Daily smiles

Another Substack I follow posted an article asking — What made you smile today. If you’re like me, it keeps getting increasingly harder to smile each day. This morning I was pretty irritated about this bit of late night news, although I enjoyed Stephen Colbert not caving. Seeing Olympic athletes making comebacks, even in sports I’m not that interested in normally, gives some bits of joy in our joyless times.

I had been thinking of how comedians could skewer last week’s insane performance in front of Congress. It looked too much like an SNL skit already. Instead, I started thinking about her after this regime ends, when she may have had to face consequences that even a presidential pardon can’t fix. I imagine her overweight, replaying in her head her past disses that she thinks are funnier than they really are. Perhaps she’s now a podcaster (what we all long to be, it seems), and maybe even has special guests, like other disgraced, if not disbarred, members of his former regime, and they offer ill-advised legal advice.

I’m smiling even as I type this, knowing that everything ends. Some people appear to skate through life, but there’s usually something that makes you realize it sucks to be them.