murder machine

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Yeah, I don’t know how many blog posts I’ve written about guns and gun violence. Two or three dozen, probably. Maybe more. I’m not going to bother to count them. I’m mentioning that because yesterday WaPo published a piece called Terror on Repeat (this is a free gift link; you needn’t subscribe to WaPo to read it), which focuses on America’s mass murder sweetheart firearm: the AR-15.

The WaPo describes the piece as “the most comprehensive account to date of the repeating pattern of destruction wrought by the AR-15.” And hey, maybe it is. It’s certainly a powerful piece and I think y’all should deffo read it. It also says, “the full effects of the AR-15’s destructive force are rarely seen in public.” Which is true. But while the article does include photograph that reveal more of the weapon’s destructive power than most folks have ever seen, they don’t (and probably shouldn’t) show the REAL full effects of the AR-15. That would be the staggering damage it does to the body–especially the small bodies of children.

WaPo acknowledges that the AR-15 “was originally designed for military combat,” Most folks have heard that, of course. And most folks think the AR-15 is some sort of watered down version of the M16, a lesser weapon, an M16 Lite. Which is only sorta kinda accurate. Here are the main differences between the two.

  • The M16 has a heavier and longer barrel. A heavier barrel is more effective for prolonged and sustained firing by reducing heat-related accuracy issues. The 20-inch barrel also increases the rifle’s accuracy and effective range, making it effective for combat situations. The AR-15 usually comes with a lighter, shorter (16-inch) barrel, making it easier to handle and more effective in close quarters.
  • The M16’s bolt carrier is capable of both semi-automatic and automatic fire. Automatic fire means the rifle will continue to shoot as long as the trigger is held down. It’s capable of firing around 800 rounds per minute. The M16’s safety selector has three positions: safe, semi-automatic, and automatic/burst fire (in this setting, pulling and releasing the trigger will fire a burst of three rounds). The bolt carrier in the AR-15 is designed for semi-automatic fire only; its safety selector has only two positions: safe and fire. Semi-auto fire means the weapon will fire one round each time you pull the trigger. An unmodified AR-15 is capable of around 45 rounds per minute.

That’s it. Those are the only meaningful differences between an M16 and an AR-15. The M16 was designed for combat. The AR-15 may not have been intentionally designed for mass murder, but there’s a reason it’s the mass murder weapon of choice: it’s really, really, really effective at killing lots of people, usually at close range, in a relatively short time.

Does it have any other uses? Well, sure. I mean, you could use one to pound nails. It wouldn’t make a very good hammer, but it would work. As a firearm, though, it’s got limited utility. They’re fun to shoot (yeah, I’ve fired a few different AR-15 variants) and they’re easy to shoot. They’re easy because they use a gas impingement system. Basically that redirects some of the energy from a fired bullet into reloading the next bullet, which translates as less recoil. You can fire LOTS of rounds without bruising the shit out of your shoulder. And the AR-15 is like Barbie for gun nuts; it’s more a firearm platform than an actual gun–you can swap out parts and modify an AR-15 to achieve different looks. So they’re popular with gun nuts as well as mass murderers.

First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs. 700 rounds in 11 minutes. 26 dead, 22 wounded.

But down at the bone, the AR-15 is basically a murder machine. It would be smart if the US would ban the sell and importation of AR-15 variants (we won’t do that). It would be even smarter to ban possession of AR-15 variants (no fucking way we’ll do that). But we’re not smart. So we’re stuck in a nation that has around 25,000,000 AR-15s in circulation. Twenty-five million murder machines. And more sold every year.

I think maybe the saddest thing…one of the very many sad things…about the WaPo article is this: there are folks out there (and by ‘folks’ I mean ‘guys’) who will read the article, who’ll look at the photographs and see all the blood, see all the destruction, who’ll read the statistics about the lethality of the AR-15, and they’ll be thinking, “I have GOT to get me one of those.”

Here’s a true thing: men commit around 98% of all mass murders; they (okay, we) are responsible for probably 90% of all murders. The vast majority of physical violence is committed by men. Around 80% of AR-15 owners in the US are men. I think it’s pretty safe to say there’s a serious problem with male culture in the US. We’re not going to solve our gun violence problems until we solve our problems with male culture.

EDITORIAL NOTE: We really must burn the patriarchy. It’s poison for everybody, regardless of gender or identity. We need to burn it to the ground and bury the ashes. We need to burn it and bury it and place a curse on the burial site. We need to destroy the patriarchy at the atomic level, so that no two patriarchal particles will ever touch again. We need to end the patriarchy, then buy ice cream and eat it really slow.

a year

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It’s been a year now. A year without the cat. I don’t check the perimeter anymore.

