January 19
Hope is the thing with feathers.
We started poetry with Emily Dickinson today. She didn't publish very many poems in her lifetime, but after she died they were discovered and people loved them very much.
She was a sad, lonely person, and I wonder if she would have been happier if she had given her poems to the world while she was still alive. I think she would have been.
It made me think of my journal—would I want it published? How would I feel if I knew other people were reading it? What would they think of me? Would they like me, or would they think I'm vain for writing so much about me? Maybe I should put other things in the journal, too, and that way it's not just about me.
But journals are supposed to be personal, aren't they? So I should just put what I want in it and I guess if somebody else reads it and they don't like it that's okay.
Some ponies think that elders don't have a sense of humor. That they're set in their ways, and don't want to change. And maybe that's true. Maybe they often think of the springs gone by and lament their lost youth . . . but I don't think that Professor Hillberry's opening poem was chosen at random. He looked right at me when he announced it, and there was a twinkle in his eye.
I read the whole poem aloud, even though he hadn't asked me. It was short, and beautiful.
The class just flew by as we read and discussed her poems, both the hopeful and the mournful. Most of her poems were short—all the ones we read were. Just a brief image, almost like a painting of words, but enough for me to see it in my mind.
I had an extra spring in my step after class. Poetry always cheers me up, even when it's a little bit sad.
I decided to try something a bit different for lunch. I thought of how Emily Dickinson had been scared to publish her poems and had missed an opportunity to touch people with her words while she was still alive (and what if nobody had ever found them?) and even if it was a bit presumptuous of me to compare myself with her, I was going to try eating in the dark room, as long as somebody I knew was there.
I admit, when I was on the threshold, I had second thoughts, and I almost hoped that I wouldn't see anyone, but Keith was there.
I thought I didn't know him very well, then I cursed myself for being a silly filly, and carried my tray over to the table and sat down across from him.
He was a little surprised at first, and he wasn't the only one. While we were eating, a few more people who had played cards last night came and sat down, and a couple of others besides. Each one of them kind of hesitated when they saw me sitting there, and I started to get a bit nervous, like maybe I was supposed to be invited to sit at their table and Keith had just been too polite to tell me.
Then I got mad at myself for being nervous. They were all nice and friendly last night, except for some of the stuff they said during the game, but that wasn't meant to be taken seriously. We said kind of mean things sometimes when we were playing games but we never really meant them.
I didn't stick around for very long after I'd finished my meal, though. I probably could have stayed and chatted with them, but the room was beginning to crowd in on me. Maybe humans like it when it's dark and confined, but I don't. We learned that humans used to live in caves, and maybe dark room reminded them of their ancestor's caves.
Otherwise, I don't know why they'd make a room without any decent windows. There are a couple, but they aren't enough to really brighten it up.
Between that and staying up past my bedtime last night, I thought I might as well take a nap.
Peggy wasn't in the room, and it was nice and quiet in the rest of the dorm as well. On weekends and after dinner, people have their doors open and usually want to be social, but usually during the day, there isn't much going on in the dorms.
When I woke up, Peggy was sitting at her desk, doing her homework. It was a little strange to see her with a notebook and pencil, rather than her computer.
According to the clock, it would be over an hour until dinnertime, so I could wash my sheets and then put them in the dryer so that they would be ready when I was done with dinner. I had to borrow Peggy's soap, because I didn't have any.
I ate dinner at the usual table. Tonight they had Chinese food, and the rice was very good, as were the spring rolls.
When I'd finished my meal, Christine put a small cookie on my tray, She said it was called a fortune cookie, because there was a fortune inside, and she broke hers open to show me.
It wasn't as easy for me to open, and I finally settled on crushing it underhoof, and then extracting the paper. Christine thought that was hilarious.
It said 'You find beauty in ordinary things,' which I thought was really appropriate.
She asked what it had said, and I said I thought that I should keep it to myself, but she said it isn't fun that way. So I told her, and she added 'in bed.' Then she explained how you're supposed to add 'in bed' to every fortune, which made hers read 'You will witness a special ceremony in bed.'
If the fortune was supposed to say that these things happened in bed, why didn't they just put it on the paper? Besides, why would I have to be in bed to see beauty in ordinary things? Couldn't I go outside and look at a cloud or a sunrise or the stars above?
