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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.

Illustration of returning Christmas presents: a pile of unwanted gifts including sweaters, books, and a candle with price tags still attached and return receipts sticking up like white flags of surrender.

Opened me last,

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Ten Lame Excuses for Returning Christmas Presents

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Returning Christmas presents is a time-honored tradition. Legend has it that the very first returned gift was frankincense, deemed “too fragrant” by the recipient who… Read More

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🛡️ A Conversational Self-defense Manual: Ten Unimpeachable Gambits

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It is an inescapable truth of polite society that one’s time is often held hostage by the unchecked enthusiasm of the excessively verbose. This self-defense… Read More

A surreal illustration of a glowing antique gas lamp mounted beside a television screen displaying a streaming interface. The lamp casts distorted shadows across the screen and surrounding room, bending reality in playful, absurd ways. The scene evokes confusion and surreal gaslighting

Netflix: Now Gaslighting in Glorious HD.

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Ten Signs Netflix Is Gaslighting You

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Welcome to the streaming Twilight Zone, where Netflix swears with a straight face that you adored a Lithuanian soap opera, insists that your queue never… Read More

A person wearing an oversized sensory-deprivation headset lying in a modified plank posture, rocking slightly while listening to primate sounds, illustrating the satirical Alpha-Chimp Brain-Reboot (ACBR) meditation, one of the best meditation practices.]

Why use simple silence when you can harness the raw, unfiltered fury of the primate brain?

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Ten Best Meditation Practices

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In an age when true peace is measurable only by the lack of notifications on one’s wrist, and enlightenment is simply a premium app subscription,… Read More

Surreal illustration of ten rejected holiday mascots including Arbor Day Armadillo, Columbus Day Conquistador, Tax Day Tarantula, April Fool’s Day Oracle, Veterans Day Vulture, Independence Day Iguana, and Thanksgiving Tapeworm, each depicted in satirical style on parchment background with bold labels.

Too real for retail: the mascots Hallmark burned in effigy.

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Top Ten Rejected Holiday Mascots

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The committee of forgotten holidays gathered in a windowless ballroom lit by flickering fluorescent tubes, determined to crown mascots that would carry their obscure celebrations… Read More

Tax audit theater illustration showing a sweating taxpayer under fluorescent lights facing a looming inquisitor on stage.

Tax audit: fluorescent lights, maximum sweat, zero mercy.

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Ten Ways to Avoid a Tax Audit

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Tax audit: fluorescent lights, maximum sweat, zero mercy. The tax audit was invented shortly after governments realized that citizens could count. Once the masses discovered… Read More

A large red capital N with wings attached, symbolizing content flying away or departing from the Netflix streaming platform, representing shows leaving Netflix soon.

Netflix is removing these shows before you even knew they existed.

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Ten Best Satirical Shows Leaving Netflix Soon

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Netflix, your bestiehome companion, does not ghost content without warning. Each month the Big N reveals ten shows that are slated to disappear into the… Read More

Male and female students together in a grand college hall with Gothic arches, singing their college songs with exaggerated emotional expression.

Nothing says "I just spent $200,000 on an education" quite like being forced to sing a depressing 19th-century hymn about fellowship while pretending not to cry.

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Ten Worst College Songs Ever

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There exists a special circle of auditory hell reserved for college alma mater songs, those funereal dirges that transform thousands of otherwise rational young adults… Read More