Postcards from The Pug Bus

Lifting a satirical leg on popular culture

Persons in the Ether

Question of the Week

Salad dressing on the side or on the top?

MB

Marlowe Brint, artisnal jewelry designer

Reportedly outside Santa Fe, NM

On the side, obviously. A salad should retain the illusion of free will until the very last moment. Once dressed, it has chosen a direction and can never go back.

EV

Evelyn Voss, lobster fisher person

May once have lived in Bangor, ME

I prefer it on top, but only in a thin ceremonial line, as priests once applied oils to objects they feared and respected. A salad without dressing is just yard work in a bowl.

CK

Clyde Ketter, attack dog trainer

Unverified, but emphatically from Akron, OH

Neither. The correct approach is to keep the dressing nearby in a separate vessel and let the salad absorb its presence psychologically. That is how my father did it, and his lettuce feared him.

Adverse Effects

The following lines may induce brief clarity, misplaced certainty, and the sense that something has already been decided without your approval ...

There is a moment, just before sleep,
when the mind loosens its tie
and admits what it spent all day denying.

Read It All

There is a moment, just before sleep,
when the mind loosens its tie
and admits what it spent all day denying.

You remember the thing you said—
not the words,
but the angle of them,
how they leaned slightly wrong
and stayed there.

A life is not ruined in grand gestures.
It goes soft at the edges first.
Corners round off. Standards blur.
You start calling things “fine”
that would have once kept you awake.

Which is the problem.

Because now you do sleep.

Beautifully. Efficiently.
Like someone who has made a series of
very small, very reasonable surrenders
and arranged them into a pillow.

Celebrity Shockers

Vanessa Hudgens Homemade Video Surfaces on Internet

19 years Chip Hilton celebrity shockers

Vanessa Hudgens has more to answer for than a batch of mildly compromising vintage selfies that recently bubbled up from the molten core of the Internet, where amateur archivists and professional doom scrollers spend their days spelunking for digital fossils.

The photos were apparently the warm-up act for a holiday video she once recorded as a joke for then-friend Drake Bell. According to THEM Weekly, the clip was intended as a “lighthearted Christmas surprise,” although opinions differ on which part was lighthearted and which part was surprising.

A representative for Mr. Bell insisted that he never opened the video. “He treats all unexpected attachments like cursed objects,” said the rep. “He believes that curiosity is how you invite spirits into your hard drive.”

Sources who did view the 45-second relic described it as an enthusiastic but deeply misguided seasonal performance. Hudgens reportedly appears before a Christmas tree, surrounded by festive props, delivering a holiday monologue that would have landed better in a room with no cameras. The soundtrack, Zamfir’s pan-flute interpretation of “You Are All I Want for Christmas,” has been widely condemned as the true crime in question.

In a statement issued by her publicist, Ms. Hudgens apologized for what she called “youthful holiday improvisation.” She further expressed hope that the public would extend mercy, or at least develop collective amnesia. History indicates that the Internet does neither.

Meanwhile, in unrelated news, the Recording Industry Association of America has mailed Debbie Foster 68,685 individual one-dollar checks to satisfy a court judgment, thereby creating the nation’s first legal settlement that doubles as a weight-training program.

For more comings and goings and celebrity shockers, hold your nose and click here.

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.

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Deliver It

⚡ The FDA has approved the first prescription-strength silence, available in 30-day supplies for patients whose doctors have determined they are talking too much. Side effects include clarity, improved listening, and a brief period of being liked.

⚡ A bipartisan congressional caucus has formed to study the feasibility of doing nothing faster. Early results suggest the group is ahead of schedule.

⚡ Netflix has announced a new content category called Shows You Will Start But Not Finish, to be featured prominently alongside Things You Have Already Seen Twice and Movies You Forgot You Watched. Subscribers describe the experience as having a lot of options.