I’m on the road today, so here’s some fuzzy pony filler for you, courtesy of a friend and former co-worker who encourages my pony obsession shamelessly:
Does she know me, or what? Not just a fuzzy pony, but a fuzzy pony surrounded by attractive women — and in case you didn’t recognize the logo on their shirts, they’re from a bar in Chicago called Fatpour, which makes this a fuzzy beer pony.
Some cursory Googling tells me that the pony is not, alas, a regular staple of the bar, but was only there for a special event. Still and all, beer pony. If life gets much better than that, I don’t want to know about it.
Did you know that there is a subfamily of creatures known as goat-antelopes? Scientific naming at its most creative! They are creatures that kind of look like goats, but also a little like antelopes.
Scientists are almost as good at naming things as Toddler Geoffrey, whose favorite stuffed animal remains to this day a blue teddy bear named Blue Teddy.
But happily, when the powers of goat and antelope combine, the result is freaking adorable. One of my long-time favorites at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago is the takin enclosure, and if you’re asking “what the heck is a takin,” don’t worry — Wikipedia is here to help!
So all that Latin should clear everything up for you. Or we could just look at adorable pictures and videos, since the ones at the Lincoln Park Zoo just had babies! You can click to enlarge any of these, and be sure to scroll all the way down for a video and a story about takin sexy times:
Awww.
Awww!
And for some extra cute, here is a video of the baby takin frolicking with their toys:
Funny story about these births (one baby each from two separate mother, just days apart) — I don’t think I actually saw the conception happen, but I sure saw Daddy Takin trying to work it.
Around the end of June last year I’d just been dumped, and I was down in Chicago trying to cheer myself up with, among other things, a visit to the zoo, and there the takin were, sort of shuffling in circles around their pen.
The bigger one would sniff the lady takin’s hindparts for a while, then do this awkward little hopping motion to try and get on top of her, and she’d kind of shuffle sideways and he’d fall back down on all fours, looking like an idiot.
This went on for as long as I was willing to watch it, which was kind of an alarmingly long time given that I was watching ungulates trying to bone, and periodically it would look like he was almost gonna get there, pinning her against a wall or tree or something — and then off she’d trot again, taking advantage of what is obviously the very real physical challenge of pivoting that many tons of furry buffalo thing from “horizontal” to “diagonal.”
Boy was working for it.
Alas, he never made the score while I was there, so the babies were probably not conceived during my visit. But takin mating is a good and hilarious time for anyone with the opportunity to watch it — you heard it here first.
And that’s your daily cute. Nothing political or controversial today — though I guess if we wanted to, we could question the zoo’s choice of Mandarin names for babies of a subspecies that mostly lives in Tibet. Up to you, but I’d recommend just enjoying the cute, myself.
Old news warning! This was an article from last April that I just recently stumbled across, so for all I know the corporate culture has changed and Valve is now violently anti-pony.
But as of April 2012, Valve, the gaming company responsible for Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, and various other titles, got a fluffy little write-up in Businessweek for their management-free corporate structure.The interview with Valve co-founder Gabe Newell finished with this little tidbit:
In the handbook, there’s a random reference to ponies. What’s with the ponies?
Oh, if you leave your phone at your desk someone will use it to send an e-mail that says, “I like ponies.” Some people will make more and more elaborate photos of ponies that people might like. There are some incredibly entertaining characters who work here.
Of course, then everybody found out that I actually like the TV show My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, so I never hear the end of it.
Everybody loves ponies!
And the internet being the internet, a quick Google search for “Half-Life ponies” reveals a massive overlapping fan culture that has produced artwork, animation, sculpture, and yes, porn. And here I was just looking for a thumbnail image for the blog post. Mercy.
Don’t worry, though, I won’t post the porn. You can Google that yourself if you want to, and it’s between you, your browser history, and the servers at Google that store your personal information for ever and ever.
What happened to poor Gordon-pony’s tail? Maybe it’s just tucked inside his suit. I dunno. That’d have to be one funky-shaped headcrab, though.
You’ll notice an absence of Super Bowl- or even Super Bowl advertisement-related content on MA101 today, and that’s because I didn’t watch it. I’m almost sorry — the blackout sounds hilarious, if worrying, and a friend who did watch said they mostly filled the downtime with footage of sweaty men stretching in tight spandex — but overall I’m comfortable with my decision to mark the end of the football season at “whenever the Packers play their last game.”
Caring about a team is something I’m happy to do. Caring about a whole sport is a level of effort that’s just beyond me.
So instead of Super Bowl stuff, let’s look at ponies.
Today’s ponies (and my interest in them) come to you by way of the New York Times‘s “Disunion” series, a blog following the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.
If you’re not reading it yet, I highly recommend adding it to your Facebook or RSS feed or whatever — the articles are short, entertaining, and good small-talk fodder for parties. And sometimes you get articles about pretty ponies:
Despite an initial supply problem and lack of leadership and mission focus, by mid-1863 the Union cavalry was coming into its own. Union quartermasters smartly purchased many Morgans, a uniquely American breed known for endurance, versatility, heart and courage. The largest cavalry battle of the war, involving 17,000 horsemen, occurred on June 9, 1863, at Brandy Station, Va. Stuart’s forces were preparing to advance in order to screen Lee’s march north toward Gettysburg. Begun by a Union surprise attack, the Confederates finally fended off the enemy. Yet the Union soldiers’ strong stand resulted from the fact that for the first time, they had trained and been commanded as a coherent corps. After the Battle of Gettysburg, Union cavalry fought 15 battles in 16 days and captured or destroyed half of Stuart’s cavalry, as well as 4,000 or so horses and mules and 1,000 loaded wagons. The South’s food crisis also gave Union cavalry operations an edge; by early 1865 well-fed Northern cavalry mounts were able to beat malnourished Confederate horses to their own supply trains and depots in Virginia.
