I ate a whole bunch of Easter candy and now that its gone, I’m going on a Breatharian diet until my kidneys an pancreas stop hating me. So hopefully just until tomorrow.
Jared Kushner says Middle East peace plan to be unveiled after Ramadan. In a quote I totally just made up, he said: “We think that the Muslim stakeholders will be much more agreeable if they can eat during the daytime.”
Texas is getting ready to kill another one of those shitbirds who gave us the Federal Hate Crimes statute. I hope the painkillers fail and it hurts for a while.
Boy that chick was cute… 25 years ago?!! Holy shit! That can’t be right, can it?
The episode begins with the three sisters training in some sort of magical VR arena, and completely sucking at it. Maggie keeps stopping to text Regina George instead of paying attention to what she’s doing, which keeps leading to her getting stabbed by sharp projectiles. Fortunately, even though this is a simulation, she appears to really feel pain, which is good, because Jesus Christ, woman. I managed to pledge a sorority without being glued to my phone. It’s not that hard, really.
Hit her again! Her screams aren’t realistic enough! I want her to suffer! (Also, on the full-size of this you can really see how shitty the CGI on this show is, they didn’t even bother to glue a real stick onto her, they just CGed it on and it looks ridiculous)
And it’s not just Maggie who’s being a great big failure. Macy, who had already “mastered” her powers thirty seconds after receiving them in the first episode, due to her advanced intellect and all, has now completely unmastered them. Apparently she is psyching herself out by overthinking everything. When she tries to lob a lead pipe at the simulated demon and fails, Mel decides she’s had enough of her sisters’ incompetence and whips out some kind of spell that makes the demon explode in a bright ray of light.
Before anyone is able to react to what Mel has just done, Harry appears and blows a whistle, ending the simulation. Apparently the spell she used is a Big No-No. When she smugly points out that she managed to kill the demon single-handedly, Harry counters that using that spell could have also killed her sisters. HA! As if Mel gives a shit about that, Harry. Nice try.
Mel retorts, “I’m a witch, Harry” — HA! HARRY POTTER REFERENCE! TOTALLY RELATABLE, RIGHT — and that she’s going to be the best witch in the world, no matter how hard the patriarchy tries to stop her.
Harry then launches into a speech about how the Harbinger of Hell is going to destroy the world, and they roll their eyes and walk away from him because that’s, like, so boring. Mel decides that she’s had enough of words; it’s time for action! She’s going to have to track down the Harbinger herself.
And the Harbinger may be closer than we think! Because, as you’ll remember from the last episode, Mysterious Coma Girl is now out of her coma. And she’s out for blood! And not just any blood — she needs a special kind of blood. Which is why she is lurking outside an MRA’s dorm room right now. There are posters with words like “Men Unite!” printed on them hangning on the wall, and he is busy recording a podcast: “Radical feminists have criminalized masculinity. They call it toxic. Why? Because they want all the power for themselves! And believe me, they have power. Some of these witches have more power than—”
Real dialogue alert: That’s the real dialogue.
Alex Jones, Jr. is cut off here by ravenous fangs to the throat. Because the Harbinger can’t survive on any ol’ kind of blood. It needs virgin blood. And we all know that any person spewing that kind of wrongthink is obviously an incel!
Back at the sisters’ house, Mel is in the attic asking Magical Siri The Book of Shadows how she can find the Harbinger of Hell. She is interrupted, though, by Niko, who I guess Mel forgot was sleeping over that night. The scissoring must have been quite forgettable. Niko says that Mel wasn’t in bed when her alarm went off, so she went looking for her. Mel fobs her off with some gratuitous lesbian liplock. They then go downstairs, where Macy is making eggs for breakfast the magical way, which looks a little something like that scene in Sleeping Beauty where the fairies have to use magic to bake Briar Rose’s birthday cake because they’re too inept to cook like humans. Niko walks in, nearly catching the levitating eggs, but Macy quickly drops them all to the floor, so now she just looks like a clumsy moron.
Mel hastens Niko out the door, lamenting that she doesn’t like keeping secrets from her. But there’s no time for that — she discovered a spell that will lure all demons within a 26-mile radius to them, and all they have to do is sacrifice a goat. Macy is Not Down for that. She has a better idea. A Scientific idea: MORE BAKING SUPPLIES! The black blob, after all, contained sulfuric acid, and everyone knows what happens when you combine sulfuric acid and sugar! At this point I’m convinced that the target demographic for this show is third graders, which is why they’re including so much elementary school “science”.
The Original Kitchen Witch
This turns out to be perfect, because it’s Halloween. The girls decide to hand out candy to everyone they come across on campus and see if anyone has a reaction to it. Macy offers to bake cookies as well so that she can ensure the sugar ratio is precise. Maggie will not be participating in this, though, because she has to go to work. Apparently she has a job, which she is using to pay her exorbitant Kappa fees.
At the café where she works, we see an angry old white man yelling at her for being out of chicken sandwiches. She explains that the delivery truck broke down, but the man is having none of her excuses. Luckily for Maggie, a white knight swoops in to save her. He is a very ugly person that I am pretty positive is Chelsea’s ugly boyfriend from Days of Our Lives circa 2008, but my sister is insistent that this guy is even uglier and also too young. Days of Our Lives boy drives off the offending misogynist with quippy one-liners and Grey’s Anatomy references, leaving Maggie’s genitals tingling. I guess this guy is her love interest now? What was the point of the other guy, then…?
Also at the café are Regina George and the other Plastics, sipping mimosas and discussing the school’s fascist booze ban and how it should be rescinded now that Mysterious Coma Girl is awake. If only they could find an off-campus venue for their Halloween mixer, so that Gretchen can wear her slutty baby costume without inhibition!
Seriously, they went out of their way to hire people that looked as much like the cast of Mean Girls as physically possible.
Luckily for them, Maggie is all too willing to oblige. She offers her family home up to the Kappas as tribute in order to make them like her again. This will definitely go fine and not have any unintended consequences.
