Awake, arm of the Lord!

My last post, "Wounded Rahab," quoted this verse from the Book of Mormon, in which Jacob quotes Isaiah:

Awake, awake! Put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake as in the ancient days. Art thou not he that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon? (2 Ne. 8:9)

Today I had a nasty migraine and spent most of the day sleeping and vomiting. When I woke up around 9:30 p.m., I finally felt better and was able to tolerate light and sound again. Thus, although it was late in the evening, I had just woken up when I checked Synlogos and found a link to an Ann Barnhardt post titled "Sexagesima Sunday: Wake up! Why are you sleeping, Lord? Wake up!" Calling the Lord himself to wake up seems like a pretty unusual theme -- we associate that more with Elijah's taunts to the prophets of Baal -- so I clicked through. She quotes two passages from the Bible:

At that time, Jesus got into a boat, and His disciples followed Him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was covered by the waves; but He was asleep. So they came and woke Him, saying, Lord, save us! we are perishing! But He said to them, Why are you fearful, O you of little faith? Then He arose and rebuked the wind and the sea, and there came a great calm. And the men marvelled, saying, What manner of Man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him? (Matt 8:23-27)

and

Arise, why sleepest thou, O Lord? arise, and cast us not off to the end.

Exsurge; quare obdormis, Domine? exsurge, et ne repellas in finem.

Why turnest thou Thy face away? and forgettest our want and our trouble?

Quare faciem tuam avertis? oblivisceris inopiae nostrae et tribulationis nostrae?

For our soul is humbled down to the dust: our belly cleaveth to the earth.

Quoniam humiliata est in pulvere anima nostra; conglutinatus est in terra venter noster.

Arise, O Lord, help us and redeem us for Thy Name’s sake.

Exsurge, Domine, adjuva nos, et redime nos propter nomen tuum.

(Ps. 44:23-26, numbered Ps. 43 in the Vulgate)

The passage from Matthew seems particularly synchronistically relevant, since after Jesus wakes up he "rebuked the wind and the sea." Rahab in the Isaiah passage is generally understood to be a monster representing the chaotic sea, the Hebrew equivalent of Tiamat. Marduk's battle with Tiamat is central to the Babylonian creation story, and hints of a story of that kind can still be seen in the Genesis 1 creation story.

Bible critics have noted that the "Sea" of Galilee is in fact just a lake, comparable in size to Lake Tahoe, and that the description of the "great storm on the sea" must be an exaggeration. Or a supernatural attack.

As mentioned in "Rock my Audible," I have been listening to an audio version of the Book of Mormon. Today I started playing it where I had left off yesterday and found that, strangely, it was in the middle of a verse, so that the very first word I heard was Awake.

And the things which I shall tell you are made known unto me by an angel from God. And he said unto me: Awake; and I awoke, and behold he stood before me (Mosiah 3:2)

.

Here it is not the Lord being called to awake but a man, Mosiah. What about the Isaiah passage, though. Isaiah actually apostrophizes the arm of the Lord, which is why the King James Version says, "Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?" The Book of Mormon changes that it to he, implying that the Arm of the Lord is a person.

If the Arm of the Lord is not the Lord himself, who might he be? The most obvious guess would be Michael, who in Revelation is given the role of fighting the dragon:

And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him (Rev. 12:7-9)

Here, as in Isaiah, the dragon is not killed but "cast out" and presumably wounded.

The dragon combat alluded to by Isaiah probably has to do with the creation story, but the Mormon temple ceremony gives Michael a role in that story as well -- and also has him fall asleep and wake up:

NARRATOR: Brethren and sisters, this is Michael, who helped form the earth. When he awakens from the sleep which Elohim and Jehovah have caused to come upon him, he will be known as Adam, and having forgotten all, will have become a little child. Brethren, close your eyes as if you were asleep.

ELOHIM: Adam, awake and arise.

NARRATOR: All the brethren will please arise.

ELOHIM: Adam, here is a woman whom we have formed and whom we give unto you to be a companion and help meet for you. What will you call her?

ADAM: Eve.

