Today's search term is "Race Queen" because "Pit Babe" turns up no hits. (Plus an ever-lengthening list of exclusions.)

I'm not sure this really should count, but it's nice and it had that tag on it, so WTH...

Pacific Racing Team hired the GuP group to make a bunch of pictures of the GuP girls in Pacific Racing livery. It became a meme and fan artists started contributing, like this one. Some of the genuine ones below the fold.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Cheesecake at 05:50 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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If you haven't already done so, please read this:

How to put links in your comment

UPDATE: Oh, and while I'm bitching and moaning, a request to my fellow bloggers: Could you please put your YouTube's below the fold? When a page has 10 or 15 youtubes on the front page, it locks up IE solid for about ten seconds, or twenty, or even more while all of them load. You can't click anything; you can't even kill it.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 08:10 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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I've always eaten my grilled cheese sandwiches with ketchup. Been doing that since I was a kid. Of course, what I was eating in those days wasn't technically "grilled cheese" because it was Velveeta, which legally speaking isn't cheese.

The FDA has a legal definition of "cheese" and Velveeta doesn't qualify. If you look at the package Kraft doesn't claim that it's cheese. They used to call it "Pasteurized Process Cheese food", and then "Pasteurized Process Cheese Spread", and the FDA issued a warning letter, so now it's called "Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Product", which apparently the FDA doesn't mind. Bureaucrats will be the death of us all.

Now my Grilled Cheese Sandwich is really cheese, however. My cheese is Tillamook Sharp Cheddar. I've tried Vermont cheddar and I've tried Wisconsin cheddar, and to me they just don't measure up. Tillamook is an area on the Oregon coast which is nearly perfect for raising dairy cattle, and the Tillamook County Creamery Association is a farm cooperative that all the dairy farmers belong to that processes their milk and sells it. They do all the things you expect from a dairy (milk, cream, butter, ice cream) but cheese is their main product.

Tillamook sharp cheddar makes good sandwiches. And it's good for everything else that cheese is good for. (I add it to my lasagna.) I grate a pound at a time and keep it in a plastic box in my fridge.

As to the ketchup, a lot of people tell me that's "really weird", but I like it, so to heck with what other people think. (When did I ever care about that?) One of the big problems for me about living in Massachusetts was that I couldn't get Tillamook cheese there. One of the reliefs when I moved to San Diego was that I could get it there. And of course, back here in Beaverton it's readily available.

If you like that sort of thing (I don't) the fields there are also a good place to find Psilocybin mushrooms, or so I've been told.

UPDATE: Around these parts, Tillamook is also famous because of the "Tillamook Burn", one of the largest forest fires in Oregon history. In 1933 350,000 acres went up in smoke. My mom was a kid in Salem at the time, and she said the smoke made it look like night-time.

Starting in the 1950's, there was a massive effort at reforestation, and that finished in the 1970's because they had reforested it all. The area is now known as the "Tillamook State Forest" and they've started logging in it again.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 02:49 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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So we introduce a new character with this episode. There isn't any suspense about it since they changed both the OP and ED to include her. Her name is Chisame and she's Yume's classmate in middle school.

Both of them took the entrance exam for this high school and both were accepted. But Chisame is really dark. She sucks the life out of every scene she appears in. The last scene in the OP shows her smiling, so I hope she gets better, but in this episode she seems to be suffering from the world's worst case of depression.

See, she's really little. Short, short, short; when she sits on her dad's motorcycle her feet won't reach the ground. She is also weak and uncoordinated and has always done really badly in sports, but she found herself in motorcycle racing, in a version where the bikes are tiny. There, her small size is an advantage because she doesn't weigh as much as her opponents so she can go faster. So she's been winning, but she's always lonely when she's on the victor's podium.

We were told that she doesn't think motorcycles should be ridden on the street. Actually, it's just that she herself can't do that because she's tiny.

Also, she's flat chested. Shows like this nearly always include a character who suffers from "A-cup angst" and originally I thought it was going to be Onsa but I was wrong. They were saving it for Chisame. (That's a guess; so far she's had other reasons to be depressed.)

I'm pretty sure she rides a Honda PCX. That's a scooter that doesn't really look like a scooter and there's a pretty low spot in the middle she could straddle when stopped so that her legs reach the ground. And it weighs a lot less than a full size bike (like Lime's Ninja) so she should be able to do the "lift".

So will Hane's irrepressible cheerfulness defeat Chisame's depression? If this picture is anything to judge by (and it may not be) then Hane will win. I do hope so; one of the attractions of this series so far has been that no one is angsty. (Not even Rin. She's disgruntled but not angsty.)

