Tin Line Tango

A tightrope dance is dangerous for romance

¹²I duckstack, therefore I am

Art: Tommy Ingberg

There is a recurring argument, which philosophers³ call “the problem of Duckstack”. It goes something like this: How do you know you’re reading the duckstack right now? How do you know this isn’t a dream, or that your senses don’t deceive you? Many philosophers have come up with various answers on the subject⁴, but none have arrived at the true answer, which is (translated from Aramaic) “A duckstack is just as real in a dream as it is in real life”⁵. Why don’t philosophers⁶ know this? I believe they are engaged in criminal conspiracy against me, and must be destroyed.

Once you notice this, you start to see it everywhere. All the philosophers⁷, carefully avoiding mention of The Duckstack. Its in the schools, all the politicians are in on it, all the teachers, all the colleges. You can even see this across nationalities and country lines. Why are they so insistent about this? Well, as they say, time is money, and we’re in a recession. They simply cannot afford to talk about The Duckstack all the time.

Well, its their loss. They will never become enlightened philosophers like me.

How To Lucid Dream

Not everyone has what it takes to be a sleepy head

Our readers have not been asking: “What is a lucid dream? Is it dirty?” and the answer is no, lucid dream just means knowing when you’re dreaming. The dream peddlers will sell you all sorts of snake oil about it like “in a lucid dream, you can do whatever you want” and “you’ll never have a nightmare again” and “lucid dreaming cured my cancer” and “lucid dreaming cured my insomnia”⁸ and for the most part these claims are a little bit overstated. You should know better than to trust marketing testimonials. If someone ever tells you “Lucid dreaming is recommended by 9 out of 10 dentists” your first question should be “what does that one dentist know.”

So we don’t know a lot about dreams⁹, but the general consensus is that they are not real. How do you know that? Well, its all in the math.

We’re pretty sure math is real, so things that are math don’t work in dreams. Seems logical, right? This includes clocks and books, since letters work as variable names in algebra, so all written words are math. Basically, in a dream, books don’t work. If you look at a clock twice, it will change or break or be stuck or exhibit other fake behaviors, enabling you to realize you are dreaming, become excited at the possibilities of false reality, and wake up.

Another thing you can do is to deprive yourself of breath. Its usually recommended to perform “reality checks” like this throughout the day, so that it becomes habitual in dreams, allowing you to “accidentally” achieve lucidity through habit. So stick your head underwater all the time and try to breath. If its real, you’ll die, but if its a dream, you’ll be able to keep breathing like its nothing, allowing you to realize you’re dreaming and promptly wake up from excitement. If you’re afraid of water¹⁰ you can also just plug your nose with your hands. I think this method wakes you up more though because the breathing establishes an awareness of a real life bodily function, but it is fairly reliable. Its easy to rationalize away that the numbers are falling off of all the clocks around you, but its harder to rationalize that you should be dead again, but aren’t.

There’s lots of other things you can do like pushing your finger through your palm¹¹ and trying to remember what you were doing just before this, which don’t work when you’re dreaming. Or in the case of pushing your finger through your palm, do work. Mirrors and electronics don’t work in dreams, so you should develop a habit of admiring yourself in the mirror (for self esteem) and rapidly flipping light switches around you on and off (for epilepsy) throughout the day.

Generally speaking your chances of achieving a lucid dream are pretty high once you start trying to have them, the issue is knowing you had one. (Because you forget. Not because you weren’t lucid in your lucid dream and so you didn’t know you were having one. In case you were wondering.) To stretch out your dream recall muscles like a piece of taffy, keep a dream journal.

Now, if you have achieved lucidity and all you got was this crappy tee shirt, that’s way better than most people get from the dream realm. Don’t worry, it isn’t a sign you are cursed or anything¹². Most people find that they aren’t able to go total godmode, so its really more of a novelty thing, I am willing to hear out the idea that it helps with nightmares though. Remember: The consensus is, dreams aren’t real. Probably.

History:

A childs prayer: “Dinosaurs. A-MEN.”

Many of you have been wondering about Jethro’s cancer but “afraid to ask”, and I do have an update on that, we just got his MRI back and at this point the cancer is still static. That’s not the same thing as remission, but it means the current chemotherapy is working to prevent growth. After doing radiation every day for a couple months last year Jethro is something of an expert on being anesthetized. The MRI aesthetician was preparing to inject him through his port and Jethro stopped him “wait, you forgot the mask.” And explained wide-eyed that “I’m really good with the mask.” so the guy reluctantly gave him an empty mask and Jethro was like “uh you forgot to hook it up” all telling the guy how to do his job. So Jethro ended up getting oxygen anesthesia rather than IV. It was pretty funny.

My wife got this light up roaring dinosaur mask for Christmas for herself to wear and chase the kids around with. She was worried it might be a little too scary, but it turns out the kids love it and never. Let. Her take it off.

One time this week, the kids were sitting on the couch and the toddler fell asleep, they stayed like that for a couple of hours and when Jethro hopped off the couch he said “see you” to his sleeping brother

My wife found Jethro each of his eyes with his hands: “are you crying?” “No. I’m a package. I’m your package.”

The toddler showed remarkable self sufficiency this week. From the freezer, he got a bunch of frozen corn and put it in a bowl and got out a spoon and ate it on the floor. He insisted it was mac n cheese. And he ate it super happily, thinking it was mac n cheese. “um, is it good?” “its just cold.” Yes baby. Because its frozen corn.

Ducksnax

Resolutions

Ducksnax #06

1. “A tightrope dance is dangerous for romance”, that’s what my dad would always say

2. Yeah dad, “news to you” I know. I’m reading between the lines.

3. Me

4. Descartes answer was: “God wouldn’t do that to me”

5. I’m flattered you’re dreaming about The Duckstack, regardless

6. Not Me

7. not me again

8. so would regular dreaming, idiot

9. part of the replication crisis, I’m sure

10. What are you, coward?

11. Not being able to stick your finger through your palm? That’s math.

12. In case you were worried about that. I have like, 200 subscribers, I have no idea what they’re thinking most of the time. Maybe most of them are worried about getting cursed. I’ll run a poll next time