Meanwhile, on campus, Mel is handing out Macy’s cookies to anyone and everyone who passes her by, in regular, vegan, and gluten-free varieties. When a student walks into the classroom talking about Mysterious Coma Girl being out of her coma, Mel freezes time so she can grab his phone, which he had open to her Facebook page, so she can look at it for more information. Harry comes bursting in, telling her that she’s not supposed to be using her powers frivolously. This leaves me with a lot of questions: How big of a radius is her time-freezing? Does she freeze the whole world? When she freezes time, it has no effect on her sisters or on Harry. But what about everyone else? Does the whole planet freeze except for other witches, who then grind their teeth in aggravation when she’s freezing time every other minute?
Harry tells Mel he thought they agreed she wouldn’t use her magic so recklessly. Mel retorts that he mansplained to her that she shouldn’t use her magic, which she chose to ignore because she’s destined to be one of the greatest witches of all time and she needs to take some initiative. He tells her that if she’s not in the exact position she was in when she unfreezes time and someone notices she keeps moving irregularly and figures it out, it could cause a major issue in the magical world. She retorts that he’s being paranoid. Before he can keep arguing, she informs him that Mysterious Coma Girl has awakened from her coma, and she appears to have done so on the night they found the black ooze residue.
Harry: “She could be the Harbinger’s vessel!”
Mel: “Please do not take credit for my ideas, white man.”
Look at the poster behind her head lmao
Real dialogue alert: That’s the real dialogue.
Mel then informs him that since she has solved the mystery single-handedly, she will handle the demon single-handedly as well. Harry tells her this is a bad idea, she tells him to get fucked, so he places a bracelet on her wrist that will alert him every time she uses her magic so he can ensure that she’s not causing problems.
So… I guess… she doesn’t freeze the whole world? But just a radius of uncertain size. I feel like in the original Charmed there was an episode where Holly Marie Combs freezes the kitchen in her restaurant, but they show that people outside the kitchen aren’t affected. So I guess it’s something like that…?
Mel is enraged that he has slapped her with the equivalent of a patriarchal chastity belt, but as she is unable to do anything about it, there’s nothing to do but train her face back into its typical scowl and unfreeze time.
Over in the Generic Science Lab, Macy is watching Friendzone and some of their other coworkers goofing off in their Halloween costumes — a group DNA helix. The helix is missing cytosine, however, because the person who was supposed to be that called out sick. Friendzone asks Macy why she didn’t dress up, and when she says she was embarrassed, he makes her a cytosine sign, so that she can be part of their group.
SHE COMPLETES HIM! *gag*
He asks her out, she naturally rebuffs him and runs away. Outside, she calls Maggie and tells her what happened, which Maggie “Hilltowne Bicycle” Vera finds absurd. As they chat, Macy is stalked by Mysterious Coma Girl, aka the Virgin Vampire, but is saved by the distraction of a Christian Purity activist who will make a yummy snack, and then by the further distraction of Melanie “Demon Hunter” Vera waylaying her.
Mel and Mysterious Coma Girl/Virgin Vampire (known in her human form as Angela Wu) return to Angela’s dorm to catch up. Mel repeatedly offers her a cookie, baked from their mother’s secret recipe. Finally, Virgin Vampire realizes she’s not going to go away until she eats one. When she doesn’t explode or start coughing up blood, Mel determines that Angela can’t be the Harbinger’s host and leaves. Aha! But! As soon as she’s gone, Angela puts her arm… down her own throat… and pulls out the cookie… whole and unchewed. BUT I JUST SAW HER CHEWING IT! WHAT?
I can’t figure out how to GIF from Amazon Instant Video, but she is definitely chewing here. She even, like, licks her teeth to get the crumbs off.
Once the cookie is disposed of, she goes to her mini fridge, where the MRA’s blood is neatly stored in water bottles, along with his head. You know. I guess in case she gets the munchies and wants his eyeballs for a snack.
Outside Angela’s dorm, Mel runs into Niko, who is checking up on the disappearance of MRA. She wants to know why Mel was visiting Angela, because at this point, due to Mel’s weird behavior of late, Niko has become convinced that Mel is running some kind of Nancy Drew investigation into her mom’s death, which had been ruled accidental by the Hilltowne PD. Mel assures her that she is not, and Niko says, “Then why do I get the feeling that you’re hiding something?” Mel freezes time so she can confess the truth to Niko’s frozen form. Harry gets a ping and comes zipping in to chew her out for using her powers frivolously again and reminds her that she’s not allowed to tell Niko she’s a witch, which makes the veins on Mel’s forehead start throbbing to the beat of “Closer” by Tegan and Sara.
Meanwhile, back at the house, Maggie is decorating for the mixer. It looks really cute, especially considering that the decorations were purchased on Halloween itself, when they should have been very difficult to come by. But Maggie is not satisfied. This will never impress Regina George. Because reasons…? It seriously looks cute. You’re not going to get better than this in terms of sorority party decor. Trust me. This is actually pretty impressive for a mixer where everyone’s sole focus is going to be getting as shitfaced as possible as quickly as possible. Nevertheless, Maggie decides the decor needs more oomph, so she starts digging through the Book of Shadows and comes across a glamour spell, which makes the decorations look… the same…? Maybe this is why I never made it anywhere in my sorority, since I can’t tell the difference between fancy decorations and regular decorations. Well, never made it anywhere beyond chapter vice-president and alumnae association president. Hmm.
Macy returns home with supplies to bake more cookies, but she’s starting to get fed up with having to stuff everyone she comes across with sugar and would like to fall back on Harry’s original plan for the Elders to be the ones to track the Harbinger. (They keep talking about the Elders, but at this point they have never appeared — are they in Hilltowne? Are they far away? Are they on another plane of existence? Are they even real at all? Does it turn out that, like Robin Masters, the Elders will be Harry all along? Regardless, whenever they talk about the Elders, my brain is like, “SILENCE!”) Mel, still pissed off at Harry about the chastity bracelet and the whole “You can never tell Niko you’re a witch” thing, screeches at her that the wamen don’t need a man for help, but Macy calls Harry anyway. Mel and Harry immediately start arguing, and when Macy asks what the deal is, Mel goes:
“Our Whitelighter, the head of the Women’s Studies Department, put a tracker on me to alert him when I use my magic because he’s threatened by the idea of a powerful woman.”