Checking the perimeter. I should explain that. The cat was already living here when I moved in. Every morning, I’d get up, start the coffee, then I’d go stand by the sliding glass door that led out to the deck and the back yard to see what the weather was like. At some point, the cat decided to join me. And that became our morning routine.

August 31. 2014

Almost every morning for years. Once or twice a month the cat would decide to sleep in, but usually she’d hear me getting up and would meet me on my way to the kitchen. I’d start the coffee, then we’d stand at the door and look out. Nothing special, really. It was just a thing we did.

December 4, 2016

The cat would usually lean up against me when we did this. Sometimes she’d sit on my foot, which couldn’t have been comfortable for her. We’d look outside for a minute or so, then the cat would either suggest I feed her or she’d quietly slide off to some other part of the house.

January 2, 2018

Almost every day, we did this. Some mornings, if I had my phone with me, I’d take a photo of the cat beside me. I don’t know why; it was always the same basic photograph; my feet, the cat, the door. Some photos were in color, some black-and-white, some square, some with the standard 3:2 format. It would depend entirely on which app I opened on my phone (yeah, I’m the sort of guy that has a dedicated b&w app on my phone). Usually I deleted the photos shortly after I took them. Usually. Not always.

Periodically, I’d post a photo on Facebook or Instagram of the two of us at that door and caption it ‘The perimeter is secure.” My friends found it amusing. So did I. It became a thing, checking the perimeter. It turned into an accidental photo project.

The photo below is the last photo I shot of us checking the perimeter. I don’t think I posted it. A couple of weeks later, she was gone.

October 25, 2022

You do something together every morning for years and then one day it’s just you. It leaves you off-balance. For a week or two after the cat died I’d step over to the sliding door after starting the coffee and I’d check the…and I’d look outside. It wasn’t checking the perimeter anymore. It felt wrong. It felt wrong, and it just hurt too fucking much. So I stopped.

It’s been a year now. If I want to know the weather, I look out the window. Some mornings I still expect to see her waiting for me. Every so often I still get weepy, thinking about her. It still hurts. I hope it will always hurt.

It’s been a year. I miss her so much.

return of the fujifilm x10

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This is what happened. At some point over the last few months I began to miss the feeling of using a camera. I missed holding a camera in my hands. I wasn’t dissatisfied with my phone; it takes excellent photos. But it’s not the same; it’s a multi-use device that also happens to take photographs. I missed using a tool designed solely for the purpose of making photographs.

So a couple of weeks ago I opened up a cupboard and looked at all my abandoned cameras. I don’t have a camera collection; I just have some cameras I’ve stopped using. Some are film cameras, some are digital. I picked up a few and handled them. It was one of those Goldilocks moments; this camera was too big, this one was too heavy, this one would require a substantial investment in film and processing.

I pulled out the last camera I’d bought–a Fujifilm mirrorless camera. I was surprised to find the battery still had a charge. So I shot a few frames around the house. It felt awkward in my hands. Worse, I’d forgotten all the familiar menu pathways. I couldn’t remember how to make the cameras do what I wanted it to do. When I put the camera back in the cupboard, I noticed the very first Fujifilm camera I bought. A small X10, the first model of the compact cameras with the letter X and two digits in the product name. I bought it back in 2012 and wrote a blog post about it.

Out of curiosity, I did a quick file search and found the last photo I shot with x10. It was from August 15, 2016 at the Iowa State Fair, at one of those rides designed to toss people around and give them the illusion of danger. I liked the photo; you can see anxiety and bravado, you can see the clinched-butt need to appear calm and unfazed.

Iowa State Fair 8/15/2016

That photo was the spark I needed. So I dug around in the cupboard until I found the battery charger and charged the batteries. It had been so long since I’d used the camera that I had to re-set everything from scratch, including the date and time. I even tracked down the manual for the X10 online. I’m sure I must have at least glanced at the manual when I bought the camera, but I was unaware of some of the things the camera could do. For example, I created a custom setting for black-and-white shots, which is something I’ve never done before (and I’ll come back to that in a bit).

A man in a bright red vest and hoodie standing outside a barber shop.

