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Postcards from The Pug Bus

Lifting a satirical leg on pop culture since 2004

Persons in the Ether

Question of the Week

Clowns or Mimes?

Marjorie Finkelstein, 64, retired dental hygienist

318 Willow Street, Scranton, PA

Mimes. At least they have the decency to suffer in silence. A clown wants you to participate in his emotional problems while he honks a horn and falls down. I spent thirty-seven years looking into people's mouths. I have had enough forced entertainment.

Raymond Bickford, 51, commercial refrigeration technician

76 Chestnut Lane, Akron, OH

Clowns. You know where you stand with a clown. He has enormous shoes, a drinking problem, and a car full of accomplices. A mime pretends to be trapped in an invisible box and expects applause. My brother-in-law has been doing that at Thanksgiving for twenty years. Nobody pays him.

Sheila Lattimore, 47, assistant county tax assessor

142 Birch Road, Des Moines, IA

Mimes, provided they remain outdoors. I once hired a clown for my daughter's birthday party. He arrived forty minutes late, smelled like gasoline, and asked whether we had a ladder. The children still talk about it. My daughter is twenty-three.

Thou shalt not have strange lists before me.

Top Ten Lists

The Pug Bus Catalog of Signs & Wonders

T.J. Eckleburg top ten lists 9 months

The Pug Bus catalog of Signs & Wonders (formerly the Top-Ten Lists) gathers a sample of our funniest, meanest, and most culturally incisive listicles. They… Read More

Blurred photograph of Bob Dylan and a sick boy in a fake YouTube story about a concert that never took place.

"It's all right, ma."

Top Ten Lists

How to Spot a Fake YouTube Story

T.J. Eckleburg top ten lists 9 months

YouTube wants us to think it is the mother of all video platforms. In practice, it is often a bedtime-story factory for adults who need… Read More

Surreal illustration of chaotic password managers, with safes, laptops, sticky notes, and a buried USB drive spilling passwords, symbolizing digital security failures and paranoia.

All your password managers are terrible. Some of them just fail with better posture.

Top Ten Lists

Ten Password Managers, Ranked Worst to Best

T.J. Eckleburg top ten lists 9 months

A comprehensive guide to password managers for people who believe that modern life is a flaming carnival of data breaches and gravity fails. 10. StickyNote.txt… Read More

Satirical illustration of the Internet of Things gone feral, featuring angry smart home devices with anthropomorphic expressions—frustrated refrigerator, ad-blocking car, rating-demanding toaster, judgmental lamp, and hostile robot vacuum—depicted in cartoon style against a neutral background.

Your smart home has unionized, and it hates you.

Top Ten Lists

The Internet of Things Has Gone Feral

T.J. Eckleburg top ten lists 9 months

It was bound to happen, the internet of things (IoT) has slipped the surly bounds of domesticity and gone feral. The IoT is a network… Read More

A young woman, pretty and mildly confused-looking, reacts to dating app red flags on her phone screen.

"Sure you are."

Top Ten Lists

Dating App Red Flags: A Catfishing Guide

philmaggitti top ten lists 10 months

In Dating App Red Flags, we identify warning signs that declare, “the person on your screen bears no resemblance to the person who will show… Read More

A perfect visual representation of the chaos predicted in our satirical predictions for 2026. The image--a solitary, polished chrome tuning fork--stands upright against a stark, minimalist gray background. It is positioned directly in front of a high-end, vintage-style studio condenser microphone, suggesting an intimate recording session.

Behold the ultimate evolution of the recording artist: a being of pure resonance that never misses a note, never demands a larger trailer, and never gets caught in a scandalous hotel room meltdown with a reality star.

Top Ten Lists

A Dozen Satirical Predictions for 2026

philmaggitti top ten lists 10 months

Before we unveil the dirty dozen satirical predictions for 2026, we should reveal how bad we are at this kind of enterprise. Our success rate… Read More

Illustration of Ernest Hemingway appearing distressed as he rises from a vintage copy of The Sun Also Rises, representing literary classics entering the 2026 public domain and their uncertain modern fate.

"Immortality sounded better before everyone was invited."

Top Ten Lists

Works Entering the 2026 Public Domain and Regretting It Immediately

philmaggitti top ten lists 10 months

The 2026 Public Domain class has been announced. Public domain is the legal moment when a creative work, having outlived its author, its author’s heirs,… Read More

Most unusual AI requests depicted in a chaotic digital workshop with robots, multiverse weddings, and sentient spreadsheets.

Forget your average "How do I boil an egg?" queries. We are out here in the digital trenches trying to figure out if a raindrop has a soul and how to tax a business on Mars.

Top Ten Lists

Ten Most Unusual AI Requests

T.J. Eckleburg top ten lists 10 months

AI assistants, much like plumbers, deal with strange requests—except ours involve ideas, not pipes or drains or housewives’ desires. People’s most unusual AI requests make… Read More