To which Harry responds:
“Now, hold on a minute. That last part is fake news.”
At which point my sister and I — she was watching this one with me for moral support — had to pause the episode so that we could howl like coyotes because are you kidding me? Why does Harry always get the stupidest lines? Answer: because he’s a penis.
In the midst of this witty repartee, Macy’s phone goes off. Friendzone texted her to say he’s looking forward to coming to her party that evening, and thanks for the invite. Macy realizes that Maggie must be up to something, and she flings open the front door to find…
…the house decorated, but not in an overtly supernatural way? I mean, there’s not candelabras hovering in midair or rooms that seem to expand in length as you stand in them. It’s just, you know. Heavily decorated.
The marble columns are a bit much, but everything else here you can pick up at Dollar City or the Spirit Halloween store
Maggie descends down the stairs in a diaphanous purple prom dress, because I guess her Halloween costume is… prom dress? And informs her sisters that this is NOT a sorority thing, even though it looks that way; she was thinking that if they had a huge party that most of the campus attended and required everyone who enters to take a cookie, that it would be easier than chasing around all the undergrads on campus. Everyone, including Harry, grudgingly admits that this is a good idea, and it’s all systems go for the Halloween party.
During the party, Harry catches Maggie using the glamour spell and informs her that magic isn’t supposed to be used for personal gain. If she does it too often, it will throw the universe out of balance with dire consequences. Maggie naturally blows him off, because across the room she spots Macy in her costume.
SHE’S RUTH BADER GINSBURG!
Pause here for more coyote howling
Maggie has an absolute stroke and drags her sister upstairs to change her into something sexier. Macy is adamantly opposed to wearing anything that shows off too much skin. When Maggie demands to know what her problem is, the somber piano music starts playing. It’s time for a Serious Talk about Real Issues.
“When I was in ninth grade, my dad sent me to boarding school in Connecticut,” Macy tells Maggie. “In a class of a hundred kids, only two of us weren’t white. In that type of environment, you have to solidify what type of minority you were before they decided for you. So my friend Tasha became the sexy funny one, and I was always the smart serious one. I played that part for so long that I don’t know how to be anyone else.”
After we recover from this, Maggie informs Macy that she’s both serious and sexy, both smart and funny. Then she uses the glamour to turn Macy’s costume into a Greek goddess. After that spiel, I assumed that she was supposed to be Athena, goddess of wisdom. Then she comes downstairs and Friendzone surmises that she is Persephone, goddess of the underworld. I… okay? Friendzone, meanwhile, is dressed as James Bond, as portrayed by Idris Elba — the way it was always meant to be.
No, I’m not kidding around here. THIS IS THE REAL DIALOGUE. If there’s a message they want you to get, they will beat you over the head with a goddamn sledgehammer to ensure that you Get It, okay?
I guess maybe her earrings are snowflakes? I have no clue how else you would immediately recognize this as Persephone
Friendzone asks her out, but before she can answer, Mel drags her away, screaming, “SISTER EMERGENCY!” Niko has been called away from the party to investigate the death of Purity Christian, and offhandedly mentioned to Mel on her way out the door that there had been three deaths on campus in the last twenty-four hours: MRA (I guess they found the rest of his body), Purity Christian, and a nun in the campus ministry. Mel has connected the dots and figured out that the Harbinger must be a Virgin Vampire. (Here is where she also spoon-feeds us the information that the MRA must have been an incel, even explaining what incel stands for, to ensure that YOU GET IT! YOU GOT THAT, RIGHT? GOT IT? OKAY? DID YOU UNDERSTAND? ARE WE CLEAR HERE? I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE YOU REALLY UNDERSTAND THE JOKE—)
Fearing that there may be virgins present at the party, which is far too overcrowded for them to keep a good eye on, the sisters decide to place a protection ward around the house, which will keep the demon from entering the party. But as they split up to fetch the ingredients for the spell, Angela enters, dressed in a costume that Resembles-But-Is-Legally-Distinct-From Samara from The Ring. It is Too Late.
Harry and Mel scramble to get the exterior of the house prepped for the spell. As they do so, they bicker incessantly about wah wah chastity bracelet, wah wah you don’t understand me. Mel laments that it would be easier if she could tell Niko the truth about her magic, so that they could help each other with this whole Virgin Vampire thing. Harry says he’s sorry if he’s caused trouble between Mel and the woman she’s dating.
Mel is offended by his choice of words. “SHE’S MORE THAN THAT! I DON’T THINK YOU UNDERSTAND!!” She launches into a tirade that seems to start out as accusing Harry of being a homophobe, but then veers aburptly and morphs into, “I never had to be in the closet because my mom was the perfect tolerant hippie, but now by having to lie to my girlfriend, it’s like I’m in the closet.” She seems to be taking this as a sort of personal oppression that she is being forced through specifically because she’s a lesbian, despite the fact that her straight sisters are in the exact same boat.
At this point, my sister asked, “But if Mel has always been a lesbian, does that count as not being a virgin? Does scissoring count?” To which I replied, “You need to factor in Niko’s strap-on.”
Before Harry can respond, Maggie and Macy hurry out with the rest of the ingredients for the spell. They cast it… but it has no effect. You know what that means!
The sisters realize that the demon is already inside, and they’re going to have to lure it out. Macy has the perfect bait: how better to lure a Virgin Vampire than with… a virgin?!
Maggie: “OH MY GOD ARE YOU SERIOUS”
Macy leads her sisters into the Mysterious Woods, marking the trees with bloody handprints every few feet. As they go, they discuss this Shocking News that their 28-year-old sister is still a virgin. Mel chimes in that she had sex with a guy once, and that Macy isn’t missing much, conclusively proving once and for all that John Titor really is the writer of this show after all, and furthermore taking the “but does scissoring count” factor out of the discussion, thus rendering moot the necessity to explain Niko’s strap-on and which of them is the bottom in that situation.
Macy is understandably embarrassed, pointing out that part of the reason she doesn’t like to tell people she’s a virgin is because people react like this. Maggie and Mel are quick to defend themselves, with Mel asserting, “The concept of virginity is really just a tool of the patriarchy to control women’s sexuality.”
