Three days ago, on May 24, I posted "Charlie Kirk, Ulysses, and twin flames," part of which deals with the They Might Be Giants song "My Evil Twin" and why I have interpreted it as being about Odysseus.
Today, fishing for new alt-Mormon content on YouTube, I was putting in various search prompts that I thought might turn up off-the-correlated-path "deep doctrine" kind of stuff. One of these returned a Mormon Stories episode called "The Ancient Devil & Joseph Smith w/ John Larsen | Ep. 1839." Mormon Stories is mostly normie content, but the title was sufficiently intriguing -- the way it specified "the ancient devil" suggested that it might refer to some other being than the common-or-garden devil -- that I gave it a chance.
It soon became clear that all they meant by "the ancient devil" was the devil as portrayed in (or retroactively inserted into) the Old Testament, and that the presenter's research on the topic had been a bit sloppy, so I stopped listening maybe a quarter of the way in. I found a sync right at the beginning, though. Here's how it starts:
John Dehlin: Welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin, with goatee. It is November 21st, 2023, and we are super excited to have back on Mormon Stories Podcast the John Larson and the Carah Burrell, or NuanceHoe. It is another John Larson Carah Burrell Mormon Stories episode - woohoo!
John Larson: How do we know -- you got the goatee and the black hat -- how do we know that you're the actual John Dehlin and not the evil twin?
Wondering if there might be other synchronistic links to my "My Evil Twin" post, but not wanting to listen to the whole thing, I opened the transcript and word-searched it for Odyssey references. I found a hit, but it's an obvious error:
right so the The Odyssey is God the author of evil or is he subjected to it and I would think that it's clear from these passages and maybe we have to uh knit them together a little bit that Smith's theodicy meaning Smith's solution to the problem of evil is to place evil outside of God
Obviously the speaker said theodicy, not The Odyssey. Scott Alexander uses this pun in Unsong, where a particular house is known as Ithaca because "it's where theodicy happens."
Last night, Laeth sent me an epub of his latest novel, Powerless. I haven't started reading it yet, but I know in a general way what it's about. In the author's May 5 post "about a shift," he explained that it was inspired by a day last year when "the power went out for the entire iberian peninsula for ten hours" -- so the title most literally refers to being without electrical power, but this setting is "used to tell stories about human powerlessness against the randomness of life." Particularly, the novel focuses on "failure to communicate," with the failure of electrical communications systems mirroring failures of a more social or spiritual nature: People "can’t use their phones to call, but also can’t talk properly to the people next to them."
During my lunch break today, I was about to start reading Powerless, but I decided that I really ought to finish at least one or two of the other books I'm currently reading before starting a new one. So instead of starting Laeth's book, I continued with Remarkably Bright Creatures. On p. 75, I read this:
Cameron's phone battery blinks red, nearly drained. He digs in the bottom of his duffel for his charging cord, but it's sitting on Katie's nightstand. He can practically see it there. Left behind, leaving him literally powerless.
Katie is Cameron's former live-in girlfriend, who has just kicked him out. The issue was communication, or the lack thereof.
I had a very strange dream that I was directing a film adaptation of one of P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster stories, and one of the actresses was our own Debbie (much younger than her current age), who was playing the role of Madeline Bassett.
In the books, Madeline is known for her excessive sentimentality, saying for example that "the stars are God's daisy chain" and that "every time a fairy blows its wee nose, a baby is born." In the dream, though, the line Debbie-as-Madeline delivered was, "Truth lies within violence like a scream." Not exactly a Madelinesque thought.
Later in the dream, I looked through my blog archive (in book form) to find the title of the most recent book I had read. I was a bit surprised to find that it was something called Poppa and Poopa the Bear.
In the morning, I found a comment from Debbie, on "Myth-kitty and Stevie Smith," mentioning seeing the name Dr. Debra Bassett in the movie The Strange Dark. Her own first name is spelled Debra, and this obviously syncs with the dream about her playing the role of a Miss Bassett in a movie.
Yesterday, after some persistent prodding from the sync fairies, I started reading the novel Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt.
Today, an employee told me she was a little tired because she had been up late last night watching a movie.
"What movie? Was it good?"
"It was amazing. It's about an octopus."
"Remarkably Bright Creatures, with Alfred Molina as the octopus?"
"Yes! Have you seen it?"
"No, but I just started reading the novel yesterday."
The novel was published in 2022. I became aware of it this past January. The Netflix adaptation was released on May 8. And yet the sync fairies saw to it that I started reading the novel the same day my employee watched the movie, and that we talked about it the next day.