When I got back to the dorm room, though, I experimented. Maybe I ought to give the fortune cookie the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it was wiser than I was.
I picked the most ordinary thing in my room. That was actually harder than I thought it would be. While the function of many of the things is the same as it would be in Equestria, the form isn't. Still, I'd gotten used to it during the few weeks this has been my home, and some of the wonder at the mundane has worn off.
My desk was as ordinary as anything, and I stood in the middle of the room and examined it, then I sat in bed and did the same. It didn't look any different.
Then, in order to reverse the experiment, I looked at Peggy's laundry basket, which has a lacy black bra hanging over the edge of it.
I tried to focus on the basket, since that was plain and ordinary. It's made out of plastic rather than wicker, but otherwise it's very plain. However, my eye kept being drawn to the bra and how intricate it was. I hadn't really paid them that much attention, especially since she covered hers up with a shirt right after putting it on, and usually threw them right in the basket once she was done wearing them.
Upon closer examination, it was a beautifully crafted piece of clothing, with intricate lacework and tiny little clasps on the back, something that would be the envy of every dressmaker on Equestria. Yet, to her it was so ordinary that rather than proudly wear it where everyone could see, she covered it up with a shirt.
I still wasn't totally convinced, though. I would have asked Peggy, but she wasn't back before I went to sleep. In bed.
My high school English teacher was a huge fan of Emily Dickinson. He told us so the first day of class, and he also told us that because he was such a fan, one of the questions on the final exam would be how to spell Massachusetts.
He wasn't lying. That was actually on the final exam.
Little jokes like this are too good and too fun too pass on. Plus it really is a good poem.
this great yet I really really really really really really really really really really really really would like a new chapter of OPP.
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lol Funny.^^
Would the pony version of the fortune cookie suffix be something like "during Spring Frolic" or "under a lifted tail"?
7033966 Look, I've known I'm arguing with a brick wall... lead bricks impenetrable to common sense of any kind put in place by your communist professors... but you are beyond stupid so far beyond comprehension I'm done after I point out one little thing:
You claim the death toll I state by communist regimes is propaganda... yet you accept a death toll of tens of millions... as acceptable?! A death toll greater than WWI and WWII COMBINED, perpetrated against their own people by their murderous regimes.
Oh, and by the way, MULTIPLE researched have put the total death from murder and starvation in Mao's regime alone at between 40 and 70 million.
So perhaps 140 million is too much... but does that make 40-70 million ok? The United States had a miniscule fraction of death from even the worst economic disaster in its history, the Great Depression, by comparison.
Seriously, this is the point where you've revealed how utterly incapable you are of reason.
I'm not going to bother splitting hairs between communism and socialism and all the other 'isms' the various factions have split themselves into to try basically the same failed system over and over again. They all fail, that's all the matters to practical thought.
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for whom the extendo arm bitch slap tolls ? for me ?
7034671 really it feels like shikazutra and his equestria girl tangent which still goes on and on and on ....... ect
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Land devastation... there is no industrialized nation that hasn't gone through a period of heavy pollution. Even the Japanese had their bad period of dumping everything. And China... oh dear lord...
As for blood-stained capitalist hands...care to put numbers behind that? How many people have been killed in their own countries (what we're talking about) have been murdered and starved to death by their capitalist leaders? How many protesters have been slaughtered? How many gulags and other camps have been created to imprison political enemies in capitalist nations?
Stalin's regime actually documented (documents which can be found and read now after they were released in 1991) 2.9 million people, fellow Russians, who were either directly executed or died in the gulags and kulak population resettlements.
Socialist-style governments don't go into the mass-killing... but instead they simply internally gut their own economic viability and occasionally transform into dictatorships after their end-stage, or meander about in financial limbo indefinitely like Argentina.
I really hope the penny drops for Silver Glow at some point. Not necessarily on this thing, though that would be amusing, but I've been wondering just how long she can go without realizing, for instance, 'oh yeah humans can't control the weather and this entire class is about attempting to understand an inherently unpredictable and self-organizing system'. I mean, her misunderstandings are cute, but unless they're resolved at some point, it makes her look a bit dim.
Possible fourth wall break?
Its going to be funny when she learns of the actual meaning of that joke.
That aught to be an interesting conversation.
7034671 Yeah, for you. Asking an author about about a different fic than the one you're currently reading?
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Harass him on his user page or the fic in question, like everyone else.