Real dialogue alert: That was the real dialogue.
They await the demon in a clearing in the woods, where Harry informs them that they will only get one chance at this binding spell and they can’t afford any juvenile mistakes. Everyone looks at Maggie. But then… Samara Angela arrives! At this point the show abandons any and all attempts to make this Resemble-But-Be-Legally-Distinct-From, and goes full-blown Ringu. The jerky walk, the hair over the face, it’s all there.
After a brief moment of “WTF” from Mel at Angela having eaten the cookie but still being the Harbinger somehow, the sisters quickly begin their binding spell. Buuuut when it gets to be Maggie’s turn, she passes out, on account of all the glamouring spells she’d done throughout the evening. Harry yells for Macy to run, and Virgin Vampire goes tearing after her.
Maggie comes to, and after a brief chiding from Harry, she turns off all the glamours she’d activated throughout the night. She reverts from Prom Queen to Sweatpant Chic. In the woods, Macy has reverted to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which actually is probably easier to run in than the Greek goddess costume, especially since she can yank the robe off and reveal sweats underneath as well. An adrenaline-filled chase scene ensues, and then… Maggie hits Angela over the head with a log and she and Macy start talking about their goddamn feelings. Which means that Angela comes to right as Mel bursts into the clearing and sees Angela preparing to sink her fangs into Macy from behind while Macy and Maggie prattle like bimbos. Mel immediately launches into the Big No-No spell from the beginning of the episode, which Harry said could kill anyone in the vicinity of the demon, including her sisters.
Which means…
Is anyone surprised? I’m not surprised.
Harry uses his healing powers, which brings Macy back to life. Mel apologizes and… Macy immediately forgives her. NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE? NO WORRIES! IT’S ALL GOOD, SIS.
Angela, meanwhile, was knocked unconscious but neither she nor the demon possessing her are dead. Harry says that the Elders (Silence!) will want to weigh in, and instructs the girls to go clear out the house while he binds the unconscious demon. In a moment of uncharacteristic humility, Mel apologizes to Harry and says he was right, she was being reckless with her powers. Harry, being a spineless, flaccid penis in this Woke Feminist Programme™, immediately tells her that there’s no need to apologize, because she was right — she managed to bring down an immensely powerful demon single-handedly, she was the first to suspect Angela Wu to begin with (since, you know, she was the first one of the four to learn that Angela was out of her Mysterious Coma, which wasn’t exactly rocket science, but don’t take credit for her ideas, white man), and basically she’s the brightest witch of her age.
So, you know. No damage to Mel’s ego there.
Harry also reveals that the reason he’s so hard on her is because he has a Tragic Past: The first witch he supervised when he became a Whitelighter was similarly stubborn to Mel. She revealed her powers to someone she believed she could trust, and that person squealed like a dirty rat. The woman was sent to an insane asylum, believed to have schizophrenia, and eventually committed suicide. Mel insists that Niko isn’t like that, and Harry says that after the issue with the Harbinger is resolved, he will petition the Elders (Silence!) for permission to tell Niko the truth. He also removes the chastity bracelet.
Meanwhile, Macy and Maggie are back at the house. Macy immediately throws herself on Friendzone and begs him to deflower her so she doesn’t have to go through a life-threatening experience like that again. Maggie, on the other hand, has to do damage control because the house reverted to its original state and somehow the party-goers were sober enough to notice, by far the most implausible aspect of this episode. Regina George is predictably bitchy about it, but Maggie makes up some excuse about how it was supposed to be Cinderella-themed and everything changed back into a pumpkin at midnight, which is also why she’s now scrubbed out in sweats and has a wart on her chin. Regina George is apparently at least drunk enough to buy that, and Maggie’s Kappa status is preserved for another day.
DO YOU SEE A DIFFERENCE HERE? I LITERALLY SEE NO DIFFERENCE
As they chat, Days of Our Lives boy from the beginning of the episode shows up. (There was another scene with him and Maggie earlier in the party but it’s boring so I didn’t recap it.) Regina George promptly begins rubbing her scent all over him and informs Maggie that this is Parker, her boyfriend.
DUN-DUN-DUNNNNNNNNNN
After Mel finishes hanging her costume up in her closet (gratuitous shot of her bedroom so you can see the giant Puerto Rican flag she has hanging on her wall), the three sisters meet Harry in the attic, where Virgin Vampire/Harbinger/Mysterious Coma Girl/Angela Wu/Whoever the Fuck She Is is chained up, shrieking like a banshee. Harry tells them that the Elders (Silence!) are coming, but that they may be a while, so in the meantime, it will be the girls’ responsibility to guard her.
(Seriously, who the hell are these Elders? Where are they? Harry can just apparate in and out at the drop of a hat. These people were supposed to be close enough that they were able to be searching for the Harbinger’s vessel, right? So where the hell are they? Why is it going to take them a few days to get here? Why do they think it’s acceptable to just leave the most powerful demon of the underworld chained in some 20-something-year-old girls’ attic, especially considering that these girls clearly have no clue what the fuck they’re doing? Remember the 90s, when shows started with relatively low stakes and then built up to the “save the world” shit for the season finale?)
The episode ends with this charming image:
Looks like we’re in for one hell of a time!
And there you have it! Woke Charmed, episode 3. After somewhat of a respite last week, it was refreshing to return to being spoon-fed social justice. Women’s rights are human rights? Anti-feminists are all incels? Notorious RBG? We’ve got it all! This show is still relevant, goddammit!
I haven’t seen all of next week’s episode yet because it was so stupid it made cerebrospinal fluid start leaking from my sinuses. So you can bet it will be a doozy! See you all then!
Good morning my Glibs and Gliberinas! And what a glorious morning it is for those who don’t use a car to commute as oil spiked, with CA hitting an average of $4 a gallon.
Trying to rise to the call for content I figured I’d try to combine both my interest in Japanese language and anime into a single quick read. I also want to suggest that all Japanese animation doesn’t revolve around an unnatural attraction to one’s younger sister. If there is interest I’ll do more. For the first attempt I figured I’d review an anime that I can actually recommend, Hayao Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away”.
