April 14 [রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর]
April 14
I took another morning flight 'cause I had all my gear with me, but it wasn't as far as yesterday's. I stayed over town, going west to the Maple Hill Mall. On a whim, I flew down to the Taco Bell, and it was open. I thought about going in and having breakfast there, but then decided that it would be more fun if I was with my friends. So I flew off and back to campus.
It's kind of weird not having anything to do in the morning. I guess a lot of students sleep in; that's what Peggy likes to do when she can.
Since I had all sorts of free time until lunch, I got my sheets off my bed and took them down to the laundry room and put them in the washing machine, and then while they were being cleaned I decided that I would go to the bookstore and see if they had any good calculators.
They did; and I got a nice one like Keith had. There was a pretty girl working at the counter named Angel who I had seen around campus occasionally and she had curly blonde hair that I just wanted to push and see if it was as springy as it looked.
When I got back to my room, I tried to open my calculator but it was in a pegasus-proof package and I had to go to Rebekka's room and have her cut it open for me.
I not only got a calculator, but I got a whole book of instructions, and I spent the rest of the morning sitting out on the quad (it was too nice a day to be inside) reading through the instruction booklet and working the calculator on the sample equations. There were a lot of them where I didn't even know what I was calculating, because the symbols were totally different than ours. When they came up in class, though, I'd know.
Before lunch, I took my sheets out of the dryer and made my bed again, then wanted to get right in it because fresh-washed sheets are the most wonderful feeling in the world. It wasn't until I started going to university that I even had sheets at all. Having them made me feel like a princess when I got in bed.
I probably should have sat with Trevor and Cedric and Leon, but I hadn't sat at Meghan's table in a while, and so I sat there and four of us decided that we'd try to talk to each other only in Equestrian. Amy was kind of left out, though, 'cause she couldn't speak it.
And when we named foods, that was kind of fun. There was stuff that we didn't have, so there wasn't a proper word for, and I had to think on my hooves to come up with something. I had to ask them what the meat was and what it came from, 'cause I didn't know. Sometimes they didn’t know either and had to guess.
That was kind of interesting, because of course there was a lot of stuff that there was an English word for but not an Equestrian word, and it went the other way, too. I'm not all that smart with languages, but I bet that if hot dogs become popular in Equestria, that's what they'll be called, rather than 'cooked carrion tubes,' which is what I called them.
Conrad started out by reading us selections of really short poems from a book called Stray Birds. Erica said that they sounded like proverbs, which is a name for a small bit of wisdom. (There is also a book in the Bible called Proverbs and I am looking forward to reading it.) Sometimes we called them old mare's tales, 'cause they were the kind of thing your granddam might say to you.
It's a different kind of thought to appreciate them. They don't really describe a moment or a feeling like the poems I like best, but they make you think in a different way.
He read one that said the sky's language was eternal silence, and before I could think about it I raised my hoof and said that was not so, the sky was always talking, and it was just that humans were often deaf to it. Then I thought that Conrad might be mad at me for disagreeing, but he wasn't. He just smiled and said that perhaps I ought to think of a way to describe the language of the sky so that humans could understand it.
Conrad finished off class by reading one of his favorite poems called Sonar Tori, or The Golden Boat. It was about a man who loaded all his treasure on a boat and then it was full and the boat sailed off without him, leaving him alone on the shore.
When he was finished with the poem he told us that we were free to go and just stayed sitting at his desk as the class left, and it wasn't until I was in the hallway that I realized that I was one of Conrad's golden boats, so I turned around and went back into the class and hugged him.
I sat in a tree branch and listened to the voice of the sky. Tagore said that trees put roots into the ground and roots into the sky, and I think he is right about that. That's why earth ponies and pegasus ponies were meant to be together: we're the two halves of the tree.
I wrote my observations down in my class notebook and decided that I needed to learn more English words for the sky because I had written down a lot of Equestrian words since I didn't know how to say it in English.
Also it is hard to balance a notebook on a tree branch and write in it.
After dinner, I went over to see Liz, and we talked about all the fighting the Isrealites were doing some more. She explained some history of the region and how all the different tribes were constantly fighting, and said how archaeologists had found the Moabite Stone, which gave the Moabite perspective on some of the stuff in the Bible. So I was really curious about that and she found it on her computer and we compared what they had written to what the Bible had said.
