MR WRONG: Time Is Money and Money Is Power
Indignity Vol. 5, No. 110
COLUMN DEP'T.
MR WRONG: It's Juneteenth Eve!
I DON'T MEAN to come off like this is a brag, but the staff here at Indignity, both of us, we work really fucking hard. We work so hard that we frequently run into scheduling conflicts because we forget in advance about stuff like Holidays, both Official and Cultural. It is the longstanding and established Policy of Indignity to Observe and Honor Holidays, and today, the Editor of Indignity texted me:
How do we resolve TAKE THE HOLIDAYS with ALWAYS BE COLUMNING?
See, careful and/or longtime readers of the Mr. Wrong column know that the Ethos of the Mr. Wrong column is: Always Be Columning, and here and now my Ethos is clanging up against our Policy. Thursday is the day of the Mr. Wrong column, but Thursday is also a National, State, and Municipal Holiday. The Public Library is closed, also the Post Office, also, therefore, Indignity. The Editor of Indignity is careful to protect the Reputation of our various Properties, such as THE WORST THING WE READ™, ANDY ROONEY 2.0, THE SOPHIST, etc., and in this case, the Brand Identity of the Mr. Wrong column was in jeopardy! How to resolve the conflict? Of course, it's not even close; we do both! Always!
If you are a supporter of the Mr. Wrong column, consider this a Very Special Wednesday Episode of the Mr. Wrong column, and if it's not for you, the column, we have The Weather and Sandwiches, and also maybe you should think about your problems and questions in life and send something in to The Sophist, to get the answer you deserve!
All right, so tomorrow, Thursday, June 19, is Juneteenth, our newest official Holiday, I think, for U.S. Americans to Observe, and in my opinion, long overdue, by more than a hundred and fifty years, even, it shoulda been an Instant Holiday coast-to-coast, but of course, it was a different time, the last hundred couple-few years, eh?
Wikipedia, at least, is still free to teach us some facts about Juneteenth:
Juneteenth is a federal holiday in the United States. It is celebrated annually on June 19 to commemorate the ending of slavery in the United States. The holiday's name, first used in the 1890s, is a portmanteau of the words "June" and "nineteenth", referring to June 19, 1865, the day when Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas at the end of the American Civil War. In the Civil War period, slavery came to an end in various areas of the United States at different times. Many enslaved Southerners escaped, demanded wages, stopped work, or took up arms against the Confederacy of slave states. In January 1865, Congress finally proposed the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution for the national abolition of slavery. By June 1865, almost all enslaved persons had been freed by the victorious Union Army or by state abolition laws. When the national abolition amendment was ratified in December, the remaining enslaved people in Delaware and in Kentucky were freed.
Do you remember when our Government was discussing moving the wild—even by today's standards—racist U.S. President Andrew Jackson off the $20 bill and replace him with Harriet Tubman? What happened to that idea, huh? Write your Congressional Representative about that shit. I found that experimental "concept" $20 and I think the picture of Harriet Tubman is OK, I guess, but I like a couple other ones more, like this one, which I think would look great as a Money engraving on a Double Sawbuck:
Especially this next one though, where she is really old, but still possessed of a Stern Visage, somebody who Got Things Done.
Also, I know we're not supposed to have Kings in this Democracy, but Harriet Tubman def looks like Royalty, just saying.
Look, Juneteenth is all about the final official governmental Emancipation of human beings in The United States of America with Liberty and Justice for All who were owned, like property, by other human beings who enjoyed the benefits of an oppressive and, well, inhuman system. There are a lotta delicate ways to put all this stuff, and there shouldn't be, it should be bald statements of fact, but for some reason people are doing their best to prevent facts from being taught to schoolchildren who should understand the history of this country, and how a lotta people got fucked over and there was genocide and all kinds of other murder, the results of which affect us today. Too many people want to go BLAH BLAH BLAH I CAN'T HEAR YOUR FACTS ABOUT HISTORY in their heads, and to them I say, Happy Juneteenth!
Harriet Tubman didn't wait for the government, she took Direct Action and got people out of bondage on her own dime. Juneteenth is now a Federal Holiday, and seems like it will remain one, even in this Economy, and so Indignity will Observe and Celebrate it, and the Mr. Wrong column will Always Be Columning! I hope you have a Happy Juneteenth and get the day off for Juneteenth, or I hope you take the day off, right?
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, June 17, 2025
[No stars] The lightweight performance layer hung up to dry before bed may or may not have been damp at the waistband still; in the all-pervading sogginess it was easier to give it a quick spin in the dryer than to try to decide. Likewise it may or may not have been drizzling outside after the app said the rain was over. Maybe it was dripping. Maybe there was a thin fog in the streets, and maybe it was just too dim out to see clearly. In the West Village, after a while, the drizzle turned definite, and a thick unquestionable fog engulfed the view up Sixth Avenue.
SIDE PIECES DEP'T.
Sam Thielman
On the Flaming Hydra Roundtable Podcast, Joe geeked out with Sam Thielman about a bunch of Superman comic books and Superman in general.
Joe: Denny O'Neil came up with this idea that all of a sudden, kryptonite, the one thing that can kill Superman, would be rendered useless. So Superman was ultimately powerful, but apparently it turned out that whatever thing had caused kryptonite to be rendered useless created this dimensional rift. The fun part of it was it created a doppelganger, which was sucking Superman's energy. Superman was getting weaker and weaker. This is where we get into my thing that I bore everybody with, which is middle-aged Superman, my dream of middle-aged Superman. That is the real Superman. right now, quite frankly, Jon Hamm would be the perfect middle-aged Superman. He was really grumpy because he couldn't fly anymore, he could only leap, and his powers were getting weaker and weaker so he was a middle-aged man losing his powers and and it was just hilarious. He had to keep improvising and keep compensating for his increasing weakness.
Sam: And those are the powers that Superman was conceived with originally. He couldn't initially fly, he could leap tall buildings in a single bound, but he couldn't just fucking fly over one.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
HERE IS THE Indignity Morning Podcast archive!
TOM SCOCCA
ADVICE DEP'T.
HEY! DO YOU like advice columns? They don't happen unless you send in some letters! Surely you have something you want to justify to yourself, or to the world at large. Now is the perfect time to share it with everyone else through The Sophist, the columnist who is not here to correct you, but to tell you why you're right. Direct your questions to The Sophist, at indignity@indignity.net, and get the answers you want.
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS in aid of the assembly of a sandwich selected from Encyclopedia of Cookery; 1001 Recipes, Menus & Rules for Modern, Scientific and Economic Cookery (Vol. 4), by Eugene Christian and Molly Griswold Christian, published by the Corrective Eating Society in 1920, and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
VEGETABLE SANDWICHES
1 cup chopped lettuce
1 cup chopped carrots (uncooked)
1 onion chopped fine
1 cup white soup beans (cooked)
1 cup chopped celery
Season all and mix with mayonnaise dressing, spread between whole wheat bread and cut with round biscuit cutter, almost as large as the slices of bread.
SELF-SERVING SELF-PROMOTION DEP'T.
Indignity is presented on Ghost. Indignity recommends Ghost for your Modern Publishing needs. Indignity gets a slice if you do this successfully!
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