There's an interesting link here between Chisame and Lime. 20 years ago (or however long it was) there were two girls who were friends of Lime and made the mistake that led to her catastrophic crash in that race. One of those eventually became the principal of this school. The other one got married and had a daughter that grew up to be Chisame. Seems like that has to be a plot point since if it wasn't there really wouldn't be any reason to include it, but I have no idea what it will mean. Anyway, Chisame's mother knows Lime and seems to know about her.

I have a bad feeling about this. Up to now the show has been very light-hearted but I'm afraid Chisame is going to drag it down into the darkness and make it serious.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 08:41 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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1 ...she found herself in motorcycle racing, in a version where the bikes are tiny.

Is it one of these?

Posted by: Wonderduck at May 30, 2016 09:10 PM (X/kQu)

2 Well, they look a bit bigger than that, but that may be because Chisame is so tiny. (Her official height in the manga is 144.8 centimeters, which is about 57 inches.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 30, 2016 09:53 PM (+rSRq)

3

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 30, 2016 09:56 PM (+rSRq)

4 Even a 145cm  woman looks bigger on a pocket bike. A bit of googling suggests that Chisame is riding a Honda NSF100 mini racing bike.

-j

Posted by: J Greely at May 31, 2016 07:27 AM (ZlYZd)

5 Someone updated the Wikipedia article about the series to include info about Chisame. It confirms her racing bike is an NSF100, and her street bike is a Honda PCX 150.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 31, 2016 09:33 AM (+rSRq)

6 Someone who hasn't been paying attention very well edited the Lime-senpai section of the English Wikipedia article: "seasoned biker in her thirties who re-enrolled using a false 18-year-old student ID at the principal's request".

-j

Posted by: J Greely at May 31, 2016 03:12 PM (ZlYZd)

7 Yeah, I spotted that and harrumphed. I thought about jumping in and changing it, but we're really short on facts regarding her and my contribution would only be speculation, just like what's already there.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 31, 2016 03:28 PM (+rSRq)

8 Heh, sounds like "Catherine's Little Sister" type of character.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at May 31, 2016 03:45 PM (XOPVE)

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Miho's secret weapon!

A torrent for the movie just showed up. It's a raw and the torrent is a whopping 15G. It's three files, one MKV and two MKA files, and it turns out you don't need the MKA files. They're alternate soundtracks; but the MKV has one that works just fine.

It is a BD rip, which surprised me; I didn't think the BD was going to be out until like August.

So how is it? Awesome! Tremendous! It doesn't feel like "been there, done that". It's enough similar to not feel like a stranger but enough different to not feel like a guest that's worn out its welcome. Even though I don't speak Japanese, it wasn't too difficult to figure out what was going on.

There are two major battles in it. The first is about half an hour long, and the trailer from last year is all taken from it. What's going on is an exhibition battle with two teams on each side. One side is St. Gloriana and Pravda; the other side is Ooarai and some team I never identified.

Their tanks were crap and they had spirit but no brains and got themselves slaughtered. I thought for a while that their equipment was Italian, but the theme music played for them sounded oriental. Maybe they were using Japanese tanks? Actually, I think they really were supposed to be another Italian team.

So that battle ended after half an hour, and it was so well done and so absorbing that I thought the movie was over. Instead we get about half an hour of plot, and then a second battle which ran fully an hour.

Huge spoiler: Despite winning the championship, the asshole in the government decides to shut down the Ooarai school ship, so everyone has to pack and go ashore. Anzu hasn't given up yet, though, and she recruits a bunch of heavy hitters to go with her to visit the asshole one last time.

One of them is Shiho, Miho and Maho's mother. In this movie she's a good guy, which is really neat.

He gives them one last chance, though he doesn't think it's a chance. There's another team and if Ooarai can beat them, they'll get the ship back. It's a terrifyingly good team, and it shows up on the day of the battle with 30 tanks, of at least two national flavors. And if you think the Maus was scary, this team has two weapons that are even worse.

Anzu has told Miho that she has to win to save the school ship, but even as good as she is she can't beat 30 high quality tanks with her 8. But as she's walking out to greet the enemy commander just before the battle, a bunch of her friends from other teams show up, with their own tanks, and they're all wearing Ooarai uniforms and claim to be part of Miho's team.

And one of them is Maho, with her Tiger I. Which was also really neat. Maho is another good guy.

So the last hour of the movie is the battle, and if we know one thing about Miho is that she loves, loves, loves fighting in cities. There isn't a city this time but there's an amusement park, and that's where most of the battle is fought. And it was awesome. The ducks were the least of the pleasures.

It isn't a capture-the-flag battle, it's last-man-standing. To win you have to beat every tank the other side has.

So how does it come out? You need to ask? You think I'm going to tell you?

It's a BD rip, ultra high quality, and it has Japanese subtitles. (Which should be particularly helpful because in a couple of scenes two of the girls from Pravda speak Russian to each other.) I suspect it won't be long before we get an English sub, but you never know.

