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: Pope’s Nose Turkey Day

4 months philmaggitti bookof-daze

A close-up shot of a crispy, deep-fried pope's nose seasoned with sea salt, held aloft on a golden three-pronged fork. In the blurred background, a crowd celebrates at an outdoor festival under a large burlap banner that reads "Book of Daze: Pope's Nose Day." — One bite of the pope’s nose and you will finally understand why the bird was trying to fly away from you.

Pope’s Nose turkey day honors the butt-end of a turkey–that triangular, fatty little nub that people fight over like starving wolves or treat like a radioactive biological hazard.

Pope’s Nose day is the ultimate “participation trophy” of holiday turkey dinners. It is for the losers who did not get the drumstick. It is for the people who find joy in the greasy, forgotten scraps of life, who convince themselves that the tail is the “delicacy” of the bird.

This day is dedicated to the underdog of meat cuts. White meat is for the weak and unimaginative. Dark meat is for show offs. Today we worship at the altar of the uropygial gland.

Before the first bite is even taken, participants must stand, place their hands on their hips, and shake their posteriors with the frantic energy of a bird trying to dry off in a rainstorm. It is not supposed to look good. It is supposed to look honest.

At any dinner, the individual who claims the Pope’s Nose is the guest of honor. S/he will be seated at the head of the table, ideally on a throne made of discarded poultry crates.

Today we must not lie and say the Pope’s Nose tastes just like chicken. It really tastes like concentrated bird-soul and pure saturated fat. Own the grease. Let it coat your chin like a shiny badge of dishonor.

Ultimately, we do not throw away the bits that make others squeamish. We embrace the gristle. We toast to the parts of the bird that the fancy folks in the city are too cowardly to put in their mouths.

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.