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.

Wal-Mart Pulls All Chinese Toothpaste in the United States

4 years philmaggitti

A baby curiously touching a man's face while he lies on grass.

BENTONVILLE, Ark. – Wal-Mart will no longer sell Chinese toothpaste in its United States outlets. The global retail giant announced yesterday that it was taking this step after receiving numerous complaints from its American customers.

“You’ve heard that old joke about Chinese food?” asked Wal-Mart’s executive vice president of oral hygiene, Champ Myers. “The one about how twenty minutes after you eat a Chinese meal you’re hungry again? Well, our U.S. customers are telling us the same thing about Chinese toothpaste. Twenty minutes after you brush your teeth they feel dirty, and you want to brush them again. That’s good for toothpaste sales, but it’s not right for our American customers.”

A source close to Wal-Mart revealed that according to internal company research, a 6.4-ounce tube of toothpaste will last the average family of six American Wal-Mart shoppers three months. Feng Shui toothpaste, China’s leading brand, lasts only one-third as long.

Although Mr. Myers was at a loss to explain why Chinese toothpaste affects Americans the way it does, he dismissed the notion that diethylene glycol, a sweet, syrupy chemical found in many Chinese products–from toothpaste to candy to antifreeze–was the culprit.

“Sure, diethylene glycol can cause liver and kidney problems in some ethnic groups,” said Mr. Myers, “but do you really think Wal-Mart customers are dumb enough to eat toothpaste?”

In related news, Wal-Mart has announced the withdrawal of Chinese finger traps, popularly known as “Mexican handcuffs,” from all its stores. The recall came after three children lost their fingers while playing “border patrol” with these devices.

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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.