Unicorn April Fools

So it is April first and I have an interesting product, and a product update, from the wonderful nerdlings at ThinkGeek.

Ever watch a horse movie or game and have something so wrong, so sappy and so annoying happen that you wish there was brain bleach?

Pegasus isn't a black Friesian!

 This isn't the story of Black Beauty, its 7 smaller horrible movies tied together by the same horse in every background shot.

 Dressage horses don't tölt!

 34 hours of my life I will never get back!  What?  I need to play it again to get video footage for a review?  And the new updates got rid of rainbows giving free money?  *&#^@#!!!

Well, ThinkGeek has a solution to that.  Just take Unicorn Chaser and it will make the world full of double rainbows.  That give you money.

 

 ~~~

And in other news.  Remember Canned Unicorn Meat?

   

Yay for parody laws.

Also conspiracy theorists believe Barbaro is still alive. :P

VP at the PA Horse Expo 2012

Ok, so this is about a month overdue.  But last month Heather and I went to the PA Horse Expo.  And we found out what happened to that horse from Family Guy.

Plush blanket-a-fications!

It's a blanket (for people and not ponies) that conveniently zips up into a horse head.  We assume this is supposed to be given as a gift to an unsuspecting recipient under their bed covers while they are sleeping. 

It also comes in bay.  And its soulless eyes follow you.

Speaking of dismembered fictional horses.  (Ok, that was an awful segue and I apologize.)  We got to see Tommie Turvey's red roan mustang stunt horse Blade.

 A.K.A the cute horse that got eaten by zombies in The Walking Dead.

Personal confession, I cried when Blade got devoured by a hoard of shambling undead.  It got to me, because in real life I hold a red roan near and dear to my heart.  It's kind of the same reaction I get when I watch that one episode of Futurama with Seymour the dog.  Because he looks like my Border Terrier.

Walking Dead is show so I know it's all fake.  They couldn't actually film a horse actually being eaten by those infected with the Z virus for the sake of entertainment (ASPCA has standards y'know). Since then I have met several other people who either ride or own red roans who also watch Walking Dead.  And all of them had the same reaction.  Those who lacked a red roan heart horse did not.  There is a psychological study in there somewhere...

Anyways.

We also got to see booths, Breyers, orange tack (Heather has a thing for orange tack, and I mean orange orange tack).  Something we noticed is that a good number of the booths had those animatronic life-sized shetland pony toys.  Hey it works though.  People come in to check them out, they model products, no clean up, and parents trick their small children into thinking they pet a real pony without fear of them losing any fingers.  

We all know real ponies eat children's fingers to gain their power.

There was a real horse who painted pictures with paint and a brush while sporting a tiny little blue barrette.

Micro fashion.  He has, how you say?  The MAGICS! 

We also got to meet this one leopard tiger horse with crazy mismarks in his pattern.  I've only ever seen pictures of him in Google image search so I kinda, maybe, sorta, geeked out over his somatic mutation.  I apologize to the lady at his stall for my geekout.  Your horse's color is really really cool.

And we also found out that Odd Job Bob, Tommie Turvey's gypsy cob, (hey that rhymes) was in a movie.  In a car.  And all we can think now is.  Eventually, for better or worse, we're going to have to review this...

...

~~~

Thanks to the very nice and people from Champion Saddlery for being understanding of the weird need to blog about the horse blanket in their booth.  

(No one pays me to link to them in my blog.  Check them out they were nice. :)

And a huge thanks to Heather for taking pictures because I always forget to bring a camera.

EDIT:  Ok change that to blame Heather now.  She told me I had to put a picture of myself on this blog somewhere, and she lovingly edited it for me so I would post it.  Here ya go!

Visible Horse: First Impressions

So last week Heather and I went to the PA Horse Expo...

At the Ginger Horse model pony booth there was this thing waiting there in neat stacked pyramids of 3 on either side.

Cue angelic singing...

It's a Visible Horse.  And anatomically accurate 1/6 scale model of a thoroughbred horse with the respiratory, digestive and skeletal system represented.  And I have wanted one since I was 5.  Yes I was a weird 5 year old into educational toys and TV shows. (Oh Discovery Channel, where have all your scientifically factual documentaries gone? Oh yah, bigfoot, truckers, ghosts, and aliens got to them. nvm...) 

After mulling over it most of the day the Visible Horse was purchased before the vendor booths closed.  Near 2 decades of material longing meant it was about darn time to give in to the desire of the clear plastic anatomical model pony.  Plus it's a fake horse (read: virtual 'pwnie'.  See what we did there? :P) and this will be a fully documented project.

 It. Looks. So. COOL.

Hey a spleen!

  

So it was opened up and this is what you get.

 

Within the box is a bag of clear pony shell, a bag of pink innards, and a bag of bones.  No need to call in the ASPCA for that last one in this case.

As you might have noticed the pink parts are not colored as in the image on the box.  This is a horse version of a model airplane kit where assembly and at least some painting are part of the experience.  Though some assembly required is a wee bit of an understatement for this project.  However, like any good equestrian who has studied horse anatomy would do, the assembly instructions were immediately thrown aside.  This is an awesome and complex 3D puzzle and it must be earned!  Bwahaha!!!  But if you do use the instructions (and honestly there is no shame in that) all of the parts are numbered with little tabs connected to them so you can keep track. 

What did I do first?  I found the skull bones ASAP!  The skull is in 5 different pieces with the jaw/mandible split in 2, the pallet and 6 back molars are another piece, while the scalp and the rest of the skull are others. 

