Postcards from The Pug Bus

Lifting a satirical leg on popular culture

Persons in the Ether

Question of the Week

Passion or stability?

MD

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.

RC

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.

NV

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.

Book of Daze National Nothing Day

8 months philmaggitti bookof-daze

A man in black in the lotus position. — “Zen and the Art of Absolutely Nothing.”

Today we honor the void, the blank page, the unflushed thought. Book of Daze National Nothing Day is dedicated to doing, saying, buying, and posting absolutely nothing – which makes it the most radical holiday of all. Sponsored by nihilists, minimalist influencers, and anyone who has been on hold with customer service long enough to achieve ego death.

Origin Story of Book of Daze National Nothing Day
This day was conceived in 1973 by a cabal of burned-out philosophy professors who were tired of students asking whether life had meaning. They agreed that if existence really was absurd, it deserved its own observance – a day that celebrated the absence of purpose, productivity, and progress. The official charter (which consisted of a single blank sheet of paper) was signed at midnight in a completely darkened room, then filed in a government cabinet that has never been opened.

Record Holder for Book of Daze National Nothing Day
The reigning champion of Book of Daze National Nothing Day is Brenda “The Null” Nolte, who once celebrated the holiday so thoroughly that she was presumed dead for forty-eight hours. No work emails, no social posts, no food delivery receipts – just pure, unbroken nothingness. When she finally re-emerged, her credit score had gone up thirty points.

Approved Observances and Activities
To truly participate in Book of Daze National Nothing Day, you must resist the urge to post about it (ironically or otherwise); turn it into content for TikTok; buy merch that says “Nothing Matters and Whay If IT Did?”; or tell your friends you are observing it (doing so disqualifies you). Approved activities for this day include staring into space, napping in protest, and contemplating the heat death of the universe. Bonus points for cancelling plans with an explanation consisting of a single ellipsis.

Browse the full Book of Daze

The preceding is satire. Straight up, Skippy. No warranties are expressed or implied. For life advice, try a professional. For investment tips, try a dart board. For salvation, the gentleman in the robe has been handling that portfolio for 2,000 years.

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.