Mellow Hello

Each emotionland has their own greetings, and none recognize any others as legitimate.

Jun 05, 2025

We all live in a yellow duckstack

Art: *Echo of a Golden Age*, by Michael Cheval

Today’s Duckstack was abducted by aliens. They prodded our text with their horrible probes. And then they returned us, apparently unharmed. You have to believe me. It really happened, I saw them with my very own i’s. If any of you writes “The Cowstack” hide your newsletter its probably next

How To Play the Piano

Not to be confused with our other hit sections, “How to Gray the Piano”, “How to Stay the Piano.”, and “How to Flay the Piano”.

Just hit the keys man with hammers I don’t care

How To Gray the Piano

Not to be confused with our other hit sections, “How to Play the Piano”, “How to Stay the Piano.”, and “How to Flay the Piano”.

If you don’t believe the world is black and white, there’s no need to let a piano symbolically encroach on your worldview. Take it outside and dump paint on it until satisfied.

How To Stay the Piano

Not to be confused with our other hit sections, “How to Gray the Piano”, “How to Play the Piano.”, and “How to Flay the Piano”.

If you’re a piano staying amateur, you might benefit from using something simple like command strips stuck to the floor or wall, but if you’re advanced you can graduate to staples, magnets, or even nails (using the hammer from earlier)

How To Flay the Piano

Not to be confused with our other hit sections, “How to Gray the Piano”, “How to Stay the Piano.”, and “How to Play the Piano”.

I’m not an expert but… Potato peeler? Probably doesn’t make the piano taste good but they’re already pretty inedible so it can’t hurt I reckon

A Missing Section

So mysterious

I spent a lot of time writing an article on something else, but couldn’t get through it. Revelation to Joseph Smith describes it as “a stupor of thought” and it was one of the rules of thumb Joseph Smith was told to use for whether he should write something or not. Assuming I was being directed from God and not just extremely sleepy, I need to think some more about what I was writing, and understand it better, or maybe now just isn’t the time.

In absence of that, I’ll share something interesting from my scripture study this week, in the book of 2 Samuel. An excellent book. I highly recommend it. Chapter 5 verse 19, and chapter 5 verses 23-24, show David having a basic, regular old discussion with the LORD (i.e. the premortal Jesus) about military tactics. And you will find similar instances throughout these books, people having discussions with God.

What is significant here is that David was not a prophet. He was a chosen king, but the prophet at the time was Samuel- in ranking, David was just a regular guy, having regular discussions with God about how best to proceed in his employment1. But more significantly, God answers. God gives David career advice like its the most casual thing in the world including prophesy about the future. This is the kind of common relationship the Old Testament peoples had with God, before their apostasy- Their prayers were two way conversations, with God responding to them with words and specific directions and affirmations.

This is how I talk to God- when I inquire of the Lord, he speaks to me and tells me what to do, sometimes casually dropping prophesies about the future as though they are mundane, but I am not special. I believe God wants to talk to all of his children, and you do not need to be a prophet to do so. If you pray to the Father in the name of Christ, Christ promises that he will send wisdom234. So after you have prayed, in sincerity, try taking a listen, and marking down what thoughts and feelings come to you. You might not know they’re from God with assurety, but assuredly God responds to the act of praying, and I believe if you pray in Christ’s name then God will at least guide your thoughts a little bit- if you’re willing.

Feelings 2.0

Tired of boring normal feelings? Finding yourself spending a lot of time on upkeep? Try upgrading! With our new set of feelings, you'll feel like a new person, guaranteed. Here’s an overview of just a small sampling:

Pumice: One of our scratchiest new feelings
Chalice: a blend of sadness and happiness for greater feeling efficiency, with a rich spectrum of subflavors that can be blended in to add just the right aftertone. Anger? Ennui? Vanilla? We’ve got just what you want and more.
Garlic: Garlic, but as an emotion.
Nostalgia: Nostalgia for the past is now more versatile, and also works in the future. You can have “nostalgiations” with your past/future self, feeling Nostalgia for each other at the same time, something many people describe as extremely satisfying.
Chickoree: When you’re feeling playfully malicious, you will start to feel chickoree, for sure. This emotion keeps you safe from failed sincerity.
“The Waddles”: A morose, somber emotion, with grandiose delusions. When you get the waddles, you’ll have the drive to go places you’ve never considered going before, grimly.
Grape Punch: Feels just like it tastes.

