Plaster Caster
Illegal mud witchcrafts originate the drowning test- sink or swim, you're dirty, then clean.
Drawn and Duckstacked
Ah, customers, welcome. Or readers rather, since you don’t buy anything from me. Sort of parasitic that way, don’t you think? But Yes, welcome dearest parasites to my little corner of the internet; gather around as I ply my trade. Handle The Duckstack wares with care, and by wares I mean paragraphs, because I am really just writing down words here. They’re very official though, aren’t they? Yes, authentic Duckstack words, genuine imports from Duckstackistan1. You pay extra for that quality. Well, you don’t pay me. I’m basically your slave. Anyway, your hard earned-wares, for your perusal. Peruse with care. You break it you bought it. For free.
A Girl Worth Fighting For
Why We Do, What We Do
Integral to my philosophy of sociology is the concept that shrines cause wickedness, not the other way around. I take this from solomon2, but it might be fun to apply it fractally at various levels of metaphor to every part of life- building shrines to righteousness in your habits, home, moral code, or word choice, or perhaps even just people you spend time around. Someone once told me that you are the aggregate of the 5 people you spend the most time with, and I don’t know that that’s true but its certainly something to think about. But I’m a big picture guy, and my brain is built for sorting and pattern construction, and I’m inclined to be very concerned about politics.
When people ask why I bother to care about a lot of this unsavory political stuff, my answer can only be that I think it matters, of course. Politics is fake to a lot of people, and I think that’s okay and should be fine, I strongly believe politics shouldn’t matter. But I have an intuition that terrifies me, a shadow that stalks the fringes of my life, through acquaintances who I’m too loosely associated with to influence regularly, who months or years too late I will hear stepped on some political landmine and got their lives blown up. One friend wasn’t prepared for his wife’s feminism to lead her out of the church. Another wasn’t prepared for culture war nonsense to end with her therapist convincing her to divorce him, when all he had ever tried was to provide and be good to their family. Another didn’t see any counterarguments to gay marriage, left his faith, and now spends 100% of his time being bitter on social media. I know ten of each of these guys, except instead of gay marriage it was marijuana, or pornography. The FDA just had a counsel on a new birth control drug which causes cancer, and most argued to legalize it because not doing so would be racist and sexist. None of the girls who will be advised to take this will hear about the debate, only the outcome. Just like when homosexuality was voted out of the DSM by a tiny minority, and now everyone thinks its a fashion statement and get legitimately mad when conservatives try to remove LGBT-themed pornography from elementary schools in Florida
You may not be interested in politics. I pray politics never takes an interest in you.
But Politics, Politics, it will drive you insane. There is so much noise, the news cycle is twenty minutes long, a new atrocity every hour. Most people cannot handle this. People are not built for it. You can’t live in a constant state of fear, you can’t raise your family in a cage, you can’t torch all your friendships over the fear they’re taking a different political course by an angle that’s off a third of a degree from Perfect Truth. Most people go insane this way when they first get into politics, like a baby taking their first steps into outrage, and then throwing a stupid tantrum and looking stupid3. Humans evolved to hear about perhaps one village tragedy per decade, our water is chlorinated, we’re all bleached green. And every tragedy has a religious bent to it, narrative after narrative. You can’t expect everyone to forge through this, it isn’t fair. Maybe it will be required, maybe that’s what our prophet meant when he talked about how everyone would need personal revelation to guide them constantly a few years back. I hope not. But if you are going to get political I do think it is too charged to do without the spirit, you will certainly get electrocuted. So you have to engage with this stuff at a distance, wearing a mask, impersonal. I’m not good at getting personal. Like talking about current events, it can feel like media is controlling you rather than the other way around.
