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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.

"Lady Chatterley's Lover" poster featuring two characters in period attire, set in a lush outdoor background.

"Mellors is game."

Lady Chatterley and Me Revisited

philmaggitti blog 1 year

Left to my own devices, which is seldom a good idea, I decided to bring Lady Chatterley’s Lover to school to share with my friends.… Read More

image of a pug dog

Satirical Commentary Songs in the Key of Fetch

philmaggitti blog, dog 3 years

Fetch was not like other dogs. Whenever people were eating, he stared at their feet as though it were high noon at the OK Corral and… Read More

Hans flunks obedience, the famous tow rope that struck fear and terror and a certain loathing into his heart.

You what?

Hans Flunks Obedience Training

philmaggitti blog, dog 3 years

The first time I saw an obedience class at a dog show, I thought it was done with mirrors. I was particularly suspicious of the… Read More

How to Understand the Tao Te Ching Without Actually Reading It

philmaggitti blog 3 years

The Tao Te Ching, a book of ancient Chinese wisdom, is roughly 2,500 years old, but nobody has figured out what it means yet. The… Read More

Thoughts on First Visiting Wellsboro Cemetery

philmaggitti blog 4 years

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r,And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour.The paths of glory lead but… Read More

Postcards from the Pug Bus Declares Itself a Sanctuary Website

philmaggitti blog 4 years

WEST CHESTER, PA – I am proud to announce this morning that Postcards from the Pug Bus–the internet’s least reliable satire site, beloved by the… Read More

Satirical Commentary Why I Love the Coronavirus

philmaggitti blog 6 years

COVID-19 is the gift pandemic that keeps on giving: a gleaming, unforgiving mirror that reflects the foibles, failures, and foolhardiness of the American people in… Read More

The Pet Sitter’s Letter

philmaggitti blog, dog 6 years

“Dear Sir or Madam” Thus began the pet sitter’s letter, which my wife and I found taped to the back door when we arrived at… 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.