History

No medical emergencies here, yesirree. Nottthing happened.

The baby will walk but only if she’s got something to lift. She's commonly seen lugging around teddy bears, boxes, and other items much too large for her. And if she isn’t, she crawls.

Toddler was playing somewhere and got hurt, and I asked him “are you hurt?” and he responded “um, I need ice cream.” like it was the most obvious thing in the world. I couldn’t help but believe him.

For some reason the toddler has decided that sticking things in his mouth is a fun joke, which did NOT lead to any medical emergencies this week that I’m going to write about. Anyway I was showing him my bag of dice and letting him play and then I found a bouncy ball and was showing him how to play with them and I was like “Hey check this out, these rubber balls can bounce” demonstrating the tile could make them bounce pretty high, and as soon as I bounced it his jaw hit the floor, and like 7 dice spilled out of his mouth comically. I felt like I was in a scene in a freaking cartoon.

The toddler got a nice fountain drink with one of those plastic lids. Which he quickly got stuck on his finger, with the straw teeth digging into his thumb. I tried to do it gently but he was pretty distressed so in the end I just ripped the lid to get it off without cutting him. Which was NOT the right move. “ahh you broke it!” and crying and crying. I told him I'm sorry. He told me, “Sorry doesn't cut it.” I told him “you don't have to forgive me” and he told me “you're in trouble!”. And then he stuck his finger in it again and got it stuck again and started panicking and crying and screaming and I had to help him out of it again.

The toddler bringing me a mold tray that I’d been using to make ice because our icemaker is broken: “I want these ice to be gummies”

Toddler very loudly in the middle of church pointing at a bald guy: “His hair came right off!”. And then, fearing that I didn’t understand, he repeated it again, louder. So I was like “yes kid we’re in church” and then he repeated it again, more insistently, (and loudly) “His hair came right off!”

Duckstack Science: Water Balloon Fight With Pufferfish

sploosh

Here at The Duckstack, we believe that the problem with water balloons is that they aren’t reusable5. So we started with a theory. We know pufferfishes fill up with water automatically. This makes them the ideal candidates for Bio-reusable Water Balloons6, and our lab boys devised an ingenious system to make pufferfishes inflate and deflate according to the needs of the water balloon fight. The trick is to make them feel threatened and nonthreatened. To shrink them down, we built a spa system with face pampers and luxurious massage jets to calm them right down when you set the empty puffer in the water bucket. And the good news is just grabbing them out of the water is a good enough threat to get them to swell to three times their size. All in all our scientists had an absolute blast throwing blowfish back and forth in the lab, and all the computers and metallic tiles are absolutely soaked! Their poison kind of sucks though, and most of our scientists have themselves swelled up to three times their normal sizes, from all the chucking pufferfishes at each other through the air. However, the pufferfish LOVE IT. We had them circling right back for more each time, happy smiles on their little or 3x-size-giant faces as the gracefully sailed only to impale head Scientist Gregory’s cheek. We expect this product to be ready for market soon, and we’re very excited to introduce it to our normal distributors. Keep your eye out for summer fun, hitting shelves and soaking them near you, soon!

Trade Goods: “Utah— A Review”

Utah, or Utahn’t?

I chanced upon an interesting article this week from a nonmember talking about their observations having moved to Utah. It touches on a lot of cultural issues that I think many of my readers may be interested in, and it was kind of a fun read, since I grew up here and take most of it for granted.

Link