Slick Click
The greasy cameramen are selling at rapidly dropping prices
Turn your head and duckstack
Welcome to Duckstack Town. A little microcosm of the world full of hustling and bustling1. Unfortunately, we live in a fallen world, and towns need maintenance. I think you're the right person for the job.
First, all the chimneys are so dusty. Have you ever looked in a chimney? They are extremely dusty. I have allergies, so we’re going to need someone (not me) to crawl down there and sweep them out. We want to make this easy for you though, so we’ve got what we’re calling a “broom suit” that you can don to maximize your wiggling efficiency, and if you get stuck we’ve got a crane to pull you out. Bachelors degree required.
If you’re not really the sweeping type, that’s okay. I can’t exactly blame you (due to my allergies2) so we have another problem. You see all these gothic lamp posts around town? We need a lamp lighter to set them up every night. You’ve probably seen lots of lamps like them in your day, but you see these are stuck in the ground. Its kind of unseemly, isn’t it? The town would be much nicer if they were floating in the air like a Japanese lantern show. So we need someone to pump them full of helium through their base spigot. Now I must warn you, there are some job hazards. Those lamp’s have real flames, which happens to be combustible when you pump pressurized helium into it. The glass is reinforced, but this still didn’t turn out well for the last guy we hired, who has a different job now. We’re confident with your ingenuity you’ll have the whole flammability problem solved in no time.
The other thing we need I think is a misspelling, it says “cop”? I think it means we need coppers. Electricity isn’t free3, and someone’s got to pave all our roads with copper to get it to where it needs to go. Nobody knows how to do this. I am suggesting paint. Worst case scenario we stop having a walkable city, which I’m okay with. We’re open to other ideas though.
Duckstack Etymology: Easy Peasy
Lemons are not known for squeezing people, either.45
Whats so easy about peas, anyway? I will tell you: We learn from Leo Tolstoy’s epic book “war and peas” that peas are the opposite of war. Something to think about.
Sign Seeking
Looking for a sign? We have radioactivity warning, stop, men working, and don’t cross the median in stock.
One of the things that makes God so scary is he knows so much more than you. Its like talking to a teacher who has a billion Ph.Ds in his field and you’re entry level, and its like, “I don’t know if I’m even capable of understanding his explanation/solution let alone predicting it. So its easy to slip into the most timid prayers imaginable. “uh, your will be done, whatever that is”. Why are you even praying at that point? (Its different to pray his will be done in tragedy and similar situations, of course). If you get some experience with God though, you start to trust him because you notice some fairly strong patterns. This has led me and others to conclude, “God is a really nice guy once you get to know him.”
But some people pray and shout all day and don’t really get to know God, and the reason is given in Mark: Signs follow them that believe. To a modern rationalist, this sounds really unfair. "um, that’s not scientific. That’s assuming the premise. That’s a logical fallacy”. I have had these thoughts before. WRONG. It actually makes perfect sense given God’s position as Heavenly Father.
You want your kids to grow, so you give support to the kids who are behaving as though they are going to do correct things, and not trash your house at the slightest opportunity, and so on. If my kids ask for my car keys, the first thing I’m going to say is “no, you’re three years old”, but the second thing I am going to say (when they’re older) is “What are you going to do with them?” To cut to the bottom line: God behaves in a manner dependent on your trustworthiness.
We studied Korihor this week in the Book of Mormon. Korihor famously asks for a sign to be convinced God exists. I’ve met a lot of korihors, even from modern sects of Christianity6. Because what happens is they get all rational and start frantically looking for reasons the sign isn’t true, in other words they aren’t asking with real intent. When someone cross examines your faith, the only reason they do so is to satisfy themselves that it is groundless, and if they can find an angle that promises to rationalize your experience they will take it, and if you counter that they’ll find another angle, into infinity. Anyone who has argued with people like this knows how fruitless this ends up being.
The real issue is that rationality is not that great for determining truth. You don’t rationally reason out your relatives existence from first principles, you just meet them, “this is your cousin”, oh okay. You don’t hit them with a hammer and break out a protractor to test how much mass per volume they aught to have, you just go with your experience and that’s right pretty much 100% of the time except when someone specifically tries to trick you- which happens at a negligible rate comparatively. This is a way, way higher hit rate than science, and is much faster.
So rationality is a fallback, meaning it is deployed only when dealing with two situations: First, when something is so complex that you cannot mentally trust any heuristics to be accurate, and second, when someone reached a conclusion you don’t like so you’re trying to retroactively disprove it. That’s what rationality is for: self justification.
