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.

Trump Appoints Grammar Grump to New Cabinet Post

9 years Biff Scuzzy news

President-elect Donald J. Trump has appointed the Grammar Grump to the newly created cabinet post of Secretary of Grammar and Usage, which will replace the moribund Department of Education. Mr. Grumo is legendary for his animadversions against those who violate the rules of polite discourse, spoken or written. His work is featured exclusively on the alt-right satire website Postcards from the Pug Bus.

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“I hear things about this guy’s work online,” said Mr. Trump. “Very interesting stuff. Very interesting. He’s going to make American speech great again and save us a lot of money.”

As Mr. Trump does, the Grammar Grump mows down political correctness like a ninety-year-old, blue-haired Jewish woman in Miami mows down pedestrians after she jumps the curb in her Chrysler LeBaron. A few cases in point:

“If you answered a or d, you are incorrect. If you answered b, you might be the sort of rat-loving, butt-scratching dunderhead responsible for turning the English language into a (merde) heap.”

“So listen up, boys and girls, use all the damn profanity you want, but don’t expect it to rescue a limp sentence. If your sentences have the mushy feel of overcooked pasta, no amount of tools, mother-lovers, or sickheads is going to save it.”

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“Stay tuned, boys and girls, next time we’re going to assay the literary stylings of Michelle Obama, who moves her lips when she reads and who speaks and writes on an eight-grade-level.”

Progressives, as is their wont these days, reacted to the Grammar Grump’s appointment with hair-on-fire indignation and their predictable threats.

“This man is a racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, transphobic monster,” said Antwan Delano Roosevelt Brown, Director of All Things That Matter of Black Lives Matter’s Grosse Point, Michigan, office. “We must fight his nomination with every weapon at our disposal. If you’ve ever been bullied by some white teacher for saying axe instead of asks, you must demand justice and the right to be taught in Ebonics.”

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.