Gandalf had entered the sync stream because of the similarity of his other name Mithrandir to Mithras, and I also posted these lines:
They never let Mithrandir
Join in any randir games
This juxtaposition of a Mith-name and a kitty made me think of Philip Larkin's famous dismissal of what he called "the common myth-kitty." Then I realized that his name, Philip, was a link to the randir pun, by way of my July 2020 post "Philip as a Christmas reindeer in polyvalent perspective."
I realized I'd never read the complete quote, just lots of references to "what Philip Larkin called 'the common myth-kitty'" and such. I tried to look it up and still couldn't find the original context, but the interesting thing was that the first result for "common myth-kitty" wasn't about Philip Larkin at all but about Stevie Smith:
Perhaps being named Smith invites this sort of thing. I've lost count of how many times I've heard Mormonism punningly dismissed as "Joseph's myth." Anyway, I know absolutely nothing about Stevie Smith's work, but just three days ago Bruce Charlton posted "'Stevie' (1978) - a movie about Stevie Smith." Not long before that, he also addressed the myth-kitty, in "Tolkien's subcreated world in Not a modern 'myth'" (May 15).
This morning I was out in a rural area I had never been to before and stopped at a local cafe for breakfast. The background music there was unfamiliar and caught my attention. At first I kind of liked the style, but as I paid more attention it quickly became clear that it was all "AI"-generated. I tracked down the "band" online and confirmed this. The music-producing entity is called 93LUCID-MODE, is based in Taiwan, and has released 10 albums with accentless English vocals in the past year and a half. All the music videos are computer-generated footage of cars driving at night from the driver's perspective, with no human faces. Although the individual tracks do have names, these are not included in the video titles or descriptions, which are all identical and all in Chinese. So yes, definitely computer-generated, though at least it's a step up from last year's "latte in my lungs" tunes.
On the road after my breakfast, I was thinking about "AI"-generated music, and my thoughts turned to that much-mocked "AI"-generated "We Are Charlie Kirk, We Carry the Flame" song that became a meme shortly after Kirk's assassination. Just as I was thinking about this, I passed on the road an old, faded election campaign ad. In the politician's picture, there was a little black spot near the base of her neck, which to me at least suggested the purported video of Kirk's shooting, though the "wound" is slightly too low and on the wrong side of the neck.
Remembering that the music bot from the cafe had had the number 93 in its name, I wondered if perhaps Charlie Kirk was born in '93. I later confirmed that he was. I also noticed that the word LUCID, corresponds to the Roman numeral DCLVI, or 656. All that's missing is an X to make it the number of the beast. I'm sure there must be some band or brand or product out there called Lucid-X. It's one of those inevitable names.
Later I received an email (to which I will reply later, after I've given it sufficient thought) bringing up the idea of "twin flames" -- a New Age term which I had thought just meant "soulmates" or something but apparently refers to the idea that a soul can split into two and incarnate in two bodies simultaneously. This made me think of the scene in Canto XXVI of the Inferno where Ulysses and Diomedes appear within "twin flames" in hell. As perhaps goes without saying, I quote the Mandelbaum translation:
My guide, who noted how intent I was,
told me: "Within those fires there are souls;
each one is swathed in that which scorches him."
"My master," I replied, "on hearing you,
I am more sure; but I’d already thought
that it was so, and I had meant to ask:
Who is within the flame that comes so twinned
above that it would seem to rise out of
the pyre Eteocles shared with his brother?"
He answered me: "Within that flame, Ulysses
and Diomedes suffer; they, who went
as one to rage, now share one punishment.
Not until I first read Dante in 2008 was I aware of this idea of Ulysses as a "twin." Nevertheless, back in 2001 I had decided that the They Might Be Giants song "My Evil Twin" (1992) was about Ulysses.
It contains these rather opaque lines:
Who cut the arm off the voodoo doll
That resembles a Republican president from long ago?
When "Cyclops Rock" was released (on September 11, 2001, very much a "Twin"-related date), it seemed to revisit this theme:
I'm sick
Like Chucky was sick
My defeated heart keeps beating on
I won't die
Like Chucky won't die
But I'm not here to socialize
Gotta find a new place to hang out
'Cause I'm tired of living in Hell
I'm a mess
Since you cut me out
But Chucky's arm keeps me company
Chucky, from the movie Child's Play (1988) is a "voodoo doll" -- a serial killer literally uses a voodoo ritual to transfer his soul to a doll -- so "Chucky's arm" must be the same as the arm cut off the voodoo doll. As discussed in "Spirit hands, song-propelled saucers, and A-P" (May 15), an "arm" can represent a spirit, so the amputation of Chucky's arm could represent the splitting of his soul.
In pre-album performances, they sang "Like Nixon was sick" instead of "Like Chucky was sick," though the other Chucky references remained, so is Richard Nixon the "Republican president from long ago"? But Nixon was still alive when "My Evil Twin" was recorded and thus hardly qualifies as someone "from long ago." I ultimately decided that the long-ago person who resembles a Republican president is Ulysses, whose name was later borne by the Republican president Ulysses S. Grant. The Cyclops theme of the second song certainly fits with that interpretation, as does the line "I can hear some sirens somewhere" in the first song.
