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.

Celebrity Shockers

Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes Still Undecided on Wedding Date

19 years T.J. Eckleburg celebrity shockers, Tom Cruise

an image

LOS ANGELES – An anonymous source at Cruise/Wagner Productions reports that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes may be close to settling on a tentative wedding date, perhaps as early as this month, perhaps not. The source also revealed that the couple will most likely marry in Europe or North America, or possibly Africa.

Juicy details, top-secret guest lists, and provocative stories involving Nicole Kidman, George Clooney, David Beckham, and David Hasselhoff (though perhaps unrelated to the wedding) continue to tantalize celebrity watchers scrutinizing every detail of this year’s—or perhaps next year’s—biggest celebrity event, barring a sudden change of heart by Angelina Jolie.

The more jaded members of the Hollywood press corps roll their eyes at any mention of the wedding, but several were visibly shocked by the announcement that Cruise and Holmes have not only settled on a prenuptial agreement but also have agreed on a format for postnuptial divorce proceedings should the marriage, potentially, not work out.

Though Mr.Cruise and Ms. Holmes have virtually consummated their affection for each other often and in a wide variety of media settings, sources close to both suggest that Mr. Cruise wants to be sure marital strife doesn’t affect his powerful box-office draw. Both prenuptial and postnuptial details are said to include the agreement that if Ms. Holmes is to display her breasts, as she did in The Gift, the movie must be “of a serious and impeccably artistic nature” and all nudity must be “approved by a representative of Cruise/Wagner Productions to ensure the scene is not in any way gratuitous or libelous or damaging to the integrity of Mr. Cruise.”

In the meantime, TomKat are said to be concentrating on a tasteful promotion campaign for the DVD release of Mission Impossible: 3. The couple is also weighing a hefty offer from Vanity Fair for the rights to their wedding photos.

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.