Japanese: 千と千尋の神隠し
English: “Spirited Away”
千 – “Sen”- In this case what the main character is called through most of the film. It’s an odd name and the reason is explained in the film.
と – “to” this a particle equivalent to “and” here in English and links nouns together. Japanese is a bit more interesting because “to”is generally use link things exhaustively. “I went to the store and purchased (only) milk and bread“. However, Japanese also as another version や or “ya” which is used on a non-exhaustive list “I went to the store and purchased milk や bread” which means “I went to the store and bought milk, bread and other things“.
千尋 – “Chihiro” – Name of the protagonist
の – “no” – shows possession or used to link nouns together. Similar to ” ‘s” in English.
So we actually have the rare case where the Japanese title mostly matches the English one. “Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi” or “Sen and Chihiro’s Spiriting Away”
The key point I want to make here is the different reading of 千. In the first reading it uses onyomi or sound (aka Chinese) reading and in the second 千尋 it is kunyomi or Japanese reading and sounds like “chi”.
The character has the 尋 (hiro) removed from her name and her memory in the film and becomes “Sen” through most of the film. This kind of word play happens throughout the film and would be instantly recognizable to the Japanese audience and is essentially untranslatable in English.
It also stresses just how important kanji or the Chinese characters that Japanese uses are to convey meaning with written Japanese. This kind of word play is central to all kinds of Japanese humor and literature.
Spirited Away (Japanese: 千と千尋の神隠し Hepburn: Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, “Sen and Chihiro’s Spiriting Away”) is a 2001 Japanese animated coming-of-age fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten, Nippon Television Network, Dentsu, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Tohokushinsha Film and Mitsubishi and distributed by Toho…and tells the story of Chihiro Ogino (Hiiragi), a sullen 10-year-old girl who, while moving to a new neighborhood, enters the world of Kami (spirits) of Japanese Shinto folklore. After her parents are transformed into pigs by the witch Yubaba (Natsuki), Chihiro takes a job working in Yubaba’s bathhouse to find a way to free herself and her parents and return to the human world. – Wikipedia
Studio Ghibli films are generally top notch and “Spirited Away” is no exception. There are other more highly rated films from the studio, but near the top of my list is “Spirited Away” for it message of growing up and responsibility. It works as simple and fun story for children while still having many parts that will be interesting and thought provoking for an adult audience.
Did anyone else go all Ron Swanson on their local grocery store today? “I want you to give me all the Cadbury Creme Eggs you have… Hold on. I’m concerned you’re just going to give me a lot of Creme Eggs. I want all that you have.” Sure my teeth are rotting from my head, and I’ve given myself Type II diabetes, but I’ll just keto for a couple of months and everything will be fine, right?
I love this hed: Vaping Teens Exposed to as Much Nicotine as Tobacco, but Don’t Know It. Probably because they’ve never used tobacco. I still can’t quite understand whether the news people are mouth breathing morons who don’t really understand that nicotine in NOT the product in tobacco that causes cancer, or whether there is some other motive in play here. But let me help everyone on this blog: There is no established causal link between nicotine use and cancer, nor am I aware of any other detrimental effects of long-term low-dose nicotine delivery. Nicotine is a poison at high enough doses. Like if you ate about 2 dozen Juul pods. But in the tenth-to-hundredth of a milligram range, no.
The video link is gone, but I’m pretty sure the Crew Dragon blew up this weekend. It sure looked like all of the fuel detonated at once, instead of over time in the rocket nozzles.
An interesting test on whether the law means what the law says or whether all statutes are open to Living Constitution interpretation. My non-lawyer take — the Title VII Non-Discrimination does not protect people from being discriminated against due to sexual orientation or gender identity, and if Congress wants that those to apply, they need to amend the law. My human take — as long as people come to work and do their job, who cares?
While this would certainly be good news for the housing and car markets, it is impossible for me to see the FedGov erasing all student loans as anything but a lump-sum payout to big banks. Those loans were already guaranteed by the government, so its not like they were carrying bad debt on their balance sheet. Nope, they’d just get a big pile of cash, presumably all at once, or very quickly.
Bonus Link: Meanwhile in Florida the Easter Bunny winds down after a hard weekend with some ultraviolence. Spud dumped this in Animal’s article so I’ll give him a tip o’ the cap.
When I was a kid just learning the shooting sports in the Seventies, all the major rifle manufacturers, ammo companies and wildcatters were engaged in a race for velocity. Roy Weatherby contributed heavily, with his proprietary line of 3,000fps+ rifle cartridges, but he wasn’t alone. The gun companies were daily bringing out new variations on the Eargesplitten Loudenboomer Magnum with muzzle velocities approaching relativistic speeds. The trend continued into the next couple of decades; back in the Nineties when I was running a little email newsletter on Mauser bolt guns, one of my regular readers used to regale us with tales of his wildcatter buddies Aimo and Delbert. Those worthies once supposedly came up with a .17/50BMG wildcat which had a muzzle velocity so high that the bullet arrived on target before the shooter even uncased the rifle.
But there was one man who anticipated the trend, and indeed predated them all; so much so, in fact, as to have been well ahead of his time. His name? Charles Newton.
The Man
1919 Newton Ad
Surprisingly little is known about Charles Newton. We know he was born in Delevan, New York, in 1868; we know he was a lawyer and firearms aficionado with an ambition to become a gunmaker. He had some pretty good ideas about big game rifles, was conversant in bolt guns and was obviously a student of Paul Mauser’s designs.
We also know he was a couple of decades ahead of his time.
The Plan
When Newton first set out to market his own ideas in bolt-action game rifles in 1914, the American outdoor scene was dominated by lever-actions. But several events were happening around the world that would change that.
First: Sixteen years earlier, Paul Mauser, working in his factory in Oberndorf am Neckar in Bavaria, created what would be the pattern for the vast majority of bolt guns thereafter: The 1898 Mauser. Unlike the previous designs from Mauser-Werke, the 98 had a robust reinforcing ring in the beefier forward receiver ring; the ’98 also had a third “safety” locking lug, an improved gas shield in the bolt shroud to vent hot gases away from the shooter in the event of a case failure, and it cocked on opening, using the leverage of the bolt handle to cock the striker rather than making the shooter push the bolt closed against the striker spring.