It appears from the lyrics that one of the twins -- presumably the "evil" one -- is in the underworld, while the other is on earth. This fits with the Charlie Kirk song. "We carry the flame" suggest the "twin flames" concept, and while Kirk himself is dead, the song asserts that "We are Charlie Kirk / Forever alive." And of course Charlie and Chucky are forms of the same name, while Kirk suggests Kirke, the witch from the Odyssey.
In the afternoon, I took a brief nap, during which I dreamt about using a trebuchet to spread seeds. Just as I was waking up, I heard a voice sing the line, "Yeah, you're a natural." I looked it up and found that it's from a 2018 song by Imagine Dragons. I don't think I'd ever listened to the whole thing before, but I'd heard bits of it used in Kill_mR_DJ mashups.
It appears to be a song on the common theme of sacrificing someone you love in exchange for worldly success -- reportedly the standard way of "selling one's soul to the devil" in the entertainment world. The repeated line "Living your life cutthroat" is accompanied in the video by appropriate gestures, suggesting Charlie Kirk.
I know it's just a song, but lead singer Dan Reynolds (a former Mormon, by the way) definitely has the physiognomy for the role.
The line "You're a natural" has appeared here before, in "Death to the natural man" (August 2025).
Random /x/ threads are still working for me, so I'm going to keep pumping that well.
Today I got a 2014 "Chaos Magick General" thread, which, unsurprisingly, had a form of the Star of Chaos as the lead image:
In the center of the Star is a skull. The right side is white with a black eye socket, and the left side is black with a white eye socket. This theme of a dark right eye and a bright left eye has turned up here before -- mostly in the form of Doctor Octopus's spectacles, but in "A spider recreates a scene from a Spider-Man movie" (May 16), the same pattern was seen in a spider.
What spiders and octopuses have in common is their eight appendages, corresponding to the eight arrows radiating out from the skull in the Star of Chaos image, which could be seen as a stylized spider or octopus. The circle around the skull also makes it look something like a spider's web, and also like the eight-spoked Wheel of Fortune.
Skull spiders have appeared here before. In "Skeletor, hieroglyphic-bearing arthropods, and the Judgement" (March 2024), I mention I've mention some "black-and-yellow garden spiders" I've seen "in North Carolina with markings that make the cephalothorax look like a death's-head."
A skull octopus -- though one with only six arms -- has also been in the sync stream, in the form of the Hydra logo from Marvel:
Coming back to the /x/ thread, the second post in the thread had this image:
It's a baby in a white hood playing the role of Gandalf in his confrontation with the Balrog. In yesterday's post "A very pale White guy in a Phrygian cap," I compared a statue of Mithras killing a bull to Gandalf (Mithrandir) confronting the Balrog. The white Phrygian cap worn by Mithras in the statue is not unlike the baby's hood.
Just now, thinking of Gandalf's name Mithrandir, I realized that I was signing to myself, to the tune of "Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer":
They never let Mithrandir
Join in any randir games
At first I dismissed this as meaningless, but then I realized that randir is composed of ran "wander" and dir "man," and that the dir-deer connection has already been made by Bill -- for example, in interpreting a dream of his about deer.
Coming back to the bright and dark eyes, in a May 21 comment on "Rumi, Wanderjahre, Area 51, 666 phone numbers," Bill brings in this car wash logo, which "comes across as having that same imagery of one light and one dark eye":
This morning I went way out into the boonies, on roads I'd never been on before, and I ran across this car wash:
The two eyes aren't dark and bright per se, but a car wash logo featuring mismatched eyes still seems like a sync hit. Dr. Wash's very large mustache made me think of Dr. Robotnik as portrayed by Jim Carrey, and one of the first results I got on an image search showed him with the right lens of his goggles "darkened."
As a live-action version of a cartoon supervillain with a doctorate, Carrey's Robotnik has a certain amount in common with Alfred Molina's Doctor Octopus.
When I looked up Alfred Molina just now I found that his latest film credit is another octopus role -- the voice of a literal octopus in Remarkably Bright Creatures, based on the novel of the same name, which I saw someone reading in a cafe back in January ("Gone with the wind from the house of leaves"). In "Turn around, bright eyes" (February 2), I juxtaposed a photo of the cover of the novel with that still of Alfred Molina as Doc Ock with the bright and dark lenses. The book cover does indicate that the novel is going to be adapted for Netflix, but I never followed that up and had no idea until today that Alfred Molina had been cast in the role of the octopus. I guess he does have more octopus-related experience than most actors in Hollywood.
