Frack Track
Earthquake drinkers follow the faults.
One Duckstack to Rule them All
I have a new schedule at work which is a bit grueling, which may interfere with my Duckstack schedule. Do not fear. Schedules cannot hurt you, unless you let them1
If you haven’t ever tried it, I think now would be a great time to round up all of your ducks and get them in a row. This activity is very popular, and for good reason- once you’ve got the ducks all together, you can knock them over, like dominoes. This process of organizing and disorganizing echoes our eternal spiritual nature as being subject to entropy and priesthood (God), pulled like the tides back and forth, so this sort of practice is therapeutic. After you’ve knocked all your domino ducks over its time to set them up, a process called “stacking”, and once you’ve got all your ducks in a row, you’ve got a “Duck stack”, so that’s why its called that.
Environmental PSA
Moving away from “Waterfall development”
Some prankster has, with scissors, been cutting off waterfalls right at the top where they start to go off the edge. This ruins the national monuments for everyone and is highly illegal2. To deal with this lawbreaking thuggery, we are now outlawing scissors. If you see someone with scissors, arrest them. Confiscate their tools of destruction. In the information age, what are scissors good for other than vandalism, anyway? The waterfalls must be preserved.
Environmental PSA: Please do not close anything with tape or anything because now nobody has scissors to open them and opening things is de-facto illegal. Just leave everything open for now until we get this situation resolved. Thank you for your cooperation, except you, waterfall cutter. Thank you for your imminent arrest.
Choked With Purpose
Emotions are rational things
Nobody wants to hear it, but emotions are tamable. This is one of the purposes of prayer. While it is a lot easier to be happy when happy things are happening, we are prone to downplaying how much our personality plays into whether happy things are happening, and how much they effect us, and we’re prone to doing this because releasing agency simulates justification, in other words its highly beneficial to us to lie. But in reality, everyone seeks the viewing angle they are comfortable with, and you really can just “let go” of negative emotions.
It is risky to let go of negative emotions, so we are loathe to do it, because negative emotions are extremely functional, especially when they are working correctly. Anger is one of the most important emotions to alert you to something that needs defending- if you let go of anger when someone has wronged you, then you may be wronged again, which could be foolish. So the emotion is valuable, and you need to have some emotional intelligence to discern what its telling you and whether the danger has passed or if there’s a better approach-
Anger is also a motivating emotion. Disgust is too, and so is greed, and so is lust, and so is pride, and so is sloth3. God strikes me as a highly motivated individual, and I believe he is a highly emotional individual. The difference between he and us is temperance, as in not just the virtue of forbearance, but literal tempering as in to temper a blade. The word of God is quick and powerful, surgical in its precision, structured in its purpose.
I believe this is foundational to the fall- When Adam ate the apple4, he gained emotions and became, which tell him rational information about where he stands in relation to his environment and values, but our environment is huge, and our emotions are like drinking from a firehose, and Adam is us. The danger of emotions is in fact that they are motivating. Because if you aren’t careful, they motivate you to all sorts of stupid stuff, to make a fool of yourself, to burn people you care about. And if you aren’t careful, then your natural man will lead you about by the nose from disaster to disaster and you won’t ever find heaven. You can see this in everyone around you, so the real trick is to see it in yourself. So pray that God will give you perspective, and help you to understand your emotions, because they’re one of the most powerful forces on Earth.
Hastory
As everything winterizes the box elder bugs are out, and Jethro is telling me (excitedly) that they suck blood. (They don’t do this)
Jethro out of nowhere: “mama, its scooby doo like you've never seen him before! wait, have you seen him before?”
Jethro sleeps in our bed with us and uses my wife as a pillow. He told my wife that she needed to stay still in her sleep because when she rolls it gives him bad dreams. Really convenient how his bad dreams always lead to getting everyone to do what he already wants
My wife woke up and changed the toddler’s diaper and was singing to him and the toddler was shaking to the music and Jethro walks in and says “I knew when you woke up we were going to have a dance party!” How did he know that?!?
The toddler was playing with this haunted doorbell toy from halloween that makes spooky noises when pressed, while singing jingle bells to himself. Because its a bell.
At church I sat to box the toddler in on the pew, which the toddler countered by crawling beneath all the pews- all of them. In less than 30 seconds popped out at the front of the church where the guy was giving a talk, eager to explore his new surroundings. I didn’t let him though. Am I a bad parent, stifling his curiosity like this?
Braces: a review
brace yourself for the review, thank you for your compliance with Review Safety Act 2047 c5.
Braces straighten your teeth over time, which seems useful so that you can mash your food together between them more effectively. However, most dentists I’ve talked to don’t calculate the optimum mashing angle at all, they just straighten the teeth. So I don’t want to oversell it. In reality, you are not going to become a superchewer just from braces. I know that might be a letdown but its important to be realistic. Will your smile look better? Sure. Does that make up for sub-optimal chewing? I’m not so sure.
Most braces do not come with features- no windshield wipers, no neon glow or undercarriage lights, no high beams, they’re all just the base model with wireframes. Another tragedy of modernity, I suppose. However, this does make them marginally better for self defense, so while just having straighter teeth does not make your chewing all that much better, while the braces are on your bite is definitely amplified for some use cases. There is also the aesthetic factor: Who wants to rob a guy with braces?
Overall, I would say braces perform sub-average, but are useful in some more marginal scenarios, so if you feel like getting braces you can still get them, you should just be aware that they are a little overhyped, and difficult to clean so sometimes they don’t stay looking quite so chic.
Braces: 2 out of 5 stars, some room for improvement.
Eggs: A Report
Are there eggs? There sure are.
My friend wrote a piece this week that I liked, so I am sharing it with you, as it is about a 5 minute read and he made some good points about human nature and such, which is something I’m interested in. Most people want to avoid pain, but sometimes avoiding pain becomes subconscious to the point where you cause pain without knowing it. Sometimes you avoid pain to the point where you miss out, and sometimes you avoid pain to the point where you take on more pain in your frantic thrashing to avoid pain. Today’s sermon prioritizes emotional control, and emotional control requires emotional lucidity. Read Egg’s thoughts on sin and pain:
Stalked in the dark by a schedule: You have no power over me, I can simply ignore you at any time. You can’t stop me. Its simple mind over matter, and if you practice it often enough the schedule apparitions usually will take a hint and leave, no doubt seeking easier prey.
Even more illegal than the normal kind
“sloth and motivation are opposites” wrong, relaxation enables you to keep going, and sometimes the oasis of relaxation is the only hope that drives you.
Genesis 3:32 Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”
We can’t have any more accidents