The first word Michael says after awakening as Adam is, "Eve." As it happens, those names are juxtaposed in an image I included in my last post:

The ceremony says that when Michael becomes Adam, he "will have become as a little child." Mosiah 3 (the chapter with that "Awake" verse) also refers to this idea, shortly after a reference to Adam:

For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father (Mosiah 3:19).

Wounded Rahab

I checked my comments this afternoon and found a new one from Bill on "Turn around, bright eyes," a post from several days ago which prominently featured an octopus. Bill wrote:

There is another potentially interesting connection to the symbol of an Octopus I stumbled across in looking at some old LDS endowment history.

The pre-1990 endowment had the role of a minister or preacher who was aligned with Satan in trying to lead Adam astray. At one point, the minister asks Satan if there will ever be apostles or prophets again on the earth. Satan says no, but that some will claim to be, and that the minister should give them a test:

"... just test them by asking that they perform a great miracle, such as cutting off an arm or some other member of the body and restoring it, so that the people may know that they have come with power."

What a random way to show power. But then I thought of our symbol of the Octopus, which is one of the relatively rare animals that can indeed have its arm cut off and restore it. Meaning, it is the kind of test an Octopus might set up.

The storylines of James Bond and Marvel have had the symbol of an Octopus represent the bad guys, with Spectre and Hydra, respectively, as mentioned in other comments. Hydra is a strange name for a many legged animal as it was originally used for a many headed monster, but its etymology supports the water link (Hydra from Hydro, i.e., "water"), which I had used in the past as one support to Ungoliant or the Great Whore who sat upon the many waters.

Thinking of the link between many heads and many arms, and treating them as synonymous given the name, then brought the satanic test given in the temple back to Revelation, and it didn't seem so random. In Revelation 13, the Beast is introduced, who has many heads (like the Hydra), and one of these heads is fatally wounded, but then healed, which causes the people to worship him and the dragon, because it was evidence of divine power, just as Satan told the minister cutting off an arm and restoring it would be.

I think he's on to something with this line of symbolic interpretation. As I mentioned in comments of my own there, being able to regenerate lost heads is the defining feature of the Hydra, and spiders (like Ungoliant) are also able to regenerate limbs.

Less than an hour after reading and replying to Bill's comment, I was reading Dean Radin's book The Science of Magic and came across this passage:

While panpsychism was once dismissed as a throwback to the ancient idea of animism (everything is alive), there is a growing consensus among biologists and philosophers that all living systems are indeed conscious, including octopuses, crustaceans, fish, insects, and even plants.

The mention of octopuses jumped out at me, partly because I had just read Bill's long comment about octopuses, but also because it seems like the odd man out on Radin's list. All the other items on the list -- crustaceans, fish, insects, plants -- are very broad taxa, making the octopus seem like an oddly specific inclusion. Also, Radin's point is that consciousness may exist even in the least brainy forms of life, but the octopus is well known for its extremely high intelligence and doesn't seem like a good example of consciousness being found in the least likely of places. You would expect to see the octopus listed together with animals like dolphins and ravens, not insects and plants.

The fact that I found this reference in a book about magic -- paranormal magic, not stage magic -- also syncs with Bill's comment in a general way, since he was talking about octopuses in connection with the ability to work great miracles.

Bill mentions the wounded beast in Revelation. When I read that part of his comment, a line from Isaiah popped into my head: "Art thou not he that hath cut Rahab and wounded the dragon?" I read Jacob's quotation of that line in the Book of Mormon just three days ago, which I guess is why it came to mind so readily.

Awake, awake! Put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake as in the ancient days. Art thou not he that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon? (2 Ne. 8:9)

Rahab is a sea monster. The wounded beast of Revelation rises up out of the sea. The fact that the arm of the Lord is only said to have "wounded" the monster instead of killing it is curious, and the fact that he is being called to awake as in ancient days and do it again suggests that the monster has recovered from the wound.

I remembered that about a year ago, Corbin had done a commentary on Jacob's sermon and "The Monster in the Book of Mormon," so I looked it up on YouTube. I hadn't noticed the thumbnail at the time, but now it seems relevant:

Rahab is typically imagined as a dragon or sea-serpent, but Corbin went with an octopus.

