A shoe (but not a pair) and a pear

In the originally published version of my last post, "Can you metamorphosize?," I incorrectly typed a quote as referring to "syncs from September." I've since corrected it to December, but since errors like these can be serendipitous, I decided to look through my posts from September 2024. I then kept scrolling and looked at some from August as well, including "The Red Redeemed Seer Stone" and "Devil Bunny Needs a Ham." The former post begins with this image and highlights the fact that it contains a single shoe:

About four hours before I revisited that post, Bill left a comment on "Nimrod's Son" saying:

The restoration of Numenor is a pretty big theme in my story. It is a necessary step in getting the prisoners (us) off of this place, as part of the wheat being plucked from among the tares. So I actually don't view the breaking of the world as a sin beyond repair, but something that will be remedied. Some people don't need the intermediary step (likely symbolized by the One Shoe thing in my dreams) but a lot of us will, I think.

The other August post linked above begins with a discussion of a game called Devil Bunny Needs a Ham, the premise of which is that you "have decided to climb to the top of a tall building as fast as you can" -- an obvious link to Nimrod and the Tower. It then includes this image of another game by the same company:

After skimming those old posts, I had a tutoring session focused on pronunciation. I use a book called Pronunciation Pairs which drills pronunciation with lots of what are called "minimal pairs" (words differing in a single phoneme only). The set of pairs we worked on this morning was this one:

There’s a single high-heel shoe and a pear (in a book called Pairs, just as the other pear picture was in a game called Pairs).

Tower, fall, and fire obviously relate to Nimrod/Pharazon, and in that post I had also wondered whether Bill still connected him with bucket (pail) imagery.

Can you metamorphosize?

A few days ago, I was supervising some of Diego's preschoolers as they were eating breakfast, and a girl said, "Teacher, can I ask you a question?"

"Sure. What's your question?"

"Can you metamorphosize?"

"Can I what?"

"Transform into a butterfly!"

"Nope, sorry. Only caterpillars can do that."

A chorus of voices begged to differ: "You can! You can! Just be patient!"

They were reciting lines from a children's book called The Very Impatient Caterpillar by Ross Burach, which they've had read to them so many times they've practically memorized the whole thing, and applying them to me was just a random bit of silliness. Synchy silliness, though.

When I brought up Blogger to post this, I found a new comment drawing my attention back to "those orange and blue butterfly syncs from December."

Nimrod's Son

As reluctant as I am to add fuel to Bill's recent speculations, God forbid that I should self-censor for such a reason.

For those who have missed all the drama here and at Leo's blog, Bill has decided that the syncs are telling him that I'm the reincarnation of Ar-Pharazôn, a megalomaniacal villain from the writings of Tolkien who made war on the gods, bringing about the destruction of Númenor/Atlantis. This, in turn, means in his mind that deep down I'm a very bad dude despite apparently being a fairly decent person in my current incarnation.

Bill understand the Tower of Babel story to be a reference to Pharazon's assault on Valinor, as each was a hubristic attempt by mortals to force their way into "Heaven." A well-established tradition identifies Nimrod as the person responsible for building the Tower, so Bill's idea that I am the "son" or avatar of Pharazon made me think of the Pixies song about being dismayed "to find out I'm Nimrod's son."

I wasn't at all familiar with that song. It's musically harsh and profane, and I don't think I'd ever listened to the whole thing until today. Yesterday, I couldn't have told you anything about it except that it includes that line, "to find out I'm Nimrod's son." I looked it up, and the first line is:

One night upon my motorcycle through the desert sped

The motorcycle is my preferred mode of transportation, and my blog is called From the Narrow Desert.

The lyrics also include a puzzling reference to "chocolate people, well I'll be damned." I don't know whether Bill still associates Pharazon with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or not. That was part of a network of links connecting Charlie Bucket, Thomas B. Marsh, Peter, and Pharazon. Bill has said he no longer identifies Peter with Pharazon, so I'm not sure which (if either) of these two now separate characters inherited the "bucket" associations.

"Nimrod's Son" is from the 1987 album Come On Pilgrim. Here's the cover art:

It's a bald man wearing a hair shirt. People wearing gorilla suits and that sort of thing have been a repeated symbol here and on Bill's blog. Besides that, Bill has often used hair and baldness to symbolize the good guys and bad guys, respectively, so a bald man wearing a hairy garment could represent a bad guy trying to pass himself off as a good guy. A more positive interpretation would be based on the fact that hair shirts, like sackcloth, are a symbol of repentance -- though actually repenting for something "you" allegedly did in a past life, of which you have no memory and with which you have no sympathy, is impossible, meaningless, and at odds with Moroni 8.

