Everything, ultimately, can be reduced to a joke, whether it’s the unlikely switcheroo of the monkey inheriting the throne, or the nudge and rolled eyes at the flatline punchline that the emergency nurses will share like a familiar in-group greeting at the start of a shift that will blur days into nights until they themselves are strapped to gurneys in forgotten corridors. I mean, you’ve got to laugh, haven’t you? Even I, Johnny Serious, the straight man of the Sunday funnies, must stake my allegiance to the absurd, knocking back pills to balance the side effects of pills to balance the side effects of pills to balance the side effects, and so on, like the old lady who swallowed the fly, the spider, and the whole menagerie, until the horse with the long face walked into the bar with inevitable comic consequences. You, I repeat, like a catchphrase in the schoolyard, have got to laugh, although when I do, I choke. Here’s one about a monkey on the throne and a plague on all our houses – do you get it? Do you? Of course you do.
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Oz Hardwick
Picture Nick Victor
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