Bill connected the octopus to the miracle of "cutting off an arm or some other member of the body and restoring it." In the same sermon that quotes Isaiah on Rahab, Jacob talks repeatedly about "restoration," including the resurrection in which "the spirit and the body is restored to itself again" (2 Ne. 9:13). He also speaks of his own people has having been "broken off" from the House of Israel, eventually to be restored:

For behold, the Lord God has led away from time to time from the house of Israel, according to his will and pleasure. And now behold, the Lord remembereth all them who have been broken off, wherefore he remembereth us also (2 Ne. 10:22).

Bill's comment also brought up the Hydra. My earliest dream I can remember was about a hydra. It was when we were living in New Hampshire, so I would have been six or seven years old. We had shrubs planted all along the front of our house, and in the dream, I was crawling through the space between the shrubs and the house. As I went, this space became more like a tunnel, and eventually it led into a huge room like a vault. In the center was the Hydra: an enormous serpent with its many heads fanned out like a peacock's tail, something like certain representations of the naga gods of India:

I would say that it stood about nine feet tall. Its skin was a translucent white like that of a termite, with blue veins visible beneath. It stood in proud silence and was being venerated by stunted misshapen dwarfs. These were beardless and mostly hairless, with very large eyes and noses, and they smiled in a strange wry manner. The closest image I can find to what their faces looked like is actually Michael the Glove Puppet from the 2022 syncs.

These dwarfs were bent over, and it seemed to me both that they were bowing to the Hydra and that they were hunchbacked and always looked like that. I had the feeling that they were "showing" me the Hydra, and that I was meant to see this as a great honor. I felt no fear during this dream, only a sense of being in an entirely alien world that I could in no way understand. For me, the Hydra was just a nasty monster dispatched by Hercules, and seeing it in such a different atmosphere and context was disorienting.

I don't know what to make of the dream now any more than I did then, but I include it here as possibly relevant.

The "sin" at Cain's door

Today we take a break from our regular synchronicity programming for a random bit of Bible criticism. (This was going to be a parenthetical aside in a post on my Book of Mormon blog, but it grew too big for its britches.)

After Cain's offering is rejected, but before he murders Abel, the Lord speaks to him:

And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him (Gen. 4:6-7).

Virtually all of the 50-some English translations available at Bible Gateway are unanimous on how v. 7 is to be interpreted. Here, for example, is the New International Version:

If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it [sin] desires to have you, but you must rule over it [sin].

I have never studied Hebrew and hesitate to contradict all the Bible translators in the world, but -- no, scratch that, I don't hesitate at all. Rushing in where learned fools fear to tread is what we do around here, and the universally accepted reading of this verse is flatly impossible. Here's the interlinear translation from Bible Hub:

The red squares I have added are to draw attention to the fact that the noun translated as "sin" is feminine, but that the KJV is correct in using the masculine pronoun and possessive in "unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him." These words cannot possibly have "sin" as their antecedent.

I said virtually all Bible translations interpreted this verse the same way. The one exception is Young's Literal Translation -- which, as it says on the tin, goes with the literal reading even when its meaning is obscure:

Is there not, if thou dost well, acceptance? and if thou dost not well, at the opening a sin-offering is crouching, and unto thee its desire, and thou rulest over it.

Even the YLT sacrifices strict literalness here in order to emasculate "his" and "him" so that they can refer to a feminine noun. Another feature of the YLT was a eureka moment for me, though: not "sin" but "a sin-offering." I checked the Hebrew word in question in a concordance, and it does seem to mean "sin-offering" far more often than "sin." This reading also fits better with the verb immediately following, which Strong's glosses as "to crouch (on all four legs folded, like a recumbent animal)." The noun "sin-offering" refers to the animal itself -- e.g. "he shall lay his hand upon the head of the sin offering, and slay the sin offering" (Lev. 4:29). If the noun can mean either sin or a sacrificial animal, and the verb is one associated with four-legged animals, what's more likely? That Cain's sinful tendencies are being implicitly compared to an animal lying in wait for him, or that the Lord is talking about an actual animal?

