Lumberjacked Cataract
Metal trees go "toot toot toot", drawing energy from C:/root
What's this? Its the Duckstack. Its a can of 100% Duckstack. You can’t get Duckstack this pure anymore, nope, they’ve1 been cutting margins lately on the Duckstack mines and diluting the product by mixing in the cheap stuff.
I just wanted to express sincere admiration for you, reading the Duckstack, against all odds. You’ve had to dodge assassination attempts, slog through waist deep mud and quicksand while taking fire from hundreds if not thousands of haters, and here you are. You’ve made it. To the Duckstack.
History
I’m pretty sick2 but still definitely stronger than a toddler so it can’t be that bad.
This week my wife was working atop a ladder and the little one pulled his little toddler chair underneath it and quipped “I’m inna house!”
Here are some things the little one tried to get me to wake up last night: Thumb in eye, forehead to forehead, sitting on me, singing twinkle twinkle little star to me, poking face, shaking me, pulling the blanket off me. But it didn’t work. I am indomitable.
Here are some times that the little one climbed on me trying to prevent me from writing this week’s Duckstack: That one, Just barely, Just barely again, Just barely, baby the laptop cannot support your weight, ouch, He jumped on my shoulders that time, shoulders again, lap, laptop (warded by my hand), laptop (miraculously preserved by the power of God), ow that was my foot, okay he’s finally gone
The little one has also written a song (its been a prolific week for him) about how mama 1) likes turning off the lights and 2) does not like hitting, I don’t think this is affection, I think its aggression. He’s 2 so he has been all about asserting dominance lately like not eating food and stuff, and I think uncovering mama’s deepest secrets like this is just another step in his ultimate psychological warfare
Legal Financial Advice
I’m not a lawyer so I don’t have to say “this is not legal advice” before I tell someone how to tie their shoes3
We’re about to burn through a huge chunk of our savings4 and therefore I can no longer afford The Duckstack’s Paid Subscribers, therefore I must ask you to upgrade to the Free Tier. Get on the free tier and carry some water, do some work for a change. Here are some of the benefits of the Free Tier:
Access weekly to the incredible catalogue of Duckstack Posts
Freedom from the abuse regularly hurled at Paid Subscribers, no longer being a Duckstack 2nd class citizen, but joining the ranks of a full fledged Free Subscriber Citizen
Access to all the Rights and Privileges of Duckstack Citizenship5
The flattery of The Duckstack’s patron, bobdaduck, who would be flattered if you subscribed.
…Refreshments? Idk I haven’t thought this far ahead. Vouchers?
You can tell your friends you’re a “Duckstacker™”6
Children’s Games
Multi Level Marketing as an paperclip AI
When I was fresh out of high school7 I got a job offer in the mail, which was really cool8 since I hadn’t like, applied for any jobs. VECTOR MARKETING was the company name, which even sounded vaguely tech-y and I was like “yeah maybe I could use some money, I could take a job right now.” And so like any reasonable person I looked up vector marketing’s website, which was really remarkably uninformative. I couldn’t find any detail about what the company was or did or where it was located, except maybe a single mention of some association to cutlery. The Wikipedia article was much more informative. Right off the bat, I learned that:
They’re a Multi Level Marketing company
They get sued basically weekly for refusing to give prospective employees a job description
Most people who work for them end up losing money due to travel expenses etc
Its very important to them that you know they’re (extremely technically) not a pyramid scheme
When lawsuits are successful against them and courts order them to be honest they simply stop doing business in that entire state
So, obviously, I went to the job interview.
The mail letter didn’t contain any details about anything other than that Vector Marketing was “definitely a company” and promised a whopping (at the time) $17.00/hr salary9, but I was looking forward to getting some interview experience under my belt at the very least. Turns out it would be my first and only experience with something called a “group interview”, which is apparently the common hiring practice of extremely gray market companies that don’t care about employee10 quality.
They sat us all in a room with elementary school desks, and we waited for the “interviewer” to show up. I saw some friends there, friends who I had a decent hunch hadn’t researched the company beforehand, and it wasn’t long before the interviewer arrived to blow us away…
…With a demonstration of how amazing Cutco™ brand knives are. No interviewing at all, he got us all in there as a “job interview” to just give us a sales pitch for these knives which we would literally have to buy “if we wanted the job”. The sales pitch was kinda neat I guess, he cut a penny in half which I’ve never tried so I don’t know if that’s impressive but
Anyway after an hour of knives he told us what “the job” was which was “sell knives for me”. "You see,” he told us, slicking back his greasy hair, “your friends and family, they are all financial assets, and you can transmute them into money by exploiting their relationship with you. You can turn your network into customers, you can turn your customers relatives into customers, you can do anything, you are Master Mahan, the master of this great secret11”. There was a lot of buzzwords in this presentation, “direct marketing” was a really common one, where you go to people’s houses and cut their pennies in half. I raised my hand: “How is this different from door to door sales?” He stopped. He stared agape for multiple seconds, blinking, lost. Nobody had ever asked him a question before. Finally he stammered: “Because its direct marketing.” and moved on. There was all the standard stuff about “since you buy product from us, you’re the owner of your own business, you’re a free man.”
Then he invited us into his office one by one to administer in private blood oaths and rituals binding us to him instead of God, which I declined. Later I saw many of those familiar faces from the “interview” posting on facebook about how they just “oh baby sold another set of cutco knives” and I don’t know, maybe they still work there today, posting the same link on facebook day after day, dreaming about meeting new people and turning them into kitchenware garbage bins. I imagine them to be content.
Mike’s New Car
15 iterations and counting
The Little One has discovered the Monsters Inc short “Mike’s new car” and demands to watch it incessantly. He laughs and laughs every time, I think he likes watching people get smashed and ground up in car motors and stuff12, which leaves me really dubious about letting him keep watching the thing, but on the other hand I’m really fascinated to learn how many times he has to watch it to finally get tired of re-watching the thing.
You know, “they”.
in both senses of course
This is not legal advice
Our non-emergency savings. We’re fine.
You have the right to remain silent, you have the right to honor your father and mother, you have the right to receive a weekly Duckstack newsletter, you have the right to an attorney when brought before a Duckstack Court of Law. Other rights pending approval, these rights are held to be inalienable, you cannot send them to other planets, they are nontransferable, one set of rights per Free Subscriber, valid through the lifetime of The Duckstack and related properties (probably forever), void if shot into the sun
Your friends will love being told this
I’m years expired out of high school now, absolutely moldy, as far as high school is concerned
sketchy
Which was a blatant lie lol they’re strictly commissioned no salary whatsoever
“employee”, employee was definitely in quotes for this company
Moses5:29 And Satan said unto Cain: Swear unto me by thy throat, and if thou tell it thou shalt die; and swear thy brethren by their heads, and by the living God, that they tell it not; for if they tell it, they shall surely die; and this that thy father may not know it; and this day I will deliver thy brother Abel into thine hands.
30 And Satan sware unto Cain that he would do according to his commands. And all these things were done in secret.
31 And Cain said: Truly I am Mahan, the master of this great secret, that I may murder and get gain. Wherefore Cain was called Master Mahan, and he gloried in his wickedness.
32 And Cain went into the field, and Cain talked with Abel, his brother. And it came to pass that while they were in the field, Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and slew him.
Is this normal toddler behavior his favorite Finding Nemo character was the barracuda