Spout About
a Duckstack about the spout that spouts about, and spouting about other spouts about.
You will be assigned points for how you navigate this week’s duckstack, some areas to focus on are technique, confidence, and style.
Great news everybody! I have carefully decided to let you read The Duckstack. At no charge, refreshments are provided, in your refrigerator, or pantry, or The Store. (The Store will charge you a warehousing fee, however, because The Store is unaffiliated with The Duckstack.) If anyone catches you reading this, you have my permission to activate the emergency self-destruct sequence and tell them you were “just reading about life.” This should throw them off your track and you should be able to lose them with some fancy maneuvering on a drive to The Store, which should harbor you at no charge until the danger passes. Then you can pick up some refreshments (at no charge, for a small fee) and resume reading The Duckstack (at no charge). My hope is that this will bring you fulfillment.
Lucky Charms
Any sufficiently pointless magic is indistinguishable from holistic medicine
I once worked at a cool warehousing company with my friend and we had the opportunity to witness a hostile takeover by holistic hippies. In some ways this was cool, you don’t get a chance to see too many hippies nowadays, they are a bit of a dying breed. On the other hand, they have a remarkable propensity to acquire unclean spirits as pets.
It all started with a hippie manager, I forget his name because I always referred to him as just “hippie manager”, he was a chill and easygoing guy who drove a scooby doo van covered in carpet. He was once a manager at a new age spiritualism smoothie restaurant which employed a lot of college kids and after he got hired he just sort of started hiring all his old underlings over and we ended up with a dozen of very unskilled laborors doing computer work despite they didn’t know how things like what ctrl+c does. Anyway this was like, two decades ago but they were all very in to whatever the equivalent of tiktok was back then.
Now, these people would give my friend and I pointers1 about aligning our chakras using energy crystals2 and feng shui and chiropractcy3. Apparently there’s some crystals4 that can sense “negative energy” and suck it up from the room, but even holistic magic rocks don’t defy the laws of thermodynamics, so you have to empty out their vacuum bag once in a while by leaving them in the moonlight, or sunlight, “whatever”, to “cleanse5”. My friend and I, being open minded sorts, asked many questions and we are pleased to report that this technology according to its adherents can be weaponized. A very confused coworker once assured me that “yeah, after it has absorbed all the negative energy, I guess you really could give it to someone as a negative energy bomb, I guess.” Most of ‘em that we asked though, they’d clearly never given much thought to the possibilities offered by their system. They should be trying to take over the world!
Later my friend and I went to a new age shop at one of the coworker’s recommendation, and we found all sorts of knickknacks, such as rocks with stickers on them that said “blessed by real Tibetan monks”. So I’m glad the monks out there have managed to find a nice marketing niche to support themselves on. They also had a spirit ray that would take a picture of your aura, which you could then put the photograph up on your wall or something. He also sold disco balls “which weren’t magic but some customers like them so they’re kind of fun.”
The non-college age person that hippie manager hired on to our team was his masseuse, who would give massages (at no charge) to coworkers instead of working. There were no cubicles it was just a big open room but apparently they were all very comfortable with this, somehow. I think she was also a licensed Reiki demon channeler but I’ve never really acquired a taste for having demons injected into my body so I always declined her offers of “spiritual adjustments” (at no charge) (except for your immortal soul.) She was nice enough, I guess, but all of them were weirdly shameless and also sick like all of the time, as a hobby.
Overall rating: 3.5/10, I would not personally recommend this type of person, I would look elsewhere, though it certainly did make for interesting experience.
HISTORY
My wife dumped me, at the dump. I came back though.
“Little one, are you a dog? No! Are you a cow? No! Are you a horse? No! Are you a little boy? No! …Well, what are you? I’m a big brother!” and then he goes right back to his own little world bouncing around on the back of a chair and picking up random objects from their drawers and putting them on the floor.
Took a big load of carpet to the dump. We just couldn’t afford to care for it anymore. Anyway I was hauling each individual sheet of carpet to the pile which was taking a bit, and a nice guy in a giant bulldozer pulled up and told me “you can just drop them on the concrete there. I’ll just push it in… With THIS.” And then he flashed a huge grin and patted the thing. He was obviously really excited to operate such a powerful machine. I think we should all aspire to be as happy with our jobs as this guy.
I read a friend’s warhammer fanfic for fun and now I’m reading warhammer lore6, I guess I can see why people get into the game despite it being obscenely7 expensive. Because they’ve created an entire universe that’s designed to house self-inserts. A lot of races and history and a lot of things happening, but also a lot of blanks to be drawn however one imagines. I am told warhammer lore is “grimdark” which is the “darkest, grittiest, dark dark genre possible” but so far it just seems like a lot of paragraphs saying “and these guys like BAD THINGS. They are so bad they REALLY like BAD THINGS” and some variant of the word “cruel” appended to every noun and verb. But whatever, its still got interesting worldbuilding. Impressive despite itself8.
Surrealist Podcast Skit
Like The Duckstack except for the podcast part, The Organist is an experimental arts and music podcast, and I constantly remember with fondness the opening to this one. The performance itself is only a few minutes long. Give it a listen here:
https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/the-organist/episode-17-barely-not-shaking
at no charge
“energy crystals” that literally just sit there on your desk, the most unenergetic things you’ve ever seen
Of these, the lucky rocks are probably the most legitimate. Don’t trust doctors who want to make you a repeat customer!
Or in their system its probably more like “all crystals”
hippies love “cleansing”
Not for fun I tell you that much
At a card shop an acquaintance once bragged to me about his incredible, mind blowing fortune at acquiring a used army for “only $2000”
They’re against fascism though, which seems kind of like that meme of “I may be a child molester but at least I’m not RUDE” like writing about entire races sending their kids souls to be eaten by moloch is fine but woah, fascism, that’s too far, that’s the kind of stuff that’s actually bad”