 

And since it has prominent canine teeth, mazel tov it's a boy!  Or one of those rare canine toothed mares. 

 

The 2 jaw pieces did not fit so well after I tried connecting them, so I had to file down a mold divot so they fit closer. 

 

 For fun I found the tongue and saw how it fit.  Anyone else getting disturbing flash backs to The Golden Compass bear fight?

The pallet did stay on when I added it, but there are gaps so some kind of filler is needed to make it look finished when I start really assembling.  Mostly just having fun checking the whole thing out right now.

 

 After having this much of the skull together I noticed that the area where the scalp went had a big ol' empty cavity. 

 

And I was as happy as a freshly infected zombie to find myself a brain.

 

It fits perfectly in it's tiny skull home.  They don't even show the brain anywhere on the box as part of the kit.  It's just a really cool extra detail.

 

During a get-together Heather played with the bones, Christine played with the innards, I and fiddled with the crunchy plastic coating.  Out of context that sounds like a night in a horror movie.  But much anatomical geeking out was had over the details and structure of everything.

After I get myself a bottle of superglue, some model putty and paint I'll be sure have another post on this project :)  Waaaaaay too happy that I finally got this thing.

Equestrian Jensen Ackles

So there is this Equestrian 'insert hot actor here'/Hey Girl meme floating around horse blogs. There is  the Equestrian Ryan Gosling one that started it all here, an Equestrian Ryan Raynolds over at Tucker the Wunderkind here, and Equestrian Daniel Craig over at A Good Horse here.

Over here at VirtualPwnies we had to try it.  So we went with Heather/Beautygirl1510's choice of Supernatural hottie Jensen Ackles.  The guy rides, so what is to follow could already be half way believable as reality.  Hope away equestrian ladies!

 I normally don't use the term 'hottie' even in appropriately acceptable circumstances.  

Here it is mandatory.

 

Who were our other choices?

Christine/WSTopdeck wanted Ryan Raynolds but he was already taken.  Who did I want?  Daniel Radcliff, but this is how it would have turned out.

Yeah... nooo...  Equus has ruined the many mostly nekked horse related pics of Hey Girl possibilities for the poor boy.

War Horse Play Retrospective

Here it is.  The retrospective of the Lincoln Theater production of War Horse!  I type this while having the last of the zebra marshmallows and realizing that Part 2 was posted almost a month after the first... Shoosh.

Part 1

Part 2

Heather Christine and myself will be getting together to record our review of the movie incarnation of War Horse soon.  Close ups of title card and vector images used in the review available in the VirtualPwnies DeviantArt gallery.

A game review of Equestriad 2001 is also on the list.  For now I am off to watch the latest episode of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic, and see the latest updates for horses with results from the Splash White test.

And lastly.  SEE THIS PLAY!  It was amazing and lovely and won several Tonys including best play.  It won for a reason and you won't regret it.  ^_^

Edible Blog Fodder!

Alright, you know that thing that happens when you say something you do as a hobby will be done at a certain time, but because it's not your job it doesn't reach the top of your to do list and then you get a second job and it kinda doesn't get finished when you wanted?

Well, we're skipping that for now.  ZEBRA MARSHMALLOWS !!!

Today I was in the grocery store when I came across this.

Zebras are a kind of 'pony'.  As in they are a member of the family equidea, with distinct stripe patterns, three separate species with different chromosome counts, and multiple subspecies.  And the fact that they are monochromatically freaking adorable.  So someone got the idea of making chocolate drizzled marshmallows that have stripes and calling them zebras.  The graham crackers feel left out, but they got voted off for being considered too healthy.  This is what they look like on the bag.

So we opened said bag and the disappointing reality did not disappoint.

 So what do they taste like?  Here are the reviews.

Christine/ WStopdeck:  They taste like marshmallows and chocolate.  :steal another:   Nom.  :steal a third:

Heather/ beautygirl1510:  Omnomnom...

Me/ Liz/ talkingMongo0se:  Can I have the bag back?

So what do we suggest doing with these other than eating them?  Wield them as a zebra stripy projectile what else?  The technological advancement of marshmallow weaponry has slingshots, catapults, trebuchets ect.  But if the chocolate doesn't gum up the works this might be an appropriate fit for the zebra marshmallows.

 

We like to think so.

~ ~ ~

 And I want to give a shout out to our latest blog watcher Lolzloz1/icklesquish89 and YouTube commenter Criminal Spirit .  Thank you both so much for your enthusiasm!

I'm working on the War Horse Play Retrospective Part 2 as I type so lets hope we don't get too much more delay.

Update on Lack of Update

Hi again!  So the first video of the War Horse Play Retrospective is complete and on YouTube.  And it kinda has been complete and on YouTube for awhile.

It's missing piece, the second part, is still in production, but with some hope, will be done possibly later this week.  Premeire Pro worked very well for the first video and like many Adobe programs, decided to not be so consistent the next time around.  Plus some things going on in my life like teaching a Chainmaille and Metal Weaving class at my alma mater have taken over more of my free time.

Also, UC Davis just released a test for Splash.  Commence the equine genetics enthusiast enthusiastic freak-out!

Test them...

To learn more about the Splash pattern and the sheer awesomeness of there being a test, with not 1 but 3 mutations isolated, check out Equine Tapestry by Lesli Kathman and Equine Genetics at blogspot by Riddle Me This.