Instead sits motionless for long periods, utterly numb
By Rebecca Peterson, Humour Editor
In a curious case of meta-reporting and self-investigation, the Other Press’s Humour Editor, Rebecca Peterson, has issued a statement to declare to the world that she has lost all sense of goodwill and humour in the face of current events.
This statement was written in the format of a humour article, the only thing Peterson knows how to write quite honestly, and reads thusly:
“Dear Readers,
I regret to inform you that I have lost the ability to laugh or experience joy. This, as you might well imagine, is not the ideal condition for a humour writer. It is also not an ideal condition for a human being, but I like to think I’m a humour writer first, shouty angry feminist second, obnoxious pretentious wine-snob third, and, down a long list of further attributes, eventually a human being. Maybe 73rd.
You see, when Donald Trrrruhng—sorry, I had to pause for a moment to dry heave, even if this is a written format—when all that nonsense started, comedians everywhere were overjoyed. Many comedians and satire writers were devastated by the loss of walking material generator George W. Bush, and had hoped to ride the wave of political hilarity right to its inevitable conclusion—that conclusion being anyone but Trump in the White House, and Trump throwing tantrums about it to provide further material for the next four years.
That, uh… that wasn’t what happened, though.
It started becoming hard to keep up with all that political hilarity, you see, right when things started getting interesting. As the world descended into a physical manifestation of an Onion article, we satirists found it hard to keep up. So, you know, we turned from political hilarity to nihilistic absurdist humour, and that worked for a while. It helped to stave off the growing panic and concern that these days are akin to those chapters in high school history textbooks about the years before the second World War, when things stopped feeling like history and started feeling like dramatic irony and foreshadowing. But we laughed because we had to laugh… for our own sake and the sake of others, we had to laugh…
But I cannot laugh anymore, dear readers. No, now I simply take solace in quiet contemplation and YouTube compilations of people falling over or getting hit in the face by comically large exercise balls. I do not laugh at these anymore, of course, nor do I smile, but for a moment… for a moment, I can almost feel something…
At any rate, I’m certain I’ll return to the craft when the world stops sending the whole of humanity into a state of clinical depression, but until that day I do not know what I will do.
Wishing you something, anything, to combat this dark night of the soul,
R.”
Peterson then issued another statement shortly after the first:
“Readers,
So I asked my editors if I could go on paid stress leave for the next four years and they said no. So I guess I’ll write some articles or something.
R.”
