M-x artist-mode an ASCII dog

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Pretend you’re not actually insane.

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Oh hey nevermind repost.

I like bananas.

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I was watching the Discovery Channel today, and whenever I watch that I tend to go off on random trains of thought. I was thinking today that hey, if you ask someone arbitrarily what they want, a lot of times people will respond with “I want a pony!” because apparently that’s the thing that people ask for when they think they can get anything.

A while back I actually lived in the country (in Belgium, actually), and we raised chickens and had a pasture behind the house. We let one of the neighbors use the pasture for some of his excess livestock, so we had a couple of different animals live there over the duration of our stay. A couple of horses, and a pony.

Let me tell you, this was the meanest, ugliest pony you’ve ever met. Not only was it not very appealing to the eyes, but it had a malicious streak. Whenever anyone turned their back to the evil pony, it would sneak up behind them and attempt to bite their ass. Yes, it was an ass-biter. This ass-biter is the only pony I’ve really “met”, but I have to say: I’d never ask for a fucking pony.

So I started thinking: what would I ask for instead? The first thing that I thought of was (I guess because I was already thinking about animals) a 1″ permakitten. I guess I first heard of the concept awhile back from an article linked in a GDNET thread. The article itself has since gone defunct, but the concept remains, I guess: the idea that you alter the genetic makeup of a cat such that it doesn’t appear to age.

Even still, if you managed to both create a permakitten breed and somehow miniaturize it to meet the specifications, I think there’d be quite a few critical design flaws. First, a kitten of that proportion would be incredibly fragile: I’d imagine it wouldn’t take that much to kill it. Sleeping with it is definitely a non-option, as a shift in position might easily crush it’s body. Falling off the bed might even impose a fatal risk for the poor animal. You’d end up having to construct some kind of “hamster pen” for the animal to ensure that it doesn’t end up killing itself among the household things. A 1″ animal certainly wouldn’t survive long in many places.

I quickly ruled that out, but was suggested another miniaturized pet: how about a three inch elephant? Surely it wouldn’t be as playful or fun as a kitten would, and would definitely have some more extreme scaling issues (but we’ve tripled the size constraint), but assuming such a feat were possible I think it would be better in the long run. All things aside, I think a three inch elephant is possibly the best desk toy I’ve ever even heard of – and the most damage it could (probably) do is leave a surprise on your keyboard.

I’ve thus added “three inch elephant” to my short list of life goals. I think I’d probably be better off trying to take care of a Bonsai Tree, though I’d probably end up killing it faster than the kitten. Ah, well.

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