You Can't PhotoShop This Archives - 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.

You Can't PhotoShop This

A Barrel of Laughs at the Gastroenterology Office: You Can’t Photoshop This

philmaggitti 4 years

WEST GOSHEN, Pa.–When was the last time you had a good laugh in the gastroenterology office? A reallygoodlaugh, not some tight little snortle, but a… Read More

You Can't PhotoShop This

Pumpkin Spice Motor Oil: You Can’t Photoshop This

philmaggitti 10 years

What’s next? Beef jerky? Cabbage? Toothpaste? Kitty litter? Toilet paper? Condoms? Quiche? Marmite? Sushi? Goulash? Potato chips? Driveway sealer? Edamame? Marijuana? Edible underwear? Fish sticks?… Read More

You Can't PhotoShop This

What Would Nixon Do? You Can’t Photoshop This

philmaggitti 10 years

We were watching the Villanova-Temple game last night, half paying attention to an interview with a former Temple player, half poking around on our tablets,… Read More

You Can't PhotoShop This

Colleges Offer Halloween Costume Counseling: You Can’t Photoshop This

Biff Scuzzy 10 years

Not content with declaring war on date rape, Columbus Day, free speech, men who urinate standing up, and other impediments to the establishment of the… Read More

You Can't PhotoShop This

All-White Diversity Philly Magazine Cover: You Can’t Photoshop This

philmaggitti 11 years

What do you get when a magazine runs a cover story about diversity in Philadelphia’s public schools and the photo of cherubic elementary school kids… Read More

You Can't PhotoShop This

Pope Gets His Butt Grabbed: You Can’t Photoshop This

philmaggitti 11 years

What nerve! What glorious, unalloyed nerve! Pope don’t support gay marriage? Pope thinks guy-on-guy reach-arounds are a sin? Gay dude gets cheeky with Da Pontiff’s… Read More

Politics You Can't PhotoShop This

Black Lives Matter: You Can’t Photoshop This

Biff Scuzzy 11 years

Members of Fuk Yo Flag, a wholly owned subsidiary of Black Lives Matter, have taken to videos and blog posts to “suggest” acts of violence… 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.