Green Team!

So as an avid environmentalist I thought I would share with you this informative video, starring WILL FERRELL, JOHN C REILLY, and ADAM MCKAY.



This video is quite thought-provoking. I found it challenged my assumptions. For example, where do we draw the line with environmentalism? Political protests and civil disobedience can be seen as justified, particularly if we look at the environment as a moral agent that has rights of its own.

What about if we look at future generations as moral agents? If humankind (and yes, unicornkind, I have been known to leave the water running while brushing my teeth, for which I take full responsibility!!!) continues at the rate it is going the world will be possibly destroyed in some years! Thus, we are currently MURDERING our great-grandchildren!

So, if we as environmentalists are trying to prevent the murder of millions and billions of future persons, it seems that much could be justified in this way! For example, putting polluters in jail! If you look at this from a Utliltarian point of view, hurting a few people to make the lives of billions of people in the future better is a moral action!

Therefore, the question that this video posts: is rape justified when it is done in the name of the environment?

I had always thought that rape was an evil crime, but perhaps it is actually a force to be used for good, much like a sword (normally used to kill) can be when in the hands of a wonderful hero such as Zorro?

Much food for thought! Thank you, GREEN TEAM!

Snowboarding, unicorns, and art

So a fellow TRAVELLER ON THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY has written to me about her recent adventures in snowboarding!

This traveller, named Garli, is a fan of magical creatures and she has a most beautiful snowboard with a lovely dragon design.

Recently, she had to replace her STOMP PAD (what a wonderful name! It makes me think of stomping merrily through fields of daisies and clover!) and when she went to the snowboarding shop, alas, there were no interesting stomp pads to be found!

However, Garli had a wonderful idea! She would not let the lack of creativity by snowboard shop owners distress her! No, she purchased foam and enlisted the help of two wonderful artist friends, who cut the plastic into the shape of a unicorn!

Yes, indeed, Garli has chosen to honour my species with this beautiful design. I am truly inspired by the art and love she has shown my race, and dragons of course.

If you don't mind me using a colloquialism (or two), this is pretty darn cool, radical, and/or tubular!

So here is a question for you, wonderful readers: Have you recently created a piece of unicorn (or other magical creature) art? How do unicorns and other magical creatures affect your daily lives? I would love to hear your stories!

Admiration for my classmates

Well hi there guys! First I have to say I am sorry for the delays in updating this blog! I am sure you all understand how busy the life of a TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Canadian unicorn can be these days.

To share a little bit about my busy week with you guys I should say that tonight, right as I am typing this, I am sitting in on a class!

This is a special class and I am truly touched by the enthusiasm and excitement of my fellow classmates. There is an ONLINE CHAT during the class where students can post comments and I have to say that they are quite enlightening!

Here is an excerpt from the conversation (names changed so that you all don't get jealous of my classmates and their extreme intelligence!). Here the professor is discussing a paper about music copyright laws. The students react:

(Augustus) YES!!!!!!!

(Thaddeus) right on!

(Napoleon) I could talk for hours about copyright issues...

(Amadeus) That was an interesting paper.

I am so excited that everyone is as interested in the assigned reading as I am! Truly, music copyright law is fascinating! Indeed, Napoleon, I too could talk for hours and hours and possibly even days about this topic!

Here is an excerpt when discussing music classification:

(Thaddeus) and then of course there is music that is hard to classify. I know several bands that play classical/jazz/experimental... very difficult to describe yet alone catagorize

(Lorelei) Thaddeus, indeed! there's lots of stuff with no proper "bin" label!

Wow wow wow! These are such good points! If Thaddeus hadn't posted I never would have realized that some bands actually cross genres! Previous to taking this course I had thought that every band in the world played RAP or POP MUSIC or CLASSICAL (also known as ART MUSIC by those of us IN THE KNOW) but never mixed any of those! Thank you so much for your contribution, Thaddeus!

I feel truly blessed to be surrounded by such interesting and intellect-challenging classmates. Thank you all!

Unrequited Love

Well hi guys! I am very very nervous about tonight's blog post. I have decided it is time to share my poetry with all of you. I have been working hard on a poem dedicated to my unrequited love, a human girl named JESSICA.

Do not be shocked! Indeed we unicorns do feel sadness, particularly when presented with an unrequited love! In fact, some philosophers have theorized that unicorns feel sadness most profoundly when writing poetry, for purging this sadness all at once allows them to remain full of love and life the rest of the day!

However, the problem of course is that when we write poetry, we cry so much that the ink smears and the paper wettens and falls apart and sometimes we are so sad we forget and even blow our noses on the very paper on which we have written our poems! This renders the beautiful words utterly unreadable!

Much unicorn poetry has been lost this way. It is a truly great tragedy for art.