Yesterday I set out to see if I could remember how to use a camera. Well, that’s not entirely true; I set out to go geocaching with my brother, but I used the excursion as an opportunity to re-acquaint myself with the X10. The little camera was a tad too big to slip into the pocket of my jeans, but it slid easily into the pocket of my hoodie. It weighed next to nothing. While my brother did the grunt work of geocaching, I watched a guy in a red vest fidget outside a barbershop in a Latino neighborhood. And the camera felt right.

Dead end road across the river from the minor league baseball stadium.

The camera felt right but the final results were…mixed. The first thing I had to re-adapt to was the parallax effect since the X10 is a sort of retro-designed rangefinder camera. I suspect a lot of folks have never used a rangefinder camera and are wondering, “Greg, old sock, what the hell is this parallax effect?” Unlike your basic single-lens-reflex camera, which allows you to see the scene through your lens, a rangefinder viewfinder is only near the lens. So you’re not seeing exactly what the lens sees: that’s the parallax effect. You have to learn to adjust to the small shift between what you see and what the lens sees. The closer you are to the subject, the more drastic the effect.

Kid riding a bike, seen through a public art sculpture.

In the photo above, I wanted to catch the rider in that patch of sunlight between the shadow and the tree. I was a fraction of a second late with the shutter as I panned to follow the kid, but I want to claim the tiny amount of parallax exacerbated the problem (DISCLAIMER: it almost certainly did not exacerbate the problem, but it’s a convenient thing to blame). If I was a fraction of a second too late releasing the shutter in the photo above, I was a fraction too soon in the photo below.

A city employee cleaning up litter and leaves.

I’d hoped to catch the street cleaner at a point just beyond the sign identifying the location as the Civic Center. I was a tad too quick on the trigger. Much of the day was spent confronting the reality of the Ferris Bueller School of Photography. Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. I was lucky not to miss the look of disdain by this privileged white woman as she watched a black man securing some home furnishings in the back of a rusty pick-up.

A man secures some home furnishings in his pick-up while a woman walks by and watches.

I mentioned earlier that I created a custom setting for black-and-white shots. This is one of the advantages of digital photography. With a film camera, you either have to change from color film to black-and-white film or carry two cameras. With a digital camera, you just turn a dial or change a menu option. I decided to try to create a setting that would sorta kinda almost mimic Daido Moriyama’s Provoke period. High contrast, high ISO, high grain. (Of course, digital imagery doesn’t have grain; it has noise, which isn’t remotely the same…but what the hell, I set the noise allowance as high as possible).

And hey, guess what. It didn’t work.

Two people walking behind some townhomes.

It wasn’t really a surprise that it didn’t quite work. Partly because Moriyama wouldn’t photograph a couple walking behind some upscale trendy townhomes. Partly because I didn’t see many high contrast scenes. And partly-mostly because I’m no Daido Moriyama. I shot maybe a dozen frames (okay, digital imagery doesn’t actually have frames either) using the custom setting. Most of them, like the photo above, are painfully dull.

I was only pleased with one black-and-white shot. Frankly I’ve shot MUCH better black-and-white photos with my cell phone (which, if you’re interested, you can see in a post about practicing photography in public). These photos were less black-and-white and more black-and-shite. But I intend to experiment more. Maybe I’ll figure out how to get the camera to give me the b&w photos I want.

Cyclist checking his stats.

At the heel of the hunt, though, I’m happy with the old X10. I’m reminded that my approach to almost everything I do is grounded in the same attitude. I want to do things well, but so long as I’m enjoying myself, I’m not that concerned with the results. And folks, I had fun with that little X10. I plan to start toting it around with me more often. In fact, I just ordered two extra batteries.

naw, wasn’t zorro

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According to the patriots on FreeRepublic, history has been destroyed. Again. The first time it was destroyed was in July of 2021, when the statue of…somebody, I can’t quite remember who…was removed from the Market Street Park (I think the park used to be named for a person, but nobody seems to know who that person was) in Charlottesville, North Carolina.

You may (or possibly you’re unable to) remember back in 2017 when that statue was first ordered to be removed. A group of white supremacists, neo-Confederates, neo-fascists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and far-right militias gathered in a Unite the Right rally to protest the removal. A counter-protest ended when one of the white nationalists drove his car into the crowd, killing one and wounding 35.

The statue…I think there was a horse involved, maybe?…was apparently removed (assuming it actually ever existed, who can say?) and put into storage. No reputable museum wanted to take possession of a large bronze statue of…some random guy who was maybe riding a horse. The statue was ordered to be destroyed–melted so the metal could be repurposed to create a new statue of somebody or something else.

