Book of Daze Archives - Page 15 of 18 - 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?

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.

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.

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.

Wanted poster featuring Schrödinger's cat's photo on it

"Wanted dead or alive or both."

Book of Daze

Book of Daze: Schrödinger’s Cat Day Quiz℠

philmaggitti bookof-daze 2 years

There is only one kind of person in the world. He who knows about SchrÃ¶dinger’s cat, and he who does not. For most of us,… Read More

Image of a stern-looking man with his arms folded and the word irregardless printed across the top of the image

"You get a problem with irregardless?"

Book of Daze

Book of Daze: Irregardless Day

philmaggitti bookof-daze 2 years

We love the sound of irregardless. It’s a four-syllable word from the wrong side of the dictionary, we know; but one should never send a… Read More

cartoon image of a man in bed with a chagrined expression on his face

"Man awakening in a bed with two wrong sides,"

Book of Daze

Book of Daze: Woke Up on the Wrong Side of the Bed Day

philmaggitti bookof-daze 2 years

The Romans had an expression for it . . . “it” being a foul, snot-flinging, food-showing, butt-kicking mood that envelops a person for no reason.… Read More

Cartoon image of Isaab Newton and a few apples falling near his head

"An apple a day keeps ..."

Book of Daze

Book of Daze: Conservation of Gravity Day

philmaggitti bookof-daze, trump 3 years

A critical shortfall of gravity brought on by the failed gravitational policies of the past is the greatest existential threat facing this country. The United… Read More

Young adults wearing DAMM parody t-shirts socializing at bar.

Gimme a D, gimme me an A ...

Book of Daze

Book of Daze: Dipsticks Against Mad Mothers

philmaggitti bookof-daze, Lindsay Lohan 4 years

[SATIRE] The following is purely and impurely fictional. James Carville famously described Pennsylvania as “Philadelphia on one side, Pittsburgh on the other, and Alabama in… Read More

"Does that mean you are just happy to see me?"

Book of Daze

Book of Daze: Screw the Pooch Day

philmaggitti bookof-daze, dog 4 years

“Screw the pooch” began as pilot slang for royally messing up–a phrase made famous by Tom Wolfe in The Right Stuff (1979). It describes a… Read More

Book of Daze

Book of Daze: Pardon Yourself Day

philmaggitti bookof-daze 5 years

Everyone, it seems, has an opinion regarding a president’s authority to pardon himself for wrong doings of a pardonable sort. Ever the contrarians, we do… Read More

Book of Daze

Book of Daze: Debunking the Nativity Scene Day℠

philmaggitti bookof-daze 6 years

WEST GOSHEN, Pa.–Despite chowder heads’ insistence that conflate means “to confuse,” conflate means “to combine two or more texts, ideas, or fanciful stories into one.” A case… Read More

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.