Category Archives: Generally speaking

I’ve neglected this place of late, but then I haven’t had a whole lot to say, and no compelling story idea are forthcoming. There will be works in progress eventually. Really.

Naming consultant Nancy Friedman has happened upon a software gizmo to benefit those of us who write pony tales: I don’t get the appeal of My Little Pony even on a meta-meta-ironic level, but I am not you, and you, for all I know, may be a brony. In that case, knock yourself out with Ponify, a browser extension “which… (more…)

This is something I wrote about elsewhere three years ago on the subject of Thomas Crapper, vendor (if not necessarily the inventor) of flush toilets, and the unusual appropriateness of his surname: John Bemelmans Marciano, in his book Anonyponymous: The Forgotten People Behind Everyday Words (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2009), advances this intriguing hypothesis: “It does seem fair to question,… (more…)

I quote these mostly because of their timely juxtaposition — and because timely juxtapositions are sometimes at the very heart of our existence. Jack Baruth writes today in The Truth About Cars: The notion of the crossroads as a sacred place is older than Robert Johnson, older than the blues, older than the automobile or the Romans who laid the… (more…)

One thing I should have done when I set this place up was to do something about the infernal number of post/page revisions WordPress likes to accumulate. There was admittedly one occasion when I did have the need to retrieve something, which leaves about eight hundred or so when I didn’t. So I did a little housecleaning today, shrinking the… (more…)

Trying to explain my characterization of Twilight Sparkle in the three TwiBrush stories went awry the moment I realized that there’s no pony equivalent for “She’s not what you’d call a people person.” Now Twi has actually used the term “people” canonically, but “people pony” just sounds funny. (Similar befuddlement here.)

Well, actually, maybe a little. My story-reads count at FIMFiction went over 1,000 this past weekend, which is somewhere around ten times what I figured I’d get in my wildest dreams when I started messing with this stuff three months ago. Anyway, if I seem a bit less Eeyorish of late, this is why.

There’s a reference to “pony cars” in The Sparkle Chronicles, in the context of not wanting to explain the concept to a visiting pony. No big deal. Then there’s this seemingly unrelated bit from Somepony New: “Seriously, Dashie,” Pinkie insisted. “He doesn’t sit like a pony, he doesn’t walk like a pony, and nopony has ever heard of him. Suppose… (more…)

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd once wrote a book called Are Men Necessary? (Did I read it? Well, yes.) This weekend there’s an op-ed in the Times called “Men, Who Needs Them?” by one Greg Hampikian, professor of biology and criminal justice at Boise State University and the director of the Idaho Innocence Project. I would suggest to Ms.… (more…)

For some reason, I felt compelled to explain My Little Dashie to a coworker today. (Having the poster for one of the film versions hanging in the office will lead to such things.) And I completely and utterly lost it. I mean, we’re talking a whole rack of bawls. So if you saw something here, or elsewhere, with my name… (more…)