THE HAPPINESS HEARINGS
In Which Sno’ Witty™ Is Subpoenaed for Manufacturing Joy Without a Federal License
A Broadcast from Rubiclone, Wisconsin
By tacocatjustice
BREAKFAST
The Government Has Questions. The Coffee Has Resigned.
Broadcasting live from Rubiclone, Wisconsin, where the leaves are turning, the squirrels are committing property crimes, and the wind has developed a personal grievance against everyone with exposed ears.
Sno’ Witty™ had been subpoenaed.
Again.
Apparently, the United States Congress had exhausted its investigation into everything that mattered and was now pursuing a woman in Wisconsin for the federal offense of being in a good mood.
The envelope arrived Tuesday morning.
Cream-colored. Heavy. Embossed with an official seal.
The kind of envelope that costs taxpayers eleven dollars to inform you that the government has misplaced its common sense.
Sno’ stood in her kitchen wearing mismatched socks, holding coffee that had been hot during a previous administration.
She opened the letter.
UNITED STATES HOUSE COMMITTEE ON DOMESTIC CONTENTMENT
NOTICE OF COMPULSORY APPEARANCE
RE: UNAUTHORIZED DISTRIBUTION OF HAPPINESS
Sno’ read it twice.
Then she read it to the dog.
The dog sneezed.
An appropriately measured constitutional response.
The letter alleged that Sno’ Witty™ had engaged in the following activities:
- Persistent happiness without a verifiable source of authorization.
- Public displays of optimism exceeding federally recommended levels.
- Encouraging citizens to manufacture their own contentment.
- Failure to demonstrate sufficient participation in the national atmosphere of impending doom.
- Suspected possession of unregistered joy.
UNREGISTERED JOY.
Somewhere in Washington, an adult human being had typed those words, collected a paycheck, and driven home believing they had contributed to civilization.
The second page demanded documentation.
Naturally.
The United States government had discovered happiness and immediately requested its receipts.
Sno’ opened a kitchen drawer.
Inside were seven pens, three batteries of unknown origin, a veterinary thermometer, and a squirrel-shaped cookie cutter she did not remember purchasing.
She selected a pen.
It worked.
Already, she was outperforming Congress.
Then she retrieved a manila folder.
Across the front, in large black letters, she wrote:
EVIDENCE THAT I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYONE ELSE’S MISERY.
Underneath, in smaller letters:
Exhibit A: Have You Considered Going Outside?
The dog wagged its tail.
The squirrel outside stole a decorative pumpkin.
Democracy continued.
LUNCH
The Honorable Committee on Things That Could Have Been an Email.
The hearing began at precisely 11:00 a.m.
It was delayed until 11:47 because the chairman couldn’t locate the microphone switch.
During the delay, a staffer distributed seventeen pages of procedural instructions explaining how to ask a question.
Nobody read them.
Everyone nodded.
Washington was functioning normally.
Sno’ sat at the witness table with her folder, her coffee, and the unmistakable expression of a woman who had already found the bathroom and therefore feared absolutely nothing.
The chairman adjusted his glasses.
“Ms. Witty, do you understand why you’ve been summoned?”
Sno’ nodded.
“Because someone mistook a personality trait for an interstate commerce violation.”
The chairman frowned.
“Let the record reflect that the witness is being difficult.”
“Let the record reflect,” Sno’ replied, “that the witness has been awake since five, and you’ve accomplished less than her coffee maker.”
A murmur rippled through the room.
Three journalists began typing.
One congressional aide Googled whether coffee makers were eligible for federal employment.
The chairman leaned forward.
“Ms. Witty, where did you obtain the happiness?”
Sno’ blinked.
“Obtain?”
“Yes. Who supplied it?”
Sno’ considered this.
“Are you suggesting there’s a gentleman in a parking garage selling happiness out of an unmarked van?”
“We are investigating possible distribution networks.”
“Oh, wonderful. Have you tried kindergarten?”
“Ms. Witty.”
“Or dogs?”
“Please answer the question.”
“Or anybody who’s ever found twenty dollars in an old coat?”
The chairman struck his gavel.
Sno’ looked at it.
“Does that thing work better if you hit it harder, or is that just how government communicates?”
The chairman sighed.
Then came Exhibit A.
A document so sensitive that two congressional staffers carried it across the room in a sealed evidence envelope.
Sno’ recognized the paper immediately.
Her third-grade report card.
The chairman cleared his throat and began reading as though announcing the discovery of a national security breach.
“On September nineteenth, the witness was asked what she wanted to be when she grew up.”
He paused.
