Book of Daze Archives - Page 6 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.

The worldwide leader in woke.

Book of Daze

Book of Daze: Boycott ESPN Day

philmaggitti bookof-daze, top ten lists, trump 7 months

Join the annual ritual of resistance with Book of Daze: Boycott ESPN Day–a satirical celebration for fans who have had enough of sermons, scandals, race… Read More

DIY Reality Show Audition Day illustration of a pajama-clad wannabe reality-show contestant glaring into a bathroom mirror, clutching a hairbrush like a microphone under a harsh ring-light.

“I did not come here to make friends,” he whispers to the toothbrush army and the judgmental rubber duck.

Book of Daze

Book of Daze: DIY Reality Show Audition Day

philmaggitti bookof-daze 7 months

Pascal warned that all of humanity’s problems stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room alone. Pascal never saw a season of The… Read More

llustration for Hug a Carnivore Day: A radiant rib eye steak floats above a crowd of ecstatic meat lovers, bathed in golden light, while a lone vegan protests with a wilting celery stalk.”

On Hug a Carnivore Day, meat lovers rejoice and celery wilts in protest.

Book of Daze

Book of Daze: Hug a Carnivore Day

philmaggitti bookof-daze 7 months

Let us dispense with the kale-stained sentimentality of Hug a Vegetarian Day and inaugurate a far more primal and satisfying observance: Hug a Carnivore Day.… Read More

A casually dressed man sits in a recliner wearing a paper crown, holding a remote control like a scepter and balancing a pizza box on his lap, illustrating the theme of stay quietly in your room.

Proof that you can stay quietly in your room and still rule your kingdom with pizza and a remote.

Book of Daze

Book of Daze: Stay Quietly in Your Room Day

philmaggitti bookof-daze 7 months

Pascal, bless his gloomy little French heart, once remarked that humanity’s wretched condition stemmed from the inability to sit quietly in your room. He was… Read More

Go big or go home illustration. a split panel artwork showing contrast between extremes: a rocket blasting off with flames and smoke on one side, and a person snoozing peacefully in a recliner with a cat on their lap on the other.

“Go Big or Go Home: either launch a rocket or take a nap with the cat —it's your call.”

Book of Daze

Book of Daze: Go Big or Go Home Day

philmaggitti bookof-daze 7 months

It is difficult to say precisely when “Go big or go home” wriggled out of the primordial ooze of marketing slogans and frat-house chants, but… Read More

In this middle name day illustration, a pudgy boy in a schoolyard wears a green shirt labeled "Horace Moisture Puddington" as three other kids laugh and point at him.

Spare a thought for Horace Moisture Puddington, patron saint of playground ridicule.

Book of Daze

Book of Daze: Middle Name Day

philmaggitti bookof-daze 7 months

Somewhere between the christening font and the DMV counter lies the cruelest prank ever played on humanity: the middle name. Ostensibly created as a dignified… Read More

Surreal illustration of a person painting a landscape using a Paint by Numbers canvas, where the numbered sections extend into the real world—floating pink clouds, numbered hills, and a winding river blur the boundary between art and reality.

Local man attempts to paint his way out of reality—accidentally numbers the clouds, his regrets, and the concept of free will.

Book of Daze

Book of Daze: Paint by Numbers Day

philmaggitti bookof-daze 7 months

Paint by Numbers Day begins with the illusion of precision. One awakens not to possibility, but to a grid–an invisible scaffolding imposed upon the chaos… Read More

Unsubscribe Day illustration a serene monk levitates in lotus position with a laptop on his knees, glowing “unsubscribe” confirmation radiating behind him like enlightenment.

Stop clinging.

Book of Daze

Book of Daze: Unsubscribe Day

philmaggitti bookof-daze 7 months

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here together on unsubscribe day to cast off the chains of obligation and reclaim our inboxes, our sanity, and perhaps… 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.