Then I went over to Meghan's to watch Harry Potter. Amy was studying and she said that she could put headphones on and try to ignore us, but I thought that would be kind of rude. So Meghan said that we could go to the lounge because her folding computer could show the movie, too. Then I said that we could watch it in my room because Peggy wasn't there, so we wouldn't distract anybody, and Meghan thought that was a good idea, so she got her computer and the movie and a bag of popcorn and back in Trowbridge we made the popcorn and set the computer on my desk and watched it from my bed.
When it was over, Meghan asked if she could stay and I told her she could so she brushed a few stray pieces of popcorn off the bed and then I could see that she was thinking about what she was going to wear to bed because her sleeping clothes that she normally wore were back in her room.
But I guess she was getting more comfortable without them, because she pretty quickly took off everything but her panties and then joined me in bed. I curled up with my head on her chest and she put her arm around me and we fell asleep together.
Stats
Page generated in 0.049 seconds
Total duration
879 users online
1,157,500 hits today, 2,004,447 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Whats the language in the title?
Don't worry Silver... that's an everybody proof package.
7299273 Bengali
It says: Rabindranath Tagore
7299273 Bengali, according to the internet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabindranath_Tagore
Edit: That's what the chapter name is, I mean. It's his name. Rabindranath Tagore.
Maybe they could read The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. That has some interesting things to read and discuss.
Don't feel bad, Silver; that packaging is pretty human-proof too. I think they figure that if you can't actually use the product, you can't get mad at it for not performing how you wanted.
...but not unicorns? Oh, Silver, I thought you were learning....
7299286 7299312 Packaging proof against everybody except unicorns, I imagine.
7299291 thanks
7299094 Hmmm. I was basing a lot of my assumptions on human society, where women got equal property and inheritance rights long before they got even near-parity in the business and political worlds, but pony society could be very different, that's a good point. I do agree that the military seems predominantly male (all of Sheriff Silverstar's deputies were stallions as well), so being a protector, or a provider of some other kind, does seem to be expected of stallions in Equestrian society.
media.giphy.com/media/F9hbT1c861ImA/giphy.gif
7299312 Unicorns raise the sun to give the tree light and the moon to give it rest, but Celestia and Luna took that job thousands of years ago, so pegasi like Silver don't appreciate it anymore. If some alicorn had come along with a cloud cutie mark instead, Silver's outlook would be very different.
I have very curly hair, and when it gets long, it poofs up, especially if it's humid. More than once, I've had random girls ask if they can touch my hair. The most memorable was the one who thought I had gone far enough away that I wouldn't hear her say: "Oh my god it's so fuzzy!"
7299244
Just be prepared for the main character to go through some FUBAR stuff.
Journal Entry; Day One
Dear Journal. Won't be writing much in you, because let's face it; with computers I can write as many entries as I want without limit, and I can play ADDC while I write about the cow poop I stepped in earlier.
Sincerely,
UniqueSKD
7299428 it's so fuzzy I'm gonna die!
I sense a distinct lack of unicorns in this metaphor.
7298926 Oh, sure, I was able to resist the obvious joke... anyways, that makes Celestia a Pony Gaddafi, since it's a fetish guard-harem, if you want to clop down that particular road - which, incidentally, I've seen end up in a scenario where all of Equestria are direct descendants of the Sisters via vigorous exercise of the right of Prima Nocta. Which also would explain Pumpkin and Pound Cake... dark places man, dark places.
More seriously, I look at the officially polygamous corners of the modern world and shake my head at the idealism of the polyamorous crowd. Because Saudi Arabia and the compounds of the FLDS are such paragons of progressivism and social bliss...
And says something pretty dark about mare-dominant towns like Ponyville & the very young age at which fillies strike out on their own.
I adore this.
Hmmm, I just love cooked carrion tubes.
"You.. you mean two thirds, right?
"
Smoooooth, Silver. Well, have fun this weekend.
Peggy has already left, Aric will be away for the weekend, and Meghan is sleeping over. This could get very interesting very fast.
7299293 It looks like Conrad is doing a section on poets of the Empire. The Rubaiyat looks like that at first glance, but it's effectively a British work in the tradition of Victorian orientalism. Don't get me wrong, it's one of my favorite works, but it is Fitzgerald riffing on the idea of Omar the Tentmaker, not a proper translation.
I'm not sure why I want to put Fitzgerald in the orientalist box, but Kipling goes into the Anglo-Indian box... might be the poetic equivalent of the old joke about the chicken being involved in breakfast while the pig is committed...
