MR WRONG: Summer is forever

COLUMN DEP’T.

MR WRONG: Back to School? More Like Back to Pool!

I DON’T WANT to harsh anybody’s mellow, but Summer is almost over. Almost! That means: not over yet. I don’t care if it’s after Labor Day and if children are going to school, it’s still Summer, you can look it up on Google Calendar, Summer doesn’t end until September 21 or something!

Google ganked the info from Country Living, which is a web site and also a printed-on-paper magazine. Country Living. It’s important to know the Seasons, out there in the Country!

The first day of fall is Saturday, September 23, 2023—the same day as the autumn equinox—in the Northern Hemisphere. The date varies slightly year to year, but it is usually September 22 or 23. On rare occasions, it can fall on September 21 or 24.

Wow, Summer goes until September 22, that’s pretty good! It’s important for me to enjoy Summer, because I hate school, and knowing that it’s Summer means I’m not in school and I don’t ever have to be again if I don’t want to (and I don’t).

It doesn’t mean I hate Learning, though, I mean, the Gentle Readers of the Mr. Wrong column know that this column is all about Learning Things, like I just did, and maybe we just did, and it was a Shared Experience, all about how Summer is until September 22. I’m not anti-learning, I am anti-School. School to me is not unlike a Gaol, with no Hope inside its walls, ugh. I’m so glad it’s still Summer and I don’t have to go to school tomorrow, whew.

Also right now it’s Summer, as we have already established, plus it is still Baseball season, which means it is not Football season. I don’t care if somebody says there are Football games, it’s not Football season for me until there’s no more baseball and then I end up looking at Basketball and Football on teevee.

Also-also, Summerwise, it’s a hundred fucking degrees outside my house right now, in Baltimore, Maryland, America. A One Hundred Degree temperature outside my castle today! Plus humidity! I didn’t even go outside for very long today, it was too hot to go in the pool, for real. The Sun was blazing and it was insanely hot and the water in the pool was very warm, ugh.

However, at this rate it might be warm enough for me to swim in my swimming pool up until November again, like I did last year. Selfishly, I gotta say I enjoyed jumping into my pool all the way up until November, but it did make me feel weird and guilty.

I am not one of those Climate Change deniers. I know that all the gunk we been blatting out into the atmosphere, and the oceans, and the earth—of the Earth itself—has to have some sorta effect on the planet, c’mon, if you think it’s some sorta coincidence or something, you are doing the Magical Thinking, seriously. You keep chemically shitting into the same box and it’s gonna get hard to breathe! That’s why all the rich Billionaires want to go to Mars and stuff, because that’s what the Billionaires do, on account of all the money, they’re like, wow, this place sucks, I’m going to where it’s just me and people like me! That’s why we have exclusive Beach bullshit communities and New Zealand and stuff. The rich fuckin’ a-holes want to be secluded and exclusive, and now they want to hide out even further away on Mars.

Or do they?

I mean, maybe what they want to do is con errbody into thinking Mars is the place to go, and then they’ll get all the people they don’t like (which is 99 point niner percent of us) off Earth and then they’ll hog it all to themselves and make it into a gated community?

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get into a whole thing about how Billionaires are doing Bad Things (they are), because that’s depressing. I don’t know how to beat the Billionaires without, like, laws and stuff, but Billionaires are pretty good at buying their way outta Laws and/or purchasing Law, right?

Anyway, again, I apologize more for this column, and so I am issuing a strongly worded apology right now, which has way more Apology Power than one of my standard apologies for all the other columns, har! C’mon, it’s Summer, still! I hope you can enjoy what we’ve got left! Dammit, now that’s also depressing to me, because now I’m thinking about The Earth, and I was really just trying to remind you it’s still Summer and you should have some good Summer-times, I apologize. Thank you. It’s still Summer. Damn, it’s hot. I almost wish it wasn’t Summer any more, you know?

The MR. WRONG COLUMN is a general-interest column appearing weekly wherever it can appear. Always Be Columning. No refunds. Why don’t you go ahead and please write Wrong: wrongcolumn@gmail.com

WEATHER REVIEWS

New York City, September 6, 2023

★★ Under clear skies, the heat kept on baking. The fig plant on the balcony was putting forth one solitary fruit, dark green and shiny and hard to the touch. Smells of sweat and frying things carried along the crosstown block. Cool air came in tiny and limited doses: a zone of evaporative effect where the sidewalk passed the playground fountains, tendrils of air conditioning inside the crowded subway car. A man holding a toddler and a woman pushing a stroller walked together along 72nd Street, both adults' shirts darkened with perspiration. Uptown the rich late light on a brick facade shone in a puddle outside the pharmacy; a trail of water off the puddle led back to a trickling plastic tube sticking out of a hole in a piece of plywood on the pharmacy window; the tube kept going to a huge temporary air-conditioning unit set up inside the store.

EASY LISTENING DEP’T.

INDIGNITY MORNING PODCAST

Indignity Morning Podcast No. 140: Google monopoly trial.

Tom Scocca • Sep 7, 2023

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SANDWICH RECIPES DEP’T.

WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS for the assembly of select sandwiches from The Altrurian Cook Book: Favorite Recipes Contributed by the Wives and Daughters of Troy, by the Troy Altrurian Club, Troy, N.Y. Published in 1910, this book is in the Public Domain and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.

DEVILED HAM SANDWICHES.
Take can of deviled ham, to it add one teaspoon prepared mustard, one or two medium sized pickles chopped fine, a third of the beaten yolk of an egg and a tablespoon of melted butter. Cut the bread and butter it, and fill with the ham.
—Miss Opal Francis.

EGG SANDWICHES.
Chop hard boiled eggs and make a paste by adding mayonnaise dressing. Spread on thin slices of bread.

INDIAN HAM SANDWICHES.
Pound and mix well together one-half a cupful of chopped ham, a tablespoonful of soft, fresh butter and a dash of tobasco or cayenne. To this add a tablespoonful of Indian chutned and about the same amount of chervil, chopped fine, and stir and mix all thoroughly. Spread on thin unbuttered bread.

If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, kindly send a picture to us at indignity@indignity.net.

MARKETING DEP'T.

19 FOLKTALES collects a series of timeless tales of canny animals, foolish people, monsters, magic, ambition, adventure, glory, failure, inexorable death, and ripe fruits and vegetables. Written by Tom Scocca and richly illustrated by Jim Cooke, these fables stand at the crossroads of wisdom and absurdity.

HMM WEEKLY MINI-ZINE, Subject: GAME SHOW, Joe MacLeod’s account of his Total Experience of a Journey Into Television, expanded from the original published account found here at Hmm Daily. The special MINI ZINE features other viewpoints related to an appearance on, at, and inside the teevee game show Who Wants to Be A Millionaire. Your $20 plus shipping and tax helps fund The Brick House collective, a Publishing Concern featuring a globally diverse set of publishers doing their own thing, with interesting items and publications available for purchase at SHOPULA.

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