It makes perfect sense. The Lord begins by saying, "Why are you so upset?" He's not warning or threatening Cain; he's comforting him. "Why are you so upset? If you do right, you will be accepted; and if you do something wrong, you can easily obtain forgiveness through a sin-offering."

As for the masculine possessive and pronoun, I think they can only refer to Abel. It's impossible not to notice the similarity of these two passages:

Unto the woman he said, . . . thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee (Gen. 3:16).

And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him (Gen. 4:7).

The first is always understood to mean that the woman is subordinate to her husband and subject to his authority. But when the same formula is used one chapter later, it means something completely different? No. I think the meaning of the Lord's words to Cain can be paraphrased like this:

Why are you so upset about your offering not being accepted? If you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about. And if you have done something wrong, you know the way to obtain forgiveness. And why should you be jealous of Abel? He's your younger brother and will always be subordinate to you and subject to your authority.

Joseph Smith, of course, had a very different interpretation from what I am proposing here. Connecting the masculine possessive and pronoun with "sin" as most people do, he understood it to mean that Satan wanted to have Cain:

If thou doest well, thou shalt be accepted. And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door, and Satan desireth to have thee; and except thou shalt hearken unto my commandments, I will deliver thee up, and it shall be unto thee according to his desire. And thou shalt rule over him (Moses 5:23).

Adam Clarke's Bible commentary and its supposed influence on Joseph Smith is a trendy topic in Mormon studies circles these days, so I wondered if Clarke had interepreted that verse along the same lines as Smith. When I looked it up, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that, no, Clarke actually agrees with me! So now it's me and Adam Clarke against all the Bible translators in the world. Here's what Clarke has to say about v. 7:

If thou doest well - That which is right in the sight of God, shalt thou not be accepted? Does God reject any man who serves him in simplicity and godly sincerity? But if thou doest not well, can wrath and indignation against thy righteous brother save thee from the displeasure under which thou art fallen? On the contrary, have recourse to thy Maker for mercy; לפתח חטאת רבץ lappethach chattath robets, a sin-offering lieth at thy door; an animal proper to be offered as an atonement for sin is now couching at the door of thy fold.

The words חטאת chattath, and חטאת chattaah, frequently signify sin; but I have observed more than a hundred places in the Old Testament where they are used for sin-offering, and translated ἁμαρτια by the Septuagint, which is the term the apostle uses, Co2 5:21 : He hath made him to be sin (ἁμαρτιαν, A Sin-Offering) for us, who knew no sin. Cain's fault now was his not bringing a sin-offering when his brother brought one, and his neglect and contempt caused his other offering to be rejected. However, God now graciously informs him that, though he had miscarried, his case was not yet desperate, as the means of faith, from the promise, etc., were in his power, and a victim proper for a sin-offering was lying (רבץ robets, a word used to express the lying down of a quadruped) at the door of his fold. How many sinners perish, not because there is not a Savior able and willing to save them, but because they will not use that which is within their power! Of such how true is that word of our Lord, Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life!

Unto thee shall be his desire, etc. - That is, Thou shalt ever have the right of primogeniture, and in all things shall thy brother be subject unto thee. These words are not spoken of sin, as many have understood them, but of Abel's submission to Cain as his superior, and the words are spoken to remove Cain's envy.

Clarke doesn't mention the grammatical gender mismatch, but aside from that he says pretty much everything I have said in this post. Pretty smart guy, that Adam Clarke.

Red and blue shoes on the Hanged Man

My last post, "Sync bananza," included this image, originally from my 2022 post "Break on through to the other side":

In order to make it correspond more closely to the Flammarion engraving, I used the mirror image of the Tarot card, as is obvious if you look at the Roman numeral at the top: IIIV. Seeing this image again reminded me that some old Marseille-pattern Tarot cards actually printed a certain Roman numeral in mirror image on purpose, giving the Hanged Man the number IIX instead of XII. The reasons for this are obscure, but it is generally thought to have something to do with the figure's upside-downness.