“The witness answered…”
Another pause.
“Happy.”
Silence.
Somewhere in the back, a journalist dropped a pen.
The chairman continued.
“The faculty noted that this response was unusual and potentially concerning.”
Sno’ folded her hands.
“I was eight.”
“Nevertheless, you have maintained this position into adulthood.”
“Yes.”
“Despite extensive opportunities to reconsider?”
“Especially those.”
A congresswoman from a state shaped suspiciously like a casserole leaned toward her microphone.
“Ms. Witty, the other children in your class listed recognized occupations. Firefighter. Astronaut. Veterinarian. Princess.”
Sno’ raised one finger.
“I’m sorry. Princess?”
“Yes.”
“A hereditary position in an unelected monarchy?”
“That is not relevant.”
“So the little girl who wanted to overthrow representative government by marrying into royal privilege was fine, but the one who wanted to enjoy her life required federal surveillance?”
A staffer whispered something to the chairman.
The chairman whispered back.
Another staffer produced a legal pad.
The legal pad was beige.
The proceedings had entered their natural state.
A second congressman rose.
“Ms. Witty, can happiness be produced at scale?”
Sno’ looked at him.
“Define scale.”
“Millions of Americans.”
“Have you tried making their lives less miserable?”
The room went silent.
A senator in the visitor gallery coughed into a napkin.
The chairman tapped his microphone.
“Please restrict your remarks to constructive solutions.”
“That was one.”
The committee’s legal counsel intervened.
“Perhaps the witness could explain her method.”
Sno’ opened the folder.
Inside was one sheet of paper.
Written in large letters:
BUILD IT YOURSELF.
The chairman stared.
“This is your entire happiness production model?”
“That’s the executive summary.”
“Where’s the implementation plan?”
“Outside.”
“The funding mechanism?”
“Mostly effort.”
“The federal oversight component?”
“Unnecessary.”
The chairman looked physically unwell.
Sno’ continued.
“Happiness isn’t a government benefit waiting for an approval number. It isn’t a promotion. It isn’t a package that arrives on Thursday if the delivery driver can find your house.”
She paused.
“You build it.”
“With what materials?” asked a congressman.
“Whatever you’ve got.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Dogs. Good work. Coffee. People who answer the phone like there’s an actual human being on the other end.”
She glanced around the room.
“That’s an especially important one. You should try it here.”
A clerk began transcribing furiously.
“You build it out of small things,” Sno’ continued. “You build it when you’re exhausted. You build it after something falls apart. Some days you build it badly, and some days the whole thing falls over before breakfast.”
“And then?” asked the congresswoman.
“You build it again.”
The chairman appeared confused.
“Without federal assistance?”
“Sir, you’ve been trying to fix the same pothole since 1987. I wasn’t going to make happiness dependent on your project timeline.”
The room erupted.
The chairman struck his gavel three times.
Someone shouted, “ORDER!”
A committee member asked whether order could be obtained through a government-approved vendor.
The squirrel outside the Capitol stole a sandwich.
For the first time all morning, actual progress had been made.
DINNER
Love, Hate, and the Department of Unnecessary Statistics.
By late afternoon, the hearing had deteriorated into a multidisciplinary investigation involving philosophy, economics, theology, and a man from Nebraska who had somehow mistaken the proceedings for a discussion about agricultural subsidies.
One congressman wanted to know whether happiness could be taxed.
Another asked whether it could be imported.
A third proposed requiring warning labels.
CAUTION: MAY CAUSE OPTIMISM.
A fourth suggested creating a National Happiness Registry, provided it did not interfere with the existing National Registry of Things the Government Had Promised to Fix.
Then a very tired representative leaned toward his microphone.
He looked like a man whose entire adult life had consisted of delayed flights and lukewarm chicken.
“Ms. Witty,” he said quietly, “do you genuinely believe love is stronger than hate?”
For once, Sno’ did not immediately answer.
She looked at the committee.
Then at the rows of reporters.
Then at the enormous American flag hanging behind a collection of people who had spent six hours trying to regulate a feeling.
“Yes,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because hate is cheap.”
The chairman frowned.
Sno’ continued.
“Hate is the easiest thing in the world to manufacture. Nobody has to teach it how to grow. It spreads like kudzu, or Wisconsin mosquitoes, or an email chain nobody remembers subscribing to.”
A congressional aide nodded involuntarily.
“Love takes work.”
She leaned forward.
“You have to build it. Maintain it. Repair it when something breaks. Show up when it’s inconvenient. Carry things that aren’t yours because somebody else is tired.”
