Razor Praisor
I'm a sappy shrub swordsman, I weep when I fight
Friend…. Or Duckstack?
With a new year comes new possibilities, challenges, and opportunities, and trials, and prospects, and hurdles, and duckstacks. Not that its a new year. But you can imagine if it was! There would be so much to explore, so many new things! Not that there aren’t new things now. But you can imagine if there weren’t! Then the new year would be truly unique, and laden with meaning. You could set new years resolutions for yourself, not that you can’t do that now, but you can imagine if you couldn’t! And you couldn’t keep them! Not that you can’t not fail to keep them now. But you can imagine if otherwise you can not!
History
To understand the present, you must understand the past.
In ancient times, duckstacks were printed1 on stone tablets, and the mail boy would toss them through your window and you just had to hope it didn’t hit your dog, young people don’t know how good they have it these days.
Then, as technology advanced, paper was invented and gained traction as a popular writing medium, which The Duckstack ignored, sticking to its metaphorical guns2 and continuing to be delivered the old fashioned way, by being thrown at you, on rocks. Unfortunately, new innovations in liability law rendered this method increasingly tenuous. For a while, this was mitigated through Duckstack insurance, where if you or a loved one were injured in a duckstack accident, emergency services would immediately compensate you in fair value of Duckstacks3 . Pragmatically speaking, this meant burying you in rocks until you called it square.
Eventually, however, The Duckstack moved to paper. This proved to be a renaissance, because you could produce a rock injury’s equivalent value in Duckstacks extraordinarily quickly. Furthermore, you could wrap the Duckstacks around a rock much smaller than a stone slab, which enabled Duckstack errand boys to make much faster deliveries. This was before the invention of the internet.
With the internet, came information superhighways and other city slicker hustle and bustle, but also increased competition, including the first ever Substack newsletter, probably started by a guy named Chris. Well, we had no idea what this email stuff was, but our delivery boys were getting around pretty well on the information superhighway, so we went with their recommendations and modernized. Now, hundreds of satisfied customers4 receive their Duckstacks personally, in the form of a computer thrown through their window, strapped to a rock, with a Duckstack letter wrapped around it. It just goes to show, the future is incredibly bright.
Duckstack Emergency Preparedness: Spontaneous combustion
When you roll a natural 1 on an attempt to sit at your desk job
They likely taught you in school about “stop, drop, and roll”, as if lighting on fire is something that just happens to people. Well, we believe them. So what do you do if you find yourself on fire? First, Don’t Panic. Fire can smell fear. The fire will burn hotter as it seeks to consume you, and will be emboldened due to your display of weakness. Knowing that the fire is dancing on your skin will likely be stressful, and it truly will be a matter of life or death, so remember to behave as though you do not know what fire is. When you stop, drop, and roll, you must act like it is the most natural thing in the world, so that the fire does not catch wise to your schemes. As you gently roll on the ground, as if you are a child rolling in a bed of flowers, the fire will be lulled to sleep, which should (if I am right) save your life. Remember to be neither too vigorous nor lethargic. As you roll, imagine you are kneading the ground into a fine dough. That is the level of rolling you should be at. With any luck, you’ll live to see another day!
The Duckstack recommends printing out this emergency advice and putting it on your fridge.
Eggy Behaviors
You are what you eat. Violence.
Sometimes, or always, our toddler will climb into places he “aught not to be in”. Of course this is subjective- My wife and I are the ones who decide what “aught” consists of. It is up to him to learn the house rules so that he can achieve household success (not dying for example) but he has difficulty with arbitrary rules. Our toddler is a passionate young man with strong feelings and vast capability for experiencing joy and I’m sure he feels boredom very intensely which is why he keeps climbing on top of the couch and jumping onto our heads for example.
Of course, the rules aren’t for us. Not entirely. One reason we want him to avoid his sort of edgy transgressive behavior is for his own safety, and also because a lot of these things can get you in trouble as an adult5 and our duty as parents is to give him correct social tools so that he can be a successful adult. But a lot of the rules are definitely for us though. I don’t just not want him to get hurt, I also don’t want to have to deal with him getting hurt. I will, obviously, but I would rather that time free for focusing on other stuff. So there’s an aspect of morality where its like “try to avoid causing trouble for others.” I don’t think this should be like, a top priority guiding principle, but obviously it does do things, there is a pragmatic benefit to it. I infer from this that it is good to ask yourself occasionally, “am I going to cause God trouble with this”?
No parent let alone a parent who is God is going to expect perfection from their kids of course, and you can’t learn if you don’t push boundaries sometimes. Even in adulthood, there are boundaries that should be pushed, and its the edgy people who do the pushing.
The trick to being an adult is continuing to view yourself as a child. I’m not good at this but I’ve seen good results from it. It really helps to contextualize emotions and stuff and is a solid check in general, but it also brings in that “humility” characteristic that the scriptures praise so often. But as in all of these things, God’s purpose in putting us here is so that we can grow up. Therefore, the faster you can learn consequences for your actions, the more moral you are, probably.
So the other day the toddler dived off of the diving board (couch) into my lap headfirst and I was sitting in such a way that my legs formed a pocket between the couch and he just got totally stuck upside down, which was somewhat distressing to him. But what did he expect? These are the fruits of his labors!
This type of thing happens fairly often, and I always ask him “Is this what you wanted?” because I feel like that’s the most important lesson in situations like this. No? This isn’t what you wanted? I will help you extract yourself if you ask me for it, but I want you to learn. God gave us parenthood to teach us about himself.
hsitory
The toddler has a bathroom song for when he finds us on the toilet. "Old McDonald had a poop! EIEIO!"
Jethro got an M&M themed blanket once because he likes M&Ms and it was a good souvenir. He was cuddled under it and told us that he was “a hungry, tired M&M.”
My wife was telling me about horoscopes. It was something like Ares would would have good luck with Cancer this week and Jethro chimed in “Yup. That’s what makes me sick!”
The toddler was having a 4 hour long melt down and we weren’t sure what’s wrong, finally I got him to drink some milk and less than 10 seconds later he was wandering around the kitchen with a giant loaf of french bread chanting “Happy Bread!”
The toddler also had an instance of waking up in the middle of the night, crying, and he tearfully told us that he needed rocked. After mama had rocked him to calmness for a while, he looked up at her and said “Uh, mama. You supposed to be asleep.”
Ducksnax
Fruit
######EXPERIMENTAL FEATURE BE CAREFUL#######
a chisel pressed to stone… a printing press..
slings
One Cent
Or else
I remember when I climbed up the couch and jumped on my coworkers face, I did NOT have fun explaining that one to HR
Nuggets of wisdom & more!
Loved:
"So there’s an aspect of morality where its like “try to avoid causing trouble for others.” I don’t think this should be like, a top priority guiding principle, but obviously it does do things, there is a pragmatic benefit to it. I infer from this that it is good to ask yourself occasionally, “am I going to cause God trouble with this”?"
"The trick to being an adult is continuing to view yourself as a child. I’m not good at this but I’ve seen good results from it. It really helps to contextualize emotions and stuff and is a solid check in general, So there’s an aspect of morality where its like “try to avoid causing trouble for others.” I don’t think this should be like, a top priority guiding principle, but obviously it does do things, there is a pragmatic benefit to it. I infer from this that it is good to ask yourself occasionally, “am I going to cause God trouble with this”? you can learn consequences for your actions, the more moral you are, probably."