Grrl Power #1371 – People aren’t wearing enough astro-hats
“General Faulk, I cannot believe you risked America’s two most important defense assets on bloodsports and gambling! What do you have to say for yourself?”
“What I have is access to a space ship. Do you have a space ship, Senator?”
“Well, we can rent one from private industry…”
“Can it travel 3,500 light years in two days?”
“Not… currently…”
“Two, holla holla, I got some space dolla!” (<–Paraphrased, as this something Faulk would never say.)
“I see. And… what can we purchase with this ‘space dolla’?”
“Some magic space thing that will make your constituents happy enough to keep re-electing you until you are able to bleed the system dry and retire an incontinent, withered old husk. Like a space-sampo or… I don’t know. Space racism.”
“Here is your medal, Faulk.”
Aaand scene.
BTW, a “sampo” is something that might only exist in one movie done by MST3K, called “The Day the Earth Froze.” It’s one of those Russo-Finnish films (the original title is “Сампо,” apparently pronounced “SAM-po”) where some witch kidnaps a girl, and the “hero” and his blacksmith buddy who is the girl’s… brother (?) sail off to rescue her. The hero basically does nothing, whereas the blacksmith makes a (living) horse that the hero rides around and clears some field of snakes, then the blacksmith, at the witches request, makes a sampo, which is a magic thing that makes gold and wheat, as I recall. Which is an odd combo for a magic item, but presumably the story was maybe from a legend originating from poor Russian peasants, or was made to entertain poor Russian peasants, and while most people would be fine with a thing that just spit out gold, a poor Russian peasant might almost be more interested in the wheat.
I’m not sure it ever was a proper Russian fairy tale, as if you google it, I think the first thing that comes up is the MST3K episode. So maybe it was just invented for that movie. But I thought I’d reference it in the above dialog, so the few people who get it before reading all this will feel special.
The vote incentive is finally done!
The update to the TWC image is pretty minor, but the Patreon version has the bonus comic as well as nude versions. I will strive to make the next one more timely.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Aaah, the Sampo. A magical machine from the finnish epos “Kalevala”.
Haven’t seen it being mentioned anywhere in a while :D
Reassure me, it can grind out basically anything you wish for, right? Salt (which was a much more valuable commodity throughout most of human history than today) being one of those things? Or am I conflating it with another Finnish myth that got adapted into a Popeye cartoon? The sampo (or whatever the grinder was called) gets set to produce salt and then falls into the ocean, which is why they’re no longer fresh water. Same myth as the MST3K episode but much abbreviated for a cartoon short?
Always depending on the translation the look and use was a little different – From the turning of the firmament to the turning of the flour mill. But in general – The sampo was made by the mighty Ilmarinen, hidden in the northern frost by Louhi and broken during the fight of the heroes in the Kalevala with Louhi, spilling riches and fertility all over land and sea :D
I’ve seen it mentioned on TV Tropes, and it’s “explanation” stated that at some point, what it Actually produced was forgotten; later story-tellers- having to make up something so it would have a reason to be in the stories- eventually decided on salt and wheat (I think, I’m not looking at the page right now). Basically, it was a Historical-Domain Artifact McGuffin.
Yeah, and it is eventually broken/lost at sea, endlessly grinding out salt.
There’s a very popular Finnish-made game called Noita and the main ending happens when you find the Sampo, defeat the boss, then place it in a machine that then turns you to gold.
It also turns EVERYTHING ELSE to gold. In fact, the ‘turning to gold’ thing is expressed in-game as ‘midas’ damage; if you teleport out of the chunks around the Work quickly enough, or if you have enough stacks of the Stainless Armor perk, you can literally survive the game trying to turn you to gold. The game will be a bit more boring after, though, since all the enemies are gold and there’s no other material besides gold anywhere, but you can still move around, go looking for wands and perks, and so on.
The Sampo is basically the Finnish equivalent of the Philosopher’s Stone.
Being out there and fighting military-grade weapons will also give them lots of military info on the galactic society. Most of it will be of the “Holy heck they can swat us like flies” variety, but still, better to know.
And it will allow Earth to look for trading partners, allies, etc.
