Fight Lights
For thousands of ants on an ocean of snow each Christmas light is a lighthouse
The Duckstack: 100% beef
Its almost Christmas, so its the time that spiders are migrating south for the winter. Spiders all do this, starting from the spiders at the north pole, and gradually as they days go on and it gets colder spiders further and further south catch the bug and proceed down, towards warmth, towards heat. All marching away, one spider after another just forming a little line, full of purpose and ardor, until the spiders at the actual equator start feeling the urge to migrate south, and implode. This is why you haven’t seen any spiders lately. What do they do when the reach the south? They build anthills.
MARIJUANA
just thinking about life
You can get pretty far by just going 1) standards can cause more harm than good 2) the people most interested in tearing down fences are the people the fences were supposed to keep out. Think: Who benefits the most from removing our household’s no ice cream for dinner rule? That's right, Satan.
Liberals hate standards. A fierce sense of responsibility generally leads people into conservative and even reactionary ideologies, or as the quip goes, “everyone is conservative about what they know best.” Fences are usually put up for reasons and contrary to popular belief malice is not a very high quality fuel for endeavors like that. It burns too fast, and you run out, and is somewhat expensive to mine from the ground. Consider the patriarchy: do men just want to oppress women? Oppressing women is work. And then you’re trying to get sex from a miserable and angry woman which would be the opposite of what men want from sex. So the malice explanation for old standards doesn’t hold up for me. Some people are very good at holding grudges, good for them, but most people actually seem to have pretty short attention spans and would rather just chill and hang out, that’s what it seems like to me. I could be projecting though, I read last week that “Men’s emotional reactions are processed in an area of the amygdala segregated from memory, which causes them to be more emotionally detached and less responsive to violent or disturbing memories.”
Leadership requires some degree of tyranny, which isn’t pleasant, which is why it attracts psychopaths. Because when you allow rules to degrade then everyone makes their own rules, which leads to both fracturing and uncertainty. You can’t accomplish half as much without a shared vision, which means everyone needs to know the guiderails they can rely on. I run a music group chat on twitter with two rules: Each day, one member of the group chat posts a song, and each day, every other member of the group chat needs to listen to that song. When I enforce these rules strongly, everyone gets both benefits of the group chat, both sharing their music and being heard, and being exposed to new music. Enforcing the rules strongly increases the quality and consistency of both of these rules. Enforcing the rules weakly leads to low participation, and everyone in the group chat suffers.
Conflict avoidance defers costs, which is a gamble. Because sometimes the costs will fizzle out, and it will turn out to have been a nonissue and you’ve basically short-sold the conflict for a peace profit. But sometimes it bottles things up and leads to recurring costs, and increased quantity of issues to address, and blowups, which result in poor conflict management. It is daunting and a headache all around.
In some ways, credit cards have kind of conditioned us to defer costs this way, which in some meandering way might be why I’ve always preferred to use cash. People are trained to pay things back later with interest rather than go an eye for an eye immediately. Who benefits the most from these spending habits? That’s right, Satan.
Some More Terrorism
we regret to inform you that the government is legislating
History
The long and the short of it
The kid has taken to watching TV from the top of a ladder. I wouldn’t think its more comfortable than the couch, but what do I know? Can’t knock it until I try it.
As an afterthought1, we converted our laundry room to a swimming pool for a day. The toddler was so excited, he loves water
My wife was in the bedroom wrapping presents, and the kiddo was trying everything he could think of to get in. The best one he came up with was “mama, you’re stuck, I have to let you out!”
The kids have been marvelously determined to find where we’ve been hiding their presents and have so far actually had a 100% success rate at spoiling Christmas but thankfully this doesn’t seem to bother them. “Mama, I want a cooking set for Christmas. Because remember, you got it for me?” And then when we went to see Santa he told us he was going to tell Santa he wanted the cooking set we got for him in our bedroom for Christmas. In the end he was too shy but it just shows where his mindset’s at this time of year
Short Story: The Christmas Vampire
Two of my kid’s favorite things. Next time I’ll just need to fit dinosaurs in somehow
Edvard was a jolly vampire, because it was snowing outside, which meant his favorite day was approaching. He was decked in red, and the human livestock he normally kept in his dungeon had been set free. He hummed to himself as he tidied, hanging garland and such all around his castle. He knew his freed prisoners would be returning to town, to their families, iron deficient and weak from bloodloss. And from carrying the gift bags full of candy canes and baked goods he had packed for them. Such a delightful time of year! In his many centuries he had never stopped believing in Santa, and he planned to stay up all night to try and catch a glimpse of the old saint by the fireplace. He never asked Santa for anything, because as an immortal creature of the night with a full castle to himself he never felt he lacked for want. At last he was finished, and he scuttled down the stairs to the generator room and snatched up two great cables and with a flair plugged them together, igniting the castle walls in spectacular light. This light was important so that Santa could find his castle, and so that the little humans wouldn’t lose their way getting back. The power necessary to run the lights could power all sorts of incredible machinery and cost a small fortune, but it was all worth it. This nocturnal prowler had stalked many, but this night only came by once a year, and he wouldn’t dream of missing it.
SPONSORED MESSAGE: Animal Control
The animals are out of control, on the dance floor
Hello, please stop sticking human legs on the sky fish. I do not want to know where you are getting all these legs but knock it off. Its hampering their ability to glideswim, and while animal welfare has noted a marked increase in skyfish satisfaction since these pranks have started, we are scared of change.
Jingle Bell Rock
Some festive music to get the people going
we thought about it after we heard the splashing