By contrast this happily means that afterward, we are able to write wonderful poetry of happiness and joy. Now I of course am not being arrogant and saying my poetry will join the triumphant annals of unicorn literature, but you may judge it for yourself! Please enjoy my HAIKU CYCLE about my unrequited love.

On the day you return my love, Jessica:
a HAIKU CYCLE
by Prince Shimmershine Moondreams, amateur poet

the words "i love you"
we ride, leaping through daisies!
laughing at the wind

i dance, you twirl, swift
entangling me in your scarf!
folds of cotton green

bohemian skin
untouched by cosmetic taint!
no mask hides your truth

the scent of your hair
o, flaxen locks, perfume free!
miasma of life

bathing in your glow
sun shining on winter's night!
an inverse eclipse

life, love, happiness!
joy, joyness, desire, lust!
exclamation point!

i dream of this night
and with anticipation,
hold my tears at bay

A reason to admire America

Hi guys! Sorry for the lack of frequent BLOG ENTRIES this week, I am working on a new poem that I soon hope to share with you all. But I did have to stop and share this piece of inspiration.

So I am a truly proud and patriotic Canadian unicorn as you all know, but from time to time I think that to learn about the world and improve the wonderful splendosity of our own nation it can be helpful to recognize with pride what our fellow members of this planet Earth are doing!

So today I must mention this very very cute magazine dedicated to the Southern United States.

It is called Garden & Gun magazine.

As a poet, albeit amateur, I must recognize how beautifully the title of this magazine juxtaposes the two major aspects of American culture: gardens and guns! This truly shows that there can be more to a country than just peace or war! The title illustrates this wonderfully. There is the idea of the gun, which enforces peace, and the idea of the garden, which is a warlike place of animals and plants devouring each other (O, the circle of life!) and both are embraced by this magazine!

One reader outlines this most clearly:

"I am a 44-year-old avid hunter and saltwater fly fisherman. I also like a great bottle of wine and 700 thread-count cotton sheets on my hunt camp bed."

I think that is a lovely sentiment and hope that we can apply this to our lives as Canadians!

(I should probably note that I first discovered this magazine via Tara Ariano's lovely blog. The entire blogging community mourns her heroic sacrifice in death by sinking battleship.)

Warning to unicorns!! BEWARE!! URGENT!!!

This evening I came across the most disturbing footage on THE INTERNET at a site known as YOUTUBE.COM.

At first this seems a charming video, with songs and magic and joyness but then I realized it was informative and URGENT that I share it with you all!!!

I checked online with snopes.com and they as of yet have no information--THIS IS BREAKING NEWS, PLEASE BE SURE TO WATCH THE VIDEO.

Charlie the Unicorn - watch it at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5im0Ssyyus

UNICORNS: BEWARE CANDY MOUNTAIN. IT IS NOT AS THE NAME DESCRIBES. THERE IS NO CANDY INVOLVED.

A magnificent pun

Oh my gosh so guys, today I was cataloguing (we unicorns do that for fun sometimes, you know...why, one day, I catalogued an entire field of daisies! It took me 11.25 hours with no bathroom breaks!) uh so I was cataloguing this compact disc of big band music for clarinet, and it was called SWING LOW, SWEET CLARINET.

Isn't that SPLENDID? You see, it's a pun...like SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT, but with CLARINET instead of CHARIOT, because they sound almost the same!

I am truly charmed!

Happy early Valentine's Day!

Oh my gosh guys!! So today I found the most precious splendid thing just RIGHT HERE ON THE INTERNET!

It’s a candy heart generator and I made some candy hearts just for all of my friends and soon-to-be-friends reading this blog!


I know it’s early early but I can’t help it; I am so excited for Valentine’s day! I think it should be expanded to Valentine’s MONTH.

Though I have to say I have some tips for their webmaster.

Not that I would ever ever want to put down someone who is doing hard work with web design, but you should note a few things about this site:

• Black is probably not the best colour to use to show happiness!
• The EMOTICON that looks like this :-( actually means SADNESS, not HAPPINESS. HAPPINESS looks like this: :-) What an embarassing typo their web designers made!

My basilisk friends

Just a quick note today to say how thrilled I am that our basilisk friends have made an appearance in a popular online WEB COMIC, xkcd! Basilisks as a species are sorely underrepresented in the media!







Also it's hard to tell from the picture but I think that might just be my personal basilisk friend, Arturo! If it is, congrats to you Arturo on your WEB COMIC appearance!

Another thing I learned about music

Oh and here is a quick story guys! Apparently it's hard to find evidence of Dvořák's work from 1866 to 1869, except for a list he made titled "Compositions I Tore Up and Burnt."

Also it seems that two pieces on the list have survived, so either Dvořák lied or didn't burn them very well!? <--this is my favourite piece of punctuation! It is called the interrobang!!! It looks like this: !?