The Sampo is indeed an old local legend. And it’s one that’s explained in the film. MST3K deliberately talked over the opening narration, keeping up Midwest patter about fishing over the entire explanation of the legend, just so they could pretend to be confused about it. But if you watch the episode and focus on the narrator, you can hear almost all of it.
Yet all kids come running for the rich taste of Sampo!
Gold and wheat comes with some serious Rumplestiltskin vibes. Turn straw to gold or gold to straw.
Gold and wheat is is a very good combo, with wheat you can make bread, you can make whiskey and wodka, you can feed animals, it is great.
Oh, and gold is nice, too.
That was my thought too. Wheat and gold were “connected” in the old stories – fields of gold and all that.
Just out of curiosity, has Sydney or Dabbler ever tried sticking refrigerator magnets on Maxima? Hell, is her skin magnetic?
I don’t think gold is magnetic.
Back in the sixties my mom did an apprenticeship at a goldsmiths / jewellers workshop. A common day one prank was to send the new apprentice to fetch the gold magnet from the master goldsmith. She would have none of that :).
Iron, nickel, and cobalt are the only three metallic elements that exhibit natural magnetism.
Alloys can be manufactured which greatly increase the ferromagnetic quality of iron, one of the more important being the neodymium alloy Nd2Fe14B. Many rare earth metals (the lanthanides) can form highly magnetic alloys, but most others are less common than Nd.
So, no, gold isn’t magnetic. Sort of the opposite.
They are the only ferromagnets, but there are plenty of paramagnetic elements that are magnetic only in the presence of a magnetic field.
You need a pretty danged strong magnetic field for the effect to be perceptible to squishy human fingers, but some Super Space Magnets (TM) should do the job – just ignore that they also mess up all the MRIs in the tri-state area and accidentally magnetise all the rebar in the building so your compasses no longer work nearby.
Gold is strongly diamagnetic, which makes it even worse. Only three pure elements rank above – thallium, antimony, and bismuth. It’s easier to make a magnetic field permeate water than gold.
Gold nanoparticles however exhibit ferromagnetic properties. And no one knows why. Why, gold?
Offscreen naysayer: “I understand the motivation and the justifications.
And I still think this is an awful idea.”
End scene…
Both of them lighting the cigars with their fingers and both clearly enjoying showing off is one of those amazing details that just add so much extra flavor to the comic
Also I have to say I absolutely Love Falk in this one, he clearly knows he’s talking gibberish but he knows his point will
come across all the same, that’s very true to life for competent people that work with other competent people.
I’ve never been sure is Faulks look based exclusively on Dan Hedeya or is there a bit of Dean Stockwell in there?
The party scene in the woods in the Dark Pheonix movie was the best bit of that film.
Just a bunch of superpowered kids hanging out and relaxing, with no shyness or fear about using their powers for whatever.
I like that Faulk is getting some screen time. I can identify with a manager who has to herd a bunch of high performance people who often have differing opinions/don’t get along.
Funnily enough the MST3K is not what came up first for me, but the actual Wikipedia page, which mentions that the English version has some information cut that was in the original version.
And it’s from an original Finnish story!
I like how Max’s expression is lost someplace between, “I can’t tell ifyou’re f*ing with us, or if the galaxy really has such god awful things.”
Perfect example of “nonplussed. ” You might say textbook definition.
wouldn’t nonplussed be better said as minused?
Plusungood!
There’s enough humans out there that there will be such things, even if no other species does that.
You only have to look at our history. Pet rocks? Crocs?
So you’re turning Both of them loose on the galaxy?
Place your bets on Sydney encountering the big guys that almost ended her and flipping out.
Who is flipping out is up in the open… she DID take down three of the planet-stomping aliens, so we might get “Oh Kreisn! Its that ONE! Fleee siblings! Flee!”
Prediction: Something happens with Maxima, Syd dons Max’s disguise, and winds up fighting in her place. Hijinks!
Wait a minute! Wasn’t that green woman a foot taller a minute ago? And what is she holding in her hands now?
Hey, check this out! The waveform signature of its energy blasts is completely different now.
Uh, you think this is the first time a contestant has used transformation magic in this arena? Half of our gladiators have battle forms, get with the program!
