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: Unread Books Day

5 months Chip Hilton bookof-daze

Stack of pristine unread books illustrated against a neutral background — All promise, no progress.

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 ever being opened. These books were purchased during moments of reckless self-belief, often after reading a review that contained the word “essential,” “challenging,” or “will change your life.” They now exist in a state of permanent anticipation, pristine as museum artifacts, yet faintly judgmental.

On this holiday, participants displaying unread books in windows, on porches, or strapped to the roofs of vehicles like shameful trophies. Participants are encouraged to arrange them by genre, ambition level, or how strongly they implied personal improvement. Public readings are held in civic spaces, during which citizens step forward, open a chosen book to page one, inhale deeply, sigh with theatrical resolve, and close it again. Applause is polite and brief.

The origins of Unread Books Day are disputed. Most historians trace them to a 1978 garage sale in Evanston, Illinois, where a man attempted to sell forty-three identical copies of Ulysses, all purchased with the intent to begin “any day now.” When asked if he had read it, he responded, “I have owned it intensely.” The phrase spread quickly, becoming a rallying cry for the unread masses.

Libraries play a central role in the observance by hosting Unread Book Amnesty Boxes. Patrons may surrender volumes anonymously that they have falsely claimed to finish, including but not limited to Russian novels, dense biographies, and any book that begins with a family tree. Librarians are trained to nod solemnly and never ask follow-up questions.

The current record holder for unread books is believed to be a woman in Portland, Maine, who owns 6,417 untouched volumes, all alphabetized, all immaculate. She insists she is not avoiding them. She is simply waiting for the correct version of herself to arrive.

That version never does. The books remain. The holiday endures.

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.