There were a number of lawsuits opposed to the destruction of the statue of…whoever it was. Somebody with a horse; I’m certain there was a horse in it. A cowboy, maybe? Possibly a circus performer? Anyway, those lawsuits failed and recently…wait. Pony Express rider! I’m just guessing here, but that’s a real possibility.

Doesn’t matter. The lawsuits failed and just a few days ago, history was re-destroyed when the statue was melted and this person, whoever he…or she, or they (which seems more than likely because really, there’s a BIG push to remove non-binary people from history) was became completely and utterly erased from history. Nobody will ever know who they were, or what war they lost, or which nation they betrayed.

Oooh, Zorro! And his horse Tornado! I bet it was probably…but no. I remember Zorro. Don Diego de la Vega, in his mask and that wonderful sombrero cordobés, fighting valiantly against the corrupt and tyrannical officials of California. So no, not him. Whoever the statue was of, I’m guessing that person wasn’t fighting for justice.

a candy corn centrist

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Every year around this time I feel the need to eat candy corn. And every year, after I eat a few pieces, I find myself wondering why. Because of that, I find it impossible to take sides in the ‘candy corn’ debate. I feel about candy corn the same way I feel about some of the more esoteric sexual practices: if you enjoy it, have at it. If you don’t, you still have lots of options.

But for fuck’s sake, people, don’t try to stop others from enjoying their candy corn, and don’t shame them for liking it. And candy corn aficionados, don’t try to force your candy corn on anybody who doesn’t want any. This is NOT complicated.

Candy corn has a long history in the US. It’s been around since the late 1880s. As far as I can tell, the company that’s been continuously making candy corn the longest is Jelly Belly, which was originally called the Goelitz Confectionery Company (and I have to say, I think the name change was an unfortunate decision; some poor bastard is now forced to introduce himself as the CEO of Jelly Belly, and you know all the other CEOs are laughing).

The Goelitz brothers began producing candy corn in 1898. Unlike the white, orange, and yellow candy we’re mostly familiar with, Goelitz candy corn (also apparently referred to as ‘chicken feed’) was white, brown and yellow. I’m sure there was some rational corporate explanation for the change in the color scheme, but I’m going to assume it was because orange is simply a more jolly color.

The commercial manufacture of candy corn was NOT the most unfortunate event of 1898. Henry Lindfield became the world’s first fatality from an automobile accident on a public road (his car rolled down a hill in Purley, England and struck a tree–which is less embarrassing than having to introduce yourself as the CEO of Jelly Belly). And the USS Maine exploded in Havana harbor, sparking the Spanish-American War (which, although it was fought primarily in the Caribbean, resulted in the US owning Guam and the Philippines; the US also annexed the Hawaiian islands that year, which was unrelated, but you have to wonder about the sudden desire of the US government to own islands located way the fuck away from the mainland). And Caleb Bradham invented Pepsi-Cola (so named because it was intended to relieve dyspepsia, whatever that is).

I seem to have lost track of my point, which is that despite the attempts to vilify it, there is absolutely nothing wrong with eating and appreciating candy corn. Even ordinary decent citizens (such as myself) have been known to enjoy it (or at least wanting to enjoy it, even if afterwards it turns out we do not). Nobody needs to justify their taste for candy corn.

Licorice, on the other hand, is an offense to the gods.

just another news item

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Here we are again. It’s been five months since I’ve I written a post about a mass murder. Oh, there have been plenty of mass murders to write about in those five months, and even more mass shootings, but how often can you repeat the same weary commentary?

Because it IS always the same. Every single fucking time, it’s the same. The names of the victims and shooters are different, the locations are different, the numbers of the dead vary, but the bodies are all dead in the same way and the guns involved are at least similar. I noted in my last mass murder post, that I’d already written 36 earlier mass murder posts. Three a year for 12 years. This will be my third in 2023. Let’s hope there won’t be another, but hey, we’ve still sixty-some days left. Plenty of time.

Hope. That’s pretty fucking useless, isn’t it. As useless as thoughts and prayers. As useless as writing blog posts. I mean, it’s true that I really do seriously hope there won’t be another major mass murder in the next two months, but it’s also true that I don’t have any hope at all. How can a person both hope and be hopeless at the same time? But here I am.

