Lugal

I think Thor's definitely screwing with us, but kennings were a common feature of Norse poetry (like using sail road for the sea) and land ship is a kenning for car.

Some local Arizona papers have been delving into that 1864 law (The Howell Code) and it's horrifying. The abortion section that they're using is Chapter X, Section 45. Chapter X, Section 15 States: "No black or mulatto, or Indian, Mongolian or Asiatic, shall be permitted to give evidence in favor of or against any white person.” And Chapter X, Section 47 sets the age of consent at 10. Probably because the Speaker of the House, W. Claude Jones (a "pursuer of nubile females") and one of the senators, King Woolsey, that passed the law both had child brides. But the good news is there's enough signatures to get the "Arizona Right to Abortion Initiative" a proposed amendment to the state constitution on the ballot in November.

By just horse and buggy, I could see it taking two months. By Hetty's time in 1895 there would have been railroads and she probably could have done it in a week or two. They seem to like the running gag of how much slower things were in Hetty's day, although I think they tend to exaggerate it a bit.

It may take time to collect my thoughts on this one. So much to say, and Rebecca was so good, but just the look on her face when she pulls down her collar to reveal the cord (which I saw as the copper wire that connected it to the wall) said everything. That's how I saw it too.

Surprise guest? Patience the feral Puritan ghost?

Sinema's out, she announced her "retirement" from the Senate last month. She blamed partisanship but really just read the writing on the wall that everyone hates her.

Yeah, right under: Secondly, I leave to my sons, Jack and Donny... I'm of the same attitude, but I would rather cull the Gruesome Foursome (Sonny/Carly/Jason/Michael) and then see if any of the others can thrive before I cut them. Pipe dream, I know. Counterpoint: Tanisha Harper is really hot! No wonder the cops are always losing to Sonny, they're clearly paid shit!

There's a lot of hours in a day they need to fill and they're hoping that the furor has died down enough to let it slide and those movies aren't making any money in the Hallmark vault?

It really does make me think of the Voltaire quote: It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. Especially even after he knew they were innocent. I don't know if it would be a deterrent for them. If they do watch, I think they should have to keep their hands in sight at all times. Personally, I would have them spend a night in a jail cell and then actually be strapped to the gurney so they really know what it feels like.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/ashton-kutcher-expecting-subpoena-over-013051777.html So, Ashton Kutcher's good friends with Sean Combs. Is it terrible taste in friends, or just birds of a feather?

We meet Trevor's brother. I assume Trevor, Pete and Flower are the only ones who still have any close family remaining. I can see the commonalities between them for good and for ill. But I liked that Trevor knew that it was best for Jeremy not to hang around the B&B all the time. Hopefully Jay will close the loophole on the sign up offer. I think Hetty's stories are worse than Thor's. Both of them are still grimly hilarious though. Isaac discovering dinosaurs was the highlight of the episode for me! Although having read the book Fossil Legends of the First Americans, fossils were being found in his day, but they had not quite realized what they actually were. They thought there could be mysterious monsters further inland, which incidentally was one of the side purposes of expeditions like Lewis and Clark's. I don't know if it was an act so much as it was just easy for her, now that Pete's been gone nearly 40 years, to apologize to (what to her was) an empty room. Now that they're back under the same roof, they seem to fall into old patterns, and we've seen over the years that Pete and Carol did not have the healthiest of relationships. While I don't want to see her stick around long-term, I would feel kinda bad if she got sucked off before Pete. Maybe she can fall down Flower's Well?

They're the people in that meme I saw: "Can't pay back those college loans? You should have skipped college and gotten a real job!" and at the same time, "Can't make enough money, well, you should have gone to college and gotten a real job!" My response: Oh, I see the problem, you weren't born rich. This "it was hard for me so it should be hard for everyone else" attitude is the main problem right here. We'd rather drag everyone down than lift anyone up. While I understand the anger when you aren't one of the ones uplifted, that's the reason to make these things universal. That's the problem with forcing children to choose a career/life path before they're trusted to go to the bathroom by themselves. It's that special kind of idiot that makes it impossible for people to have children and then they're shocked, SHOCKED! that people aren't having kids. Our government seems to be full of those special kinds of idiots.

