Postcards from The Pug Bus

Lifting a satirical leg on popular culture

Persons in the Ether

Question of the Week

Passion or stability?

MD

Mavis Drouk, emotional escrow officer

Believed to be near Harrisburg, PA

Stability. Passion is what people choose when they still believe a staircase can be made entirely of sparks. Stability may not sing outside your window, but it does remember where the insurance cards are.

RC

Rufus Clenn, freelance thunder consultant

Last reported west of Tulsa, OK

Passion, obviously. Stability is just boredom wearing shoes with arch support. I want life to arrive late, smell faintly of lightning, and explain nothing until several lamps have been broken.

NV

Nora Vell, deputy curator of small regrets

Possibly sheltering in Eugene, OR

Passion is useful for beginnings, stability for the paperwork afterward. I prefer both in moderation, which is another way of saying I would like to be ruined briefly and then driven home safely.

Rush Limbaugh Accuses Dixie Chicks of Lip Synching

20 years philmaggitti Dixie Chicks

Conservative talk-show diva Rush Limbaugh has accused the Dixie Chicks of lip-synching “every last one of their ridiculous songs” on their Accidents and Accusations tour, which stops tonight at Toronto’s Air Canada Centre.

Mr. Limbaugh leveled the charge Friday on his nationally syndicated program, just three days after suggesting that retired actor Michael J. Fox had exaggerated his Parkinson’s symptoms in a commercial supporting stem-cell research.

“What the Dixie Chicks are doing is even more reprehensible than Mikey’s act,” thundered Limbaugh. “At least nobody had to buy a ticket to see Mr. Fox shake things up.”

According to Limbaugh, “The Chicks are fleecing their fans—people who spend good money expecting live music but get the country version of Milli Vanilli instead.”

Although he admitted he hadn’t attended any of the shows—“and I sure don’t plan to”—Limbaugh said he’d seen enough YouTube clips “to know those gals have about as much control over their lips as a wind-up doll in a hurricane.”

He further alleged that sisters Emily Robison and Martie Maguire had fabricated “personal-life hardships just to write another song about the female condition.”

The talk host finished with one of his signature jokes about “truth in advertising” before cutting to a commercial for hair-restoration supplements.

Dixie Chicks’ lead singer Natalie Maines was the only member willing to respond on the record:

“Consider the source,” said Ms. Maines. “The horrible man is a walking pharmacy who thinks empathy is a socialist plot.”

In related news, President Bush opened his weekly radio address by observing, “Just so you know, I’m still ashamed the Dixie Chicks are from Texas, heh-heh-heh.”

The preceding is satire. Straight up, Skippy. No warranties are expressed or implied. For life advice, try a professional. For investment tips, try a dart board. For salvation, the gentleman in the robe has been handling that portfolio for 2,000 years.

The Pug Bus Breaking News

The Pug Bus Breaking News requires no email address, no mother's maiden name, no first pet's nickname, and no DNA sample. You simply mash the link below and read.

Deliver It

⚡ Scholars at the Royal Institute for the Advancement of Obvious Things have concluded, after eleven years of exhaustive inquiry, that people who speak at great length in meetings do not thereby become more correct. The findings have been submitted to a committee for review.

⚡ It has been determined by authorities in several jurisdictions that the phrase "I just want to be honest with you" reliably precedes the portion of the conversation one would most prefer not to have. Legislation is pending.

⚡ The Bureau of Perpetual Reassessment has announced that this is not, in fact, the most divided the nation has ever been, a distinction that continues to belong to a prior era when the disagreements concerned rather more consequential matters and people occasionally died over them.

Adverse Effects

The following lines of prose cleverly arranged as poetry may induce brief clarity, misplaced certainty, and the sense that something has already been decided without your approval ...

By seventy you know which doors you walked past without opening,
can name the rooms you never entered,
hear the echoes anyway.

Read It All

By seventy you know which doors you walked past without opening,
can name the rooms you never entered,
hear the echoes anyway.

The years do not accuse.
They simply pile up like newspapers you meant to read,
each one carrying news that is no longer news.

You think: I should have said that differently.
I should have stayed. I should have gone.
The mind is efficient this way,
filing the same cases under the same wrong headings,
finding them again at 3 a.m. in perfect order.

What surprises is not the weight of it
but the patience —
how regret waits,
how it has nowhere else to be,
how it sits across from you at breakfast
and asks for nothing,
knowing you will offer it everything
on your own.

The body slows.
The catalog does not.
You carry the unlived lives
the way old houses carry
the smell of people who are gone —
not haunting exactly,
just present,
just there,
just refusing
the simple courtesy
of leaving.