She glanced at the committee’s ceiling.
“In Wisconsin, we call that keeping the roof on.”
The representative listened.
“And when winter comes,” Sno’ continued, “hate is still standing outside yelling at the weather. Love is the thing that remembered to buy insulation.”
A pause.
“Anything that can be manufactured effortlessly will always be common. Anything that requires care, time, sacrifice, and maintenance will always be harder to come by.”
She smiled.
“And anything that survives all that?”
Another pause.
“That’s strength.”
The representative leaned back.
Nobody spoke.
Even the chairman seemed temporarily unable to locate a procedural objection.
Sno’ closed her folder.
“That’s not sentiment, gentlemen.”
She tapped the table.
“That’s load-bearing math.”
At 5:42 p.m., the committee reached a unanimous decision.
They would not dismiss the investigation.
They would not recommend legislation.
They would not acknowledge that they had just spent an entire congressional workday investigating a woman for possessing an emotion.
Instead, they voted to establish:
THE SPECIAL SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE STUDY OF UNREGULATED DOMESTIC HAPPINESS AND ITS POTENTIAL ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES.
The subcommittee would operate for eighteen months.
It would require twelve staff members.
It would commission four independent studies.
It would produce an eight-hundred-page report.
The report would contain forty-seven charts.
All charts would be beige.
Because everything government produces eventually becomes beige.
It is the natural final stage of paperwork.
The chairman announced that the committee’s findings would be published in two years.
Sno’ raised her hand.
“Yes, Ms. Witty?”
“Wouldn’t it be faster to just go make somebody’s day better?”
The chairman considered this.
“That’s outside the scope of the investigation.”
“Of course it is.”
Sno’ returned to Rubiclone after midnight.
The dogs greeted her as though she had returned from war.
Which, considering she’d spent the day surrounded by elected officials, was not entirely inaccurate.
One dog presented a chewed sock.
The other knocked over a chair.
Both were delighted by her existence.
Neither requested documentation.
Outside, a squirrel sat on the porch railing holding what appeared to be a tiny American flag.
Nobody knew where he’d gotten it.
Nobody asked.
Sno’ took the subpoena from her folder.
She opened the refrigerator.
There, held in place by a magnet shaped like a disgruntled dairy cow, was her first congressional subpoena.
INCIDENT ONE: EXCESSIVE PUBLIC OPINION.
She placed the new one beside it.
INCIDENT TWO: UNLICENSED HAPPINESS.
A matching set.
Collect them all.
The coffee maker clicked.
The house settled.
The dogs snored.
And somewhere in Washington, a junior congressional staffer was awake at 1:13 a.m., drafting the preliminary findings.
On page 407, beneath a heading titled Recommendations for Sustainable Domestic Contentment Initiatives, the staffer typed one sentence:
The witness recommends that individuals assume responsibility for constructing meaningful sources of happiness.
He stared at it.
Then he deleted everything except:
Build it yourself.
For the first time in six months, he smiled.
Which was unfortunate.
Because somewhere, deep inside the federal bureaucracy, a printer began warming up.
🎙️ SNO’ WITTY™ — CLOSING BROADCAST
Sno’ Witty™ returned to the microphone in her kitchen.
The dogs were asleep.
The squirrel was under investigation.
Congress had formed a subcommittee.
And happiness remained entirely unregulated.
For now.
Sno’ looked directly into the imaginary camera.
“An announcement for the United States Congress, which has now subpoenaed Sno’ Witty™ twice and is therefore legally classified as a subscriber:
“You cannot subpoena a feeling and make it testify against itself.
“You cannot legislate joy into existence.
“You cannot regulate somebody into loving their life.
“And you certainly cannot demand proof of happiness from a woman who has spent the entire day watching elected adults struggle to operate microphones.”
She adjusted her coffee mug.
“Sno’ Witty™ was not handed happiness.
“She built it.
“Out of spare parts.
“In Wisconsin.
“In the cold.
“While the government was busy ordering more beige paper.”
She leaned toward the microphone.
“And if Congress wants to subpoena her again?”
A smile.
“She’ll bring the folder.
“She’ll bring the truth.
“And she’ll bring her own pen.”
Because the government’s never work.
MIC DROP. 🎤
Somewhere in Washington, a congressional printer produced one final document:
NOTICE OF INVESTIGATION: WITNESS APPEARS TO BE ENJOYING HERSELF.
Sno’ Witty™
Created by tacocatjustice
Broadcasting from Rubiclone, Wisconsin — where common sense is endangered, squirrels remain ungovernable, and happiness requires no federal license.
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