Ahhh ... I can't wait for the part where Silver brings in a cloud and the face of
the teacherall humansI once got a fortune cookie from a Chinese restaurant that said, "Human Rights: Know them, Respect Them."
I had a few more things to say that I learned from an Asian Studies certificate I earned last quarter, but no way do I want to get involved with the argument a few other commenters have going.
7034688 Oh! I suppose that yes, if we limit ouselves to planned death rather then caused death only Cuba (when under Batista), Chilia, Argentina and Brazil had concentration camp and massive death.
By the way, all these countries governement were fully backed by the USA. All in the name of stopping the dangerous socialist.
But since you choose to count people dying from hunger in China, I supposed that you were willing to count people straving in America too.
Or the amerindian.
And yet all you doo is talk about Totalitarist regim (USSR, China under Mao), Social democratic regim (Scandinavia, Venezuela) or countries that aren't socialist at all and merely have elected president more or less from the left wing. Argentina for exemple, merely choose not to abide by the IMF's condition and didn't cut in the service their governement is offering. That is not what it mean to be socialist.
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I think it is more a case of Leaning on the Fourth Wall, but details...
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first, communism is the anti-thesis of capitalism ( and it true that it has been confirmed to fail almost every-time (except maybe in china, economically speaking of course) while socialism is mostly capitalism with just a little help for peoples to give them the opportunity to do greater things (mainly elders, students, and peoples who wouldn't be able to find a job because they are too poor to meet the requirement most jobs demand : a car, an address or a bank account)
so capitalism should count too,
US: $19,030,024,473,091 - Debt as of February 2016
(since you seems to like numbers so much)
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(Kiddies, cover your ears.)
GODDAMMIT PEOPLE. STOP. THIS IS NOT THE PLACE FOR THAT. JUST. FUCKING. STOP.
If you really want to continue this, then start a personal message thread, or provide a link to a forum elsewhere and take it there. Do not continue this here. Please.
Not to discourage intelligent discourse or anything – but politics? Here? No.
Talk about colorful horses and weather magic and stuff instead. Or airplanes. Airplanes are cool.
*reads, then goes into a corner and cries a little*
And I bookmarked the poetry foundation. Thanks.
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And that's my point. Socialism DOESN'T WORK because it's VERY EASILY TAKEN OVER BY THOSE WHO DESIRE POWER.
It's an inherently corruptible system nearly impossible to repair once it's been broken.
It's unrealistic in its very conceptualization.
IT IS A UTOPIAN FANTASY.
7035210 I have already stated that the USA has not been truly capitalist for quite a long time. It is quite clearly crony capitalist, which has become epidemic in this era of bank bailouts and endless Fed stimulus, and contains large and expensive socialist elements since the 1960s.
The Fed, by the way, turned out to be a terrible idea, as even its presidential proponent Woodrow Wilson realized it later in life. It also failed utterly in its primary stated purpose: to prevent large recessions and bank runs... since it's creation was followed by a major recession in 1920 and then the Great Depression... both of which, especially the latter, featured bank runs. Now, the Fed prints money (as are all the major nations and the ECB) to such an extent that valuation is highly unstable and lending rates have gone effectively negative, eliminating traditional savings benefits and forcing everyone into a stock market buoyed by massive stock buybacks paid for by the stimulus money lent to companies by banks at a near-zero rate. It's practically a world-wide Ponzi scheme at this point which no one dares pull out of or everything collapses instantly.
Dwight D. Eisenhower was the only President to significantly lower the national debt, and Andrew Jackson the only one to ever eliminate it. Since 1980 it has exploded by a massive expansion of military spending (a significant portion of which goes into very heavily crony-based, outrageously expensive weapons programs... which often yield poor results, like the latest two fighter aircraft which cost about $1.5 trillion to create in total and really aren't much of an improvement.) and social welfare spending (which make up about 50% of the total federal budget annually).
Dickinson and fortune cookies. A surprising effective blend. I suppose the innuendo would go over Silver's head given the different logistics involved.
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it may have to do with the fact that I'm not native English speaking but I don't quite understand the meaning of that sentence
other than that, could you explicit a little more on what would a purely capitalist country have that america doesn't at the moment?
