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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.

image of an angry-looking white man

"Image of a person of white."

Don’t Call Me a White Person Anymore

philmaggitti blog 7 years

Recently I was informed by the entrail readers at 23&Me that I am 1/500 sub-Saharan African or any other non-white subgroup. I was delighted by… Read More

The Kids Are All Right, Satirical Commentary

philmaggitti blog, trump 7 years

I have nothing against children. Indeed, I think qualified persons should own a few. Children are often cute, sometimes amusing, and if we’re lucky, they… Read More

The Rolling Stones Should Shrivel Up and Die

philmaggitti blog 7 years

Dear Mick, Keith, Charlie, and the Other Guy,I have learned recently that you stinking geezers will be touring next year. Please don’t. In the name… Read More

Sticking It to The Military-Athletic Complex

philmaggitti blog 10 years

The military-athletic complex is a pain in my NFL-watching butt. I detest the ginormous flag rollouts that precede most games, the stupid camouflage gear that… Read More

Stay the Hell Home, Mick Jagger

philmaggitti blog 11 years

Dear Mick,I see where you dragged your withered buttocks on stage the other day to croak your way through “Satisfaction” with that towering mediocrity Taylor… Read More

Postcards from the Pug Bus On Holiday

philmaggitti blog 12 years

WEST CHESTER, Pa.–Postcards from the Pug Bus, southeastern Pennsylvania’s slowest-growing satire site, is going on holiday. As several members of our entourage are not permitted… Read More

The Grammar Grump Says Leave God Out of It

philmaggitti blog 12 years

While the Grammar Grump was watching a football game on television recently, an announcer declared, “Quarterbacks like Peyton Manning are a godsend.” What is wrong… Read More

The Grammar Grump Fingers Three Who Misused Begs the Question

philmaggitti blog 15 years

Hello, boys and girls. The Grammar Grump has a treat for you today. Instead of our regular quiz designed to irritate you and to undermine… 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.