My favorite Moroccan Amazigh Band/Youtube discovery Meteor Airlines has a new album out. One of my favorite tracks is Mani Aman (Where is the Water?)

And here I thought they were finally going to delve into the long awaited story where Laura, as mayor, discovers all the lead, cadmium, and (apparently) cobalt in the PC drinking water, thus explaining the high levels of stupidity and cancer in that town. (Personally, I'm still pissed that we were cheated out of the confrontation between Heather and Liesl after Britt's death)

Whatever he was in was extremely volatile if it oscillated between +200,000 to -48,000 to +187,000 in the span of a few moments. And he was shorting which opened Sam and Jay up to much greater losses than just the $10,000 he started with. I guess it's easier to take that risk when you're dead. But like all good investors, he was playing with other people's money.

Just skimming episodes and the thread, I had a realization: Does anyone else think that Port Charles is really just that gangster planet from the classic Star Trek Episode A Piece of the Action?

This one was fun, especially Hetty and Sass trying to get the candy from Carol's purse. "What kind of candy? Nose Candy?" And because I was curious, they probably would not have been snorting cocaine in Hetty's day. They did however put it in everything else, from wine and coca cigarettes to hair care, toothache drops to yes, actual candy. Pete and Carol working through things was good to see. Although when she first confessed to Sam and Jay about the affair she said, I think Pete may have known, which we can now see was just a way of making herself feel better. And Alberta and Nancy stepping in to help Pete was fun and showed the friendship's he's built there in 40 years. As for the main thrust of the episode, its one of those weird things of why they gave Isaac the money in the first place? I get that it is his book that he dictated to Sam, but still,and I thought being known to posterity was enough for him. Even Sass pointed out their poor business sense: "You're the ones who gave $10,000 to a ghost." I understand Jay's frustration. He still has a life to live and its not like Isaac can spend the money without Sam's help (or Trevor's, it seems). Still, his saying Isaac's not real was too far. Actually, he insisted on sawdust because Isaac wanted a high end restaurant. Same with the whale oil.

Nice interview with Yvonne Chapman, Avatar Kyoshi herself.

Because when she first saw them she messed with Trevor's tie.

Easy. The corporate execs that make the cuts and "save money" are lauded and rewarded by the shareholders and move on to better things by the time the costs come due. Then it's someone else's problem.

Flower was in the well all along. I'm just happy to have her back and honestly, her having fallen down the well and gotten trapped there was a very Flower thing to happen. But it does make me wonder what everyone saw at the beginning of the season. To me it looked like something came down more than went up, but we will see. Halloween as we know it is modern, but it goes back to older wheel of the year traditions (Samhain in particular), marking boundaries between the seasons, like the beginning of winter/the dark half of the year or in some cultures the start of the New Year. In Thor's time, it would have been the Winter Nights (Vetr-nætr) which was marked by feasting and sacrifices. As liminal time, it would be a perfect moment to call back spirits.

I think the ghosts themselves have speculated that could be the reason, but they'll admit they don't know. They seem to have other ideas, like when Hettie acknowledged that the cholera ghosts "are people" and was immediately disappointed that it didn't her get sucked off: "That was gross!"