7035210 That may have been the debt in February 2016, but also be sure to look not just at the recent numbers, but also go further back with them. Around half of that 19 trillion debt was accumulated under one man, who seems to be more of a communist than anything. For example, universal health care provided by the government (who can't seem to run anything right) is a communist thing. How much time and money has been put into that failure? I don't know the money part, but the time is at least five years. If a program or even a set of rules/laws produce only a mess and headaches after five years with no significant net gain to show for it, the right thing to do would be to scrap it. There's also redistribution of wealth, which disincentivizes the rich to make money, since it will be taken from them anyways, and disincentivizes the poor, who are getting free money. Once there's no more wealth to redistribute, you'd wind up with former rich people with their mindset of not working to avoid government theft and former poor people who have lived off the government's theft. One group doesn't want to work and the other may not know how.
I'd like to continue my somewhat disorganized thoughts, but then I'd start naming names, and I'm not in the mood for that. I think heavy implication of one name is enough.
I look at the story and look at the comments and wonder.
Wtf is your major malfunction? Argue political ideology on Facebook. Geez!
7034656 "Look, I've known I'm arguing with a brick wall... lead bricks impenetrable to common sense of any kind put in place by your communist professors... "
Ahh, the good old fashioned american far-right anti-intellectualism. Somebody disagrees with you therefore it must be a communist conspiracy in the higher education system.
First you've appealed to "crony capitalism", now you've alluded to the "Cultural Marxism" conspiracy theory. Well done, you are ticking all the boxes.
For the record I had a standard pro-western bloc high school history education, followed by a two year BTEC in Television and film - which focused quite heavily on the history and methodology of propaganda production.
I came to Marxism-Leninism through independent curiosity and desire to research the other side, and this occurred a great while after I left formal education. Hell, I did this during a phase of my life where I was an Orange-Booker, making this learning process a very long uphill struggle against my preconceived notions. So much for your academic conspiracy, hey?
"but you are beyond stupid so far beyond comprehension I'm done after I point out one little thing:
You claim the death toll I state by communist regimes is propaganda... yet you accept a death toll of tens of millions... as acceptable?! A death toll greater than WWI and WWII COMBINED, perpetrated against their own people by their murderous regimes."
No, actually, what I did do was demonstrate that your numbers were made up. I did it by applying the ancient communist secret of "primary school maths" to publicly available demographic census information.
"Oh, and by the way, MULTIPLE researched have put the total death from murder and starvation in Mao's regime alone at between 40 and 70 million.
So perhaps 140 million is too much... but does that make 40-70 million ok? The United States had a miniscule fraction of death from even the worst economic disaster in its history, the Great Depression, by comparison. "
So I crushed your made up number, so you settle for another, smaller and vaguer number starring Shodringer's 30 million people.
And, pal, you really shouldn't try and claim to have a "minuscule" fraction of death when arguing the defence of a country which spent a couple of centuries pursuing a policy of deliberate genocide against the native peoples of it's territory - then carving four slave owners into their sacred mountain. And then going abroad and installing fascist puppet governments in central and south american counties so as to keep their markets free and deregulated for the benefit of international capital. Big ups to United Fruit and the Coca-Cola anti-union Death Squads?
"I'm not going to bother splitting hairs between communism and socialism and all the other 'isms' the various factions have split themselves into to try basically the same failed system over and over again. They all fail, that's all the matters to practical thought."
There's not much practical thought emerging from a person who cannot tell the difference between a Capitalist economy with private property and class conflict mitigating government regulation, and a command economy with no private property, no market, and an active class struggle.
That is the crux of your problem, you're determined to argue for the superiority of a given economic system without understanding the differences between it and the system you attempt to oppose.
This is not really surprising, given your prior appeal to "crony capitalism" - you can't even defend capitalism on it's own terms so you attempt to redefine the word and defend that instead.
7035210 That's not the definition of Socialism; a capitalist system with a welfare state is known as a social democracy.
A socialist system is very specifically one where private ownership of production and distribution is abolished.
This issue is often confused by political figureheads who historically responded to demands for the latter by providing the former, and in the present by Bernie "just like now but with free college" Sanders.