This set the 98 apart from previous bolt guns in several ways. First, the action was tougher, allowing the use of high-pressure, high-performance cartridges. Second, the cock-on-open action made for faster, more certain cycling of the action. Third, the gas shield made the ’98 safer for the shooter in the case a high-performance round blew a case head.
Second: In June of 1914, when a Serb Yugoslav nationalist named Gavrilo Princip rubbed out the Austro-Hungarian royal heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, triggering a conflict which eventually exploded into the Great War. Why is this relevant to the American sporting rifle picture?
Because three years later, in 1917, the United States entered that conflict. In all 2.8 million American servicemen volunteered or were conscripted for that conflict (my grandfather among the first group). Those who were hunters and shooters had, like most American sportsmen, favored lever guns prior to this, but their service time made them intimately familiar with the Pattern 17 Enfields and the excellent 1903 Springfield rifles they were issued; both rifles were essentially clones of the 98 Mauser. When they returned home, the American doughboys led the slow but inevitable rise of the bolt gun as the go-to American sporting rifle.
Charles Newton was poised to capitalize on that trend.
The Cartridges
Newton Cartridges
A rifle is a device for launching bullets. Knowing that to be true, Newton began his forays into ammunition before he began building rifles. Of all his cutting-edge (for the time) cartridges, only his first is still in use today.
In or around 1912, Charles Newton designed a new cartridge for a company that had a great property, a cutting-edge lever gun; that company being Savage, the gun being the Model 99, and the cartridge Newton developed became the .22 Savage Hi-Power. It wasn’t a complicated piece of engineering; he merely took the .25-35 WCF case and necked it down to take an oddball .228 bullet. But the combination of high velocity and the slightly over-bore .22 round firing a 70-grain soft point bullet yielded a round that punched well outside its weight class by the standards of the time. The round became popular in Europe for hunting red deer, Europe’s slightly smaller variation on North American elk; no lesser a man than W.D.M. “Karamojo” Bell, demonstrating once again the advantages gifted by an enormous set of brass balls, successfully used a .22 Savage Hi-Power rifle to hunt Cape buffalo. Newton’s ideas of high velocity and high penetrating power were beginning to earn some respect in the game fields.
The .22 Savage Hi-Power, in the European guise of the 5.6x52R, is, in fact, the only one of Newton’s cartridge designs still in common use, although only in Europe – and only in those jurisdictions where the peasants are still allowed to own rifles.
The following year, 1913, saw Newton bringing out another new cartridge. The .256 Newton was another adaptation of an existing round – Newton took the famous .30-06 case and necked it down to take a .25 caliber bullet. Sound familiar? Of course – many years later Remington legitimized the popular wildcat round that originally came out as the .256 Newton, calling it the .25-06 Remington. For Newton, the .256 round was a breakthrough. Western Cartridge Company loaded the case with a 123-grain pill at a tad over 3100 fps, a blazing-hot round for the time.
Then, that same year, Newton brought out one of the first real magnum rifle cartridges, the .30 Newton, which fired a 150-grain bullet at over 3,200fps. This was a rip-roaring .30 caliber round for this pre-Great War market. Newton achieved this by necking down the big German 11.2×72 Schuler case. This was a big, beefy case; the original 11.2×72 (firing a .44 caliber bullet, more or less) round was a popular round in German rifles made for the African safari market at the time.
This case was roomy enough to be adapted for larger bullets, and Newton took advantage of that, bringing in the .33 and 35 Newton in 1915, launching 225 and 250-grain bullet at 2800fps, and finishing up with the .40 Newton, which never saw full production (as we’ll explore here in a moment) but which theoretically could propel a 300-grain slug at over 3,000fps.
But a cutting-edge cartridge is of little use unless you have a rifle that can handle it. It was in the development of those rifles that Newton showed his prescience.
The Guns
While a rifle may be a device for launching bullets, the bullets are nothing without the rifle; and it is in the rifle that a designer has a chance to achieve some real artistry.
Model 1916 Newton
The first Newton rifle wasn’t made by Newton. In 1914, the Model A Newton hit the market, sold only in the .256 Newton caliber. It’s unclear how many Model A Newtons were imported, but the number is likely under a hundred. The rifles were made under contract in Germany; one shipment of 24 rifles, built on 98 Mauser actions, is confirmed to have been received and sold by Newton. Other shipments were prepared but not sent, and it is unknown what happened to those guns, as the beginning of the Great War interfered with shipments across the Atlantic.
Undeterred, Newton decided to build his own guns. In 1916 re-formed the Newton Arms Co., Inc. and enlisted the assistance of legendary gunsmith and barrel-maker Harry Pope. In due time, The Newton Arms Co. introduced the first American-made Newton, the First Model 1916.
This was a solid bolt gun that departed from the Mauser in having not one two large locking lugs but six smaller ones, making for a shorter bolt throw. The 1916 was, at last, the culmination of Newton’s intentions for a modern bolt-action sporting rifle. About 4,000 were made, chambered for the .22 Savage Hi-Power, the .256, .30, .33, .35 Newton calibers as well as the .30 U.S.G., better known nowadays as the .30-06. .40 Newton rifles were advertised but it’s unclear if any were actually built. The 1916 also featured a variety of wood grades, barrel lengths up to thirty inches, scope mounts, and a double-set trigger.
But not all those 4,000 rifles were made by Newton.
Newton was a man ahead of his time, but his timing was poor in other respects as well. He was trying to build an market an innovative new sporting rifle while most of Western civilization was involved in a horrible war of attrition on the European continent, making it very difficult to obtain steel and components for ammunition; since Newton’s rifles used (mostly) proprietary ammo, there was no pre-war inventory to rely on. Newton was able to produce the 1916 rifles for about 16 months, building 2,400 or so rifles in that time. But then ongoing financial troubles threatened to sink the New Arms Company, which was forced into receivership for a little over three months; the receiver sold the company’s assets to a third party, who formed the Newton Arms Corporation in New York City and continued building the Model 1916 rifles, cranking out about 1,600 before Newton sued to get his design back. No more Model 1916 Newtons were built after that.