Its gotta be a balance, right?- the less you’re integrated into the culture, the more you can get away with being ignorant of, and the more integrated you are, the more bombs you are going to find. You find the balance of how close your family is to society and decide how many defenses you need to set up. Moats are the price we pay to live in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. And I think this localization approach is a good metric for how much you should care about any wider media incitement, and if you get into a habit of doing this first when presented with any news story, then it puts you in the right state on approach. If you go in asking “Do I really need to worry about this?” Then you immediately give yourself agency to act rationally, and then you don’t need to be afraid.
On the old internet, there was also a saying on forums, when new people came into your group and started mucking about and violating community culture, they would tell you to “lurk moar” (more). Lurking is watching without commenting or acting, which frees you from making mistakes while you evaluate the rules, or, in this application, the dangers. Because the dangers will be different for everyone, and if you determine to learn by experience you’re going to get a lot of splintered thumbs. Waiting is a huge advantage on the internet- you really can process everything before you act on it4, you can wait to make the best judgement.
And politics is a matter of judgement- and like all practice, you’ll get better a lot faster if you practice doing it correctly at first, slowly, and gradually increasing your speed. As my dad would say when coaching chess: Sit on your hands5
We tried to toaster all these things, here are the results
Your things are toast
meat: make sure its not set to bagel so it knows you're not toasting bread
frisbee: didn't really fit so it only got partially toasted, theoretically you could rotate and slowly toast each edge but that would be very slow and I think the previous edges would be cold by the time you would be done
Fine-toothed comb: In theory, each of the little prongs would serve as a focal point for the toasting, creating a gradient effect with possibly fire on each of the tips when it pops out. In reality, our fine-toothed comb was mostly made of metal and plastic, and nothing of the sort happened. We tried it with a priceless medieval relic comb and it worked, however. Wood does not toast as fast as bread does, so leave it in at least 8 minutes.
Human hand: One of our Brave Duckstack Scientists put his hand in it. “Ouch, ow, owie”, he said.
Live electric wire: A little sparks here and there, buying sparklers seems simpler
Live pigeon: “Ouch, ow, owie”, the pigeon said. In this way, pigeons and humans are very similar6
Another Toaster: We forgot what brands we used but by clamping the tongs together the toasters were locked in molten mortal metal combat, screeching and hissing. The more expensive toaster won by virtue of points, without either toaster succumbing to submission
sneakers: we only tried nike, but it smells bad and the rubber gunked up the toaster, so we're stopping the experiment here
Histi
Natural Disaster Alert: The toddler has discovered the word ‘no’
Jethro has always been an extremely pedantic child, infuriating to me who likes to play fast and loose with words. I’d tell him to let me put his boots on, but I’d call them shoes, and he’d be like “Uh, those are BOOTS”, and he’s been this way for years. So yesterday his brother comes in saying “egg” over and over again, and just as panic was rising in us we saw that what he had was a pecan. And Jethro was like “That’s not an EGG!” All condescending and indignant, and we were like “Oh yeah, what is it?” and he was like “Its a coco-nut!”
Had to do some work and left the toddler unattended and he put two things of toilet paper in the toilet, an early fascination with plumbing, perhaps?
We’ve been preparing the basement to turn into a playroom, so we spent a good deal of time grinding down the concrete floor, and I am pleased to announce several evolutionary adaptations.
My sense of smell has turned into concrete
I have evolved four more arms, to efficiently swap out shopvac ammo cartridges (filters)
To extract oxygen from my lungs, I have converted them into crushers, pistons cycling rapidly to process the concrete, the way a fish pulls air from water.
detachable knees
diamond sandpaper hands
Toddler has a hobby of falling asleep in his high chair which his grandparents got to witness this week, its a sign that the food was good. It is also a sign that he missed his naps
Uhhh TBA. Patent Pend ing. OC Do Not Steal. But our imports are definitely from there. I hope. Someone is in huge trouble if they’re not. Someone is fired.
the philosopher-king who charted my philosophy by being a huge dork
unlike me, right? Ha Ha
I never edit the Duckstack
thankfully I can type the duckstack with my nose
Racism is solved