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: Pardon Yourself Day

5 years philmaggitti bookof-daze

purely decorative image

Everyone, it seems, has an opinion regarding a president’s authority to pardon himself for wrong doings of a pardonable sort. Ever the contrarians, we do not have an opinion in this regard. Lucky you.

We do, nevertheless, believe that pardons, by whomever they are issued, resemble charity: they ought to begin and most frequently end at home. If, as we are told, we cannot love anyone unless we can love ourselves first, how can we forgive anybody if we cannot forgive ourselves first?

We can’t. That’s how. And if, as we are told, the faults that we hate most in others are the ones that we see in ourselves, we cannot forgive those faults in others unless we pardon ourselves first. Capisci?

Hence, National Pardon Yourself Day, a day when we can say “Pardon me” or “I beg your pardon” and really mean it. A day for replacing “my bad” with “I’m good.” Or, as we used to say, “I’m OK, You’re Not.”

A baby curiously touching a man's face while he lies on grass.

Your ability to pardon yourself is unlimited and doesn’t require an act of contrition or slavish penance. Pardons are given, not earned. No fawning or obsequiousness here; and if anyone claims that only god can grant pardons, tell the fool that you can’t pardon a sin you haven’t committed.

For those who like happy endings, we are pleased to report that today we pardoned ourselves for forgetting that it was our 39th wedding anniversary. We felt like canine crap for a few moments until we pardoned ourself. There was no choice. We’d have felt like canine crap therestof the day otherwise.

As they say in Rome, “De Indulgentiis incipere domi.”

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.