Chimicherry or Cherrychonga story notes · 10:16pm Sep 13th, 2014
First, a thanks to my editors, Metallusionismagic and AshadowOfCygnus.
A second thanks to Not Worthy, who wanted this as part of a collab which unfortunately never came to fruition.
Traditional section cars, or handcars as they were also known, were lightweight rail vehicles operated by pumping the walking beam up and down. Y'all know this, since we saw it in the episode. They were light enough that they could be lifted on and off the tracks when needed. Over time, they were replaced by bicycles with outriggers, gasoline-powered speeders, and eventually hi-rail vehicles.
The Bard, in case it wasn't obvious enough in the text, is William Shakespeare. The actual quote from Romeo and Juliette is, of course, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
If you called a rose a stinkbloom, you probably wouldn't have much luck selling them around Valentine's Day. This is especially true of food; nobody wants to eat a carp, for example—which is why some people are proposing renaming them “Silverfin.” If you think I'm making this up, you've probably never enjoyed a good Patagonian toothfish (now called Chilean seabass) or a slimehead (more commonly known as Orange Roughy).
For what it's worth, 'thornflower' and 'stinkbloom' aren't real flower names, as best as I can tell.
Many people know that sugar comes from sugarcane. When I was in college, I discovered to my surprise that many people didn't know that sugar comes from sugar beets. See, I knew, because one side of the elementary school playground backed onto the Pioneer Sugar factory's storage lot, which ever fall would fill up with neat mountains of beets. [The other side of the playground faced a pickle factory.]
Kumquats are the only citrus fruit that can survive a late frost. While their kin—oranges, grapefruit, and the like—happily blossom as soon as its warm, the kumquat trees wait a little while and think it over before committing themselves. Kumquats may be the only citrus fruit which is eaten with its rind. We used to get them around Christmas time (no idea why), so when a character was introduced in a Mickey Mouse comic who liked pickled kumquats, I knew what they were.
Blaze Star is made up by me; if he figures in some other story, that wasn't an intentional reference. A search of the Wiki gave me no stallions who'd only been seen in Dodge Junction. There were four mares, and I was going to use “Cornflower” (a recolored Daisy with a cowpony hat), but when I started changing pronouns it just didn't read well.
There's an old joke about a guy named Larry who claims he knows everybody. I won't reprint the joke here, but the punchline is that the Larry's friend challenges him to go meet the Pope. Larry does, but then the his friend is not sure that's actually the Pope up there, so he turns to a random bystander, and says, “Do you know that guy up there?” And the bystander says, “Larry? Yeah, but who's that with him?” I actually used to work with a guy who pretty much did, although I never had a chance to test him with the Pope. Anyway, that's probably Pinkie's life in a nutshell.
Rarity might have a secret weakness for cake, just like Princess Celestia.
While Pinkie and Rarity might seem an odd couple, remember that in the Iron Will episode, they were the two working together who helped turn Flutterb
ch back into Fluttershy. I think they've been friends for quite a long time.
Pinkie and Rarity aren't a bad ship. I've seen it a few times, most recently in Steel Resolve's "First Steps".
I'm a little bit reluctant about actually shipping them (and the story to which this blog post is attached is NOT a shipfic), but I've got no problem with them being close friends.
Yep. One of those rail inspection cars was stored not too far from Bronycon!
rigger.smugmug.com/Sights/Museums/BO-Railroad-Museum/i-R9pfPdm/0/L/IMG_0726-L.jpg
This one's from the Ma. & Pa. railroad.
Ah yes, the Buick. I actually got to ride in one of those in a parade (not that one, obviously).
Oddly your link is broken. Here's a different source:
c1.staticflickr.com/5/4135/5487418067_627cf8442e.jpg
The rail museum served as inspiration for a side story which is yet to be published, and had some influence on Changes, which is just now ready to edit.
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I get it, I get it, back to work I go.
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Oh, and thanks for giving me the link to that comic, too.
2452949 /mlp/ is a never-ending fountain of wonder, joy, and sequential art.
huh, link? there was never a link here. YOU'LL NEVER FIND IT, NEVERRRRRRR
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Don't worry, I won't let him know. He'd only waste hours looking at all the pretty comics.
I wonder if the joke re-done with Pinkie would have Celestia in place of the pope...
Sugar can be made from quite a lot of things surprisingly.
But it's mostly noted from Sugarcane because that's one of the more common methods of making it, specially down here in the south with the more humid and rainy weather.
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Probably.
th00.deviantart.net/fs71/200H/f/2014/104/3/d/pope_celestia_by_10tb-d7eidqv.png
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Up here in the north, we use beets, dammit.
(Well, and we've also got a lot of corn that can be turned into HFC)
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Driving through parts of North Dakota in October and November highlights the humble sugar beet - huge piles are heaped by the side of the fields where they were grown, waiting to be trucked to the processing factories.
My grandfather tried his hand at growing them here in northern Maine as part of an experimental program, and they did pretty well. However, the promised processing infrastructure never was built, so after three years in the program, he didn't plant them again.
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The thumb area of Michigan, too, we’ve got lots and lots of them. Had to be careful in the wintertime; a beet that’s fallen off a truck looks a lot like a slush pile, but it’s a lot more solid.
When I was a kid, my elementary school’s playground bordered on a sugar beet factory, and during harvesting time the piles of beets would get closer and closer to the school . . . and then through the year, they’d diminish as the beets were used, only to be repeated the next year.