You’ve got to be shitting me!
“I’d like to borrow your trailer.” A friend was asking to borrow my utility trailer. She uses it all the time. I don’t mind. In fact, “asking” was something of a misnomer since the trailer was already hitched to her idling SUV and we were standing around it chatting.
It’s a darned nice trailer. From my point of view a good trailer is a ray of sunshine in an otherwise imperfect world. She agrees. She also brings it back in exactly the same condition as it was when she picked it up. So it’s no big deal.
“Yeah sure.” I was thinking about something else. Being me, this could be anything.
“I’m going on a long trip this time.” She continued. (Usually the trailer only goes on local jaunts to the lumber yard or the landfill.)
“OK, check the tires before you go. They should have plenty of tread.” Was that a squirrel in the tree?
“Indianapolis…” She explained. Whatever. I didn’t care. I was thinking about fishing bait, or taxes, or spark plugs, or something else. Lets face it, there are a thousand thoughts in our heads all the time and very few of them involve Indianapolis.
She continued…
“It’s for a ‘My Little Pony’ convention.”
!!!
My brain went on high alert. Time slowed. Mental focus snapped to attention like a laser beam.
Did I hear that correctly? No! It couldn’t be.
There are certain things which merit immediate and definitive response. For example; tiger attacks, car crashes, and gunplay. This was a similar moment. I had just been exposed to an unfathomable “thing which should not be”.
My brain alerted the rest of the body; ‘Something is amiss. We have received information which is inconsistent with logic, reality, and the human condition. In the next two seconds we’re going to run like hell or kill something.’ My stance changed. I became deeply aware of my surroundings. I sniffed the air. It was ‘go time’.
I spoke carefully because this was important. “What. Did. You. Say?”
“A ‘My Little Pony’ convention.”
Oh God, she’d really said it! Klaxons went off in my brain. The Earth shook. Time and space had no meaning.
I tried to come to my senses. Ponies? I dredged up a decades old mental image of a hideously cartoonish, rainbow colored, sparkle laden, children’s toy. A pony… possibly a unicorn? Animated? Plastic? Plush doll? I couldn’t recall. All I could recall was mutant eyelashes and the manic dopamine smile of something with an IQ less than furniture.
Aren’t My Little Ponies the kind of saccharine sweet, mass marketed, brainkill that causes anyone over age two to recoil in horror? Even in my youth they caused boys to freak out and hurl their GI Joe at the wall. Any girl mature enough that she was not currently scampering around in a fairy costume would react similarly.
This person talking to me, who heretofore has been sane, should feel the same. Aren’t we all mildly annoyed that such things as “Little Ponies” still exist?
And what was this concept of a gathering? A group? A herd?
“A”… I grasped for words. “…convention?” Still reeling from the alien concept of ‘Little Ponies’ I tried to imagine a ‘Convention’.
Unbidden, my mind envisioned 1770’s patriots in white powdered wigs debating an experimental future government; the ‘Continental Convention’. I relaxed a millimeter. Then I realized that my mind was simply leading me toward safe havens.
I shook my head and tried again. I saw sparkly ponies. I saw them en masse! Sparkly ponies en masse… right here on the planet where I have to live! My knees felt weak.
“Yeah, a bunch of people get together and trade and sell ‘My Little Pony’ stuff.” She continued.
“In Indianapolis?” Was there something in the water?
“Yep, that’s where it is. A friend of mine has a display booth. We were going to strap it on the roof but it’s a long trip so I volunteered your trailer. I hope you don’t mind.” She seemed to be speaking English but the words made no sense.
“There is ‘My Little Pony’… commerce?” I stammered.
“Apparently. I’m just along for the ride.”
“Um… You’re talking about the children’s things? The little horses with rainbows and shit?” I just wasn’t getting it.
“Yeah, it’ll be weird eh?”
“Weird is a matter of degrees. I might think it’s weird that a meteor hit the garage roof. I might even think it’s ‘weird’ that an orangutan broke through the window and did a puppet show with live cats. That’s nothing! In the case of a ‘convention‘ of children’s rainbow horses that involves commerce ‘weird’ is totally inadequate.”
“Well I’m in it for the road trip. I’ll take good care of the trailer.” Then she hopped in her car and zoomed off. I think I heard my trailer weeping.