Normally I would never ever ever accuse someone of lying with out cause, but it is Dvořák we're discussing here guys...I have NO RESPECT for the man.

We all know Clara Schumann would never ever tear up her compositions and burn them. Really!

What I learned today about music

Today I learned about songs by MAURICE RAVEL. There are two of them that struck me as particularly worthy of mention. Here they are:

All gay!

All gay! Ha, all gay!
Beautiful leg, ti-re-li, which dances:
the plates and dishes dance, tra la lai.

I think this is just lovely. It truly captures the spirit of what it is like to be young and happy!! It also shows us that it is not just one species that can be genuinely happy, such as unicorns or humans, but also dishes!

Here is the second one:

Italian song

I look out the window and see the waves;
I see my miseries, which are great.
I call my love, but she does not reply.

This song saddens me. I have been very unhappy recently by the presence of music in this world called EMO. I had hoped that this was a short fad but alas it seems that Maurice Ravel was practicing a sort of 19th Century Emo. So perhaps EMO is a recurring fashion. I can understand recurring fashions such as corsets (pretty!) and shoulderpads (useful!) but not EMO...why are so many people so interested in being SAD?

Example of a useful fashion trend:

Learning from comic strips

So for a long time now, a long time, I have been reading COMIC STRIPS also known as THE FUNNY PAGES in newspapers. Mostly I read them online on the INTERNET where I can get them at exactly 12:01am which is so much faster than waiting for the young lad (whose industriousness I fully appreciate, don't get me wrong please please) to deliver the newspaper in the morning.

So guys, I do feel that these comic strips (aka funny pages) are vitally important to our culture because not only do we laugh at them (and laughter begets sunshine and happiness always!) but also we may learn from them and take much pleasure in said learning!

TODAY'S CASE IN POINT - FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE



Panel 1: Human Female Child learns that asking questions in a polite manner brings answers. Human children reading this strip will follow suit and accomplish much. Well done, comic strip/funny pages author Lynn.

Panel 2: Oh ho but here Lynn makes a fatal error! Here the Human Father accuses his daughter of lying! I cannot condone this. We have thus far seen NO evidence of Human Female Child's dishonesty and she should NOT be treated in this manner! All creatures are INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY.

Panel 3: Ah, a satisfactory equal division of labour. The Human Father makes some progress!

Panel 4: Human Female Child!!! Learn from your younger brother, Human Male Child!!! When you cry, he offers assistance! When you pout, he resolutely pursues his goal!

Panel 5: Here the Human Father realizes his failure--he is not prepared. Dear humans: always, always, carry two potato peelers! Of course, unicorns have not this issue (guys, guys, can you guess why? Guess what we use to peel potatoes? Of course I cannot tell you...but it is wonderful).

I hope you have enjoyed this look at COMIC STRIPS/FUNNY PAGES!

Puppy Bowl IV

Dear Sirs/Mesdames,

I am writing to express my extreme admiration to your network executives and executrixes there at the most splendid Animal Planet television (TV) station.

I must say indeed that you have outdone yourselves with the Puppy Bowl IV. Such delight! Such playfulness! Such bounding enthusiasm for life!

I firmly believe that if you kind souls would air the Puppy Bowl IV bimonthly this world would be a very much better place (even though of course it is already splendid, there is room for improvement in everything).

I believe that we, equinekind and humankind (oh how fitting that both our species have names ending in "kind"! Clearly we share an innate goodness and hopefulness!) work together in this matter we may potentially end such terrible activities as:

1. homophobia
2. misogyny
3. misandry
4. war-related torture activity


I hope you will consider my proposal and keep me in your kindest of thoughts. Also, please add more Bernese Mountain Dog puppies to the Puppy Bowl IV. They are the cutest ones.

Sincerely and with love,
Prince ShimmerShine Moondreams

Riding the bus

Gosh so today, today guys you’ll never guess, I decided to try riding the bus!

Why today? Well today was the splendidest day since yesterday, first off, with the sun brighter than the twinkle in a young foal’s eyes, and the most beautiful melody that only I could hear which I think may have been influenced by Chopin or Schumann (Clara) and so I thought WOW, guys, just WOW, this is a SPLENDID DAY TO RIDE THE BUS!

Oh but alas alas! It seems the bus is not for unicorns, or thus I was told and my $2.25 refused! Oh, how I pity the non-equine world and their biases!

This may seem like an inauspicious post with which to begin this virgin blog, but fear not guys! Prince ShimmerShine Moondreams knows that one must--oh absolutely must--ease into a new art (and yes, blogging is art, not craft) carefully and with much jurisprudence.

Remember, friends and soon-to-be-friends, TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY, filled with harmony and poetry!