• Alice Playten, voice of Baby Lickety Split in My Little Pony: The Movie dies at 63
  You can read her obituary here on Playbill. Share your favorite My Little Pony: The Movie moment in tribute below. Share:
• New My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic clothes from Mighty Fine & a T-Shirt Design contest
  Well, that was fast! Two big peices of news for you in this post. The first is that Mighty Fine just signed a licensing deal with Hasbro for My Little Pony and have debuted three new T-shirt designs starring Rarity, Applejack and Twilight Sparkle. We’ve got a look at these three designs below and you [...]
• proto-typing’s Jim Cummings tribute
  I guess we’ll need to welcome proto-typing into the cult! Check out this nice tribute to Jim Cummings here: Underrated Genius – The Voice Actor No tags for this post.
• From Speak Well, He Can: An interview with the voice of Yoda (Tom Kane):
  Did you do voices for your kids? When they were younger … I would read them books, children’s books. I would always try to liven it up by giving the characters different sounds. The funny thing is that when kids … Continue reading →
• Bill Clinton: Former US President and… Brony?
  Rhodes Scholar and former President Bill Clinton was on an NPR quiz show recently and was asked trivia about My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. He did surprisingly well making us wonder… might he be a brony? OK, or maybe the questions were a little on the easy side. Either way, you can read the [...]
• Summer Hayes’ MLP Corner
  MLP Fair Weekend General Admission Have SOLD OUT! General Admission Passes for Saturday ONLY are still available! The My Little Pony Fair has had a banner year for ticket sales. While this is very exciting and means there will be plenty of pony fans in attendance, it also means that the events scheduled for Friday [...]
• 5 Reasons to consider DISQUS for your blog or website comments
  I’ve been using Disqus‘ commenting system on half a dozen websites for quite a while now and I couldn’t be happier with their service. With over 500 million unique visitors per month according to this NYT article, Disqus is a very big fish in the blog plugin pond. But if you haven’t installed this commenting [...]
• Jim Cummings talks about being protective Winnie the Pooh and not smoking joints in Variety
  From Variety: When it comes to its “Winnie the Pooh” franchise, Disney isn’t the only one that protects the brand. Jim Cummings, who has been the voice of Pooh since 1988, admitted at Thursday’s “Winnie” press junket at the Burbank … Continue reading →
• How I got started selling on eBay: an interview at the Kabbage blog
  The nice folks over at Kabbage are doing a feature this summer, inspired by all the superhero movies, on the origins of various e-commerce superheros, if you will. Well, and me. I’m not sure I’m in the same league (like Justice League? No?) but I’m always happy to play along. Take a look at my interview [...]
• Don’t want to pay that much for an My Little Pony item you see on eBay? How to haggle the price down with Best Offer
  Best Offer is one of those eBay services that just about everyone has seen but not everyone knows how to use. In short, if you see an item that you want on eBay but you don’t want to pay that much for it, look for the “Make an Offer” button on the listing. While not [...]

