MR WRONG: Playing to the balcony
Indignity Vol. 6, No. 25
WAIT JUST A MOMENT DEP'T.
Tom Scocca
Before the next chapter drops Friday, get caught up on THE STAIRS, Tom Scocca's serialized work of fiction!
COLUMN DEP’T.
MR WRONG: I'm Spinning Like a Windmill With How Much I Want My Plug-In Solar Power
WHAT THE HELL is going on? Do you know about this thing called Balcony Solar? I read this article in NPR—or is it on NPR, but is that only if it’s on the radio? National Public? Radio?
Do you see how this Balcony Solar has me all at sixes and sevens? I’m not talking about the irritating children’s reaction-version, like the Knee Surgery jape, I am talking the classic meaning of “sixes and sevens,” I didn’t know this, so Today I Learned, it’s from a fucking dice game called Hazard, but the first time I heard it was on The Sopranos, on Home Box, when the mobster Carmella Soprano put on the high hat and described themselves as being all “at sixes and sevens” as they were supervising preparation for a social event in their home, and were employing the catering services of Artie Bucco and his wife Charmaine, known associates of the eponymous crime family, who were humiliated, big-timed, by Mrs. Soprano.
I can’t get all bogged down in The Sopranos, I don’t have time to look this shit up! OK, here’s a tube of the “Sixes and Sevens” incident, and you gotta ride it out through the 2:30 mark to see Carmella do some demeaning shit to Charmaine:
Also, in the interest of full Transparency and Accountability, I got way behind on my columning schedule today because I was busy working, but also another and Real reason is it was Opening Day of Baseball Season today—the real Opening Day, with lotsa teams playing all day, not the fake Netflix subscriber-only Soft Opening Day game they put on the night before—and Baseball is a thing that gives me a modicum of Joy in this Economy, and in the further interest of Self Care and Mental Hygiene, I was paying attention to the Baseball, I’m not gonna lie.
Alright, I gotta get back on this Sixes and Sevens bullshit before I get back to the Balcony Solar problem.
"At sixes and sevens" is an English idiom used to describe a condition of confusion or disarray.
The phrase is used in Gilbert & Sullivan's comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), where Captain Corcoran, the ship's Commander, is confused as to what choices to make in his life, and exclaims in the opening song of Act II, "Fair moon, to thee I sing, bright regent of the heavens, say, why is everything either at sixes or at sevens?"
So the NPR thing, it is reporting that the Power Companies are fighting this Balcony Solar, this super-easy way to get some economical fucking electrical energy from the goddamn Sun in the fucking sky, the companies are saying there are safety concerns and all this bullshit—read the NPR thing, seriously—and meanwhile in Germany, they been doing Balcony Solar for years! Germany!
Easy-to-install solar panels that plug into a regular outlet are getting attention just as Americans are worried about rising energy costs. That's because these plug-in or balcony solar panels start shaving off part of a homeowner's or renter's utility bill right away.
"A year ago, nobody was talking about this," says Cora Stryker, co-founder of Bright Saver, a California nonprofit group that advocates for plug-in solar. The panels are already popular in Germany, where more than 1.2 million of the small plug-in systems are registered with the German government.
Meanwhile, the goddamn stupid fucking President of the United States of America is gonna pay a Billion with a B of dollars to some wind-farm thing to get them to stop!
JENNIFER McDERMOTT
These greedy fuckers are putting the squeeze on everybody so they can sell their flavor of Energy and overpriced oil!
The same fucking companies that wanna burn mountains of dirty-ass coal—there’s no “clean” coal, c’mon—and build nuke plants or whatever to slake the thirst of data centers, those mutts want to deny us the opportunity to save money with plug & play "balcony solar" power! "It's not safe," they will say as they break ground for the mini-nuke reactor next to the data center across the road from your family farm where they stopped you from putting up wind-energy turbines!
OK, that’s it, let’s review, we gotta get these wind farms back in production, we gotta get going on this Balcony Solar, I want one, I have a balcony! Under the Sun! Affordable energy from Outer Space!
One more time, I apologize for today’s column, I was in a hurry. I again admit that I was busy looking at the radio and listening to baseball. I have previously elaborated upon this to the Gentle Readers of the Mr. Wrong column that the way I prefer to receive a dose of baseball is audio-descriptive, which is, to me, way more entertaining that looking at it on the teevee while there are some sports-dopes talking while you are looking at what they are talking about. It’s not helpful! Annoying, even!
Joe MacLeod
Also, listening to the game on the radio, it’s one of the few ways one can enjoy a sporting event without having to pay for Cable Television or a Streaming or an App or a Streaming fucking App subscription, and if I can get a Balcony Solar panel, I can charge my rechargeable batteries on my AM/FM AC/DC transistor radio and listen almost for free! Play ball!
The MR. WRONG COLUMN is a general-interest column appearing weekly. No refunds. Write Wrong: wrongcolumn@gmail.com.
BUSINESS DEP'T.
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WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, March 25, 2026
★★★★ There were just enough clouds to mellow the blue of the sky, and the temperature had moved up out of winter without yet getting warm. Shreds of old posters stuck out from a storefront, catching the sun on their still-white undersides. A pigeon's shadow rose up the front of a building to meet the pigeon as it came in and landed on the edge of the roof. The dogwood still stood leafless in the back courtyard; the potted fig, sitting in the draft from the window just inside the balcony door, waiting for freezing days to leave the forecast, was pushing out new growth.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
Here is the Indignity Morning Podcast archive!
TOM SCOCCA
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS for the assembly of sandwiches selected from Choice Recipes, by Order of Eastern Star, published circa 192o and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
SHRIMP SALAD
One loaf white bread
Two cans or one pound fresh shrimps
Dash of cayenne pepper
One-third cup mayonnaise
One-half teaspoon Worcestershire sauce.
Drain and rinse canned shrimps, or boil and chill the fresh. Mash with a fork and add pepper and Worcestershire. When well mixed moisten with mayonnaise and spread between thin slices of buttered white bread. Press firmly together and cut in strips for serving.
If you are inspired to prepare a sandwich inspired by these offerings, be sure to send your experience and a picture to indignity@indignity.net.