Looking through my Tarot de Marseille files to find examples of this, I unexpectedly found something else: Here is the Hanged Man card from the deck printed by François Héri in Solothurn, Switzerland, in 1718:

Besides being numbered IIX, this card has a red shoe on the Hanged Man's right foot and a blue shoe on his left. This is quite unusual. I have 20 Marseille-pattern Hanged Man cards in my files, of which only 6 have mirror-image numerals. Of the 20 cards, 15 give the Hanged Man two red shoes, and 4 give him matching shoes of another color (blue or tan). Only Héri gives him mismatched shoes -- and he just happened to choose the correct colors and put them on the correct feet.

Sync bananza

Yesterday's post "Turn around, bright eyes" included this photo of an empty oil pastel box:

First, I failed to note earlier that the brand name is Potato Cat in English, 土豆貓 in Chinese. In "Same aloo gobi (actually different aloo gobi every time)," I noted that aloo (Hindi for "potato") was not only transliterated but also translated differently on the two menus I saw: once as 洋芋 ("ocean taro") and once as 馬鈴薯 ("horse bell potato"). Here we have a third Chinese word for "potato": 土豆 ("earth bean"). In Taiwan, that's actually a dialect word for "peanut," but it means "potato" on the Mainland, which is apparently where these pastels were made. (Notice also the simplified character 画, where the Taiwanese would use the traditional 畫).

Since different ways of rendering "potato" in Chinese had just come up in connection with aloo gobhi ("potatoes [and] cauliflower"), I wondered what the Hindi for "cat" might be. It's billi. So Potato Cat would be aloo billi -- what you might say to your hounds when you're hunting roe deer in western France.

In yesterday's post, I noted the significance of the blue book with a gold heart on the cover but said I wasn't sure how the word Banana on the spine fit in with that symbolism. Actually, it fits perfectly. Vidya is a major gap in my cultural literacy, but luckily I've got Bill and WG to fill me in when necessary. It turns out that "Breaking Through (Heart of Gold)" is the main theme song of the 2025 Nintendo game Donkey Kong Bananza.

Bananza isn't just the name of the game. The word also appears in the lyrics, shortly after the only mention of a "heart of gold":

Look at us, so big and small

Two together through it all

Heart of gold, a wish come true

You and me, unbreakable

Bananza

Bananza

Other parts of the lyrics are interesting, too. The first line is:

This strange world, it's so vast and deep

Which reminds me of a translation from Nietzsche I did back in 2019:

O man, give ear!

Deep midnight speaketh; canst thou hear?

"From sleep, from sleep,

From dreaming deep I woke and rose;

The world is deep,

More deep than day would e’er suppose.

How deep her woe!

Joy—deeper still than heartache, she.

Though woe cry, 'Go!'

All joys long for eternity—

For deep on deep eternity!" 

Although the lines quoted earlier refer to "Two together through it all," another repeated line is:

We'll strike a chord that's gonna break us free

Two can't make a chord; it takes at least three. This syncs with something that happened this morning. I was listening (again!) to "Aloo Gobi" by Weezer and came to these lines:

You are not alone

You are not alone

Someone else will be there with you, be there with you

You are not alone

Be there with you, be there with you

You are not alone

As this was playing, a stack of books on my desk caught my eye:

I saw "We Are NOT Alone, Child of Fortune." As I have mentioned before, "Child of Fortune" is the meaning of my last name, Tychonievich. "You are not alone" can be true if there are just two people: you and someone else. "We are not alone," like a chord, requires three.

At the bottom of the stack is The Secret Language of Birthdays, which I have posted about before ("Squaring the circle, and more red and blue eyes"). I bought that book for the newspaper clippings the previous owner had put in it, but in the context of the present post, what is significant about it is the cover art, which is a colorized version of a detail from the Flammarion engraving:

The Donkey Kong Bananza song, remember, is called "Breaking Through (Heart of Gold)." The Flammarion engraving depicts someone "breaking through" into another world, and I included this image in my 2022 post "Break on through to the other side":

Coming back to the "strike a chord" reference, though, the heart of gold has been associated with one particular chord: A minor (ACE). In fact, my "bright eyes" post quoted and linked to my 2024 post "I've been A minor for a heart of gold." That post begins by referring to an earlier post with a nearly identical title, "I've been a miner for a heart of gold," and cautioning the reader not to confuse the two. The idea of a pair of "twin" posts with nearly but not precisely identical titles also came up in the "bright eyes" post.