The early reports are that the butcher’s bill in Lewiston is at least 22 dead and maybe 60 wounded or injured. The actual numbers will likely change. They usually do. Over the next couple of days we’ll learn their names; we’ll see their photographs, we’ll see interviews with some of their families, we’ll see photos of the usual memorials–flowers and notes and teddy bears–at the crime scenes. We’ve seen all of this before and we’ll almost immediately forget it, because this is how we live in the United States.

We all know why this happens. We’ll ask the question, of course. Why does this keep happening? But c’mon, we know why. It’s the easy access to semi-automatic weapons and high capacity magazine and Republican lawmakers. It’s not a mystery.

Mass murder in the US isn’t really a tragedy anymore. It hasn’t been for years. It’s just another news item.

EDITORIAL NOTE: I’ve been reminded that earlier this year I won an Edgar award for Best Mystery Short Story. It was called Red Flag; it’s about a man–a survivor of a mass killing event–who moves to Lansing, Michigan, where he learns of a person talking about committing a mass murder. He tries to find some way to prevent it. It’s about Red Flag laws, the laws that some states have passed allowing the authorities to temporarily remove weapons from people believed to be a danger to themselves or others.

Michigan doesn’t have a red flag law. The day after I learned the story was going to be published, there was a mass murder event in Lansing, Michigan. How creepy is that?

The alleged shooter in Maine had apparently been committed to a mental health facility for a couple of weeks last summer. He was reportedly hearing voices and had talked about committing a mass shooting at a nearby military training base. This is precisely the sort of situation for which red flag laws are intended.

Maine doesn’t have a red flag law.

except for the wind

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It was a lovely day for a bike ride…except for the wind. A sunny Monday (which meant all the decently employed people were off at work, leaving most of the bike trail almost empty), just a few days past peak foliage season, unseasonably warm (fuck you, climate change, there’s no reason for it to be 70F in the Midwest in the third week of October). So yeah, a lovely day for a bike ride…except for the wind

But the wind…lawdy. Steady 15-17 mph; gusts over 30. That kind of wind at your back is grand on a bike; it just pushes you along. But riding into that wind is a massive pain in the ass. And cross-wind? Fuck me with a chainsaw. If you need another reason to dislike the wind, it rips away the autumn foliage. Still, a bike ride seemed like a good idea.

Besides, I’d never ridden across the High Trestle Bridge. I’d ridden most of the High Trestle Trail many times, but the bridge is inconveniently placed near the end of the trail. I like to ride loops; you know, the sort of ride where you circle back to the beginning. The HTT isn’t a loop. It starts in on town, goes through a few other towns, then just ends. When you get to the end, you just turn around and ride the same trail back. That would be fine, except a big section of that trail is what cyclists call boring as fuck. It’s a long, ruler-edge straight, former railroad track that’s almost completely exposed to farmland. Which means there’s absolutely no protection from the sun or the wind. It’s awful.

But you can put up with the dull sections so long as there are interesting sections. So we hauled my bike to the far end of the High Trestle Trail and I rode home. The first few miles were lovely; a tree-lined, leaf-strewn trail. Quiet, peaceful, mostly protected from the wind. Then I came to the bridge. It’s a former railroad bridge, spanning the Des Moines River Valley. Half a mile long. One hundred and thirty feet high in the center. Absolutely beautiful. Absolutely exposed to the wind.

Did I mention there were gusts over 30 mph? Did I mention those were cross-winds on the bridge? Even on weekdays, the HHT bridge gets plenty of traffic. The far trailhead is within a few miles of the bridge, and there are bike pubs on both sides. It’s a popular cycling spot. Yesterday was no exception. But those winds.

I saw cyclists start on the bridge, then turn around and come back. I saw a four-bike collision in which it appeared the wind blew one cyclist into another, and two other cyclists piled into them. I saw some cyclists get off their bikes and walk them. And there were a few of us who just put our heads down and rode. I’d originally planned to stop at a couple of the observation areas on the bridge–slightly wider spots where you can dismount and enjoy the scenery. But it was too windy. The bridge is wide enough for maybe three bikes to ride side-by-side, but it felt awfully narrow in those winds.

Once across the bridge, the trail became friendlier. It’s a beautifully maintained paved trail, lined with trees, passing by or through a few small farming towns. It was the very best part of the ride; the part in which most of these photos were taken. But then the HHT turns southward and, aside from a few small sections, it’s almost entirely open to the wind. I’ve never been so glad to own an ebike.

