Chip Hilton, Author at Postcards from The Pug Bus

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.

Super Bowl Week illustration of Friedrich Nietzsche dressed in a vintage football uniform with number 00, throwing a forward pass on an old-fashioned field.

No huddle. No mercy. No comforting metaphors.

What Would Nietzsche Do?

What Would Nietzsche Do–Super Bowl Week Edition

Chip Hilton nietzsche 3 months

Welcome to What Would Nietzsche Do–Super Bowl Week Edition. In this weekly advice column for the chronically unsettled, Friedrich Nietzsche—temporarily awakened, moderately irritated, and in… Read More

Stack of pristine unread books illustrated against a neutral background

All promise, no progress.

Book of Daze: Unread Books Day

Chip Hilton bookof-daze 5 months

Unread Books Day honors the towering stacks of good intentions that have loomed beside beds, beneath coffee tables, and atop toilet tanks for decades without… Read More

Clark Gable saying, "Frankly, my dear,I don't give a damn."

"And that's the name of that tune."

Book of Daze Have a Conversation Entirely in Movie Quotes Day

Chip Hilton bookof-daze 8 months

On Book of Daze Have a Conversation Entirely in Movie Quotes Day, language is not spoken, it’s sampled. Communication is cobbled together from decades of… Read More

man wearing a hoodie that says decentralize everything

"What class am I?"

Class in American Society

Chip Hilton cultural commentary 9 months

(Class in American Society presents the kind of profiles you’d find in a field guide annotated by a disillusioned anthropologist with a flair for satire… Read More

young girl sitting at a cumputer

""This sure beats the old math."

The Home School NIL Gold Rush Is Here

Chip Hilton 9 months

By the time Micah Green turned twelve, he had trademarked his cursive penmanship footage and inked a co-branded flashcard deal with Staples. Young Master Green… Read More

a poster of the third eye

"I'll keep an eye out for you."

The Third Eye’s Bonus Side Effects

Chip Hilton marijuana 10 months

The third eye–let’s call it E3, because enlightenment sounds cooler if it sounds like a software update–has long been revered as the gateway to divine… Read More

an oldish looking man wearing a hat, He has a long goatee and an elaborate mustache.

“I don’t always grow a beard, but when I do, it’s to show off my manliness.”

Beards Are for Blowhards

Chip Hilton 10 months

Beards and goatees are the facial equivalent of distressed jeans. They are worn to project rugged authenticity while quietly being curated with an artisanal beard… Read More

a woman standing at a table in a restaurant blowing a chef's kiss to a man seated at a table eating

"Same to you, buddy."

Chef’s Kiss

Chip Hilton 50-Word Stories, Brevity is the Soul, flash fiction, Micro Satire 10 months

He murmured “chef’s kiss” and leaned in close. She tilted her head. He kissed the duck confit. Ardently. She froze, stunned. “Sublime rendering,” he sighed.… Read More

← Previous

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.