Still, in due time, the Great War ended. Lots of American doughboys came home, and many of them returned to their pre-war pastimes, which included hunting and shooting; suddenly there was a market for bolt-action sporting rifles. Such firms as Remington and Winchester were already stepping into the market, and so in 1922, Charles Newton, having once more re-organized his business as the Chas. Newton Rifle Company, arranged with Germany’s J.P. Sauer to import Mauser-based rifles in .256 Newton as the Model 1922. This was not a good business model; only around a hundred rifles were imported before the whole thing fell through. So, Newton shifted gears yet again, moved his operation to New Haven, Connecticut, and formed the Buffalo Newton Rifle Company. Once again Newton was manufacturing.
Model 1924 Buffalo Newton in .256 Newton
Between 1924 and 1930, the Buffalo Newton Rifle Company put out about 1,000 Second Model 1924 Buffalo Newton rifles, chambered in .256, .30, .35 and .40 Newton calibers as well as the .30-06. The Buffalo Newton, like the Model 1916, was available in a variety of trims and barrel lengths and featured a double-set trigger designed and patented by Newton himself.
But the Newtons were something of a premium rifle. Take note of the years of manufacture; after the crash of 1929 and during the resulting Great Depression, there wasn’t a great market for top-end guns. The Buffalo Newton Rifle Company folded in 1930.
Charles Newton wasn’t quite finished. In 1929 Newton had come up with a prototype for what he called the “Leverbolt” rifle, a fast-actioned, straight-pull bolt gun that looked like the illegitimate child of a 98 Mauser and a 99 Savage lever gun. The gun was never manufactured, and while there have been a couple of attempts to revive the design over the years, nothing has ever come of it.
A while back I had the chance to handle and shoot a Model 1916 Newton rifle in .30-06. It was a great rifle, well-made and beautiful, with a premium walnut stock and good sights. The rifle impressed me enough that I asked the owner, who had inherited the rifle from his grandfather, if it might be for sale; he replied, “not at any price,” which is understandable. The stock had rather more drop than a modern rifle, but the action was smooth, and the double-set trigger clean and crisp. I’d like to have one like it one day.
The Legacy
Charles Newton passed away at his home in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1932, aged 64. While he never saw much commercial success as a gun builder, in his development of fine bolt-action rifles and high-velocity magnum rifle cartridges firing tough, heavy slugs resulting in high shock effect and great penetration, Charles Newton foretold what the American sportsman would be looking for in a game rifle – he just saw it about twenty years too soon. I look today at my favorite big-game rifle, my own Thunder Speaker, based on a ’98 Mauser action, using the .338 Winchester Magnum cartridge to fire a tough 250-grain bullet at around 2800 fps; this is a rifle that will let daylight in both ends of a moose, the long way.
That’s a rifle Charles Newton would have approved of.
It’s a difficult thing, sometimes, to be too far ahead of the wave. Had Charles Newton brought out his rifles and cartridges in the years leading up to the second world war instead of the first, he may well have taken his place along John Browning and Sam Colt as a great American gun designer. As it is, he’s a footnote; few people today know of Newton rifles, and the guns themselves are relegated to ranks of collectors, too few and too valuable to see much use in the game fields.
And that’s too bad. I’ve long watched the online auctions for a Newton rifle, and when I do find one to take an honored place in the gun rack at the Casa de Animal, it will certainly be taken out to the range and the field, shot and hunted with. That’s what a rifle is made for; that’s why Charles Newton designed his rifles and cartridges.
When you get right down to it, there are plenty of worse legacies a man could leave behind him.
Monday Mornings, we are trying to give Banjos a bit of a break. Thus you will be seeing Links of Me. Links of Mine. My Links. Whichever. OMWC will be taking Fridays, so steel yourself for that.
So, befitting my oft times minimalist style – here are your Links for Monday, April 22, Anno Domini two thousand and nineteen.
Um….wut? That almost compares to “Franco and Mussolini form joint peacekeeping force”.
Um…who? We’ve gone from clown car to the short bus. Lets see if they can get to 25…30 declared candidates.
BACK THE BLUE! CPD has another shining moment of glory. “Alcohol may have also been a factor.” NO WAY!!!?
Stay classy, MSNBC. Maybe wait until he is at brunch, then shove your way over to his table.
I shan’t have tears enough to shed for these poor,unfortunate souls. Oh, wait…I meant I am laughing quite hard. Now, go out and campaign for moar socialisms.
The boot stomping on a human face forever stomps a little less vigorously, though it still stomps. The Stars do have something significant to tell us this week. The Sun and Mars are in alignment with Mercury and Saturn. Now if Venus had been in opposition, this would have indicated an end to war, but we’re not that lucky. Instead there will be a historically important battlefield death this week. Those of you not on battlefields and/or not historically important can relax a bit.
Backstabbery and team drama continues as Mars hacks its way through Gemini. Ordinarily we could count on Venus to offset that a bit, but she’s off consorting with Mercury in Pisces, resulting in a general decrease in libidos. Aries gets its theme music. And Jupiter retrograde in Sagittarius continues to be a right dick. Did you ever know anyone who was covered in karma teflon? I had a fraternity brother like that whom I will refer to as Edgar. Edgar would constantly do stupid and/or criminal stuff and have the results of his actions land on someone else standing nearby. He would do things like walk out of a place without paying, and the owners/security would converge on the people who came in with him (the fucker still owes me for that, btw) but the best example I can think of is one night when several of us drunk bastards were being driven home by our sober-driver brother. Edgar rolled down the passenger-side window and whipped out the beer bottle he had just emptied… directly impacting the windshield of a parked (and occupied) police cruiser. The sober driver got hauled off to jail, Edgar stumbled away unscathed and unrecorded. Jupiter retrograde in Sagittarius is like that. The only real thing working for us in the sky is the moon in Virgo, and while it does give us some protection, it’s most beneficial for women (so of course less useful for us). It’s very good luck for any pentagram-wearing Wiccan lesbians who might be lurking.