This was a great finale for the series. They changed a lot from the cartoon, but I think for the most part that it worked. This show has not been afraid to show what war is and what it does. The battle was spectacular and I'm sorry we lost Hahn and the acolyte waterbender. But I'm glad they healed Momo! And Koizilla was even more spectacular than the cartoon. Yue's sacrifice was just as gutwrenching as it was in the original. Interesting that as part of the moon spirit, she still had her waterbending. And Sokka's face as his girlfriend turned into the moon. That's rough buddy. Zhao was even worse here, although he did drop some truth bombs on Zuko. Think about what side you're really on, Zuko! Nice touch that Iroh blasts him into the water. We didn't see Koizilla drag him off to the spirit void but I'm going to pretend that it happened. And Ozai didn't really care! I would think he would be concerned that Zhao wiped out much of the Fire Navy. Maybe getting dragged into the spirit void was a better option for him than facing the Fire Lord. And Ozai was playing things the whole time to take Omashu, or have Azula take Omashu. She's definitely set up as the main villain for the future seasons. Further thoughts on Omashu I'll put in spoiler tags. And we saw Sozin's Comet is coming... As for the series as a whole, I think it was a pretty good adaption, I think one or two more episodes would have been good to add a little extra would have been perfect. Some of the combinations of elements of the original did not quite work (some of the spirit world stuff), but I did like little touches, like the crew of Zuko's ship being the 41 division which he stood up for at the council meeting. I feel like Katara's arc was cut short, I think because a lot of her development in the cartoon was in one off episodes that were cut. We saw her practicing waterbending a few times, but by the time she reaches the North, she was a master, it felt a little rushed. And I'm sorry we didn't see Aang at least try to practice waterbending. The changes to some of the backstories like Sokka and Bumi were a divergence, but like so much else, I really can't judge it until the story is done. But I'm looking forward to seasons 2 and 3. So hop to it, Netflix!

I would agree with Maelstrom that they're the same Ozai. In the cartoon he was a menacing background presence for most of the first two seasons. Did we even see his face before season 3?

Zhao - a cautionary tale of giving a small man outsized power. He tried to kill Zuko and of course failed at that. Capturing the Avatar and killing Zuko, 0 for 2 there, Zhao. Iroh caught and pointed out that Zhao was not that bright and being used by someone smarter, and we see Azula (and her lightning). Ozai was impressed that she was willing to strike him down. She spared him, but it was not out of compassion. Now we set her up for the next season villain. Agna Qel'a was gorgeous! I wanna live there! It's interesting to see the Northern Water tribe in comparison to the Southern Water tribe, and knowing that this is what the south probably looked like at one time, before the war. It reinforces what Katara said about the North being frozen, having avoided the war, they haven't had to adapt. It feels like they did tone down Pakku's sexism from the original and (I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt here) that his attitude seems less sexist and more just Men are warriors and women are healers and this is just how things are. And Katara, having grown up in the south, learned firsthand sometimes the warriors aren't around and you have to protect yourself. Which dovetails into her fight (Ap Kai?) with Pakku. He defeated her, but she more than held her own and afterwards everyone rushed to her, impressed and saying they never saw anyone fight Pakku and asking about the ice disks (which she learned from earthbenders). Now she feels like the Katara we've known from the cartoon. And Aang meets Kuruk! They kept the different personalities of the various avatars, although I feel for Kuruk and everything he went through. I previously saw Meegwun Fairbrother in Burden of Truth and liked him there and I like his interpretation of Kuruk, and what Kuruk went through while he's believed to have failed when he really saved the world on many occasions. Aang really didn't have as much to do in this one, other than fret about his friends. It was interesting to see Sokka actually respected and valued for his experience. A nice bit with his reflection of two kids from the Southern Water Tribe who've seen the world. And the nice brother-sister moments between him and Katara. "Quit staring! She'll think there's something wrong with you. More than there already is!" I will agree that Yue's wig was not the best, but I like the changes they made to her story and that Hahn is a decent guy! Although they did have a little shoutout with him asking Sokka about shoulder spikes on Fire Nation uniforms (in the original, Hahn was an arrogant jerk who tried to infiltrate the Fire Nation forces with a hundred-year out of date uniform. Which had shoulder spikes.) I like that Sokka and Yue have a connection in the Spirit World and I wonder if they'll meet up there. And we end with the black snow as the Fire Nation arrives.