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sorry, it's just that a flame war on the internet is like a burning house, you should try to put out the fire, but it look so pretty, you end up looking it burn to the ground (and maybe putting a little oil on the already blazing fire)
now about planes... I find them great, but I also wonder what it would be like to fly in the clouds without been in a giant flying tin can with wings
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funny how, by switching "socialism" with "capitalism" you get the argument peoples are going to launch at you
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thank you for correcting me, I forgot to look up the definitions before posting
but I did bring my bag of pop corn, want some?
7037279 I agree, Everypony is plural, it is improper grammar to use herself and she.
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A whole cloud house can fit into their drom room? Must be a big room then!
Still a funny mental image.
7037393 104 cards? Wow! The game must had lasted forever!
This is really interesting and cute. It'd be fun to see the other side of this, a human in Equestira writing about .........
Oh right, that's 'On To The Pony Planet'. Any idea on when you'll continue with that one as well? I find everything about it great but am especially hooked on the Earth side investigation.
7037269 Ah glad I could help out with that
7037359 Ah I see. A good solid truck either way!
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Maybe, but if I have to be the sole fireman pouring water on this blazing shitstain inferno, I will. Pardon my French.
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Alondro. KB_BOY. Stop. Now.
Not after you make one more good point.
Not after you offer a rebuttal to the last stupid thing the other said that makes you angry.
Now.
Imagine you're in an amusement park, there to have a good time, and a few yards down the road you see a pair of adult men having a shouting match. You're annoyed, but maybe also a little worried, so you listen in for a second. Turns out they're shouting about socialism versus capitalism*. In the middle of an amusement park. While parents carrying stuffed animals for their kids give the two a wide, wide berth on their way to the next ride. Several people have stopped to watch the train wreck, expressions of awkward consternation universally plastered upon their faces. Most want to step in, but the two men are behaving violently enough that the onlookers are afraid they'll get hurt if they try.
These two men are the two of you right now. If either of you is not male, then replace the pronouns accordingly. They are irrelevant. Point is, you're embarrassing yourselves, you're embarrassing the community, and we the onlookers are embarrassed for you. We are standing between you and our acquaintances with our backs to you, holding up our hands and offering profuse apologies accompanied by an assertion of "I swear it's not normally like this around here."
Right now, we are ashamed and disappointed in you. So do your dignity a favor, bite off your next carefully sourced scathing retort, and walk away. Better yet, mutually apologize to each other.
We know you can be better than this.
*Yes I know there are more -isms involved. Shut up.
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I think 'under a lifted tail.'
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She knows that humans don't control it like pegasi control it. She still hasn't really wrapped her head around what that means.
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There's another more pointed joke at my expense in the story. One free internet to anyone who finds it.
Peggy won't leave her hanging. All she's got to do is ask.
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Why not? It's the Internet! You're supposed to have Opinions on the Internet.
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You are welcome! It's a resource I've been using a lot recently.
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Everything blends with everything if you look at it just right. For me, this story has been proving that again and again, much like college did.
Pony innuendo =/= human innuendo.
I've got a great joke planned for that, BTW.
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One of the things I was hoping for with this story was debate. One should be careful what one wishes for.
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Depended on who was playing. We could knock out a game in 15 minutes, or stretch it for an hour.
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It will be soonish. One of the reasons for this story is to get me back in the habit of writing every day, something I haven't been doing for the last year (and you can see it by the pace of updates). There are IRL reasons for that, as well as a lot of shoddy excuses.
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"Continue striving! Your efforts will soon offer great reward."
...under a lifted tail.
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A man can dream.
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Fair enough.
7037404 By less standard I mean specially made so not playable with the standard 52 card pack. Sorry if I ended up sounding demanding. Or confused you.
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Aw man, don't let the news get you down too much!
I could make a comment about the media's eternal bias toward bad news, but instead I'll leave one of my favorite quotes:
"When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'"
― Mr. Rogers
Famous last words.
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Ah, I forgot to respond.
Ahem...
You don't know me very well, do you?
But you will... sooooooon...
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Politics is an appropriate topic for discussion, in any comments section of any story about college/ university life.
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Another impressionable young person brainwashed by crony capitalist propaganda. Trickle-down economics does not work. Recent history (within your own lifetime) blatantly bore this out.
So, what's with the darkened room for eating? It's been bugging me that there is something more to that room that I am missing and this chapter brought that feeling to the forefront.
STAY IN WONDERLAND, AND I'LL SHOW YOU HOW DEEP THE RABBIT HOLE GOES...
...IN BED. ;I