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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.

Nietzsche holding a book during a therapy session, reversing roles and offering a satirical view of modern therapy advice.

He’s not opening up. He’s opening a book.

What Would Nietzsche Do?

What Would Nietzsche Do: Postmodern Therapy Advice

philmaggitti nietzsche 5 months

1️⃣ The Morning Routine Cultist Q: Dear Nietzsche, every successful person online claims they wake up at 4:30 a.m., drink lemon water, journal for an… Read More

Friedrich Nietzsche sits alone at a wooden table in a stark white room, surrounded by surreal stacks of endless cards, a darkly comic scene echoing the futility of self-help books.

Self-help books sold separately. For good reason.

What Would Nietzsche Do?

What Would Nietzsche Do? Why Self-Help Books Keep Failing You

philmaggitti nietzsche 5 months

The Eternal Left-Swiper Dear Nietzsche, I have swiped left on 4,000 people and counting. Not one feels right. My therapist says I am “too picky,”… Read More

Coping with Reality illustration: Friedrich Nietzsche stands at a blank help desk in a modern office setting, surrounded by meaningless self-help imagery and stacked books.

All inquiries will be answered eventually, but not helpfully.

What Would Nietzsche Do?

What Would Nietzsche Do? Coping with Reality (Badly)

philmaggitti nietzsche 5 months

Dear Nietzsche, I keep buying planners, habit trackers, and “rise and grind” journals in the hope of coping with reality, but I still procrastinate. Am… Read More

Friedrich Nietzsche sits at a café table surrounded by modern chaos, gazing skyward in stoic disbelief—perfect image for What Would Nietzsche Do? — When Your Guru Gets It Wrong.

"Dieser Schnurrbart fängt an zu jucken."

What Would Nietzsche Do?

What Would Nietzsche Do? Since God Is Dead

philmaggitti nietzsche, trump 6 months

Advice for truth seekers now that God is dead and Nietzsche is taking your letters. Q: Dear Nietzsche,I have been at the same job for… Read More

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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.