Ixnay on the No sé

The "name" Snow Snow -- attributed by one of the other characters to Guy Pearce's character in the 2012 Luc Besson movie Lockout -- has played an important role in the currently active synchronicity-stream. In particular, I've connected it with two movies released shortly before: 50/50 and The Adventures of Tintin -- the common feature being the doubling of the element tin/Sn/50. This also ties in with what started the current stream: linking an episode from the Tintin book Prisoners of the Sun with a story about the Mormon leader Lorenzo Snow.

The Latin word for "snow" is nix. This made me think of the line "'Nix, nix!' said the nix" -- which I was pretty sure was from one of the Piers Anthony novels I read as a child. Looking it up on Google Books, I find it comes from Night Mare, in which a nix (water sprite) repeatedly uses the magic words "nix, nix" to transform water into ice and back again.

They plunged into the water. "Nix, nix!" the nix cried. "You shall not pass without the word! I will freeze your tracks!" He pointed -- and the water abruptly congealed about Imbri's legs.

Imbri stopped, perforce. She stood knee-deep in ice! The nix did have power to stop her progress.

"What do you think of that, nag?" the nix demanded with insolent satisfaction.

All Xanth novels are pun-centric, and here Anthony combines three meanings of nix: a water sprite, dated slang for "no," and frozen water. (I'm not sure if Anthony was consciously aware that nix means "snow"; if he were, surely he would have used that word instead of ice.) A water creature called some variation on nix is universal across Germanic languages and folklores; the Old High German form, nihhus, was also used to refer to the crocodile.

"Snow Snow" is Guy Pearce. "Nix, nix"  is from Piers Anthony. This made me think of the 2013 cli-fi movie Snowpiercer; I slept through most of it, but I do remember that it's about people who live on a train that never stops.

The "Imbri" in the passage I have quoted is the magical horse Mare Imbrium, the titular night mare. This is another triple pun: nightmare, mare as female horse, and mare (plural maria) as lunar "sea." The real name of the "Snow Snow" character in Lockout is Marion Snow -- suggesting a lunar "Sea of Snow" as a counterpart to Mare Imbrium, the Sea of Rain.

The night mare, called "nag" by the nix, made me think of the minstrel song "Gwine to Run All Night" -- about, as you might have guessed, horses that (like the never-stopping train in Snowpiercer) are going to run all night and all day.

De Camptown ladies sing dis song -- Doo-dah! doo-dah!

De Camp-town race-track five miles long -- Oh! doo-dah day!

I come down dah wid my hat caved in -- Doo-dah! doo-dah!

I go back home wid a pocket full of tin --Oh! doo-dah day!

Gwine to run all night!

Gwine to run all day!

I’ll bet my money on de bob-tail nag --

Somebody bet on de bay.

There's a reference to "tin" in the first verse, right after a mention of a caved-in hat. This made me think of the They Might Be Giants song "Nothing's Gonna Change My Clothes," which begins with these lines.

All the people are so happy now, their heads are cavin' in

I'm glad they are a snowman with protective rubber skin

Here, caved-in heads are associated with snow, and we have already linked snow to tin.

Later in "Gwine to Run All Night," the horses that run all night and all day are compared to a train, again suggesting Snowpiercer.

Den fly along like a rail-road car -- Doo-dah! doo-dah!

Runnin’ a race wid a shootin’ star -- Oh! doo-dah-day!

Note that The Shooting Star is the name of another Tintin book.

The horse-train connection is reinforced by the cover art of Night Mare, which shows the front half of a horse emerging from a wall, an image reminiscent of Magritte's Time Transfixed.

Nix is the most heavily Pig-Latined word in the English language -- so much so that the Pig Latin form is probably now more common than the original! People still occasionally say, "Ixnay on the . . .," but no one ever says, "Nix on the . . . ."

Pig Latin for "snow" would be owsnay. But supposing your Pig Latin were a little rusty, you might make the amateur mistake of transposing only the first latter rather than the entire onset, yielding nowsay -- pronounced just like the Spanish No sé, "I don't know." This Spanish expression is prominently featured in Prisoners of the Sun.