Assorted frame grabs below the fold.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 08:04 PM | Comments (19) | Add Comment
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Steven Hayward has trolled me.

I have to admit that it took me something like 10 seconds before I noticed something really wrong with this picture. Which I guess proves I'm Cis, not Trans, and that I'm old but not dead. (Whew!)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at 11:30 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I think this is really sweet:

Here's how he did it:

This one is pretty good, too:

Warning, lots of NSFW elsewhere on his page.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Entertainment at 06:47 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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It's a lot more pleasant watching anime stored on a flash drive than it is on my NAS, you know that? The NAS ain't blazingly fast at the best of times, for one thing, and if I stop using it for a few minutes the drive spins down. Which is what it's supposed to do, in order to increase the drive life. It's just annoying because sometimes I try to use it and have to wait ten or so seconds for the drive to spin up again.

Anyway none of those things get in the way when watching from the flash drive. So I decided to go back and rewatch all of Bakuon! this afternoon, in part because I wanted to grab and post all the eye catches. But along the way I spotted something that annoyed me a bit the first time and still annoys me.

OK, this show is a farce, and when you watch a farce you turn up the "suspension of disbelief" dial to 11. I understand that. But it still didn't work in this case.

Some background: Rin's bike is a 400cc Suzuki Katana. There are a range of sizes of bikes sold under the Katana brand name, ranging from 50cc up to 1100cc, as far as I can tell. Part of Rin's character is that she's pretentious. So one day the bike club decide to go out for a touring ride, just because the weather is nice, and Rin decline to join them. She really wants to go but she wants someone to beg her, and no one does. So she follows them and pulls in at the destination shortly after they arrive.

But when accused of following the other girls, she claims she's there for another group. Onsa points out three guys with full-size Katanas and asks if that's them.

Well, she's stuck. So she rolls her bike over to them and says, "Hi, fellow Suzuki riders. Mind if I join you?"

And they snub her. Her bike is too small.

No. Not a chance. I can't buy that. Yes, it was a funny scene but even the rule of funny doesn't excuse this.

There isn't any chance that those guys wouldn't immediately try to hit on a girl that looks like this, especially when she went to them instead of the other way around. Of course, if they had done that it would have been really creepy and this isn't that kind of show.

Oh, well. That's what I get for refusing to turn my brain off. Now, as to the eyecatches, they're all fan service, each featuring a bike which doesn't appear in the show and one of the girls dressed as a race queen. And they all look good. One thing that's nice is that Hane is always with a Honda, Rin with a Suzuki, Onsa with a Yamaha, Hijiri with a Ducati, and Lime with a Kawasaki. So there have been 8 so far and they're all below the fold.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 06:07 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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A hundred thousand flying foxes have invaded the town of Batesmans Bay, south of Sydney.

The article says they're a threatened species so the authorities can't kill them. It would be stupid to kill them anyway; they're major insectivores and taking that many out of the ecosystem would have significant consequences. (Kind of like the farmers who shoot all the hawks and then complain about being overrun by rodents.)

So the authorities are going to have to come up with a way to scare them away. I wonder how the bats feel about firecrackers?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in System at 07:25 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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I really like Nanoha Vivid. I liked the anime and I like the manga, but it looks like most of the rest of the world doesn't agree.

The anime stopped in the middle of the story (right after Einhart and Corona fought in the tournament) and clearly was intended to be the first half of a split-cour series. But they didn't release it on BD, which is a very, very bad sign and there's no indication whatever of another cour coming in future. I think it's dead.

As to the manga, that's still ongoing. Chapters come out once a month, and a circle called "Vivid Translation" has been working fitfully on it -- or not, as the case may be. The most recent chapter they've translated is #62 and that was in January.

They just posted an explanation and said they haven't given up. The art cleaner is dropping out, or may as a practical matter have dropped out months ago. They just faced reality and recruited someone new, so maybe we'll start getting chapters again. That's what they're saying. But they've been saying that for months now without delivering.

I sure hope they mean it this time; I want to know what's happening with Ixy.

I also want to know why Corona had to fight Tao in the middle of a limestone cave. And who the blonde chick is who stole Sacred Heart and forced Vivio to fight without it, and why. And a bunch of other things.

Volumes have been released about twice a year, and the most recent volume (#16) came out in April. It begins with chapter 78 and probably contains 5 chapters. But we don't know because no one seems to think it worth scanning and posting anywhere I've found, and I've looked.

I understand that they're volunteers and at best crabbing at them would be counterproductive. They owe me as much as I'm paying them, which is to say "nothing". But it's frustrating, especially because they put together a "B-team" who have been translating other titles from the Nanoha manga canon and making lots of progress doing so.

If I had a choice, I'd prefer lower-quality output from a B-team to nothing at all, but that apparently isn't how they feel. It's a shame.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 06:06 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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