"Nimrod's Son" makes no mention of the whole Tower of Babel thing. Instead, the thing that makes it horrifying to be Nimrod's son is (according to the song) that Nimrod's wife was his own mother -- something that is not even hinted at in the Bible or in any ancient tradition of which I am aware. Black Francis didn't just make it up himself, though. Apparently he was drawing on the 1835 book The Two Babylons; or, The Papal Worship Proved to be the Worship of Nimrod and his Wife by the Presbyterian theologian Alexander Hislop (who, in turn, did just make it up).

"The Papal Worship Proved to be the Worship of Nimrod" -- this ties Peter (the first pope) to Nimrod (Pharazon), which is a link Bill made in the past, although he has since rejected the idea. The "and his Wife" part is a link to Bill's current position (see "Intercepted prayers?") that people who pray to Mary are actually praying to a demonic being, Ungoliant, who is figuratively Pharazon's "mother" (just as Hislop maintains that Nimrod's wife, Semiramis, was also his mother).

One of the synchronistic "arguments" Bill gave in support of calling Ungoliant my "mother" is that he identifies her with a character called Mommy Fortuna, who is the villain in the movie The Last Unicorn, and the etymology of my own surname suggests that I am "the son of Fortuna" (Tyche being the Greek equivalent of that Roman goddess).

I turned to the "Mother and Child" section of Hislop's book, where he argues that the Madonna and Child theme in Catholicism and various other religions represents Semiramis and her son/husband Nimrod. One of the pagan examples he gives, on p. 20, is "Fortuna and Jupiter-puer, or Jupiter, the boy." Fortuna was normally thought of as the daughter of Jupiter, not his mother, but apparently there is one place in Cicero (Latin text) where he mentions a statue of "the child Jupiter, sitting with Juno in the lap of Fortuna and reaching for her breast."

I can only hope that as I continue to follow the syncs, things will start to make some kind of sense. In the meantime, you're welcome, Bill.

The more "the more, the merrier," the merrier

The boar, the barrier:

The core, the carrier:

The door, the derriere:

The whore, the hairier:

The score, the scarier:

The war, the warier:

The more, the merrier

Ulysses wasn't long enough.

These verses add some other stuff,

As sung and strummed by that great playler,

Ukinbad the Ukuleler.

Flinbad the Flailer was a sort

Of Gnoll, quite strong but rather short.

(That couplet was the only choice.

Old Gary Gygax knew his Joyce.)

Frinbad the Frailer isn't stronger

Than the others any longer.

Grinbad the Grailer found the Cup

And, posing with it, hammed it up.

Ginbad the Gaeler stands for Scotch.

No Limey liquor on his watch!

Strinbad the Stralier knows his place:

Upon the planet's nether face.

Sninbad the Snailer used his bill

To crack the shells and eat his fill.

Stinbad the Staler felt quite jealous

Of that band the Young Fresh Fellas.

Winbad the Wailer wondered why

Succeeding made her want to cry.

Trinbad the Trailer oft was seen

Before the feature on the screen.

Quinbad the Veiler used disguise

To marry off old Tender Eyes.

Yinbad the Layler, she was apt

To dance and sing while Eric clapped.

How many Ailers have you counted?

To what have all these lines amounted?

The first sixteen, and then those two,

And now eleven more for you.

We're well along the rocky road

To doublin' what old Séamus wrote.

Arms and legs

These army men and leggy girls

With weaponry and flaxen curls,

Respectively, are plastic toys,

One kind for girls, one kind for boys.

And when the kids are in the shop,

Accompanied by mom and pop,

Each for their favored plaything begs,

The boys for arms, the girls for legs.

But mothers dream potential harms

If anyone should play with arms,

While fathers for their part think twice

When girls inform them of the price.

Varda ambigram

Those few who have been following me for a really long time will remember that there was a period of time where ambigrams took over this blog, much as syncs have done now, and accounted for the bulk of my posts. I haven't done any in a long time, but my recent post "Varda Elentári" said:

Given the recent theme of writing things backwards or upside down, I thought it was potentially significant that the student wrote the name “backwards” in a sense, but in such a way that the final result was the same as if it had been written in the ordinary way.

That’s the concept of the ambigram (or some kinds anyway): You write something so that it reads the same upside down or backwards as it does read in the ordinary way. Then I realized that the name Varda is virtually a naturally occurring ambigram, requiring very little ingenuity on the part of the artist: