December 13
I didn't want to leave, even though I was eager to see Florida and visit with my pony friends. And I was glad that I didn't have to get to the train station first thing in the morning: the train wouldn't come until after ten, and Aric said that he'd take me to the station.
But I was as little bit worried about staying in bed too late and then having to rush, even though I shouldn't have been. I just thought that today might be the day that we stayed in bed too late and then I'd miss my train.
I watched the morning birds for a little bit, and I had to remind myself to stop swishing my tail 'cause I was going to wake up Meghan and I didn't want to yet. It was barely light out, so there was still lots of time.
As soon as the sun had come up, though, I woke up Meghan and then Aric, so that we'd have plenty of time to have sex. And Aric said that he wasn't ready yet but that wasn't what his body was saying, but since he was being mean I turned around and started kissing Meghan and she didn't mind the attention.
She thought that I should get my toy, so I got out of bed and I had to do a little bit of looking to find it, 'cause it was in a box since I didn't have a dresser to put it in. And Aric pretended not to be looking at it but he was and he said that he couldn't compete with it.
I had to reassure him that it was a fun toy but it couldn't do anything on its own and that made him feel a little bit better. He didn't want to touch it, though, even when I said that he could. Meghan said that was because boys loved lesbians but the thought of doing anything that might seem even vaguely gay terrified them.
I told him that that was dumb and he might be missing out on a lot of fun, and then I stopped 'cause it isn't nice to tease someone because they don't want to do something, even if it seems silly to you. Like me not wanting to go in caves or Gusty not liking high places.
Me and Meghan used it and it was a lot of fun even if Aric wouldn't touch it. I think he worked a little bit harder to make us both happy, too, maybe 'cause he still kind of thought that we might replace him with a toy, even though we'd said that we wouldn't.
When we were done Meghan asked if I wanted to take it with me, and I said that I probably shouldn't, so I put it away and then we went into the shower to get cleaned up.
I wanted to know if they were going to watch my apartment when I was gone, and make sure that the birdfeeder stayed full, and Aric said that they would. He asked if I minded if they spent the night when I was gone, and I didn't mind at all, but I said that maybe I should ask Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn if it was okay with them. Because maybe they'd planned for somebody else to do it.
While we were still in the shower Meghan said that she wanted to go get the toy and she could hold it up next to Aric and we could decide who was bigger, but she didn't do it. And then he said that he should buy a fleshlight and then he could compare it to one of us, and after I learned what that was, I told him that Cayenne had had an artificial mount modeled after herself and he didn't believe me, so after we were done with the shower, he got out his portable telephone and started looking.
He said that now he was going to get pop-up ads for sex toys on his portable telephone and so he probably shouldn't look, but he did and he found it and they even had pictures of Cayenne lying on her back and exposing herself, and a short biography too. I read through that and it wasn't all true, but it was mostly true.
So Aric said that he should get one, and I thought that would be fun for him to have. And he said that I wasn't supposed to be agreeing with him; I was supposed to tell him how upset I'd be which was a very strange thing to say. I'd only be mad if he got one and wanted to spend all his time with it instead of with me or Meghan.
I sat down on the mattress so that Meghan could groom me and Aric sat down too and let me rest my head on his thigh while she was preening my wings and he was trying to distract me and it worked, and then Meghan said that I had just gotten out of the shower and I promised that I'd keep my coat clean, and I said that I could make breakfast so she could play with Aric after she was done with my wings. He asked if he got any say in the matter and me and Meghan both said no at the same time.
So I kept my promises, and when Meghan had finished grooming me, I went off to the kitchen to make breakfast. We should have bought more waffle mix when we were out, but we hadn't, so all I had was oatmeal and shredded wheat, and a couple of pieces of bread for toast. So I boiled some water and started a pot of coffee for all of us to share, and it didn't take too long for me to get it all ready, plus it mostly cooked itself without my help, so I got to watch Aric and Meghan.
I had to add a little bit more water to the pot, 'cause I didn't want to interrupt them. That still left us plenty of time to eat, though, and then we had a little bit of time to relax and for them to get dressed before it was time to go to the train station.
There was a bit of fresh snow on Winston but it wasn't very thick and Aric just brushed it off with his arm, and he asked me if I was sure that I had everything, so I looked through my saddlebags one more time and then said that I did. And then we went off to the train station and Sienna was already there so I got worried that I was late, especially 'cause the radio in Aric's truck didn't show the time but it did show the radio station which was 102.5, and I misread it as 10:25 which was when the train was supposed to arrive. And I almost jumped out of Winston before it stopped but Meghan looked at her portable telephone and said that we had plenty of time, and Aric said that the train was probably going to be late anyways.
So he parked Winston and the three of us walked in, and Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn were in the waiting room with their luggage around them, so Meghan and I sat down next to them and Aric kind of paced around the room and Mister Salvatore watched him while pretending not to, and so I was kind of hesitant to ask him if Aric and Meghan could stay at my apartment while I was on vacation, but I did, and he said that they could, that it was mine to use however I wanted.
Aric had been right, and the train was twenty minutes late. The station attendant announced when it was five minutes away, so we had time to get to the platform and Meghan and Aric went out with me and we had time for a hug before it arrived. And then we got onboard and I stopped in the doorway long enough to wave but I didn't want to wait too long 'cause the train was late and the conductor looked kind of impatient. Maybe it had had problems getting through the snow.
Mister Barrow and Miss Parker were on the train, too, and they'd taken a booth that had a table in the middle, and invited Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn to sit with them if Aquamarine and I wanted to ride together, and we did, so she got out of the booth and we went a little ways down the train car and found ourselves a pair of seats that were open. And we sat on the south side of the train even though that was kind of the more boring side, 'cause you didn't get to see Kalamazoo College. But we did get to go alongside the cars on Stadium Road, which was fun, 'cause we were faster than they were. And I pointed out the window when we went by about where my apartment was, although you couldn't see it from the tracks at all.
I was kinda distracted at first just because I kept looking at the familiar landmarks that the train went by on its way out of Kalamazoo, but after we'd crossed under the 94 Highway near Mattawan, I turned my attention back to Aquamarine and we had a lot of catching up to do. She told me about how she'd gone to Thanksgiving with Jenny and her family and they lived on a farm which was really nice, and Jenny was learning to be a blacksmith in her free time even though there wasn't much demand for human blacksmiths.
Aquamarine said that Jenny had a lot of friends who didn't go to college and they were mostly a lot of fun, too. She'd gotten to ride in a monster truck and she'd also gotten to play with Jenny's chickens and her cats. She had a lot of cats, Aquamarine said, to keep all the mice away, and during the summer she worked at a place that kept cats that had their blood taken in case other cats needed it. I thought she was making that up but she said that it was true; sometimes cats got hurt and you had to give them a blood transfusion, and it was just the same as it was for ponies.
And she'd also spent a lot of time with Cedric and she said that was a lot of fun too because he was so smart and thoughtful and they liked to sit on the couch together and read poetry which was really nice, and they also liked to exercise together, and Michigan State had a really nice exercise room that they could both use. She said that most of the machines weren't designed for a pony, but there was a treadmill that she could trot on, and there were also some benches with weights that she could use. She said that if she'd brought her harness from Equestria, she could have hooked it up to some of the machines to practice pulling, and she told me that they also had a really nice swimming pool that was inside like hotels had.
She had gotten an apartment that was a few miles away from her old one, so that she'd be closer to the greenhouses, and she said that when she moved out at the end of the year she was going to give all her plants to Doctor Krelborn because she knew that he'd take care of them. And I almost told her about his bonsai tree but then I remembered that he'd told me not to, 'cause she might make it grow too big.
I told her about everything I'd done and then when I'd finished she said that we were gonna have to tell it all over again when we met up with Cayenne, and that thought made us both laugh. I said that if I could work my portable telephone better, I could show her some of the movies that Meghan had put on YouTube, and we thought that Cayenne would be able to do that.
The highways have signs that let you know when you've gone into another state, but the train tracks don't, so you have to guess, and I'd never followed these tracks all the way to Indiana, so it wasn't until we stopped in Michigan City that we knew we were in Indiana.
And that was where the train started to go slow, 'cause there were so many other trains it had to get around, and since we were both kind of familiar with the route we just talked some more. We were both looking forward to going back home, but we were both gonna miss all our friends, and we were glad that we would have time back in Michigan before we had to go home.
Aquamarine said that she was going to spend Christmas at her apartment and Cedric was going to be with her, and I said that I didn't know for sure yet what I was going to do, so she said if I was lonely I could come to her apartment, which was really nice of her. I was a little worried that maybe both Meghan and Aric would want to have me at their house, and I couldn't be two places at once.
The train was almost an hour late when we finally got to Chicago, and a bunch of people were standing up and crowding in the aisles while it backed into its space. That was kind of silly of them, 'cause being impatient wouldn't make it go any faster, so they'd be better off sitting in their seats and being comfortable instead of trying to stay balanced as the train jerked to a halt.
We stayed where we were until everyone else had gotten off the train, and then we followed our helpers out and when we got upstairs, Miss Blaise and Mister Garvin were waiting for us along with Cayenne.
Even with our train arriving late, we had a lot of time before our next one so we were going to go shopping on the Magnificent Mile after we had a good lunch, 'cause Cayenne knew all the best stores. She told us that she'd gotten kicked out of a jewelry store after asking where their good diamonds were, 'cause all the ones that they had were small and overpriced and they'd been insulted by that.
Aquamarine asked if she'd slept through the class where we learned that big gems were really rare for humans 'cause they didn't have magic to make them and earth ponies to farm them and she said that she knew that but she'd expected something a little bit bigger especially for what they were charging. She said that they wanted almost two thousand dollars for a tiny little diamond on a silver chain. So then we both got curious about that 'cause neither of us had visited a jewelers on Earth, and we thought that maybe we could go into one that she hadn't been kicked out of.
Before we could go anywhere, though, we went to Burrito Beach for lunch. It wasn't very beach-y, but I didn't mind 'cause they had lots of kinds of burritos and quesadillas and we got plenty so we could all share and try some of almost everything. Me and Aquamarine got the black bean and goat cheese burrito mostly to ourselves, 'cause Cayenne took one bite of it and decided that it had too much cheese in it. I think she missed out, 'cause it was really good.
All of the Magnificent Mile was decorated for Christmas, and the stores had really big windows so that you could look inside, and it was fun to just look in even if it was a shop that we weren't too interested in—there were lots of stores that just sold clothes that were for humans, and we didn't go into any of them. And there was a store that sold Legos that had a big Lego display in their front window complete with a train going around.
We went into a store called I Love Chicago first, and it had lots of little gifts. I got some clicky pens that said Chicago on them and some postcards that had pictures of the Chicago skyscratchers and the lakefront and those were nice 'cause I could put some in a scrapbook maybe or send them to friends. And I was looking at shirts even though I didn't know anypony who would really want one when Aquamarine said that she'd found a snowglobe that had some of the skyscratchers in it so I went over and looked at that and I liked that a lot.
There were Christmas ornaments, too, and Aquamarine got one 'cause she could put it on a Hearth's Warming Tree next year.
After we'd bought that, we went to Giorgio Armani which mostly had clothes that didn't fit ponies, and Cayenne said that they also had really nice purses and handbags and me and Aquamarine couldn't really see what use one would be, 'cause saddlebags were more convenient and you could put more in them. Neither of us knew anypony who'd want one, either. But Cayenne did, and she found some that she really liked called Le Sac, but it was really expensive and they didn't want to barter at all. They said it was exclusive which was why it was so expensive and she was kind of frustrated by that and said that she was going to go somewhere else to get one there because they were a lot cheaper other places and she'd only wanted that one because the color matched her mane.
She stayed kind of grumpy until we went to Bloomingdale's and that was sort of overwhelming 'cause it was so big and they had almost everything that you could imagine. She got a handbag that complemented her coat nicely and was much cheaper than the one at Giorgio Armani, and she got some leg-warmers because her mother liked wearing them in the winter, and also a box of utensils for her father, so that he could brag about them every time he hosted a fancy dinner. And we all admired all the shiny cooking utensils but most of them wouldn't be very useful in Equestria 'cause they took electricity to run. They had a waffle-maker that was a lot nicer than the one I owned, and they even had a machine that made fresh bread for you and all you had to do was put dough in it. I found a really nice set of hair-clips that my sister would like for her mane.
Me and Aquamarine found some nice blankets that we really liked, 'cause they were made of polar fleece which was soft and warm and fluffy, so we bought a couple of those to give as gifts and we each also bought one for ourselves.
And then time was getting kind of short, so we left with our things and I'd been a little bit worried about buying a bunch of stuff because then we'd have to take it all with us, but Mister Garvin and Miss Blaise weren't going to Florida with us so they were going to keep it safe while we were gone.
We had enough time on our way back to the train station to stop in Trabert & Hoeffer, and Cayenne had been right; they wanted too much money for the little gems that they had. So we left there without buying anything. And then we went to a restaurant for dinner, 'cause we were going to get on the train too late to have dinner there.
It was called Coalfire and they cooked their pizzas over coal which I thought wouldn't be very good but Cayenne said that it was and the oven kept the fire below so the coal smell didn't get on the pizzas. She just had a salad anyway 'cause she thought she'd eaten too much for lunch and she didn't want the cheese that came on the pizza, so we got a couple to share with our helpers and it was really good and you couldn't really smell the coal at all.
When we got back to the station, we had to wait a little bit before we could get into the train, which gave us time to give the new things we'd bought to Mister Garvin and Miss Blaise, and then they got a little cart to carry all of Cayenne's bags to the train.
We had a room on the bottom with windows on both sides like we'd had when we went out west, which was nice because we could look out either side although the view wasn't quite as good as from the top of the train. Our helpers had a room upstairs that was called a suite 'cause it was two bedrooms that were attached to each other.
Since we'd gotten on early we had plenty of time to go to the Viewliner car and claim seats, but we didn't have anything to look at except the train shed and the people getting on the train, which got a little bit boring after a while so we just talked until we felt the train jolt and then it started to move out of the station and once it got out from the yard we could get a view of Chicago.
I was kind of used to leaving Chicago going east or west, but not going south, and so it was a different view as the train made its way out of the city, and for a while it turned almost due west and we got a kind of distant view of Chicago and the skyscratchers along the lakeshore, and then the train turned south again and we couldn't see them anymore.
There were lots of houses that we saw that were decorated for Christmas, and I bet that none of them had had a pegasus to help them. There was even one that had lights facing the tracks and a lighted sign that said 'Illinois Central.'
There wasn't as much snow out here as there was in Kalamazoo, and Aquamarine said that there hadn't been as much in East Lansing either, and I thought that she'd just gotten the tail end of the storm.
The sky was clear and the moon was full, so that was very pretty and I think we could have seen more stars but even though the lights in the Viewliner were turned down they were still pretty bright, and after a while we decided that we'd have a better view from our room, even though it was on the bottom and the windows didn't curve overhead.
So we went back to our car and then I wanted to go to the very back train car and look out that window for a little bit before we went downstairs, 'cause it was a fun view, so we walked all the way back there and took turns on our hind hooves watching out the back. The train was pulling some of the snow along with it, so we couldn't actually see all that far, but it was neat to see the back lights of the train shining in the snow, and when we went past roads you could watch as the cars that were waiting disappeared into the snowdust the train trailed along.
Then after we'd all had a turn looking, we went down to our room and got the conductor to come and fold down the bottom beds—we didn't need the top ones—and we all got on the mattress by the window and watched the world fly by.
Since we were lower to the ground, it looked a lot faster as we went by it, and we all jumped back in alarm as we went by a freight train that was on the other track, 'cause it was so close to us.
Cayenne got into her bags and brought out a bottle of Malibu that we could share—she said that she'd chosen it 'cause it was beachy—and we had a couple of drinks and talked a little bit more and me and Aquamarine were both kind of tired, so we cuddled up on the crosswise bed and Cayenne got out her folding computer so she could look at it for a little bit before she went to bed.
So cheesey!!
(Maybe there's a reason unicorns avoid cheese?)
Well, just because the 'Little' Head is saying yes doesn't mean the 'Big' Head is okay enough to say yes.
Welp, guess she really did do it.
Human's concept of possession just isn't the same as a pony's.
The sex life of a man outvoted by two ladies.
Is this the first time its been brought up, that Cayenne managed to successfully get one made? How did silver know?
If "youth is wasted on the young", then privacy is wasted on the old. You try all night to do what you used to do all night without trying. Viagra ads say "consult a physician for an erection lasting more than 4 hours" I say "To Hell with calling a doctor! Cut out the middleman and call the Pope because it is a miracle!"
As to Unicorns and cheese. It could be a tribal thing. Unicorns could just be lactose intolerant (although AFAIK cheese isn't as hard on you as milk). Or, it could be cultural, like Moslems not eating pork, Mormons aren't supposed to drink coffee, & Hindus won't eat beef, etc. Or, it could just be personal. As Tigger said about Honey "It's got the wrong sort of swallow"
Aww, Aric. It's just a toy. You missed a great opportunity on a new way to make both of your girls happy at the same time.
Cayenne leaving a legacy as she hoped she would.
Aric, you're at the bottom of the totem pole. In this sense you are more "theirs" than they are "yours". Relax; accept this glorious fate.
Silver cares very deeply for them. I can't recall if Silver has expressed her love to them yet. I'm certain she watched with much joy and contentment. Geez that was sappy.
I did not know this was a thing.
I'm a little surprised that ponies as blood transfusions as well, I wonder how many blood types they have? If there's to many they might not have invented the process in the first place.
Feh. I should have known Aric would listen to country.
Silly alric, doesnt like the competition so much, doesnt want cooperate either so that Meg can have two freinds in her life ven when Silvers not around.
Long train running is long, butthey havent even got to the east mountains yet? Given the weather, hope the snows low and the rain aint trying to wash ou the bridges again.
Shopping, why did it have to be shopping.
7950051 The Pony tribes are related closely enough for intermarriage (according to Mr. Cake), and science and magic combined give them a functional health system, so blood transfusion should be a thing in Equestria, but there may be more blood types making it difficult.
Pizza on coal is usually the best. That an universal constant.
7949718
So I'm not crazy, the fact that Cayenne's offer was accepted was never mentioned?
So how did Silver knew?
7950428
It definitely was never mentioned (the last mention was Cayenne being disappointed that the company hasn't reply her yet) and from what I can guess is that Silver Glow simply assumed that they did reply her and Cayenne did agree to model and she turned out to be right when Eric searched for Cayenne on Bad Dragon.
7950428
7950452
Wasn't there a few mentions of Silver checking her facebook? She could have found out about it then.
7950227
Well blood types don't normally prevent interbreeding but they make blood transfusions dangerous and possibly lethal if you don't recognise the types. Humans have about 8 major types (A, B, AB and O each of which can be Rhesus positive or negative) and luckily O makes up about 40% of most populations as it can be donated to anyone. However there's no real reason why ponies shouldn't have a dozen types or a hundred (it might actually be better as it stops parasites trying to avoid your immune system by mimicking a blood antigen, they can do it but it only works for a smaller proportion of the population). If they did then they would probably not develop blood transfusions until they had a way of detecting blood types.
7950865
That is also possible.
7950865
7950452
While it is plausible, I would've expected her to mention it. Same if she simply assumed.
Meh. Not important. And I guess that if it end up being important, Biscuit will make the needed corrections.
7951005 Depend if your O+ or O-, you can't give blood with a positive rhesus to someone with negative rhesus, although the reverse is possible.
So yes, O- blood can be gived to anyone, but it is only 7% of the world's population.
This is entirely subjective, I know, but in my mind-movie of events , Mister Salvatore is played by Mark Ruffalo, because who else?
Forgot she had that. I'm going to be honest, my first thought was use it on Aric
7949987 I think it's just a twilight thing.
Is Gusty not going on this trip or is she meeting them there?
She's meeting them there.
"What have you done to this poor little tree? I could feel how it's suffering even before I entered the room!"
Better than that, Silver, all you have to do is put the ingredients in. It makes the dough, too!
7949714
My theory is that because it's spoiled milk, which is why they generally don't like it.
7949718
Well, just because the 'Little' Head is saying yes doesn't mean the 'Big' Head is okay enough to say yes.
That's very true. Although to most teenagers/early 20sers (there should be a word for that) what the little head says goes.
Of course she did. Cayenne has no shame.
Nope, not at all. It's funny, you can kind of see that in the show, too. How often do ponies just go into somepony else's house without even knocking? Or fly through an upstairs window?
He can't really object. He'll keep it up (so to speak) until it kills him.
7949931
Uh, that's a good question. Lucky guess?
7949987
(Also, it is a potentially serious medical condition. I wrote a story all about it! [which I can't link here, for fairly obvious reasons])
I think it's largely a tribal thing, or perhaps even regional. You've got to figure that all the fisherponies in Chonamare eat fish, even the earth ponies, because it's what they have and it's normal for them. In Ponyville, there probably aren't very many ponies who do.
Also, Mormons don't drink coffee? Interesting. I'd never make it as a Mormon.
7950040
Toys can be intimidating, though.
But of course!
Twilight: What did you do while you were on Earth?
Aquamarine: I planted trees
Silver Glow: I wrote poems
Gusty: I was in plays and Orange is the new Black
Cayenne: I had a sex toy made that looks just like me.
It's the best fate any man could hope for.
She does--she wants to make sure that they're both happy, even when she can't participate.
7950051
I didn't, either, but in the town where I live, there are two clinics, one for cats and one for dogs. And then when they're done being donor animals, they're adopted out.
Well, I just now found out that IRL horses have eight major blood types (A, C, D, K, P, Q, U and T), and that there are no universal donors. Ponies may very well have more.
That having been said, ponies have magic, and probably they figured out some time ago that if a pony is dying because her blood drained out, than putting more in might be a good idea, and then they would have refined the process from there. Even though Equestrian tech is behind Earth tech, the first experiments in blood transfusion on humans were carried out in the 1620s.
7950080
I'm just impressed that I remembered it after being out of Kalamazoo for sixteen years.
7950160
Well, you can't just whip a thing like that out and expect the guy to get used to it right away. You have to work your way to it, you know?
Most any Amtrak train out of Chicago leaves in the afternoon, so you don't get to good scenery until dusk, generally . . . but then you wake up in it, which is really nice. They do try to route the trains through the boring parts (like Kansas) at night.
7950227
That's my thought. The ponies seem to have a decent health care system (we haven't seen enough of it to really compare to human, and of course they probably have to treat maladies that humans can't get), so surely they would have figured something out. Incidentally, IRL equines have eight blood types (I just looked it up).
7950428
Hmm, I'll have to try it. I've never had it before.
I'm gonna go with lucky guess, or maybe it came up in some conversation, somehow, and she just forgot to put it in the journal.
7950452
Yeah, it was never specifically mentioned that Cayenne had actually gotten it done. So maybe poor phrasing in her journal (she didn't know, but Aric looked and it was there) or else like 7950865 suggested, she might have seen it on Facebook (or maybe Meghan did and told Silver Glow, because the SG was never much of a Facebook user, and you can bet that Meghan friended every pony she could find on FB).
7951005
Of course, pony immune systems and pony parasites might not work exactly the same way ours do . . . for example, there are likely to be parasites that feed on magic, and possibly friendship as well [changeling breezies?].
I'd assume that they figured it out at some point. Humans started experimenting in the 1620s, and while the first experiments weren't successful (since we didn't know about blood types back then), in 1667 there was a successful blood transfusion from a sheep to a human. And experiments continued after that.
Given pony society, they probably don't have blood banks, but instead the nurses just ask ponies if they need blood, and they may very well use the old-fashioned method of connection the donor and recipient with a tube. I could see them doing it that way, to be honest.
7951822
I could see that.
7951977
Aric's definitely not ready for that. He'd at least want to go to dinner with it first.
7958518
I know, right? And you give her ten minutes with the thing, and all of a sudden it's be outgrowing its pot.
7989775
Huh, even I didn't know that. Dang. I ought to buy one, and I can have fresh bread whenever I want!
Haha, the entire leadership of the De Beers Group must have been screaming continuously since the day Equestria made contact. Decades spent building a monopoly, manufacturing artificial scarcity, brainwashing generations of women into measuring their self-worth by the amount of money they can get their lovers to squander on useless diamonds — all rendered moot by the sudden appearance of a country where you can buy a diamond the size of your fist (or hoof, as the case may be) from a streetcorner vendor for pocket change.
Oh, the sudden ruin of their entire business couldn't have happened to a more deserving bunch of bastards.
8167971
That was honestly one of the first things I thought of when I considered some of the problems of first contact, and it's the reason why the host nations are paying expenses, because there are groups with financial interests that want to make damn sure that the ponies don't ruin the market for them. And yeah, De Beers' vast fortune could be gone in seconds if a pony or two works out a deal with the Diamond Dogs and then starts importing softball-sized diamonds to Earth by the cartload.
static2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20121010014748/mlp/images/3/3c/Rarity_pulling_gem_cart_S1E19.png
Yeah, but there ain't so many blacksmiths around, either. It kind of evens out. There are still millions of horses that need shoeing & odd jobs for the SCA, plus stuff like making ornamental iron objects & some repairs.
8169806
Well, yeah, but these days they can make artificial gems. How much longer can their monopoly last, anyway? Pearls will still be good, though. What I'd wonder is "Can they grow computer chip quality crystals?" because there is money in that & what will China say? (They make most of the world's computer chips?). Also, gold is artificially high priced. If Pony coins are gold, they're maybe the new Krugerrand (currently a bit over $1350 each).
8924416
Probably if you know your stuff and live in the right place, you can make a decent living as a farrier. I wonder how many farriers there are in the US, anyway?
Artificial gems aren't as good as normal gems in most cases (at least for jewelry). Certainly, things like industrial diamonds are very useful for industry, and of course far cheaper than actual diamonds (well, I assume). Probably there are other gems where the artificial one is just as nice as the real one and a fraction of the cose.
I have to figure that there are probably very smart people trying to figure out if we can grow computer chips. It seems like it might be possible, but I don't know.
Gold, I think, is not particularly valuable in Equestria. Nobody was trying to chip off all the things that Rarity turned into gold, anyway. Maybe unicorn gold is like leprechaun gold, in that it vanishes after a little bit (although if that were the case, why bother trying to clean it up? Unless it turns into something nasty). My own thought is that they make coins out of gold because it's easy, they're durable, they're fairly anti-microbial (I think gold is, anyway), and like our paper money, it's the value printed on it that matters, not the base material.
Assuming my headcanon there has any weight at all, that's a good reason to not let ponies bring gold on the exchange program, because they'd wind up ruining gold markets.
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I'm also seeing them start up a low key smeer campaign that tries to paint Equestrian gems as somehow inherently flawed and inferior to 'real, human gemstones'.
Eh, I could see them having something like that. Unless they just have blood replacement potions like in Harry Potter. As to cross species transfusions, those can be odd and interesting. Most dogs can be given cat blood with little to no issue from what I understand, but cats can only receive blood from a dog once before their body starts to reject it. (Which is perfectly in keeping with cats being cats.) Also read a really good EQG fic where Sci-Twi was doing a bunch of (legit, non-harmful and standard) medical tests on the girls to test how magic was effecting them, and one of the oddities that made the hospital staff running the blood tests think their equipment was broken was Sunset came back as having a blood type usually found in horses.
Or eat chocolate. They won't eat or drink anything that could be considered a 'drug', including caffeine.
Also, as always, Schlock has it covered.
schlockmercenary.com/strip/152/0/schlock20001110.jpg?v=1443894883576
"And made a WHOOOOLE lot of humans question their sexuality in ways they never even thought were possible. Also, I hear the CDC is naming a brand new STD after me."
To be fair, that's usually RD doing it, and it's usually not wholly by choice. Other then the window made a less likely to hurt target then the walls around it.
Cute worried pone, all anxious about being late.
Also, cute excited pone being all tail swishy.
Heh. "Wake up and service your mistress slaves!"
Well, having a real dick still has a few benefits to the toy. If nothing else, you're is self propelled.
Yeah, 'gay' and 'girl on girl' tend to get filed under different headings.
D'awww cute caring Silver, no tease someone jsut for not liking something and being silly about it.
Yeah, doubt having the toy would be that great an idea, not many times to play with it that wouldn't be very awkward.
Silver, someone needs to explain to you how an apartment lease works. No one else is going to be living there till you move out.
And, as has been pointed out already here.... how did Silver know about them accepting Cayeene's request?
Hey, could be worse, just hope that your fiends and family don't start having Amazon suggesting pony sex toys as good gifts based on your viewing habits.
My, however did they talk Cayenne into posing for them like that......
Pffffft, silly not silly pony, being all practical and reasonable and not having the slightest issue with her boyfriend getting a sex toy model on her friend and ruining his attempt at a joke.
"Now attend me female slave, I require grooming!"
Again, no you do not have any say Aric, female slave outranks male slave.
Stupid radio station number causing pony to be all freaked out and worried.
Humans can be so silly bout things, but her being worried about asking if her herd can use her apartment is so cute,
Of course ponies want to be together when traveling! And again I love her phrasing of things. "We wanted to do this, and so we did."
Of course the farm pone likes seeing human farm.
Good to see other ponies having fun silly pony time as well as Silver.
D'awwwwwww, of course spend time with human husbanado.
Further notes for pony rule, get pony safe exercise equipment in gyms.
Why do I see Aquamarine finding out about the Bonsai Tree, leading to a terrible B-moive, 'Attack of the 50 foot Bonsai'?
Happy sad ponies, eager to see old pony friends and go home, sad to lose new human friends.
Nice, spend time with the human's while you can and be adorable about it.
See, Pony have too many friends to be alone on Christmas.
Now now Silver, you know those two know they have to share the pony.
Smart ponies, wait till after the rush of people dies down to try to leave, no hurry.
How hard is it for Cayenne's humans to not just dump her out of the car towards the other helpers and drive yelling " she's you're problem now!"
Of course this pony is proud of getting kicked out of a store, store's fault for having such pathetic gems.
Very, very silly humans and your silly overpriced gem market.
Ponies expect full truth in naming, if your place says 'Burrito Beach' there better be a beach involved! but, they will let it slide a little if the noms are good enough.
What tragic accident as a foal left her scared by cheese?
hmmmm, LEGO! YAY! To bad too small to be pony friendly.
Yay gift shop kitsch.
Really hard to wrap your head around bartering, or someone not battering if you are used to the other.
Yeah, ponies really don't seem to get the idea of "$20 purse with a $980 name on it." Though, maybe Rarity or other fashion ponies might understand that,
D'awww, ponies all happy at simple things, like finding soft fluffy blankies.
It says a lot that those two would rather spend time not around Cayenne then get a free trip to Disney World.
Meh, however good that pizza is, it's still Chicago. Therefor, way to far away from NYC to be REAL pizza.
Needing a cart for your baggage, most of which is likely booze, porn, and toys. I can see why they want time away from her.
Smug little pony helper, all proud of only special houses having pegasus hung lights.
Notes for trains, add more windows in the back for ponies to look out of. But keep them up high, cause them standing on their hind hooves to look is cute.
More pony sleep piles, always adorable.
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I feel like it wouldn’t work, even if they tried. Especially since DeBeers isn’t exactly known for it’s human rights record or its desire to get diamond prices lower . . . there are probably lots of people would would flock to an alternate source. Although I suppose if people in general were more anti-pony than anti-DeBeers, they might be able to make such a strategy work for them.
I just did a bit of looking (I think I looked this up once before, too), and IRL equines have 8 major blood types with 30 different factors in addition. Apparently in most cases, they just find a horse that’s likely a suitable donor and do the old-fashioned method of mixing the two bloods together to see what happens (in a test tube, not the horse). If ponies had many different blood types/factors, that might be how they do it, too. I also found out that IRL equine blood doesn’t store well, so there aren’t horse blood banks. Of course, things could be different in the pony world; they could have magical artificial blood, or they could have a spell to ‘fix’ other blood so that it would work in a different pony, or they could have a way to store it that we humans don’t have.
Ooh, link?
Also:
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Well, I wouldn’t make it an hour as a Mormon.
Yeah, that would happen. Both those things. And random fun fact, there is at least one STD that can pass from equines to humans. I’d like to think that any one that ponies had involved either sparkles or rainbows or both.
I’m surprised that RD doesn’t have really awesome scars from all the glass she’s gone through. Or maybe she does, and we just don’t see that in the show. She’d totally brag about it, too. And maybe be one of the few ponies who has her blood type memorized.
Silver Glow knows what she wants.
On the down side, the toy stays up for longer.
They very much do. When you really think about it, it is weird how so many guys get upset about one but not the other.
As always, she wants her little herd to be happy. Maybe she’d like it if Aric was more willing to experiment (or doesn’t understand why he won’t; maybe it’s socially acceptable and not uncommon for stallions to be casually gay), but she’s not going to force him to do something he doesn’t want to do.
Cayenne would join in, Aquamarine’s unlikely to, and Gusty would not be interested at all. She’d probably want to be very, very far away.
I feel that ponies might have some different ideas when it comes to real estate than we humans do. And in some ways, it’s a fair point; Silver Glow didn’t sign the lease--Mr. Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn did, and it would be within their rights to have somepony or somebody else stay in the apartment while Silver Glow was gone.
Lucky guess? She just assumed? I thought at some point earlier Silver Glow mentioned that they’d done it, but maybe not.
That would be awkward. Does Amazon even sell sex toys?
<checks>
Yes, yes they do. They even have a bondage gear category.
They probably had to talk her out of it, at least until they got to the modeling studio. “Please put your tail down; we’re not done filling out forms yet.”
She’s got her priorities right--as long as he still wants to have fun with them, he’s more than welcome to play with a Cayenne toy on his free time.
Meghan’s going to be a pro at grooming ponies, something she’d want to put on her visa application.
At least he’s smart enough to agree when his girlfriends tell him what he’s going to do.
Radio stations shouldn’t have numbers that are similar to actual times. That’s messed me up more than once.
I think she knows that Mr. Salvatore doesn’t entirely approve of her relationship with Meghan and Aric. Since he’s a pro and really cares about her, he won’t do anything except maybe give disapproving looks now and then.
Pony train riding bonding time! And yeah, she does have the best phrasing sometimes.
It’s so different from the pony experience, and yet kind of the same. Bigger fields and crops planted closer together and big, motorized machines that work the fields. Even if she didn’t take any farm classes at MSU, Aquamarine probably spent some time hanging out at farms.
I think almost all of the ponies did, in their own ways. Cayenne of course went bar-hopping and got laid a lot, and Gusty presumably did all sorts of theatre stuff with her theatre friends.
Of course!
I’m just imagining a pony like Applejack doing one of those machines that you pull the weights towards yourself hitching it up to a harness and doing a short pony pull right there in the gym . . . and then getting upset that they don’t have more weight for the machine.
Given the Bonsai tree’s owner, that would be entirely appropriate. (hint, it’s a musical reference)
That’s got to be the sad thing about ending a year abroad. Eagerness to go home, but sadness at leaving all the new friends behind.
Exactly. There’s no chance that a pony wouldn’t have somebody to spend Christmas with.
And at least they’re mature enough to do it without shouting and jealousy.
When there’s no hurry, why not just stay in their seats and carry on talking until the aisle’s all clear? Much more sensible.
They have probably been tempted more than once to do exactly that. When she got arrested, they might not have been in any real hurry to get down to the station and pick her up.
I know, right? It’s not her fault at all; the store should have had proper gems on display.
Ponies can fix that!
You can bet that most pony stores promise what their name says. Quills and Sofas sells quills and sofas. If they had a Burrito Beach in Equestria, there would be a beach inside.
It’s long been my headcanon that unicorns don’t like cheese, and the show has indicated that Twilight doesn’t like quesadillas because they’re too cheesy. So, headcanon confirmed!
I bet a really patient pony could build a lego set by mouth. Or, a unicorn wouldn’t have much trouble with it, and actually lots of small pieces would probably be good for horn dexterity.
Overpriced crap, all the way from China!
Supposedly, in some cultures it was insulting to not barter. I’ve heard that, anyway; no idea if it’s actually true.
I don’t think that most ponies would jack up the price too much. Rarity probably offers a very reasonable price for a personally-tailored dress, for example (and let’s be honest, if it’s custom made, it’s going to be pricey). Heck, Rarity wasn’t too keen on making dozens and dozens of clones of the princess dress.
I think they’d understand the idea of a better craftspony charging more than some other pony--Rarity’s creations presumably do have a bit of a premium over somepony else’s--but I don’t think that they’d tend to jack up the price for a mass-market good just because it has a designer label on it.
Soft warm fuffy blankets are the best. Ponies are practical and appreciate things like that.
Yeah, Cayenne’s helpers idea of a vacation is ‘anything without her.’ They’re having more fun in Chicago not watching Cayenne than they would be having in Disney World.
I like thick crust and deep dish pizzas. Fight me.
As a Michigander, I can say that the best pizza is Detroit-style. Traditionally, it’s baked in used automotive parts pans.
Yeah, they’re certainly looking forward to a week without her.
Odds are that there are only two houses in the US that have pegasus-hung lights.
Generally, there’s only the one in the door (and they’d have to stand on hind hooves to look out of it). Some railcars have more windows, such as some commuter cars, and of course the observation cars from days gone by.
Sleep piles in general are adorable, but of course ones with ponies are the best.
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I know this is an old post, but I just want to clarify:
The Word of Wisdom (the Mormon health commandment) only forbids coffee, tea, tobacco, alcohol, and illegal drugs. It's more to keep you from becoming dependent or addicted to things.
Some individuals interpret that to mean no caffeine in general, so they cut out Coke and other sodas. I won't say that nobody has cut out chocolate, but I'm sure some really rules focused person has. But when a worldwide leader of the church comments about drinking Diet Coke, I don't think caffeine is a doctrinal no-no.
Also, a common interpretation about tea is that only the common tea leaf is banned, so peppermint or chamomile tea is fine.
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Which legit isn’t a bad idea. I can’t fault the logic there.
I had a friend in high school who wouldn’t drink anything with caffeine in it, although I don’t think that was based on a religious belief (I suppose it could have been; I never asked). And of course there are medical reasons not to as well; I work part-time in adult foster care homes, and there are a few residents who are not allowed anything with caffeine for medical or behavioral reasons. I can say having gone without for a while and then drinking it again, I really felt the effects, and I’d assume at this point if I stopped, I’d have whatever caffeine withdrawal symptoms are.
I don’t feel like tea is as addictive as some of the other items on the list, but I’m hardly an expert on it. Having said that, coffee is certainly socially acceptable in general, and one can certainly be addicted to it.
Good old organic pesticides. I probably shouldn't bring up cranberry farming, but I'm doing so anyway because you that's why.
Because of course that isn't actually in Michigan. Like Kansas City, which had a whole song based around how part of it is in Kansas but it's not the part anybody cares about. Have I mentioned that English is bull and the US is even more bull?
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Wolf spiders run the cranberry bogs.
Yeah, it is, and we are.
Michigan City is on Lake Michigan, which may be where it got its name. Or else they wished they were in Michigan instead of Indiana. FWIW, the city was founded before Michigan was a state.