More Donkey Kong lyrics that got my attention:

You and me (We're my favorite band)

My hand in your hand

Given that the song has "Heart of Gold" in the title, this is a link to the Grateful Dead song "Scarlet Begonias":

Wind in the willow's playin' "Tea For Two"

The sky was yellow, and the Sun was blue

Strangers stoppin' strangers, just to shake their hand

Everybody's playing in the heart of gold band, heart of gold band

That song has come up a lot, but most recently I think in "Blueberry Hill and the Golden Age," because the Fats Domino song "Blueberry Hill" also references a song being played by the "wind in the willow" -- and that brings us to the strangest connection with the Donkey Kong lyrics.

When "Blueberry Hill" first came up, I remembered a Tori Amos song that said, "Too bad 'Blueberry Hill' was premature." When I looked it up, though, I found that I'd always misheard it. The song is "Mr. Zebra":

The final line is in fact:

Too bad the burial was premature, she said and smiled

The meter of the song requires Tori to stress the last syllable of burial, making it sound like "berry hill," and I guess I just hallucinated "blue" to make the lyrics make some sort of sense.

Here's how the song begins:

Hello, Mr. Zebra

Can I have your sweater?

'Cause it's cold, cold, cold

In my hole, hole, hole

And here are lines from the Donkey Kong song:

When it all seems so dark and bleak

When the hole looks so cold and deep

So they both have a cold hole and a roundabout connection to "Blueberry Hill." Not that impressive -- until I scrolled down on the lyrics site I had been using and saw this:

Yes, this same video game has another song called "Zebra Bananza" -- played, apparently, when Donkey Kong transforms into a zebra. I guess he transforms into lots of different animals in this game -- there's an "Ostrich Bananza" song, an "Elephant Banaza" song, and so on -- but "Zebra Bananza" was the one the lyrics site thought I might also like.

Jonah yet again

In "There again! There she blows right ahead, boys! -- lay back!" I discuss the synchronicity of attending a particular church twice in a two-month period and being treated to sermons on the Book of Jonah both times.

Today -- nine days after the second Jonah sermon -- I found that the preschool had just ordered a new book for the children. It's not about Jonah -- it's a just-so story called Why Does the Big Whale Have Such a Small Throat? -- but it features a whale swallowing a man, the man staying alive inside the whale's belly, and the whale vomiting him up on a beach. In an unexpected twist, the man sort of "hijacks" the whale, refusing to come out of its belly until it has delivered him to a beautiful beach in England. Here's a video of someone reading the story. It's all in Chinese, with no subtitles available, but I think the pictures should enable even those ignorant of that language to follow the basic plot.

Miss South Carolina

Yesterday I spontaneously thought of the scene in Idiocracy where Dr. Lexus, after diagnosing Joe ("You talk like a fag, and your shit's all retarded"), offers his prescription:

After searching out that clip -- I just wanted that clip, not the larger scene of which it is a part -- I thought I'd check Ceiling Fan Man  I found this short video, which intersperses clips of a speech by some WEF nudnik with one by the woman who will always be the only Miss South Carolina in our hearts:

These are both clips of people talking without actually expressing any ideas, so I thought it was a bit of a minor sync.

The real sync came today. A couple of days ago I received an email that mentioned the Weezer song "Pork and Beans" (to which I will reply soon, God willing and the crick don't rise), and so today I played the music video for that song, which I had not seen before:

Here's a still from the Weezer music video:

This is a reenactment -- one of the music video's many references to then-recent memes and viral videos. In the original 2007 interview, the man holding the microphone had short hair and was clean-shaven, and the sash just said "South Carolina." That's some incredible casting, though. Here's the real Miss South Carolina as she appears in the Ceiling Fan Man mashup:

In the Weezer video, Miss South Carolina grabs the microphone, which turns into a lightsaber:

Later more lightsabers show up, including a drummer using two lightsabers as drumsticks:

I kept hoping I would see someone with lightsabers coming out of his ears, but no dice.