Drain Frame Refrain
Spirals down the drain. Squares down the drain. The drain is full of shapes.
When it rains, it duckstacks
Ducks, as you know, are aquatic animals, meaning unlike all the other animals and plants and stuff1, ducks like water. In fact they will be very unhappy without it, and maybe die. This unique dynamic sets them apart in the animal kingdom, the diametric opposite of their sworn enemy, the camel.
Why ducks like water is a mystery to even the most zealous scientists2, but it is certain that they know some secret. Probably it has something to do with the seasons, since the ducks all go somewhere during winter. They cannot drink snow, and I believe they fly up into the sky, to drink the water up there before it has a chance to freeze and come down. In perfect V formation3 they work together for the hydration of all, isn't that beautiful?
Duckstack Shopping: Sleeping Bag
Tired of sleeping in boxes? Try bags!
Announcing our new line of Duckstack Sleeping bags! Experience the world of a pupa as you hang upside down from a tree in the woods at night. Fully featured, these sleeping bags are well insulated, with water resistant technology and a bunch of extra zippers. These are well padded for maximum comfort, made out of the same materials comforters themselves are made of.
Now you may be asking, “why upside down?” and the answer is something rangers have said for a long time: don't leave food around for bears. wouldn't that include… You? A poor little duck, or human, camping out in the wilderness, untested yet almost certainly made of meat? We have it on good authority that bears eat meat.
The traditional solution to the bears problem is to get a gun and just shoot them, but that made the environmentalists sad, so now most people use “lock boxes” to keep food away from bears, which seems equally cruel to the bears if we're being honest. Well whatever.
The Violence of Eden
I’m not sure I’m cool enough to write a section titled this but I’m going to try
Earlier this week my friend Indian Bronson talked about how a lot of people are too squeamish to even watch a farmer put down a cow, which got me thinking about my relationship to meat. Everyone4 knows that Latter-Day Saints have their own dietary code which includes abstaining from coffee, tea, alcohol, and tobacco. Some assume that to mean no caffeine, some assume that to mean no teas at all (the classic interpretation is just nothing with black or green tea in it). Men wiser than me have given their opinions on the origin and functional benefits of following these commandments, that the Word of Wisdom as it is called has broad spiritual effects of shifting your orientation to consumption in general, and much of that is self-evidently true. For me, it is enough to believe that abstaining from coffee marks me as part of a people who has made unique promises to God and am thus part of a spiritual military of sorts. I don’t need to find reasons for coffee to be unhealthy to boost my faith in the commandment, if that makes sense. But the section in scripture that lays the Word of Wisdom out for us says a lot more than just not to drink coffee and tea- it also says meat is to be eaten “sparingly” and with thanksgiving. Of course, Latter-Day Saints do not believe in eternal commandments- having a modern day prophet means commandments that are appropriate for one period of time might change as more effective strategies emerge to deal with the shifting cultural landscapes, in other words “A lot of things are circumstantial and God is smart so he recognizes this.” But eating meat sparingly has been something that stuck with me. And as you grow up in the church everyone kind of runs up against that question- “you think commandments are important? Than what are you doing eating meat?”
I have prayed about it and God didn’t tell me to stop eating meat or to follow the instructions in the verse to the letter- I don’t live in the same time period that it was given in, after all. But what God instructed me to do was exercise more.
Meat is to be eaten with thanksgiving- that means a lot of things but it certainly means appreciation, especially for the animal that died to feed you. That means using the protein well, rather than wasting it. That’s what God told me, feel free to double check with him yourself of course.
Part of raising chickens is ending up with roosters5. When you’ve got lots of roosters they disrupt your neighbors and fight and make the hens stressed and they also attack you and your kids, so you’ve got to do something about them- but you can’t give them away really, and if you set them free in the wild they won’t be able to fend for themselves and will either starve or get mauled to death by wildlife, and they’ll be unhappy and scared6 the whole time because they don’t have any hens, and at some point you have to say “is this really even humane?” So usually you eat them, and you do so as reverently and as respectfully and as quickly as possible. And its really unpleasant.
