News Archives - Page 14 of 27 - 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.

News Sporting Life

President Obama Threatens NBA Players Who Sign with Foreign Teams

philmaggitti 15 years

President Barack Obama said today that National Basketball Association (NBA) players who sign with “foreign teams” during the current NBA lockout will be taxed heavily… Read More

News

Amanda Knox Bags High Paying American Express Ad

philmaggitti 15 years

Amanda Knox: My Life, My Card My name . . . Amanda Knox nickname . . . Foxy Knoxy© perfect day . . . not… Read More

News

PETA Rallies Snails Rights Advocates In Florida

Biff Scuzzy 15 years

MIAMI – Snails rights advocates picketed outside the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables yesterday to protest the addition of giant African snails to the menu… Read More

News

Text of Obama’s Jobs Speech Leaked

Biff Scuzzy 15 years

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The text of President Obama’s major address about jobs, scheduled to be delivered before a joint session of Congress Thursday night, has… Read More

News

Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin Gone and Forgotten

philmaggitti 15 years

PHILADELPHIA – Five years ago tomorrow Steve Irwin, better known as the crocodile hunter, died as he had lived: messing with a dangerous critter with… Read More

News

Irene Dumps Record Number of Cliches on East Coast

philmaggitti 15 years

PHILADELPHIA – As Hurricane Irene waddled up the East Coast Saturday night and Sunday morning–slower than Kirstie Alley climbing into her sitz bath–forecasters were predicting… Read More

News

Susan Powell’s Husband, Father-in-Law Linked to Supermarket Ad

philmaggitti 15 years

PUYALLUP, Wash. – The investigation into the disappearance of Susan Powell, 28, who has been walkabout for nearly two years, took a turn for the… Read More

News

Moammar Gadhafi Obsessed with Condoleeza Rice

Chip Hilton 15 years

TRIPOLI, Libya – The scene inside Moammar Gadhafi’s man cave in his Bab al-Aziziya compound looked like the centerfold of Beggar’s Banquet, only worse. Rebel soldiers,… 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.