When Korihor asks for a sign, he’s asking for information he can use to demonstrate, to himself, how flimsy the foundation for Alma’s faith is. Unfortunately God is real and he gets his sign, which is “getting maimed7” Korihor loses the ability to speak and everyone makes fun of him until he dies, the end. Pretty drastic, but Korihor was a special case and a very influential person.
Contrast it to a different Sign seeker: Gideon in the Bible, who asks God for multiple signs, and gets the sign every time, and God doesn’t even maim him or let people make fun of him. The difference is of course his heart. Gideon wanted to do what God told him to do. He was asking for the confidence to make a leap he was planning to take. He was asking for confirmation, not justification. Mormon in the Book of Mormon says if you want to know the Book of Mormon is true, you have to pray with a sincere heart and real intent, which is far more of a filter than it initially seems. Usually, people investigating the church don’t really start getting huge confirmations from God until they’re already starting to walk the path- giving up smoking, preparing to break up or marry someone they’re already living with, things like that. Actions signaling intent.
I don’t know about you, but for me, I make a lot of promises to myself that I don’t keep. I intended to run out and check the mail. I intended to do this other thing. I intended to publish The Duckstack on time. If I was to judge me, these actions would be the simplest measure of sincerity- “alright bob, you say you’ll do that, but are you taking steps towards it?” Heaven knows (and worse, I know) whether I am.
Therefore, if you want a sign from God, you need to march off in his general direction, blindly. Its not anti science, its tokens of sincerity. If you’ve been having trouble finding God, the problem is a lack of intention, nearly every time. God will speak to you while you are yet a sinner, but he will not heap condemnation on your head by nagging you with right and wrong. A parent wants their child to grow, which means you have to be growing. Nobody can do it for you, not even a prophet8. A parent will be merciful on a child who is trying, but never a child who is defiant. That is simple logic, but just as true and as 2+2. Relationships exist at a pre-rational level, and have a math and method all their own. You can’t use science to prove God, because God isn’t a science, he is your Dad.
History
Still sick, I labor and slog and huff and puff to bring you these hit clips
Infant daughter: “ah.. ahhhh… CHOO” It was just like a cartoon
toddler while mama chops brussels sprouts: “ow you hurt me, ow you hurt me, ow that hurt me” for every. single. one. He gives voice to the voiceless. A true advocate for the people.9
Mama trying to teach toddler about plurals. “this is a foot, and both of these are feet.” and then he ARGUES. “No, that is a feet, and this is a feet.” Where does he get this arrogance from?10
Toddler to me buckling in his seatbelt: “you did it!”
I don't know what he's doing but he's hopping up on my lap, wagging his pointer fingers at himself in the mirror disappointingly, then going “ahhh!” and jumping backwards onto his head over and over. No idea what’s going on but its pretty cute
Nephew: I know where this restaurant cooks its food. Me: “In the kitchen?” “how did you know that?” “uh, lucky guess”
Rotten Liars
They aren’t dirty rotten liars though, they bathed as recently as this morning
You might have heard it said that the time is now, and this is blatantly false.
You see, the time has always been now. Its a part of “time” generally, its like saying the water is wet. Maybe this strikes some as a deep observation but here is the problem: If the time has always been now, then the time is now in the past too. This means that the time isn’t now, and is in fact ancient history, just like it is now. The upshot of all this is that there’s a lot of nows in the past, and those nows are not currently now. When someone tells you the time is now, ask them which one? Because if they pick a time in the present, then the time they pick is instantly in the past, making them a liar. And if they pick a time in the future, then that isn’t now by definition. Though it might be later. For an instant. But this will help you to expose them. They’ll lose all credibility when they can’t even identify when now is11. Please only deploy this on your enemies.
Ducksnax
Lurking
In that order
my allergies are just as made up as the rest of this, by the way
we keep it in tiny prisons
Unless fired from a rocket
This is also the origin of the popular gangster phrase: “put the squeeze on ‘em.”. It was lemons.
“Where’s the gold plates?” Your mom.
Should have asked to see what was behind door number 2
However, and this is important, listening to the Word of God has a tendency to induce faith. When you steep yourself in reminders to exercise faith then you are more likely to remember to do it, make a habit of it, and start building trust with your maker. That’s when you’ll start to see him dispensing the power of God into your life. That’s when you start getting your “allowance”. When you’re doing chores. Not because God can’t do them, but because God wants you to have a work ethic.
the… Brussels sprout people.
Perhaps its… Um… Genetic.
unlike you