Comb Tomb
Every hair a bar, your mind in a prison, but mine out on bail
Diamonds are a girl's best duckstack
You, dear reader, are a mining company. But you drill not for oil, but a much more precious1 resource: text. In your emails, you now command a powerful laser drill: duckstacks. Turn it upon the text. Extract it into your brain. Be enlightened, sell it to the highest bidder, become a Beverly Hillbilly. Live in an upclass area you aren’t adapted for. Feel like a fish out of water, or be oblivious to the social pressures and expectations around you. Drift through life innocent, and happy. And when you run out of ideas, return, to The Duckstack.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
A classic horror film with a new, modern, twist
Picture a deforested hill. The lumberjacks have gone home. The trees are gone, and only stumps remain, as well as the chainsaws. One chainsaw per tree, covering the hill, like a small herd of grazing husbandry. But the chainsaws are unintelligent, and unsuspecting. Their teeth can chew through wood, but they are cunning for little else. And then, the skies darken. And then, it begins to rain. And then, the chainsaws begin to rust.
Layup Your Treasures
just throw them right in this basket. I’ll make them all disappear.
if there’s one thing thieves like2, its an easy mark. Loose clothing, unlocked cars, highly credulous employees- Most nonviolent crime is a crime of opportunity. Anything happening in the ghetto is just some teenage hooligan3 jiggling car doors as he passes to see if any are unlocked. Then they ransack the car as fast as they can and leave with anything that looks like it might be sellable on ebay. There’s no thought behind it, they’re impulsive and unscrupulous, that’s all. Even most violent crime is just random gang escalations over pride, or someone way too high on drugs to think about any consequences. The premeditated stuff stands out because its more horrifying, but its definitely not more common. Most mean people are mean casually.
That’s “Blue collar” crime. Just immature nonsense. You can guard against it pretty easily by just staying away from areas impulsive and immoral people congregate. If you make things difficult in any way, this type tends to stay away, whether its by being armed, locking your doors, living in a nicer part of town, or being over 6’3”4. Online, trolls go after people who are easy to get a rise out of, and if you present as cultured and well reasoned you can actually keep a lot of nonsense away from you. Presentation literally shields you from crime, drama, and all sorts of undesirable circumstance. But it has to be a certain kind of presentation- looking tough might avert psychos, but it might also signal that you’re the same kind of fighter class that petty impulsive people are. You must present as classy. This is something normies struggle with.
You can see this play out on a smaller scale online, where people (the aforementioned normies) constantly get into arguments where they get humiliated simply because the other person has the philosophy of a cockroach: The most disgusting person wins. Then you walk away feeling gross because you thought you were having a conversation, but what they were actually having was onanism. Consider first in any argument: If you weren’t giving them what they want, they wouldn’t still be talking to you. What do people actually want? What’s their real objective? More often than not its not to convince you. It isn’t about you at all. Theft isn’t either. It isn’t targeted beyond this: You looked easy.
“White collar” crime is different, of course. This is the type of intellectual ponzi scheme embezzlement crime that is more a crime of temptation than opportunity- though don’t get me wrong, many of these schemes certainly are unscrupulous. When you have a lot of power but not a lot of oversight, its easy to skim off the top. Coincidentally, this is the same motivation for most sin be it porn/adultery, dishonesty, and even most forms of impulsivity/impatience. The church guards against this sort of thing by just making sure accountability is a key feature in all of its accounting structure. Tithing donations are always deposited by at least two leaders, never just one. Our missionaries go out two by two, and a lot of guidelines for youth and ecclesiastical activities specify multiple leaders should always be present. This isn’t crime you guard against from the outside, this is crime you guard against within yourself.
“Pink collar” crime is almost exclusively false rape accusations to punish and/or gain prestige or trading seduction for favors. Not much to be said about this other than we also have an emerging genre in the United States of female judges and senators harboring illegal immigrants from law enforcement- This type of thing is basically crime out of virtue signaling, or less cynically crime of compassion. Our society has very few if any protections against women’s heartstrings, so we should expect a lot of developing exploits against women in power along those lines.
There is also Indian collar crime. Telephone scams, phishing emails, and hustling that revolves almost exclusively about presenting as respectable and legitimate in order to con people into giving up money and sensitive info voluntarily. As phones have become more adept at blocking scam calls I think this genre has fallen off, though it still exists at a low level due to the sheer infinitesimally small overhead required to keep stuff like this going, and even a single success can steal thousands and thousands of dollars. But as AI advances, we are going to see a resurgence in this because AI is going to trivialize the cost of developing highly convincing lures. For example, it is at this point trivial to create voice messages in the voice of literally anyone on earth. Then you just have the AI masquerading ‘son’ call the clueless mother and tell her he’s in jail and needs bail money or whatever- AI can make this very convincing and adapt what it says in realtime easily. Video still has some artificial intelligence ‘tells’ but those will probably be ironed out in 2-3 years. The rule of thumb is quickly going to need to be “if something sensitive or money is involved, always ask something personal that only the real person would know” and its pretty much guaranteed that society is not going to be ready for this.
Between white collar and blue collar crime, there is what I’m calling grey collar crime. Pickpocketing is definitely still petty theft- but certainly its more respectable than bashing in windows to grab valuables from the passenger seat. I imagine pickpockets maintain something of pride. Its impulsive, trash-tier crime, but manages to take some degree of skill. Like white collar crime, it takes intelligence, but like blue collar crime its still at its heart just looking for something to pawn. Its robbing individuals, rather than institutions, and as such there’s not really any way to pad your conscience by distributing impact. Grey collar criminals can work in teams- a classic scheme is to have someone talk to your mark, distracting them from the feeling of you sliding their phone or wallet out of their pocket. Like blue collar criminals, you can mostly just avoid them if you avoid their haunting grounds, but their grounds tend to be tourist attractions that you still want to go to, so, its just something to be vigilant about.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as they say. With good security, you can keep criminals looking for easier targets.
History
The baby got a pineapple juice drink in a can, and we had the good fortune of getting several pictures of her trying to drink through the pop tab as though it were a straw.
The toddler, standing proudly on the table: “I’m a giant food!”
baby stayed up till 4. when we finally got her to stop crying and settle down she sat in her crib blowing bubbles and chattering to herself until I left. So something for you to be aware of. When you have one.
Toddler, unprompted: “we turn into bones, right?”
Toddler, unprompted: “I love books. Trees don't love books”
Impractical Jokes
Knock knock books are popular. Why not learn some impractical jokes?
Here is a list of impractical jokes you can play on friends and family.
Sneak into their closet. Surreptitiously, turn all of their pant pockets inside out.
“Key their car”. You will need a lot of keys, and superglue
Weld all their forks together
Place a silver dollar in their shoe for them to discover later, and then fill the shoe with lead
Using an angle grinder, file all of their outside stairs into ramps.
swap the white and black of all their wires. Make sure the gauges stay the same to avoid electrocuting yourself.
deposit $100 into their checking account, in pennies. Keep each transaction separate.
swap their knights and bishops
Attach thousands of helium balloons to their car.
replace the tobacco in their cigarettes with ground pepper.5
Ducksnax
Fish6
Previous Duckstack
Assuming the pen being mightier than the sword actually makes it more valuable. Which probably isn’t true but I’m going with it
Other than your stolen items
“Teenage Hooligans” could be here, he thought
Women: hit the height gym.
my uncle did this to his aunt once and almost killed her
I bet I’ve done this before. But I’m not looking it up, and I already drew it, and it still made me laugh.