The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single duckstack
Welcome back to The Duckstack! I hope you got a good nights rest1 following last weeks dream issue. Unfortunately, we feel we must issue a correction. At the behest of my lawyers2, I insist dreams are for sure not real. Do not search for treasure and backdoors within the dreamscape. Do not exploit any dream secrets. It will gain you nothing.
Pubert
Kids look so young these days... Is this what growing old feels like?3
If you had all the testosterone in the world in a tub, half of it would evaporate every generation. That’s how bad global warming is. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself when was the last time you saw a man. Pretty much never, right? Okay, bad example. The dropping testosterone levels are real though.
It has been my impression for quite a while now that puberty is coming later and later each year. When I read about how 14 year old guys used to inherit the family farm and get married and basically “manage their affairs just fine” I can’t help but suspect that we’ve lost something, and it is definitely the impression of my peers that today’s young guys4 have hardly any work ethic or drive or even just competence. With some exceptions, of course. And I see something similar with girls too, where every few weeks seeing women shocked in outrage that an old guy would date a girl as young as like 28, pretty soon we are going to have to start treating women like they have no agency at all5.
I regularly encounter something of a cope from unmarried guys who have a sort of complex about married men’s “ball and chain” (nagging wife), they boast about how much more freedom they have and how the great conquerors and inventors throughout history were not married because having a wife tames you or whatever, which is not actually true but which it is normal to act as though it is true, because married men can become henpecked, can become personality-less “family men” without hobbies, and can be really boring and responsible. But my argument is, I ran the numbers, and married men seem to have testosterone and unmarried guys don’t.
When I ask women what’s wrong with single guys, one of the most common responses I get is “they don’t ask girls out.” This is certainly true among my single friends, of whom several ask maybe one girl out a year. This shouldn’t be possible if you’re horny.
You can attribute this to all sorts of things- “oh they’re just doing porn instead”, “oh they can’t afford a girlfriend right now the economy is bad”, “oh they are busy intending to be strong and charismatic some day” but guys just aren’t horny enough, and they just don’t have enough testosterone. I have counterarguments for these but men just aren’t going through puberty.
This is an old fogey rant to be sure, but I do have a point: I hate feminism and women have a vote in this. A common male experience is asking girls for dating advice in high school and being told some sort of “you’re perfect, be yourself, be a good person” which is objectively speaking not exactly actionable, even if it worked. What actually ends up working for the guy usually ends up being increasing his risk tolerance by about 600% and becoming less devoted to specific outcomes/women. Women will quite rarely encourage risk, however. They have good reasons for this but it is simply not in men’s interest at that point. A capable man is one that has attempted and failed many times, and “validation” approaches don’t incentivize this6. And we all want more capable men. The simplest and most universal driver for all of this will be libido.
Libido is not comfortable for men. During puberty, girls go through a lot of physical changes that are physically uncomfortable, socially awkward, and painful. During puberty, boys go through a lot of emotional changes that are uncomfortable, awkward, and painful, because the boy gets burdened with drive. It is like an automatic car, if you take your foot off the brakes it moves forward because every time its not sleeping its pulling on the drive train, and the guy has to reconcile with dealing with that the rest of his entire life. It is like having a fish hook in your forehead, and at the slightest hint of sex it yanks you. Especially for Christian boys, this is not desired! It would be much simpler to focus without it.
And indeed, a lot of women find it pretty gross too, and highly desire to sterilize men from it, to the result of a whole generation of impotent, listless men. That used to not be possible because the world wasn’t saturated in so much drugs and entertainment, but nowadays you actually can just kind of have a guy check out, scratch the drive a little bit and have some degree of peace, there is just one problem, you need it
The post that prompted this whole article was something to the extent “its good that AI girlfriends are weeding these losers from the gene pool” and I commented at the time that it won’t necessarily be basement dwellers who are the ones susceptible to that, especially if it isn’t disclosed to them the girl isn’t real- AI can animate speech and realistic video now, who is to tell a guy that he is wasting years of his life thinking he’s in a “long distance relationship”? In any case, we actually do want libido in the gene pool, it isn’t bad for guys to want girlfriends so bad that they’re foolable on a conscious or subconscious level.
It goes beyond dating too, even in marriage libido is important. It can go too far, I have heard stories of men insatiable to the point of destabilizing the relationship, but generally speaking it is a very safe bet that most marriage problems can be seriously reduced through sex. Sex is marriage food. Its a check engine light.
I suspect that a problem the next generations will need to overcome will be sexual stasis- there’s simply no motivation to move and create, and people who can’t find a way around it risk getting weeded. As we are already seeing, people without strong religious and ideological reason to reproduce simply aren’t. Raw libido isn’t cutting it anymore, but we should be careful about discouraging it when it pops up. The sex drive is to be utilized, not cast away.
Fruitoscopes
Are you a little fruity, or are you a balanced breakfast? Read this section to find out!
What was the last fruit you ate? Drank doesn’t count, you have to have bitten into it, like an onion, or swallowed it whole, like a potato. Here’s what this says about you:
Apple: People who swallow apples whole have one thing to say for themselves: the doctors are after them7. Since doctors are eldritch creatures, prone to uncertain motive and disposition, I would advise caution, but not necessarily evacuation8.
Cherry: Cherry eaters are such a delight. Consider how many bites it takes you to consume one- this is a direct measure of your conscientiousness or IQ. Simply count the bites it took you: That’s your IQ.
Pineapple: Pineapple biters have very tough jaws, and tough jaws breed tough people. Keep it up.
Peach: Soft and fuzzy, peach swallowers are out for the experience, and I would say after swallowing a peach you probably have had plenty. Go ahead and take a break.
Banana: Banana biters are hardy extremists who we can only conclude want to make everyone else uncomfortable by biting right into the peel. I would say keep it up: Solitude breeds wisdom.
Watermelon: While watermelons are on aggregate too large to swallow, some people try anyway, and if this is you, consider re-evaluating your goals and trying a more realistic approach. Just think: You don’t see watermelon biters having this problem, do you?
Grapes: The doctors are after you too. Doctors love grapes.
HISTORY
New diet for Jethro: Pretzels
I’ve been trying to teach Jethro a little bit of letters, which is hard because I think the radiation treatments make that sort of shape recognition a little more difficult for him. Later this week he asked me out of the blue: Papa, what number spells bobdaduck? and I told him “that would be the letter b, see? it makes the buh sound.” and he was like “ah yes. Like bobdachicken. or bobdachridtmas tree.” yes. exactly. probably?
Wife cut up grapes all nice for toddler so he wouldn't choke on them which he responded to by simply putting all of them in his mouth at the same time so that he couldn't even close his mouth
One of the toddler’s new “things” is flapping his wings whenever he wants something, or whenever he’s running. He doesn’t have wings but he thinks he does
I was cuddling the toddler to sleep in his bed and he pulled the blanket up over his head and then said “papa, are you being cozy? Are you being cozy with baby?"
Ducksnax
Grow
for the entire week. That would be 168 hours of sleep btw
I’m sure I can find at least one of my lawyer friends to behest this of me
No… It must be everyone else that is old.
I’m still a young guy, to be clear, but I’m reaching the age where some people would disagree with me about that. The fools.
Next thing you know seducing women with no intention of taking care of them will be illegal. Barbarism, I tell you.
Other methods that do work are sort of a dragon+princess dynamic where there’s a trophy at the end, male group ribbing, stuff like that
they are trying to save you from choking
of anything other than the apple you just swallowed whole