When she shows that her hand is a projection. . . Isnt it on backwards?
If by backwards we understand “chirally wrong”, i.e. lefthanded on the right side, yes – or her left arm got an extra elbow and an elongation, which would be perfectly fine for her holographic apendages, too. *shrugs*
I’m almost certain that there’s a Popeye cartoon that features the Sampo.
(It looks like a coffee grinder.)
It’s alive after a fashion and will give you what you ask for provided that you ask politely.
Of course someone steals it, treats it badly and it objects.
“You want salt? Here’s salt. Here’s plenty of salt.” It won’t stop. It’s thrown into the sea.
And that’s why the oceans are saltwater.
‘Old Salt Tale’ (1960)
https://youtu.be/J3-uJfJRqBw
The Sampo is from the Kalevala, Finland’s national epos. It has nothing to do with Russian peasants. Really, a cursory search on the net would have told you that.
In the area where I live, the annual Finnish-American festival often features the Sampo in the parade.
In being able to produce just about anything, it seems to me it is the type of of mythic object that represents the promise of unlimited prosperity like the Cornucopia horn of plenty or Odin’s seven-fold self-replicating gold ring.
I think it also might be tied to, or a parallel story to massive magical grindstone Grotti, owned by the Danish king Frodi, which could grind out anything (including prosperity, happiness, etc), but needed two incredibly strong Jotunna, Fenja and Menja, to make it work. As with the Popeye story above, it ended up grinding out so much salt as to be the mythical explanation for salty oceans.
Since the main driving force driving the plot of the Kalevala story is those desiring the Sampo, contesting over this singular magical item, there are some who think the Sampo might have been part of the inspiration for the Ring of Power for Tolkien. (He was known to like the Kalevala, and I’ve known people of Finnish-American descent who found some scenes of The Lord of the Rings movies distracting, because the Elvish sounded too much like suomi (finnish))
This is the futurama rings joke all over again. Though space bucks sounds more real then Vbucks. Space bucks were in space balls.
Anyone else hearing Jennifer Hale’s voice when Max talks? Or have I just played too much Mass Effect?
I like the little detail of Maxima lighting her cigar with her powered finger.
The standard comic technique of naming something from space is just to replace the initial consonant with ‘sp’. So Space Bucks are Spucks, and Space Racism is Spacism. A Space Sampo would be a Spampo.
I love the way you can easily produce a sperm (space term) like that.
I feel dirty for immediately imagining Frix leading Syd around on a leash when I read: “That will include keeping Private Scoville on a tight leash.”
My imagination might have added additional bits of costume to the leash
I am a bad person with a filthy imagination.
No no you’re a great person with a useful imagination!
I think bloodsports means hunt? It’s a bad name for what it is
Bloodsports are combat, like boxing, MMA, Muay Thai, Pankraton, and any other sport that involves possible bleeding wounds.
All Sydney’s gonna hear is, “I get to see my space boyfriend. Gonna need more than a Sixpack of Dabbler’s Fitting potions.”
Sixty seconds later, panic attack about space kaiju.
3 hrs later “I can use my holowings and batman gadgets. How would Woof react to a naughty fairy?”
During disguise discussion, “We’ll need impenetrable disguises for me and Sydney. Especially Sydney.”
“Agree. Combo of surgery and hardlight tech. Cover some powers and her quirks. Bonus we have an in-house tech and surgeon all in one.”
“Which she’s dating. Might I suggest we augment her breasts? That might distract both Suspicion and Sydney for the duration.”
” She may not want to go back…Woof might refuse too.”
“Use pills, so it gradually fades away. But triple check they don’t interact weirdly with her meds. ”
” Yeah, we hosted her before… Wasn’t meds, but a food reaction. Tira-ma-cheesecake and her secret chocolate hotsauce.”
“She kept holoreplicating nonstop. Woof had his handsfull.”
Woof is Frix’ species, not his name
“a magic thing that makes gold and wheat, as I recall. Which is an odd combo for a magic item, but presumably the story was maybe from a legend originating from poor Russian peasants”
Of all the plants to grow for food, Wheat is by far one of the most finicky.
It is very efficient when it has ideal soil, water and temperature conditions – but any deviation and yields go down hard towards “complete crop failure.”