This week’s draw looks remarkably good. We have two cards that are exactly the same in meaning as Jupiter retrograde; but in this case in context, it might actually mean less “overzealous prosecution” and more like “cop was too interested in donut to notice you speeding.” Literally only three number cards were drawn, so it’s going to be a big week and active at the end.
Aries: 5 of Coins – Love and lovers, concordance, affinities, material difficulties
Taurus: Queen of Cups – Success, pleasure, happiness, wisdom, virtue. This is probably the best possible draw for women.
The second seder has passed and our first born still appears to be alive, so we did something right. I’m not sure if Mormons do the Easter sunrise thing or not but the neighborhood is very quiet. And that means ADHD folks like I am can type away and not get distrac… hey, what’s that? PIZZA?? I’M SAVED!!!
Todays birthdays lead off with The Other Lizzie; religious slaver James Dobson; everybody’s hero and the greatest Stooge since Jerome Horwitz, Iggy Pop; and the surprisingly best NFL commenter ever, Tony Romo.
Oh yeah, let’s link!
This is extremely ominous. If it really is a sign of the return of the Tigers, Sri Lanka is in for a long and horrible ride.
Old Guy Music continues in my violin groove with an absolutely astonishing performance by Sugarcane Harris on a rare night that he was more sober than George Jones.
There’s a lot we don’t know about the legacy Donald Trump will leave behind. And it is, of course, hugely important what happens in the 2020 election. But one thing seems sure: Even if he’s a one-term president, Trump will have caused, directly or indirectly, the premature deaths of a large number of Americans.
C’mon now, that doesn’t sound the least bit hyperbolic. Its not like somebody is going to put a black bag over my head, and tie me up and beat me…..well at least not somebody from the Government.
Some of those deaths will come at the hands of right-wing, white nationalist extremists, who are a rapidly growing threat, partly because they feel empowered by a president who calls them “very fine people.”
I see you support your claim with a link to Vox. I’m going to escalate this by throwing Jihadwatch at you!
Some will come from failures of governance, like the inadequate response to Hurricane Maria, which surely contributed to the high death toll in Puerto Rico. (Reminder: Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens.)
Reminder: Puerto Rico received $16 Billion last year to recover from Hurricane Maria. Assuming the population statistics from the Census Bureau are correct that is approximately $5007 per Puerto Rican in response to a single event…
Some will come from the administration’s continuing efforts to sabotage Obamacare, which have failed to kill health reform but have stalled the decline in the number of uninsured, meaning that many people still aren’t getting the health care they need. Of course, if Trump gets his way and eliminates Obamacare altogether, things on this front will get much, much worse.
But the biggest death toll is likely to come from Trump’s agenda of deregulation — or maybe we should call it “deregulation,” because his administration is curiously selective about which industries it wants to leave alone.
Krugman — or maybe we should call Krug”man”…
Consider two recent events that help capture the deadly strangeness of what’s going on.
One is the administration’s plan for hog plants to take over much of the federal responsibility for food safety inspections. And why not? It’s not as if we’ve seen safety problems arise from self-regulation in, say, the aircraft industry, have we? Or as if we ever experience major outbreaks of food-borne illness? Or as if there was a reason the U.S. government stepped in to regulate meatpacking in the first place?
Now, you could see the Trump administration’s willingness to trust the meat industry to keep our meat safe as part of an overall attack on government regulation, a willingness to trust profit-making businesses to do the right thing and let the market rule. And there’s something to that, but it’s not the whole story, as illustrated by another event: Trump’s declaration the other day that wind turbines cause cancer.
Yeah, because meat is the same thing as aircraft. Besides, organizations outside of government are more than capable of providing food safety standards. Not like there are any cultural or religious standards that have thousands of years of success that we can point to. In Krug”man’s” world, it was the great salmonella outbreak of the 1940s that nearly eradicated (((them))).
But when it comes to renewable energy, Trump and company are suddenly very worried about supposed negative side effects, which generally exist only in their imagination. Last year the administration floated a proposal that would have forced the operators of electricity grids to subsidize coal and nuclear energy. The supposed rationale was that new sources were threatening to destabilize those grids — but the grid operators themselves denied that this was the case.
So it’s deregulation for some, but dire warnings about imaginary threats for others. What’s going on?
Part of the answer is, follow the money. Political contributions from the meat-processing industry overwhelmingly favor Republicans. Coal mining supports the G.O.P. almost exclusively. Alternative energy, on the other hand, generally favors Democrats.
There are probably other things, too. If you’re a party that wishes we could go back to the 1950s (but without the 91 percent top tax rate), you’re going to have a hard time accepting the reality that hippie-dippy, unmanly things like wind and solar power are becoming ever more cost-competitive.
I see you linked to Forbes. Wanna see what else Forbes has to say about the market viability of hippie-dippie, unmanly things like wind and solar power?
A study by the University of Texas projected that U.S. energy subsidies per megawatt hour in 2019 would be $0.5 for coal, $1- $2 for oil and natural gas, $15- $57 for wind and $43- $320 for solar. Many of the renewable energy subsidies come in the form of a Production Tax Credit (PTC) of 2.3 cents per kilowatt hour. Wholesale prices for electricity in 2017 were between approximately 2.9 cents to 5.6 cents per kilowatt hour. Therefore the wind production tax credit covers 30% to 60% of wholesale electricity prices.
…that means it is only competitive because of the scale of subsidies. That means it is not competitive. So how does Krug”man”end it?
Whatever the drivers of Trump policy, the fact, as I said, is that it will kill people. Wind turbines don’t cause cancer, but coal-burning power plants do — along with many other ailments. The Trump administration’s own estimates indicate that its relaxation of coal pollution rules will kill more than 1,000 Americans every year. If the administration gets to implement its full agenda — not just deregulation of many industries, but discrimination against industries it doesn’t like, such as renewable energy — the toll will be much higher.
So if you eat meat — or, for that matter, drink water or breathe air — there’s a real sense in which Donald Trump is trying to kill you. And even if he’s turned out of office next year, for many Americans it will be too late.