7299805 Look at Rubaiyat less as a translation of a Persian poet and more as the work of an English Victorian-era poet in a sense riffing on the works of the Persian poet. FitzGerald was writing his poems in what he saw as the style of Omar Khayyam instead of doing a serious translation of the older work into English. As you said, it is a product of Victorian Orientalism but FitzGerald's work should be viewed as a product of his time and of his own invention.
I have both great and horrible feelings about Taco Bell breakfast.
"cooked carrion tubes" like some kind of cannibal internet?
She is a bit casually racist towards unicorns... She prolly doesn't even realize.
7299879 I wonder if she would embarrass herself if she ever met a unicorn celebrity like one of the princesses for instance (although technically alicorns).
Mmm. I do love a good cooked carrion tube. And a good neologism. It'll be very interesting to see what words English pilfers from Equestrian and vice versa.
I have managed to open blister packaging without scissors. It took a lot of bending the plastic back and forth. And no small amount of biting.
Aww. Golden boat hugs.
And yeah, I'm going to have to echo the concern with that tree metaphor. These days, I suppose unicorns would be the fertilizer, irrigation, and pest control that make the tree healthier than it ever could be without them.
A recommended method of opening clamshell enclosures is to use an electric can opener.
7299312
Maybe Silver will come to realize her unconscious (slight!) racism toward unicorns in her anthropology class?
I hope she finds out one day about the classical elements and sees that they could correspond to ponies: Air=Pegasi, Earth=Earth, Fire=Unicorn, Sea=Sirens (not that she knows about them, probably). That could be interesting.
Hey, uh, Silver? There's an irate earth pony sailor here by the name of Golden Boat who says she'd like a word with you about infringement.
Unicorns are the trunk of the tree, clearly.
Cooked carrion tube, that sounds like the scientific name
"Cooked carrion tube" would be a usable substitute for "sausage," but now Silver needs to come up with a way to differentiate the types!
(It's OK, Silver Glow. It's OK... Bratwurst isn't really made from ground-up brats. We don't eat our children, even if they're naughty...)
I could totally see Meghan taking this in a different way than what Silver means it to be...
Well, at least she didn't call them 'murder tubes'.
Thus it was that Silver became best pony.
Biscuits, if i may call you such, I have a question, at what point precisely did Silver find her voice?
By which I mean that curious business whereby a character starts speaking for themself. How many chapters were you into this when Silver Glow essentially pushed you aside and said "Dude, I got this"? I only ask this because, while I lack the courage to post anything myself, I have written enough to have experienced that strange feeling when a character starts speaking their own lines.
In other news...
MLP in a nutshell.
Edited for punctuation, not that it matters. It does. Also for spelling.
Too many its.
7300049
Unicorns=manure, got it.
7299286
They are!
7299291
Although I should add the caviat 'according to Google.' I don't speak Bengali, so it really could be anything and I wouldn't know.
7299293
That's not a bad idea. Dang, I love how y'all are suggesting new poems and poets for me.
7299312
That's a pretty logical conclusion.
Unicorns are the squirrels that run up and down the tree and beg for food and chatter incessantly.
7299339
The plastic is spell-resistant.
7299346
That's always the trick with cultural anthropology--you can't really make any assumptions about the society. Just because they do some things similarly way doesn't mean that other things are the same at all. The truth is that we don't know at all; I don't think it's ever been mentioned in the show.
7299407
So basically, these days unicorns are a bunch of slackers.
7299428
Mine's the complete opposite. The only interesting thing it does is get blonder in the summer.* But I occasionally have girls ask if they can braid it. . . .
__________________
*Also some of it is grey now but I think that's just the follicles resting and it will turn back to the proper color soon.
7299445
Is it worse than The Mares of Diomedes?
7299663
Uni-what?
7299447
Keyboards suck when you have hooves. You can try it for yourself by making two fists and trying to type. Protip: don't accidentlly shut down Chrome like I just did.
7299608
Imagine Fluffle Puff on Earth. People would get lost in her fur.
7299663
What do unicorns actually do?
7299763
It generally doesn't work well with people, but I don't think we can make the claim that it wouldn't work for a genuine alien species.
I've mostly avoided going there because of the potential squick factor of my readers. But I think it's a potentially valid headcanon that at least historically once ponies got their cutie marks, they were ready.
7299788
A pony goes to Sonic and tries to order food for all her friends. That would be hilarious.
Unicorns just sit around being smug and doing magic.