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  RT @Bookwyrm76 It’s been overt a decade, yet I still read Darkwing Duck in Jim Cummings’ voice. Tags: Jim Cummings
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  RT @DisneyMagicMan I officially dub Jim Cummings the greatest voice actor, EVER. He’s played so many amazing characters! Tags: Jim Cummings
• Getting stuff done, working more efficiently & finally tackling the things you keep putting off
  I wasn’t exactly trying to but I recently realized that I have something of a series going on working more efficiently and getting stuff done that spans both The Whine Seller and my writing blog, Unpublishable Pennings. I thought I should make these posts a bit easier to find so I’ve compiled them together for [...]
• Heck yeah, green feedback star! (& why it took us 14 years to get it)
  We reached our green star today, 5,000 feedback ratings. Our 5,000th feedback was from NullApps’ Ryan who is a regular Whine Seller reader which gives me endless joy. Especially because the item he left us feedback on was the ad space I auctioned off to benefit the Japan earthquake which just makes the whole thing [...]
• My Little Masculine Pony
  Another opinion peice about the surprising popularity of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic amongst adults (especially males).  My Little Masculine Pony – Opinion by Kara Tsukashima Share:
• My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Equestria Election posters
  I don’t share much fan art on here but sometimes you have to make an exception. Check these out.  Share:
• More ‘My Little Pony’ Trailer Mashups
  Pony Up with ’Scott Pilgrim’ and ’V For Vendetta’ Share:
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  Jim Cummings’ newest cartoon series, The Looney Tunes Show, premieres tonight, Tuesday, May 3 at 8/7c on Cartoon Network. Jim Cummings will be playing the Tasmanian Devil (Taz to his friends). See the trailer at the official site here: http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/tv_shows/looneytunesshow/index.html … Continue reading →
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  An excited fan gets an autograph from Jim Cummings [video] Tags: Jim Cummings
• Integrating Microblogging, Mini Posts & Status Updates into Your Blog
  One of the things I didn’t anticipate when sites like Twitter and Facebook first came out was how much I would like microblogging. This may sound odd coming from someone as verbose as me but while there is some content that can only be expressed as an article, for many of my websites, I find [...]

It’s Lovely! I’ll Take It!. is a blog that showcases very bad real estate photos. Anyone who either is looking for a house or otherwise just bought a house will have some fun reading through it. Some of the pictures are hilarious and some are just oddly depressing. . .

So if you have been living under some kind of rock and have not yet witnessed the awesome-ness that is the world’s first super villain musical, there is still time to remedy that.

Dr. Horrible’s Musical Sing Along Blog is a movie, broken into three parts and being premiered for free online. Each part is only 13 minutes long and two parts are out already so you can catch up in less than your lunch break. It is by Buffy/Firefly god Joss Whedon and stars Neil Patrick Harris who is beloved by many as well as Nathan Fillion who is beloved by me. I also love NPH but, you know. NPH is actually adorable in this and sings awesome so I am falling more in love with him with each episode.

Anyway, this isn’t one of those internet things where you can just say, “Oh, I will watch it a month from now” because it is up for one week only with the final episode premiering on Saturday. It is very silly good clean fun and I highly recommend you check it out before it is gone.

If you don’t believe my recommendation, go a quick Google search. It basically got rave reviews across the board.

Now, go work on your evil laugh!

Here is something silly for you to chew on. The following image was featured on good old I Can Has a Cheezburger the other day. Take a gander at the left side of the photo:

Let’s all use our context clues to the best of our ability here. Clearly, a vintage So Soft Cupcake and what appears to be a Minty (though it could be one of the reissues). So here is the question: Is this photo from the 80s or is this child just playing with some very old toys?

The wicker table makes it nebulous. Do people still have them anymore?

So this lion video was featured on Rosie’s blog a few days ago and then Cute Overload picked it up so I feel like I have to link to it. It’s from the 70s, but it will definitely make you smile. And possibly make you want to befriend a lion.

Just go ahead and watch. The video explains everything.

If you haven’t already, you must see this.

Amazon has this thing that I am 99% sure most people have never noticed but is my husband and I’s favorite thing. For a while there, we used to check out it religiously every night.

This wondrous thing is the Gold Box. The Gold Box is a section of the site tailored just for you based on your Amazon activity. Based on the type of stuff you usually purchase, it recommends random things to you that you may like. But it doesn’t just offer them, it offers them at huge discounts and sometimes ludicrous quantities (I once got like 25 disposable cameras for like $1 each). But the icing on the cake is that it only offers each thing to you for a limited number of seconds. So in addition to being a random deal that would likely tempt you, you have only a very short time to make the decision. It’s not shopping for the weak of heart, I can tell you that much.