Europe went heavily for the potato because of regular wheat failures and associated famines.
DaveB is having fun with the smoke brush I see
I loved him as ‘Captain’ in “Running Scared” with Billy Crystal & Gregory Hines
The MST3K movie title sounds familiar, but not nearly as familiar as Crow and Tom Servo doing multiple skits around the word ‘sampo’.
Panel 4
Scoville is PERMANENTLY a Private?
Maybe they can wave a promotion over her head as a reward for not shenannigating.
Also… Disguise ideas…. Catgirl? Could the Orbs be a collar and/or a belt?
A gigantic hat would be practical so she can have them circling her head. Or she could bring tubey.
Page 4, way back, Maxima refers to her as a Corporal.
Guess we have not reached the first panel of the story are as still in flashback after 15 years…
Get Sydney a bio-fursuit, connected to her nervous system and circurtory system.
{Dogs and Cats, living together…. Mass hysteria!}
it occurs to me that vehemence might be well suited to this fighting arena scheme. maybe they should send him next if everything works out with maxima
Space-phone, galaxy bucks, warp mufflers, astro hats.
This guy is great…
” and while most people would be fine with a thing that just spit out gold, a poor Russian peasant might almost be more interested in the wheat.”
There is a Russian story about some miners getting shut off from their pay due to political issues, they decide to mint counterfeit coins from the metal that they are mining, so that they can buy food. Thus, they flood the Russian economy with Ruble coins made of *Platinum*. So yes, Russians understand the first rule of economics, “you can’t eat money.”
Yeah the sampo is an actual thing, and weirdly is in what i like to call the frustrating for a one language speaker/reader set of mythos and folklore to try and look further into.
When it comes to things translated into English most of what we get are the legacy things, old fairy tales from western Europe, the “classical myths” along with Norse mythology, some Celtic mythology, and Egyptian, we also get plenty of Chinese and Japanese folktales thanks to the exoticism trends towards those cultures in the last half a century or so.
But for a lot of world folklore, if its not in those specific categories its one thing to find a description, Finnish, Galician, Russian, and Slavic, seem to have this oddity where English translations will describe elements of those cultures, like say looking up the Iele, Zana, Enchanted Moura, Samodiva, Mavka, etc…and find a few parapraphs describing them in English…but they will tell you there are specific fairy tales, folklore, and unless you come across a cartoon from these countries that used one of these in them and got translated it is hard to find the specific legends, cryptid modern sightings, old folk tales, translated for an English audience…if I could translate these and knew how to find them I would. Half the problem is the old localization issue, someone translates something and they change the names of characters and things for the new audience…there are actually a number of hercules movies that one watching will realize are not based on Greek myths but might assume are creative liberty without ever knowing these are foreign films based on a different local legendary figure whose name was changed to sell the movie better to an English speaking audience who’d be more familiar with Hercules than that figure.
the creatures one is annoying too, imagine being from a culture with no idea what an elf is, seeing English products that have very distinct things as elves, but the translations kept calling them some local folklore creature instead and you had no means (that didn’t involve learning English and navigating the English internet and libraries to trace what these are and why there are so many variations). The frustration I feel looking up slavic legends with very similar to each other mythical beings at least in appearance and I am concerned the english translations might be making distinctions or combinations that aren’t present in the source culture, but its one thing to have a paragraph say, “this figure seen as a ghost today was originally a local goddess and benign until the 1800-1900s when changes from the Church came through” and mentions there are local stories…but those stories which could provide internal insight are not translated. So we just get the cliffnotes versions.
Bell-bottoms were great — you could get them on and off without having to take off your boots first!
Navy wore boots?
Speaking of lucrative interstellar ventures, why can’t they visit the adventure locations that Dabbler got her rare and valuable potion ingredients from. They’d be able to select S-rank dungeons that are known to have enemies that suit Maxima’s power set. It could also be done relatively discretely compared to participating in televised bloodshot. I’m sure that Cora could be compensated for transportation with a cut from the loot. She could also work as middle-man to sell excess materials discreetly on behalf of Earth.