My wife had witnessed the whole thing. Inexplicably the idea of Little Ponies en masse hadn’t fractured her psyche.
“That really does sound weird; but what were you saying about orangutans?” She gently coaxed.
“A convention… Rainbow. Sparkly…” Words stopped coming out.
“It’s just a gathering. Like when we rode to Sturgis.” She tried to calm my nerves.
“Leather clad bikers… Rainbow sparkly ponies…” A juxtaposition formed and took a dump in my skull. “Aaacckk! You’re not helping!”
Mrs. Curmudgeon, realizing I would need hours of therapy, steered me toward the porch. I sat on the swing. A beer appeared. I drank. I tried not to ponder the fact that the world where I live, which has a blue sky and gravity, is also inhabited by adults who are avid fans of sparkly ponies. In Indianapolis.
I survived but I’m not the same. This information is a thing which cannot be unlearned.
Now you know it too. We’re all screwed aren’t we?
That is by far the most disturbing thing I have read today, albeit couched in some of the finest writing I have witnessed you put forth. And oh yeah, thanks for foisting that imagery upon the psyche of your loyal readership…
Shit, no I’ll be up all night knowing I missed this.
Then you won’t want to hear this. Turn away! Turn away!
Too late. There are middle-aged men who are MLP fans – they call themselves “Bronies” and they have things like ponies hanging over their computer monitors and such.
I only wish I was kidding.
Errrr….yeah. My Little Pony adult fans…..
Idiots.
If I was one when I was younger, my Dad would have done me a favor by giving me an ass kicking.
So, your dad; after discovering you are an adult fan of My Little Pony is going to go back in time to kick your ass?
You don’t understand entropy or causality and have the temerity to call others idiots?
So, because I have been accused of hasty generalization and other things, I figure I shall ask you directly:
Are you, in fact, advocating that adult MLP fans need their asses kicked?
You may read every word I’ve written about anything in my entire life and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I do not advocate kicking the ass of anyone based on their fondness for my little pony.
Thank you, AD, but I wasn’t talking to you. I was SPECIFICALLY talking to Czechsix, and I should have made that clearer. My apologies to you.
My only encounter with the puke pink ponies was when someone fetched several to a pistol club I belonged to and we shot them to smithereens. That was about 15 years ago now.
Most satisfying and gratifying.
Just be glad I didn’t purchase the “I break for Ponies” bumper sticker I had my eye on to put on your trailer! I came to my senses and realized if I EVER wanted to use the trailer again I should leave the sticker in Indy.
If it had come back with a sticker like that I would have had to burn the trailer and sell it for scrap metal. Otherwise I might get sparkly rainbows all over my firewood. 🙂
Wow, it sure is awful when people on the internet like a thing that you don’t like! We should totally stop them from liking that thing, and force them to like a thing that you like. Because everything you like is wholesome and good! And things you don’t like are dumb and dangerous! We should only like the same things from now on. The world will truly be a safer place without any differences in taste or dissenting thought.
Relax; I’m not forcing anyone to like old tractors and crappy homesteads. Nor am I about to restart the Spanish Inquisition about fluffy pony critters.
On the other hand a pony convention is more than I could ignore. It’s a pitch across home plate for the creation of jokes. If I can insult the Chevy Volt, the AMC Gremlin, the President, vegans, and the French why not also make light of the ponies? Surely there are pony people making fun of gun toting rednecks with blogs?
Nothing is too serious for a good joke!
Actually, I’m far more annoyed with the commenters above that with your post, which just enabled them. Sure, let’s kick the ass of people who like a cartoon about talking horses. While we’re at it, let’s go beat up some ‘a them fags, too! They need a good toughening up.
My point here is that the moment you (any of you) label a hobby as immature/faggy/in need of a good asskicking, you are doing exactly what the Brady Bunch and Joyce Foundation and CGSV do to gun owners. They call us immature and prone to violence and dumb rednecks and, if you’re male, desperately trying to compensate for a tiny penis.
Can you folks not see that you are doing exactly the same crap to other people? You’re better than that. Stop it.
Whoa there now. Comparing our lighthearted jest to the Brady Bunch is a bridge too far. It simply isn’t supported by our actions (or words).
By my count the number of people suggesting we kick someone’s ass is zero. One guy wishes his dad kicked his ass more. I wish my dad bought me more ice cream. It takes all kinds.
