly. Cut some bread into thin slices, and some very thin slices of veal, fowl, or game; spread a slice of the bread with the above mixture, then a slice of the meat; lay on another slice of bread, and so on, till the quantity required is prepared. If cut into small shapes, these sandwiches prove very acceptable for breakfast or for evening parties. The above quantities will make as many sandwiches as will fill a moderate-sized dish.
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.