They have changed it slightly since the days when we used to visit it all the time. They added a few deals that don’t expire in addition to the countdown ones which, honestly, are for pansies. They also upped the time from a few seconds to a few hours so its a little less stressful now. They also give you a preview of items that are coming up so it’s honestly the sort of thing that could get really addictive.

Right now, in my Gold Box, they are recommending all this man stuff like hunting knives which leaves me with the conclusion that my husband was on my computer the other day.

Take a look at your Gold Box and let me know what’s in yours in the comments.

A long time ago, I took the time to write up a simple checklist for Lulu authors for making their book look professional. I sent it out to Lulu staff and got no reply whatsoever from anyone so I assumed no one cared and dropped it.

However, lo and behold, I just discovered that they did use it after all! With only a few additions and changes, my list now appears here. I have no idea how long ago they posted it but huge sections are word for word.

No acknowledgment, no credit, no love but its all good. I am just glad I was able to help and that it was actually useful enough that they posted it.

I have reached that point in the year where I have had it as an eBay seller.

I have sold through most of my good stuff in the prime retail season of the winter and am just listing the last of the good stuff in the next week or so.

That leaves a few other high ticket items that I am saving for September-December, but, overall, my eBay sales are going to be much less over the summer. Lots of buy it nows and not so much with the auctions since the bidders will be in their swimming pools and not on eBay.

So now is the time of year when I look through my stock with cold scrutiny. I look at the items that I have listed several times now and which still haven’t sold. I look at the store inventory items that have been festering for months without so much as a nibble. I look at the items that Trading Assistant clients have told me that they do not want back, but did not sell. I look at all of this stuff and wonder what, pray tell, am I going to do with all this stuff?

In the old days, I used to just throw it all into one box and sell it as a mystery lot. But eBay just did away with mystery lots and this year I was at a loss with what to do with all this stuff.

Enter the Lupus foundation. They are looking for donations of just about everything on earth (see complete list) AND they will come to your house come and pick it up. Just leave it outside the door and when you come home, the stuff is gone and you have a receipt for tax purposes. (You can schedule a pick-up here) They will even take some furniture AND are especially looking for knickknacks, clothes, toys, old computer parts, appliances and other items that are the staple of the average eBay seller. You won’t believe all the stuff they are looking for!

There is a local church that takes clothing and stuffed animal donations and last fall I gave them 10 bags full of my clothes I don’t fit into anymore. But a lot of the stuff I sell on eBay didn’t fall into the list of what they accept and so I didn’t know what to do with it. You know the stuff I mean. It’s perfectly good stuff, just not the sort of stuff people purchase on eBay.

Now, even if you are not an eBay seller, just about everyone does their spring cleaning around this time of the year. Just about everyone has those boxes of stuff that they haven’t touched since they moved, those things that are still perfectly good but you just don’t like them anymore, those skinny clothes that you don’t want to admit that you will never fit into again, that set of dishes you don’t want anymore. Having tore through my house and eBay stuff this week to see what I can donate, let me tell you that it is very freeing to not only get rid of old stuff, but know that you are doing some good with it.

I personally (I suspect it is the eBay connection) have a lot of trouble getting rid of things that are still perfectly good. Trash or broken stuff, that I throw out with no qualms. But if the item is something that, while I don’t particularly want it, someone could use or if it is still like new, I cannot make myself throw it out. I need to know that someone is getting use out of it. I love the idea that the stuff I no longer want and couldn’t sell on eBay can be doing some good!

The Lupus foundation is a spring cleaning dream for anyone. But for myself, as an eBay seller, it is so very freeing. Suddenly that huge list of “Ugh, I still have to sell that” has been whittled down to only the stuff that will sell for a lot and all the other items can go and do some good elsewhere. It’s win-win. I get to start the holiday retail season with much more empty space in my stock room and the Lupus foundations gets a huge donation of items from me that they can sell and use to help save lives.

Their website has been a little overloaded this week but, even if you only have a single box or bag of stuff, please consider scheduling a pick-up.