I joked about burning my trailer and someone shot up stuffed animals; both of us disposing of our own property as we see fit. Buying something with your own cash is hardly mayhem. Shooting stuffed animals is, in my mind, good clean fun.
Nobody’s suggesting we “beat up fags” or disparaging a pony person’s penis (though that’s the best alliteration ever!). For goodness sake, my trailer benefited a pony fan! Don’t I get credit for that? My mighty trailer has banked pony karma on my behalf!
Ponies are both legal and moral. We’re not trying to ban, tax, sue, harass, regulate, censor, eliminate, or boycott. That’s why we’re entirely unlike the Joyce Foundation. Until one of us starts shaking down the legislature or boycotting Indianapolis we’ve behaved better than gun banning organizations by a long shot.
The most we’re guilty of is crass lowbrow humor; none of us seem to deny that. Luckily there’s no law that says I have to treat anything seriously.
No ponies were harmed in our jest. Certainly nobody encountered anything worse than being the butt of a joke. Which is the price of living in a free world.
I had my eye on a nice “I break for Ponies” bumper sticker that would have looked quite nice on the back of the trailer. However I still need to be able to borrow the trailer! I got some fresh air and I left the sticker in Indy…
Relax. No hobby or similar pastime makes any objective sense. Not one.
I mean, seriously; Golf; a game involving (thank you Mr. Churchill) knocking a small ball into a small hole with implements uniquely unsuited to the task.
There are people who gather in conventions to play Scrabble.
There are people who collect barbed wire.
You think My Little Pony is mawkish? Check out Hello Kitty. Then wrap your mind around the fact that there is a company in Japan that makes licensed Hello Kitty vibrators.
We live in a society wealthy enough that we can ‘waste’ huge amounts of time and money on pastimes that make no sense, advance no rational understanding of anything, and are of no use whatsoever. And any busybody who wishes to interfere with this, no matter how ‘good’ his intentions, should be chased up the nearest tree.
I didn’t wish to interfere with the sparkly pony people. I wished to be unaware of them.
And poke a little fun. Always a good pastime.
Ah, but the knowledge is itself power. At a bare minimum, your mind is hardened the next time such a thing crosses through your sphere of awareness. Or you investigate and decide “Hey, this actually is awesome. Bro-hoof!”, or anywhere on the spectrum in between. But wishing to not know something? That’s the failing.
…and get them off your lawn, no doubt. 😉
Seriously? Hello Kitty vibrators? Well Helloooo Kitty!
I don’t find the existence of the vibrators that stunning. What gets me is that, so far as I can tell, they are legitimately licensed. So the Hello Kitty marque owners thought that they were a good idea, and fit into the ethos of the franchise.
*bangs head with heel of palm*
Japan. All you need to know.
” Like when we rode to Sturgis.”
Y’know she’s not that far off, considering Sturgis is essential a Gay Pirate convention. (BMW-rider’s joke).
This was a terrifying post. I hope you don’t have to spend too much on head-doctors to recover.
*makes sign of the cross*
Speaking of Sturgis I loved the concept of displaying one’s rebelliousness by wearing the official uniform of blue jeans and a black t-shirt. That said, it’s worthwhile to see Sturgis once, it’s a lot like the bar scene from Star Wars… with black t-shirts.
The “My Little Ponies” remind me of the people who collect Beanie Babies and plaster them all over the back window of their cars. The problem is that this obstructs the driver’s view, diverts their attention, and could be hazard to other drivers. Plus, I don’t need to see that on the road. I apologize if I am being enabled.
“Ponies are both legal and moral. We’re not trying to ban, tax, sue, harass, regulate, censor, eliminate, or boycott. That’s why we’re entirely unlike the Joyce Foundation. Until one of us starts shaking down the legislature or boycotting Indianapolis we’ve behaved better than gun banning organizations by a long shot.
The most we’re guilty of is crass lowbrow humor; none of us seem to deny that. Luckily there’s no law that says I have to treat anything seriously.”
Got it in one. I don’t care to interfere with anyone’s enjoyment of MLP stuff – but I am bewildered by it and find the whole concept a little mind-boggling.
Erin struck me as a little defensive, but I read her blog and get the sense there’s some flack she takes for being so into the whole MLP thing so I guess it’s to be expected.
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