Rock Shock
We're in a housing bubble, an airlocked city floats on the breeze
Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Duckstack
According to the best scientific data available1, there’s only two types of people in the world: duckstack, and hot sauce. Its up to you to decide what type of person you want to be, and you can never change it once you pick. Is this the most important decision you will ever make in your life? No. But it is a decision. You can’t dispute that2. And the calculus of little decisions every day is what souls are made of. So I would say its pretty darn important, that’s what I would say. You’ve been warned, anyway. That’s the legal out of the way, that’s the fine print. What you do now is beyond me, but at least I’m not culpable. I would never be culpable for a duckstacker3.
ENVIRONMENTAL PSA
When you look around you, you may notice that you mainly use your eyes. This is due to the eyes being the main sensory organ for seeing, in fact the number of optic nerves distributed on your nose, tongue, and upon your ears is shockingly small. When light hits objects, it bounces into your eyes like a vacuum cleaner, and your brain calculates the exact positions of objects based on the trajectory and color and shading of the various shapes that it puts together, like a puzzle. Your eyeballs are installed upside down.
How to Fight God
Procedures For Addressing Problematic Scripture Bits 4
Suppose you’re reading the Bible and a dude cuts up his dead maid and mails the parts of her to all the different tribes of Israel. You might say: “That seems a little harsh”5. There are a lot of ways to grapple with the parts of the Bible that make us uncomfortable, and none of them is inherently wrong or less valuable:
Ignore it, and talk about what you want to talk about instead. If you don’t have a stance on how divinely inspired any particular verse is, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with just “shelfing it” and trying to build on what you have. Not everything in the scriptures is maximally important. The danger of course is in building nothing, and then when the question pops up again you have even less of an understanding to try to fit it into.
Directly address it by saying it was wrong and move on. The Bible isn’t Jesus, the apostles got into arguments about church policy, not every word they said was meant to be taken as equal to God’s, and in fact, they say so. Alternatively, (and this is a lot more realistic), you say the scripture was good, and right, but time bounded- modern times would call for different commandments. This angle is a lot more likely to be true, but in a roundabout way ends up becoming path 1- if you don’t try to understand why a commandment might have been inspired for its time, then you can’t build a strong foundation in the gospel- When you do this too often, you start making up a church (and God) unto yourself.
Pray until God explains it to you. You can always just ask the guy, right? Maybe he’ll give a partial answer, but remember you are allowed to pester him until he finally gives you what you want6. This could be a waste of time, or it could not be worth the time, or it could be outright damaging to you if you ask for something you shouldn’t have, or won’t be careful with7.
I have been observing many people have these discussions this week relating to Paul’s thoughts on women, in 1 Timothy 28. And I am seeing a lot of ignoring it and saying “lets talk about powerful women in the Bible instead”, and I’m seeing a lot of saying that it was just “a product of his time”, but I am seeing very few real attempts at explanations, or trying to discover “is this right” or “how could this make my life better, in theory?” I know among the Latter-Day Saints there was
I see the scriptures as something to conform to, and learn from, so I would encourage you to try to do a little more of method 3, as the spirit directs you, and I’ll give a few thoughts of my own, as I am wont to do.
As many of you know, Latter-Day Saints serve missions throughout the world, without input in where they get sent9, and they serve for 2 years, knocking doors10, without pay, and this tends to be a pretty arduous experience. For a long time, it has been a church-wide commandment that all men should serve missions, always, and the mission has served as a sort of “coming of age” activity for men. You send boys out and they come home men, or at least a little closer. What they get out depends on what they put into it, whatever. Girls can serve too, but at least from what I’ve seen, a mission doesn’t have the same beneficial experience for them. They don’t go out girls and come back women, and I know a lot of them actually come home with more mental illnesses than they started with. And I suggest that this is a small sample of why women can’t hold the priesthood.
This is a problem, because most women see the priesthood as a symbol of status, since many priesthood roles come with accompanying power, such as a bishop/pastor having authority over his congregation. You can see why women would envy that, and why women would want to escape the curse of Eve which God levied in the garden- to have travail in children. Paul says the same here in Timothy, “Women shall be saved in childbearing”. Not baptism? Apparently not. Not totally. But why wouldn’t you feel shunted by this? I certainly feel shunted by the curse of Adam. But Christ explicitly warned against thinking of the church in terms of status and power dynamics:
Luke 22:24 And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest.
25 And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors.
26 But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve.
Some have also put forth the “Two Trees” theory- That women gained dominion over the “tree” of bringing life into the world, and men gained dominion over the “tree” of leadership, or something like that. That doesn't sound right to me, but it might make more sense to other people. From an evolutionary sense the 40 hour weeks our Bishops put in might have lower impact on their homes than if they were to have the mom out of the house those 40 hours, but honestly watching the behavior of women who agitate to be given the priesthood is sufficiently instructive for me. They protest so aggressively, and with such indignant entitlement, that I am hard pressed to see the merit, from the perspective of a gospel that is to be preached in humility- “Why can they not have the priesthood?” Because then they would stop praying.