The “Morgan horse” in question has always been one of my favorites, despite its coastie origins and tendency to be too small for my 6’8″ frame. They’re smart and sturdy, and what’s more important, they’re really pretty:
The official breed standard includes the terms “…an expressive face, large eyes…” in its laundry list of what makes a Morgan a Morgan. Who could fail to love a horse like that? Other than the Confederate cavalry, obviously, although they had their share of Morgans too, just not the massive bulk-purchases that kept the Federal cavalry mounted.
True story: many years ago at a bar, a mutual acquaintance pulled my ladyfriend aside and whispered conspiratorially “Geoffrey has pony eyelashes.” I don’t think he meant it as a compliment, but I’ll cop to it. I do have pony eyelashes.
Now wasn’t that more fun than Super Bowl power outage jokes?
Sometimes my internet-cynicism makes me miss amazing things.
For example, while scrolling through Facebook the other night, I glanced at this picture and kept right on skimming past the obvious Photoshop:
Only it’s apparently not! Unless the Photoshopper in question was dedicated enough to create an entire Scottish tourism website to back his/her claim.
The photo, and several others like it, were apparently taken for VisitScotland’s “Year of Natural Scotland,” which sounds like a pretty silly ad campaign but who cares as long as there are ponies?
There are eight photos total over at the post on VisitScotland, and a video as well, so go have some fuzzy ponies in your day.
And credit and thanks to my friend Andi for e-mailing me the link, without which I would have dismissed the photo I saw as a fake and never looked back. Sometimes you just gotta believe, ya know?
Well, I won’t lie to you. I was going to do a thing about President Obama’s “horses and bayonets” line, and how it’s dangerously close to not promising us all our own individual ponies this time around. I mean, he says “horses and bayonets” like it’s a bad thing, right? Come on, Bammerz. I’m not that into bayonets, but I still want my pony you promised me in the 2008 election.
But the funny’s just not coming today. I think I am all political-commentaried out. Instead, let’s just look at a bunch of fuzzy ponies.
Everyone likes fuzzy ponies, right? Also My Little Pony, hence our little sidebar pony here. Or maybe that will just turn the comments section into a perfect storm of internet hatred for both Obama and bronies, but I never read ‘em anyway! So carry on!
This Tamora Pierce is a hedgehog! She has been boarding with me for the last week or so while her owner was out of town.
So far what I have learned about hedgehogs is that:
They don’t like being woken up.
They really don’t like being woken up when it’s still daytime.
They like baths, but tend to poop in them.
Little things love the shit out of their running wheels, but only use them at night, all night. Squeak-squeak-squeak.
They are possibly the solution to all energy problems, as the laws of physics would have to be broken somehow to generate that much poop from that little kibble.
But they are awfully cute little critters (so cute, in fact, that I’m filing this one under “Fuzzy Ponies” even though Tamora is neither fuzzy nor a pony, on the grounds that people who are searching for fuzzy ponies will probably appreciate hedgehogs too).
Here she is being grumpy at me:
That is what they look like if you wake them up when they don’t want to be woken up. Also they make little huffy grunts, adding to the overall image of a fussy old lady muttering about kids these days.
And here’s the actual Tamora Pierce, who, it must be said, looks a little bit like a hedgehog herself.
I will miss my spiky little friend! She was a pretty cool houseguest, and excellent blog fodder. I will put a few more pictures below for people who like to overload on adorable animals:
That is all for today. Writing about hedgehogs is very hard work and I need to take a break.
Today I move all my worldly possessions (mostly a computer, two cats, and 4,038 lbs. of clothes).
Here are the fuzzy ponies I wish were helping me out:
D’awwww.
Really we’re using a U-HAUL, but fuzzy ponies would be much more fun. Maybe next time. Either way I’m taking the day off the blog to lift heavy things.
Hooking up internet at the new place could take a couple days, so if I’m slow for the next few days don’t panic. Usual posting should resume by Monday at the latest.
Since that makes the math fairly straightforward I thought I’d run some statistics for fun, forgetting that “fun” and “statistics” should never be used in the same sentence. It took a bit longer than I’d planned.
But I did learn some entertaining things. For starters I looked at the first word in each post. The split between first words that I used only once in the whole 500 posts and first words that got repeated multiple times was almost exactly equal:
And an analysis of the ones I used more than once showed, basically, that I like talking about myself too much:
I suppose that shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to anyone. Anyway, a few other stats for your idle enjoyment:
So the moral of this story seems to be that I am better at writing than I am at using Excel to make graphs. Also that my posts tend to be heavily self-referential and don’t include enough fuzzy ponies.
And that’s 500 posts of MA101. I’m glad you’ve all been along for the ride. What were your favorite posts? I may post a collection of my favorites tomorrow, just to get out of thinking up an actual topic for another day. But for now, feel free to reminisce about the good old times down in the comments.
Or critique my graphs. I could probably use the help there, too.
