COLUMN DEP’T.
MR WRONG: Time Is Money and Feb. 29 Is Your Bonus
THE UNIVERSE, IN a great gift to me, as a Columnist, has aligned itself to present me with a topic for this week, and more accurately, because that’s what this is supposed to be all about, this day, February 29, 2024 A.D., aka Leap Day within a Leap Year. Thanks, Universe!
Or maybe thanks, Chronologers or whoever hands down the rulings on this shit? Calendarologists? I dunno, but this is mostly about Big Business, right, so there’s a way to keep track of when we’re supposed to pay for stuff, like Rent, and Power? Again, I dunno, but it is Leap Day, and I am celebrating by pooping out this column in record time, which will allow me to party like it’s 1999, if that was Leap Year, which, I’m not even gonna look it up, you totally can, it’s out there. I bet Leap years are only even numbers, but again, I am not even bothering to verify any of this stuff today, because that’s how I roll on Leap Day! No checking Facts! Just type stuff into my Column-Hole and cast it out into the Universe that made me and gave me Leap Day!
Anyway, look, Happy Leap Day! If it’s your birthday, please enjoy telling people how old you are in Leap Years, never gets old, seriously, I’m not kidding, I enjoy the paradox of somebody who is 50 saying they are 11 or whatever it is in the Leaptinium, totally weird and paradigm-destroying and stuff. All you 12-year-old Leaplords, try not to drink too much tonight, you don’t really haveta cram three extra years of Birthday into your special day, but I’m not tryna tell you how to live your life, just be careful, get an Uber and stuff, don’t carry cash.
Here is my Salute to Leap Year, featuring Leapy Lee.
Did you hear about Leap Second, though? They (I have no Idea who They are) decided to let it go, no Leap Second this time around. I didn’t even know what Leap Second was until I heard somebody talking about how it is not going to Exist, or like, we’re not going to give a shit about it anymore, it’s some sorta extra adjustment made by I Don’t Know Who And I Don't Care, on account of the Earth doing its thing, minding its own business hurtling through the Universe, rotating and stuff, and somehow, I dunno, I am luxuriating in my Ignorance today, the Leap Second plays hob with Time Itself! Not really, though, Time is not anything we can do adjustments to, right, it’s just Time, and we spend a lotta energy dividing it all up into little pieces so we can keep track of how much we Gets Paid, and also how much we owe, blerg, but Time keeps on slippin’, eh? Time DNGAF! Time might be God, right?
Meanwhile, there’s Atomic Time, have you heard this one? I have one of those “Atomic Clocks” on the wall in my house and supposedly it is in constant communication with the emanations of an Atomic Time thing, somewhere, which I always imagine as some giant glowing mound of Uranium 237 or 238 or whatever, close enough, and that shit is sitting there, mounding, emanating its radioactive decay, its Half-Life, if you will, and my personal home version of the Atomic Clock is wired to it, the Radioactivity, and so it is constantly adjusting itself to be on Atomic Time, the time of THE ATOM, beholden to none! Controlled by none! Atomic Time, as opposed to whatever the clock on my stove is doing, or the clock on my kitchen wall, or the clock in my bathroom, or the clock in my bedroom, or the clock in my Rumpus Room, or the clock on my cellular telephone, or the clock in my goddamn car, Jesus Fucking Christ, so much Time! Enough, already, I hate time.
The MR. WRONG COLUMN is a general-interest column appearing weekly wherever it can appear. No refunds. Write Wrong: wrongcolumn@gmail.com.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, February 28, 2024
★★★ Midmorning between showers was drippy but not drippy enough to make an Uber in rain-snarled traffic more attractive than a walk across the Park in a rain jacket, light hoodie, and rubberized sneakers. A mallard preened in the water at the edge of the silt-murky Pool. The light brought out red tones in the brown of the sweetgum balls carpeting the slope on the other side. The mist was thinner but more evenly distributed than the previous day's. Robins paused and hopped and paused again on the yellowed grass of the North Meadow. A wrong turn between baseball fields extended the walk long enough for some real raindrops to start falling again. Light rain was falling on the return trip, too, but a weather app promised it would pass soon. Pigeons huddled high in a tree just inside the gate from Fifth Avenue, looking like something more ominous than pigeons. Starlings came flying in to land on the baseball diamonds as the rain faded out, and behind them came grackles, more than a hundred of them, gliding in low and steady-winged on a line like a spatula spreading frosting. At night the rain came drumming down hard, driven by the arriving cold front. By bedtime the incoming fresh air was so cold and forceful that once the window had been lowered enough to be comfortable, the draft made a moaning noise through the narrow gap.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
ADVICE DEP’T.
Ask The Sophist
GOT SOMETHING YOU need to justify to yourself, or to the world at large? Other columnists are here to judge you, but The Sophist is here to tell you why you’re right. Please send 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 from The Carbon County Cook Book : A Collection Of Tested And Tried Recipes Contributed And Vouched For By The Women Of Carbon County, published in 1926, by Relief Society and the Girls of Victory Swarm Beehive Swarm of the city of Price, Utah, now in the Public Domain and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
Sandwich Filling.
1 tablespoon butter, 1 cup sugar, 2 eggs, 2 lemons, 1 grated rind. Cream butter and sugar, add egg beaten, then lemon juice. Cook in double boiler until thick. Spread on slices of bread and butter.
—BELINDA LANGFORD.
If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net.
MARKETING DEP'T.
The second printing of 19 FOLK TALES is now available for gift-giving and personal perusal! Huddle up against the cold with a cozy collection of stories, each of which is concise enough to read within the snowy part of a wintry-mix storm.
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, available for purchase at SHOPULA.
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