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"Maybe you just aren't fun anymore," a reader wrote to me recently. With all due respect to this reader, are you fun? No, please, are you having it? What is so fun out there, hmm? Is someone having a party full of Nerds Gummy Clusters and total disassociation?

Apparently, the tone around this column space has trended too serious for some people, and I'm sorry about that. Truly and sincerely. Believe me, it would be more "fun" to exclusively write about which kitchen spoon is the most comfortable spoon.

But if you haven't noticed, keeping up with current affairs is like watching a raccoon wash garbage. In fact, our structures of decorum have run so amok that daily headlines have crossed into the absurd, which is the worst-case scenario for someone who writes humor for a living.

I can't pinpoint the exact moment when the comedy aspirated. Oh, wait, yes, I can. This demise has been an ongoing multiorgan failure, but satire took an official dirt nap when a Republican congressman from Georgia introduced a bill to name Greenland "Red, White and Blueland." This kind of phrase was previously heard on "The Daily Show" or found among the pages of McSweeney's. But in 2025, that's an actual proposal from an actual lawmaker.

Being funny involves, at basic levels, exaggeration of normal events. But there is nothing left to exaggerate. Traditional Republican/Democrat wranglings, a softer arena to navigate with levity and distance, are over. We have spiraled full tilt into a spaghetti bath that spills into every crevice of the culture.

President Donald Trump won the election and swiftly ceded control of the nation to the world's richest man, Elon Musk, who proceeded to dismantle international aid like the Big Lebowski under an organization winkingly named for a Shiba Inu meme. You just cannot make it up. This week, Musk stood in the Oval Office and uttered the words "daily proctology exam" to a room of reporters after being questioned for mixing up Gaza in Palestine with Gaza in Mozambique. Proctology quips used to be the territory of someone like the legendary Dave Barry. Now it's just state business.

How to approach each new day with a light and creative sense of fun? Trump signed an executive order ending the use of paper straws in America; writing from the perspective of a little turtle is too depressing. He took over the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; Hulk Hogan could honestly receive cultural honors. Meanwhile, Democrats cannot seem to land on which inspiring message will inspire (pick one, any one!). And apparently an asteroid has a "not insignificant chance" of hitting Earth. That used to be a funny bumper sticker, but now it's merely the news.

Laughter will persevere because it always has, even through history's darkest chapters. To thrive in an era where facts and fiction blend into gray pate, humor may have to lean into the mundane. My favorite story on The Onion right now is "Man So Hungry He Could Eat An Orange." In this spirit, I am workshopping a piece in which I embody my dishwasher (why does it always leave one cup fully dirty and dry?). Hmm, maybe it is time to revisit spoons.

We will still have fun around here, is the point. We'll still tell local stories, find opportunities for empathy and nuance and smart conversation. But I suspect "not fun anymore" sentiments have less to do with comic stylings and more to do with comfort. There's a real urge -- and I feel it, too -- to find solace in upholding the status quo. To tune out. To give all opinions a hard stop somewhere between capri pants and Crocs. However, it's too late for that. I don't expect to end up in any history books, but we should all live with the notion that it could be possible. At least until a giant rock slams into Earth.

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Stephanie Hayes is a columnist at the Tampa Bay Times in Florida. Follow her at @stephhayes on X or @stephrhayes on Instagram.

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