We’ve raised chickens a couple years now and have beheaded quite a few of them at this point which is something I am very averse to. Even things like spiders in the house I usually try to spare their lives and bring them gently outside- I don’t know if that’s a modern thing or if old societies just “got over it” by necessity. One of the truths of the fruit of knowledge between good and evil, one of the things that the fruit of the tree of life prevented, is that violence is necessary for perfect stewardship7.
Art: The current prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, president Russell M Nelson.8
Invasive species often bring other species to extinction, too large of a flock can destroy your land or pollute it. There are many, many variables involved in being a good steward, and many times the correct action is icky. Including aspiring to power, exercising authority, asserting that you know better. Some people of course have no issues with these things, and they tend to be the types that don’t really care that much about doing it right either. This is what I call the “Bull in China shops” analogy- it is always better to have someone in power who feels accountability, because they will be more careful about fragile things.9
Unfortunately we are very divorced from violence in our society, because we’ve outsourced most of it to the government, butchers, teachers, and judges, which I think is pretty understandable since again, its kind of icky. But this means that most people’s ability to be a steward is severely atrophied. In many ways this is an origin point of liberalism, and why they tend to err towards welfare programs and kindness on10. They are averse to violence, so they do/vote for what they know, and they become poor stewards. In their quest for pleasant solutions they won’t account for overall systemic health, and inevitably their generosity has to come at the expense of someone else’s wallet11. As society became increasingly insulated from hard reality, I wonder if liberalism was not inevitable. Nobody wants to kill a rooster.
History
Toddler apparently heard once “kids are resilient” and took that sentiment way beyond what it is supposed to be
My wife asking the toddler “What’s a good birthday dinner… Birthday cake?” and the toddler goes: “No.” and she goes, “cupcake?” and he says “No, just french fries.”
My wife joked that she was going to turn the toddler in to spaghetti. He says: “Noo don't turn me into sparsketti”
Someone commented that I was a boy, and the toddler says “no hes not a boy, hes a papa”
The toddler was playing with his orange slices. “Is we toddler food? Yes. We is a toddler food.” And then: “Ahhhh! He’s eating my body!” as he chowed down
Toddler has road rash over every single part of his body somehow and every day there's more but he never complains
Toddler also got stung by four bees and wasps this week. He did not like that.
baby: kick kick kick. Mama comments “oh the little legs!” which is a sentiment that makes a lot of sense when you see a baby and the toddler who is an extreme contrarian this week says “no, that’s my big legs! and points to his thigh.
Ducksnax
Mining
₧₧₧₧₧₧₧₧₧ Previous Duckstack ₧₧₧₧₧₧₧₧₧
computers, toddlers, the sun
but if you ask a duck zealot, that certainly won't stop them from speculating
for… vvater.
everyone who has been told this knows
Roosters is a metaphor for “society”
We had a rooster that was raised for about 4 months without any hens, and he was the most neurotic, twitchy, scared rooster ever, even far into adulthood, because chickens rely on social bonding to that extent. To let a chicken alone in the woods is to set them into panic mode- “where is my flock, what is happening, something is wrong”. This will literally give them chicken ptsd.
You can see that God’s plan from the beginning was to engineer our growth to become a judge as he is.
It won’t let me caption videos lol
Like all analogies, this is only a model.
The normie liberals I mean. I maintain that most of the liberals in government are totally malicious on purpose.
Libertarians like to say “taxation is theft” and I don’t think that’s right. If someone steals my money and builds a road for themselves, but I get to use it too, that’s more like “forced spending”. Not that I would argue that’s compatible with the maximal freedom libertarians seek, but it does make sense to me. This stealing for blatantly selfish purposes ends up being much more communally eugenic than liberal programs that exclusively generate excuse.