Culture

Yesterday, October 18th it was announced that the heroic forces of cancer and covid-19 completed their pincer maneuver and finally brought a small measure of justice to the world by squeezing the last breaths out of Colin Powell's lungs as though they were the green new deal in the hands of the Democratic party. A precious ventilator and overtaxed and underpaid health care workers were freed up to make more profits for the industry by being assigned to actual human beings.

All three episodes of Epstein's Shadow: Ghislaine Maxwell were released on the Peacock Network (NBC's streaming service) on June 24th and Sky's streaming service in the UK on June 28th , 2021. Because of my long history of covering all things Epstein, it was of interest to me. It was billed as a documentary, although Blue Ant Media, the production company, claims it specializes in “factual entertainment”. A colleague and I settled on the term “Docutainment”, while discussing the biggest problems with the three hour media product.

Rush Hudson Limbaugh III (January 12th, 1951 – February 17th, 2021) Finally a 2021 celebrity death we can all get behind. Fire up your horns, noise makers, and bitterly ironic disco tunes so we can mock the death of Rush Limbaugh the way he mocked individuals dying of AIDS in 1990. Limbaugh’s path of American destruction began in the typical fashion of being born a white male spawn of a wealthy and influential family from Missouri.

As a disclaimer I need to note Lee Camp and I go back a ways. This allows me to say assurance he has always been able to be funny about things that are horrible. I first became aware of him in October of 2012 when I had my first big story. I had caught Mitt Romney, through a not very long chain of proxies that included his son Tagg, having an ownership interest in Hart Intercivic, the company that manufactured and maintained the voting machines that would be used in my home state (and other states) in the upcoming election.

David Koch (pronounced with an oke as in coke not an ock as in sock) was born into a wealthy family that made it's living shirking international norms to make a fortune in oil and related industries. He was the youngest of four billionaire brothers in the satchel of Kochs but the first to be swallowed by death.

Avid long term readers may remember our last examination of an internet aware sex toy and how it could be used by the NSA to really really invade your privacy. Indeed one avid reader remembered so vividly that they tipped us of to this latest entry of a sex toy into the internet of things, or as we are calling this growing technology sector, the internet of bad bad dirty things. This one is an internet aware, blue tooth enabled buttplug.

Heartbreaking decisions to end relationships are never easy. You will always love the other party, or at least love who they were. A song will always remind you of a special time, a feeling, a place in the space time continuum that brings you pure joy. Unlike the world of comic books, our universe has no alternates, time is linear and we can not go back and ret-conn things to a better outcome.

I've never written an obituary for someone I've known. I've never written an obituary for someone I've liked. I've investigated friend's murders as a journalist. I've never framed that work as an obituary. I normally write obituaries for public figures I hate. I've written to celebrate their deaths, to name their crimes, to wish them ill in the afterlife.

The complicated web of supposed Russian interference in the election continues to be unraveled, found to be incomprehensible and then rewoven into a tapestry that amounts to a blanket of money laundering. Maria Butina is the only actual Russia national actually arrested in connection with the election. She is a accused not of actually violating the integrity of the election process, but of being an unregistered foreign agent. She is not accused of espionage nor under any national security clause, or even unregistered lobbying. She is being held without bail in Virginia.