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.

Book of Daze: Jitterbug Day

6 months philmaggitti bookof-daze

Wild poster with music images celebrating Jitterbug day. — “Ii we survive this spin, we achieve enlightenment and a free root beer float.”

Let it be known throughout the land that October 25th is Book of Daze: Jitterbug Day, a sacred observance commemorating the only dance that can summon both joy and mild whiplash in a single eight-count.

The jitterbug, born in the smoky swing dens of 1930s Harlem, was originally a covert military experiment designed to weaponize rhythm against fascism. Early practitioners–code-named “Lindy Hoppers”–were trained to disorient enemy troops with aerial flips and syncopated footwork. It worked. Mussolini once reportedly fainted after witnessing a triple spin into a backslide.

Today, the jitterbug survives in underground sock hops, TikTok wormholes, and the occasional wedding reception where Uncle Marvin attempts a death drop and is never seen again. Its most devout modern practitioner is sixty-two-year-old Mavis “The Tornado” Jenkins of Boca Raton, who claims to have jitterbugged through three husbands, two hurricanes, and one minor extradition hearing. She teaches weekly classes at the YMCA, where students are required to sign a waiver and a jazz oath.

The benefits of jitterbugging are numerous and medically unverified. It improves cardiovascular health, increases bone density, and allegedly opens the third eye. Practiced correctly, it can also summon the ghost of Cab Calloway, who will critique your footwork and possibly your life choices. Jitterbugging burns 800 calories per hour and an additional 200 if you scream “Hot diggity!” while doing it.

The secondary meanings of “jitterbug” include: (1) a person who drinks six espressos before noon and insists he is “just vibing,” (2) a 2000s-era cell phone designed for grandmothers and time travelers, and (3) a rare forest insect that dances to avoid predators and existential dread.

So on this Jitterbug Day, let us don our polka dots, grease our knees, and hurl ourselves across the linoleum of destiny. Let the swing be wild, the rhythm unhinged, and the laws of physics politely ignored. For in the sacred chaos of the jitterbug, we find truth, tremors, and the divine right to boogie.

Browse the full Book of Daze

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.