Sometimes subtlety isn't Silver Glow's strong suite.
7299793
Naked pony snuggles!
7299805
He's sort of skipping around--that's not an intentional theme (although a Canadien poet might be a good one for next, eh?)
I did some googling and there are multiple translations, so possibly there is a more authentic one. Dunno--I've run into this on occasion. I have a copy of The Canterbury Tales which is a literal, word-for-word translation, and it's practically unreadable. Then I have one that's a 'close enough because it's poetry' translation, and that one's a lot better.
7299869
It seems to me like this is the kind of thing that we find whenever we're seeing translations of any sort. Especially of long-standing works, like the Bible.
7299870
I've never tried it. Perhaps that's for the best.
7299879
Only a little. And yeah, she doesn't even realize it.
7300006
She does all right with actual unicorns that she can see and smell and nuzzle; it's the concept of 'unicorn' versus Cayenne or Gusty that's where she has problems.
7300049
I could see a bunch of foals picking up on slang, and those words getting added to Equestrian, much to the horror of the adults. As for English . . . we'll take whatever we can. There's no logic to it. There might be a new rule added to the language, though (IIRC, the 'w-is-sometimes-a-vowel' rule is only for words we stole from Welsh).
I can rip some of them apart, if they use shoddy plastic. If the thing inside is stiff and has blunt edges, it helps a lot.
That's the problem Silver has--what unicorns contribute to society is subtle. Necessary, yes, but very subtle.
7300165
Non-electrics work, too. Or so I've heard. Never tried it myself; I usually have access to a knife or razor blade or something similarly destructive.
7300171
There's always hope!
She probably knows a fair bit about seaponies, to be honest. Probably more than she knows about unicorns.
7300725
Or the vine that climbs up the tree and mooches off it.
7300749
Heh, close enough.
7301329
Pink carrion tube, brown spicy carrion tube, curved carrion tube, carrion tube the size of a donkey d
k . . . lots of ways of distinguishing the types.
7301866
Who wants what out of the relationship?
7302440
lol, I'm unconsciously channeling Horse Wife
7303849
Boy did I misread that the first time.
7304193
"Where do the unicorns fit in your metaphor?"
"Well, they shit on us."
". . . "
"Hey, we need that to grow. I just wish they were more polite about doing it."
7302541
She was pretty loud by humanity i love you. For other characters, Peggy really came forward after the shooting, and Gusty when they got to Seattle. Mostly now I just listen to what they tell me.
And if you're legit writing to the point where the characters are driving the story, get an editor and publish. I love character-driven pieces more than anything else.
7299273 I know I'm quite late in replying, but Google Translate tells me it's Bengali and it says Rabindranath Tagore.
It can be quite human-proof as well. Although, this may be useful in a few scenarios back at Equestria...
I presume this was true for several cultural exchanges in the past.
She bought a graphing calculator. Sooner or later, she will buy a smartphone. For less than the cost of the graphing calculculator, she can buy a app which graphs. Ah, ¡thus is how it is with Moore's Law!
7375571
I bet some unicorns love trolling the other ponies by making packages that can't be opened without a horn.
Still is. I know a couple of translators, and I've actually helped one out by giving her instructions sheets in multiple languages, so she can see how things like 'battery compartment' are written in different languages.
It's really hard to do. Her best bet would probably be total immersion in a unicorn city for a couple of years.
7452939
She's already got a smartphone, although she doesn't know how to use most of its smart apps. She only uses it on occasion for phone calls and text messages.
7477175
This chapter inspired me to get a free App for graphing calculations for me iPhone (usually, I use my MacIntosh (The Family
Apple 
makes all of my computing devices)). It is not very good, but it was nice for a programmer to throw it together. If I really need an app for graphing calculations, I can get a professional app for a few dollars. SmartPhones replace all handheld devices by matriculating their functions and being just as good, while costing less than the stand-alone handheld device and a separate SmartPhone (graphing calculators, BarCodeReaders, GPSReceivers, RemoteControls, CreditCards, DebitCards, IDBadges, et al (that is 1 SmartPhone costing 1 to 2 hundred dollars plus 1 thousand dollars of other handheld devices, requiring a backpack to lug around, or just 1 SmartPhone costing 1 to 2 hundred dollars with less than 1 hundred dollars of apps)).
7299870
7307721
Taco Bell breakfast is actually pretty good. There's one on the way into work, and I've grown rather fond of the sausage crunchwrap. The hashbrowns are pretty good too.