My bike has five levels of pedal-assist. It’s so easy to ride, I’ve never felt the need to leave the first level of assist. But into those headwinds, I toggled up to pedal-assist two. Around ten miles straight into steady 15-17 mph headwinds, with gusts of 30 mph. There were very few cyclists riding into the wind; maybe half of the riders I encountered were riding ebikes. The ones who weren’t, looked miserable. I didn’t even think about stopping to take photos.

One of the many nice things about the High Trestle Trail is that there are lots of places to stop and rest. Benches every few miles, small towns with parks, people who live along the trail set out chairs and small tables. I saw at least three bike maintenance locations along the trail, with air pumps and a selection of tools. There are trailheads at both ends of the HHT, with restrooms, picnic tables, and repair stations. The trailhead at the southern end even has porch swings.

It wasn’t a terribly long ride. Less than 30 miles. A hefty chunk of it was unpleasant and more strenuous than I’d like. But any day you get to spend on a bike is a good day. Yesterday was a good day. Except for the wind.

sydney powell in the car with a plate of shrimp

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I had a ‘plate of shrimp’ moment this week when Sidney Powell got in the car.

Okay, that sentence probably needs some explanation, doesn’t it. I mean, it’s got two wildly diverse idiomatic phrases: ‘in the car’ and ‘plate of shrimp.’ Let’s start with the former and I’ll include an editorial note at the end to explain the latter.

In the car — it’s an out-of-date phrase used by police and criminal lawyers. It meant ‘cooperate with the authorities.’ “Will this guy get in the car?” “Can we keep him in the car?” “Motherfucker is thinking about getting out of the car.” Like that. If somebody is in the car, they’re cooperating with the State. They’re along for the ride.

I wrote about this almost six years ago in regard to Lt. General Michael Flynn, who was Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor for 22 days. Flynn was forced to retire from that post for lying (to the FBI and to VP Mike Pence) about conversations he’d had with the Russian ambassador to the US. It’s not a crime to tell a lie, but it IS a crime to lie or conceal material facts to a federal investigator in connection to a federal crime.

So Mike Flynn got his ass charged. And hey, he got in the car. He agreed to plead guilty to a single count of lying to the FBI and to testify truthfully in the Mueller investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. In exchange, he’d get a lenient sentence. Accused criminals get in the car because it’s to their advantage.

But Flynn didn’t stay in the car.

In 2019, Flynn fired the lawyers who’d arranged his plea deal, withdrew his guilty plea, and hired a new lawyer. Sidney Powell. That very same day, Powell asked Trump’s Attorney General, Bill Barr, to drop the charges against her client. In the movies, of course, you see prosecutors say, “I’m going to drop the charges” and those charges just disappear. Poof, they’re gone. But in real life, a prosecutor has to file a motion to dismiss the charges and a court has to agree. Barr filed the motion to drop the charges, but the presiding judge, Emmett Sullivan, was reluctant. So Powell asked the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to force Sullivan to drop the charges. The court said, “Nope, not gonna do that.” So Powell went higher up the food chain. And in 2020, then-President Trump issued a presidential pardon to Flynn.

That’s right. Trump pardoned a guy who’d originally agreed to testify against him. Hell, he pardoned a bunch of guys who were in a position to get in the car and testify against him. If you’re a criminal, it’s good to be POTUS.

Sidney Powell, booking photo

Also in 2020, Powell joined Trump’s legal team and played a major role in his attempt to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 election.

In August of this year, Powell (along with 18 others, including Trump) was indicted on seven felony counts for various types of fraud and election interference under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization law. And hey, guess what.

Sidney Powell got in the car. On Thursday, she pled guilty to some misdemeanor crimes in exchange for testifying truthfully in regard to the RICO crimes. Will she stay in the car? Probably. Unless Trump somehow manages to get re-elected as president. Then it’ll be presidential pardons all around.

Plate of shrimp, right?

EDITORIAL NOTE: Right, plate of shrimp. It’s from a scene in the film Repo Man in which an eccentric mechanic name Miller sort of semi-explains the concept of synchronicity to punk-apprentice-repo man Otto.

Miller: A lotta people don’t realize what’s really going on. They view life as a buncha unconnected incidents and things. They don’t realize that there’s this, like, lattice of coincidence that lays on top of everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you’re thinking about a plate of shrimp. Suddenly someone’ll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate of shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in looking for one, either. It’s all part of a cosmic unconciousness.

Otto: You eat a lot of acid, Miller, back in the hippie days?

Professor Plum in the conservatory with a candlestick. Sidney Powell in the car with a plate of shrimp. It’s all part of a cosmic unconsciousness.