WINOOSKI – After many complaints (and a few messages of thanks) regarding their smaller output recently, writers of premiere local satire site The Winooski have spoken out about their difficulties in writing articles that don’t include the word “covid.” The Winooski has gone from being a daily torment fixture in the lives of humor-minded Vermonters, to being a once-or-twice-a-week-if-you’re-lucky kind of a thing.
“People keep saying to us, ‘shouldn’t you have more time to write things now?'” says head writer A. Nonymous, “and we have to keep telling them, yeah, we have time, but how many jokes can you really write about not having any toilet paper?”
The writers’ room at the secret headquarters of the satire giant is experiencing something that most Americans are struggling with right now, Pandemic Fatigue. “We’re as tired of writing about it as you are of hearing about it,” Nonymous said, “but what else is there? I tried to write something funny about the bird I saw on my walk the other day, but then I read online that birds don’t exist, so I may just be going stir crazy.”
The national election provided a small amount of relief to the writers, who do cover national politics from time to time despite billing themselves as a local satirists. But with the election over for everyone except Extremely Temporary President Donald Trump, the site is once again wondering how to make death and suffering funny.
“My mother always told me, if you can’t say something funny, don’t say anything at all,” said Founder and Editor-in-Chief Adam Hall, “and right now it’s hard to see what’s funny about being trapped in my house all winter surrounded by death and misery. I mean, it was funny at first obviously, but now I’m just sick of it.”
Vermonters were split in their feelings about the pandemic, with about half reporting that they are “100% done with this pandemic, so let’s stay inside, wear our masks, and get that vaccine moving,” and the other half reporting that they are “100% done with this pandemic, so let’s open up, get back to normal, and let the chips fall where they may.”
Well, to be fair, you could transfer your Trump-related writing to ICBM (In-Coming (president) Biden’s Mortality. I recall an article about his Vice-presidential “Squad” of all women. His cabinet selections make that look almost…prophetic. Just don’t let Trump hear about “ICBM” or he may nuke the White House on his way out.
And all this time I thought “Pandemic” was a new hemhoroid cream!