In any case it is a truth that God has designed this life for us to grow, and I think men are generally quite content to be lazy, so having responsibility given to them through the priesthood helps them to overcome that weakness, but most of the women in my life are extremely not lazy, and it is pretty easy to observe in other churches that have adopted women pastors that the men all drop out pretty much immediately because they have nothing to do, the women just handle it all, and the churches become a sort of status club for the wives, and then attendance plummets until the church goes extinct. None of this might be the real reason, I’m sure there is much more beneath the surface, but no matter what the reason is, female priesthood never seems to work out11. But I believe if you ask God about this sort of thing he will just tell you. I have never known him to be stingy12.
DUCKSTACK COOKING: Top Ramen
Ideally served from space. Then you would really be on top!
Alright, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way. Your choice bub13. But we’re making Ramen, and you’re going to like it. Salty carbs here we come, get on the salty carb train because we’re going to salty carb town, this train has no brakes or seatbelts, hold onto your hats. What do you need? Water. You’ve got water, don’t you? Put it in a pot, and make it hot, if you dare.
Ramens got a few ways to do it, but you always put the noodles in the water. Let it boil, boil the water, boil the noodles, and once it starts boiling, wait one minute and forty six seconds. Once its boiling, stick a fork in it, and whisk it like eggs, you are going to make this ramen. Pull out a noodle on a fork and bite it. Is it done? Then eat the ramen.
Is ramen not enough for you? There’s no shame in being a thrill seeker. Put the seasoning packet in it. Just rip it open and dump it in. That’s how the ramen water gets its flavor. Flavor is here, baby.
That’s still not enough for you, I can see it in your eye. You don’t want to be like everyone else. You’ve got… A hunger.
Open your freezer, take out a bunch of peas and corn and zucchini and anything else, anything else, it doesn’t even matter, put it in a bowl with water and microwave it covered for like a minute. Then dump it into your ramen. Done.
Eggs. Someone told me that you can put eggs in your ramen. We’re in the belly of the beast now14. Uncharted territory. Do you scramble the egg? Do you drop it in while its cooking like egg drop soup? I do not know.
history
Toddler cries when his food breaks. Unfortunately, food breaks when you eat it.
Out of somewhat nowhere: “mama, can you give me lots of money?”
At the hospital, Jethro calls it “heartbeeps”
Both kids running around the house with laundry baskets over their heads yelling “basket case!” as they run into each other
The toddler who can’t really speak yet sang me happy birthday. Jethro really wanted to buy me this pop the pig board game he played in the hospital that he really liked, and Mama was like “Maybe we should think of some things that papa actually likes?” And Jethro was like “well, papa likes playing games with me, he likes driving in his car, he likes a burger from McDonalds, I think that’s all he likes! No wait, he likes spicy food.” He’s got me to a T, other than that its him that likes McDonalds, not me. But he’s always been one to give gifts as an excuse to get shared with.
Anyway he yelled all day about how excited he was about the pop the pig board game and 12 hours later got it out of the car (with me right there) and told mama “I’m not going to tell papa about his birthday present! He will be so surprised!”
The toddler has been singing this little ditty recently, “yo yo yo” and we had no idea where he got it, but we’ve finally figured it out, because today he was like “yo yo yo. old MacDonald”
toddler looked down the barrel of a sippy cup and got milk in his eye. Which he didn’t like. He said to mama: “Eyes! Eyes! Eyes!”
The best data we have at arms reach is “making things up” but I don’t think that decreases validity or empiricism at all
you can’t even try
I am, weekly, culpable of duckstacking though. I’m the culpablest man alive
PFAPSBS
You might not, maybe that’s normal for you, what do I know
Luke 18:1 And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint;
2 Saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man:
3 And there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary.
4 And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man;
5 Yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.
6 And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith.
7 And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?
8 I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?
I think there a lot more people including me in these situations than we would think.
1 Timothy 2:10 But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works.
11 Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.
12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
15 Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.
This is strictly speaking false because you can always pray to put in a bug with the man upstairs but just like, generally speaking. You say “I’ll go” and wait for your fate.
Knocking doors is starting to be a little bit electronic in the internet age with social media but there’s still plenty of areas where biking door to door is practiced
I would like to think the Latter-Day Saints could be the exception to this, but that in my mind means there’s all the more reason to stay firmly away from the line, and that there would need to be a really serious circumstance to justify it.
God must be rich.
Or… Bubbette? (menacingly)
Uh, your own belly, I guess. Because you’re hungry and making ramen