It seems like that would be a lot easier and safer than making a dungeon on Earth. You could also frame it as a training exercise as there are few enemies that can provide a workout for Max and the other heavy hitters. It would also help to have a sparring partner that they won’t feel bad about breaking.
I’d think this one would be more useful and reasonable, but don’t forget… when gambling at the galactic level, you can do so for a LOT of money. Leverage is a huge thing!
A dungeon dive is effectively mining: you get what you find. IN terms of money, it’s not gonna compare.
The problem is that once Max dives an S-rank dungeon successfully no one is going to bet on anything less. If you want to maximize the gambling money you probably want to work up to it.
“New Lemminkäinen – in the rinse cycle!”
My favorite line from that MST3K.
SAMPO!
My favorite part about this is how General Faulk makes it clear: “I wouldn’t be doing this normally… but your track record of being a decent person, and you GIVING ONE OF MY SOLDIERS A NEW LEG, makes me want to accommodate you.”
Faulk basically just dismissed Realpolitik as being utter bunk. Kissinger would be so annoyed.
Kissinger deserves, at the very least, to be annoyed.
The sampo actually comes from the Kalevala, which is the Finnish national epic compiled by Elias Lönnrot in the 19th century. It’s a real piece of folklore, not a movie invention, though MST3K’s skewering of The Day the Earth Froze has definitely eclipsed it for a lot of people outside Finland.
Astro bell bottoms. Heehee.
https://tse2.mm.bing.net/th/id/OIP.pp_L-71toO_1LB4j_lXDVAHaLH?r=0&rs=1&pid=ImgDetMain&o=7&rm=3
Personally, I think a replicator from Star Trek would be all I’d want, food grade of course, and can make GOOD food, not “close enough” food. And it runs on 50 Watts…
Weird I know, but being able to eat foods that are healthy for a diabetic AND taste good sounds like a nice deal to me. And if it had a scan feature, you could add things to it, food or anything else, I know I’d have to have a LONG talk with my gun-nut son.
In the grrlverse I would suggest two fairly low tech (by galactic standards) solutions that would make things hugely simpler on Earth.
Tech to fabricate:
1 – near room temperature superconductors
2 – fullerenes in quantit
With these two technologies and a couple of supers replacing messy rocket launches, we could easily (if not necessarily quickly) build an orbital loop for certain, and possibly a space elevator.
Either would allow to bring cargo and passengers to orbit for a cost comparable to drive a truck or bus 100 or so miles. (plus of course a fraction of the operational cost and interest payments on the structure itself)
Once one of these is in place then the cost of building space infrastructure becomes nearly the same as building a strucutre of similar size on earth. Travelling to the moon can become near common place (and many people beyond billionaires could afford at least a vacation on the moon, the same way people can afford going on cruise at least once in their life). Launching ships further out into the solar system becomes much much easier. Either solar sails or ion propulsion can be launched from low or near earth orbit without quite the punishing cost of the rocket equation. (just use a lot more time to get up to speed)
A space elevator (a spelevator) sounds good but do you really want a device whose failure mode is an extinction level event?
What Earth needs is nothing.
A few billion tons of nothing.
A quick, easy, cheap, environmentally responsible method of toxic waste disposal.
I thought that Neutrinos would dispose of themselves but now I hear that they actually do something.
Based on Dave’s description of the Galactic market, the market itself qualified as a gigantic toxic waste disposal service.
They want dense hard to fabricage stuff with interesting properties.
This basically describes all toxic waste.
All heavy metals are toxic waste when not in use.
Toxic waste comes from complicated processes(simple processes are more easy to keep waste free)
Toxic waste has tons of interesting properties for example apperantly it’s tendency to react with carbon based life forms(and thus the atoms and molecules inside it)
Neutrinos do only relevant things when with a lot(gravity)of actively manipulated to do things, while forming.
Neutrons do a lot.
A replicator, including food, replicates what it has been programmed to replicate, usually after having a sample of that item feed into it first
You could enter, say, your favourite aunt’s deviled eggs and call it anything you want (doesn’t have to be “Auntie’s Deviled Eggs”), just have to be careful about naming it something common but different (unless you want to prank someone)
«…military reasons.»
Intel.
Yup, intel.
One of my favorite MST3K episodes. Grain, Gold, and Salt