And You Could Have It All, My Empire of Birds

Basically the Hanshin Tigers baseball team had a major victory in 1985 and fans went WILD and stood on a bridge chanting the player’s names, and every time they said a name a fan that resembled the player whose name was said would jump into the canal

BUT there was an american player on the team named Randy Bass and the crowd wanted to include someone who looked like him too, but there were no white people around so they snatched a Colonel Sanders statue and tossed it into the water as an effigy

after this the Hanshin Tigers won nothing for 18 years! The rumor began to circulate that throwing the statue into the canal had angered Colonel Sanders and he had cursed them and wouldn’t allow them to win until they retrieved the statue. Obviously many attempts were made to find it, but no one was successful.

In 2009 the uper body, lower body, and right hand of the statue were found when police thought it was a dead body, but the left hand and his glasses are missing and the Hanshin Tigers still have not won anything. It is said they will continue to lose until they find the last pieces. Here’s the colonel though!

Here’s a personal project, a short 5-page comic, “A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing”.

Written by Jordan Alsaqa (https://twitter.com/endigomaster), and all art by me.

The Kingdom of Equestria is inhabited by thousands of colorful, magical ponies, whose life cycle, socioeconomics, and biomechanics are best not investigated too closely. Their names are usually something like “Rainbow Dash” or “Diamond Tiara” or (my favorite because she’s totally a grad student pony): ‘Twilight Sparkle”.

Often the plot calls for crowd scenes (usually involving ponies in great peril), and I worry that some day the creators of My Little Pony will run out of names. In the spirit of being helpful, I decided to put a computer to the task of generating lots of new ponies.

I used a program called a character-level recurrent neural network (char-rnn), which looks at examples of text (Pokemon, or Harry Potter fan fiction, or even guinea pig names) and learns to imitate them. I gave the neural network more than 1,500 names from My Little Pony Friendship is Magic Wiki, and let it start learning.

Result: partial success.

It did come up with some pretty plausible-sounding ponies, certainly not as weird as some of the ponies that have already appeared on the show (such as Groucho Mark and Button Mash and Buzzard Hooffield).

Star Blueberry Sprinkle Cherry Bolt Berry Spy Sweet Glints Cheer Belle Sunferry Sunshine Star Sweet Bolt Cherry Curls Mint Flower Bright Seas Flight Star Plum Flower Sweet Suns Brash Clouds Cheery Breath Cloudy Daze Big Blue Brass Flare Blue Chile Coco Mane Neon Brush Strawberry Sun Sugar Top Cinnamon Mark Glowberry Amethyst Mist

The neural network also came up with some seriously tough-sounding ponies, ones that you would definitely want on your side when fighting giant killer cupcakes, or whatever the peril is this week.

Cold Sting Scarline Shoot Bolt Sunder Bright Dark Role Sob Dancer Sunsrot Masked Rock Roar Starlich Command Pony Deader Pony Flint Sting Steel Roller Dark Candy Scarphore Creep Well Prince Still Stare Rust Crack Colder Sanderlash Bitter Star

But the neural network’s results weren’t all successful. It also came up with some ponies that probably wouldn’t be on the A-team.

Dunder Dort Tardy Pony Flunderlane Flueberry Sherry Marina Doof Want Cone Starf Dad Star Star Flurtershy Starly Star Mr. Atple Pony Pony Packy Pack Pinky Swoll Apple Apple Dim McColt Free Sing Fail Poney Hoof Tasting Spar Dirky Flithers Arple Robbler Chest Star Barp Moon Mr. Wander

It also invented some ponies that are just plain weird.

Lilie Lice Billy Boon Wootson Mice Full Fish Crest Suns Sun Ramen Breek Smarky Hondsarors Blither Bon Persy Belly Pony String Heart Swinkleshine Flint Cream Star Sandlime Rocky Scooppony Piemonk String Punch Apple Stork Bunny Maze Lilac Ruster Winker-Moon Charmy Vine Swan Break Wags Pine Pearlicket Nandy Quark Firey Up Tracklewock Packin Flustershovel Aoetel Pakeecuand Tapshine Sugar Cloudsdalou Sandy Apple Mitten Splash Silvermice Butter Flash Agar Swirl Cheese Breeze

And a list of ponies you might want to avoid:

Clotter Raspberry Turd Blueberry Pants Benny Sweat Parpy Stink Blue Cuss Groan Rear Pony Lace Crunk Rade Slime Derdy Star Swill Brick Colona Pocky Mire Hoofed Snarch Apple Ronch Trowel Pony Smanky Hank Princess Sweat

Pony pictures created using: http://www.dolldivine.com/mlp-fim-pony-creator.php