Quoth that Black Bird, "Not Again!"

If you look up at that rubric that tops this post, you'll find that it's a word-for-word copy of a bit from Arthur Gordon Pym's famous composition "That Black Bird," which notoriously abstains from using a particular symbol -- viz., our fifth Latin glyph. In that way it is similar to this introductory paragraph. I should point out, though, that Pym's black bird was a sort of corvid, similar to a crow but for its croaking call which contrasts with a crow's harsh shout of "Caw!" Ours isn't that kind of bird. This post is actually about syncs having to do with a small carnivorous raptor, a hunting bird, known for its astonishingly swift flight and its sharp talons -- in a word, a falcon.

Shall I try to do all of this post this way, too, from start to finish, not just that initial paragraph? Okay, why not. I'll do it, although it might occasionally call for odd wording, paraphrasing quotations, or using an alias to talk about a particular famous individual. This blog has got smart fans, so I trust you won't find it too hard to follow. Anyway, it's just a sync post.

Bill Wright just did a post, "Dark Falcon," about a kit of plastic building bricks his son just bought -- you know, from that famous Danish company. It's a Star Wars kit, but with a twist: it flips tradition around -- making Jar Jar Binks into a Sith Lord known as "Darth Jar Jar," turning Anakin into a good guy in snowy garb (not black as in all Star Wars films), and going so far as to cast Anakin's son not as a knight or warrior but as a sort of surf bum. (Bill says a J. J. Abrams Star Wars film did that, too, but I wouldn't know about that, as I didn't watch any of that "third trilogy" shit.) Han Solo was originally a good guy, but I think this kit flips that, too, which is why Han's ship is now a "dark" Falcon. Anyway, this is a photo of Bill's son's brick kit. Its box has that taboo glyph on it, but words in a photograph don't count, right?

I, too, bought a lot of plastic Danish bricks as a young child, but chronologically first out of all that stuff I bought was this kit:

What is it with Danish bricks and "black" or "dark" falcons? I bought that knight kit long ago, and Bill's son bought that Star Wars kit just now, but what strikingly similar branding! Why is that bird-color combination so popular among staff at Scandinavian toy corporations? It’s curious.

You know that rap artist from Atlanta, who did such albums as Graduation and Donda, who was Kim Kardashian's husband for a bit, who Barack Obama said was a jackass for dissing Taylor Swift at an awards show on MTV, and who had a minor scandal about posting a Star of David with a swastika in it on a major social platform, incurring (for that among additional things) accusations of anti-Judaism? "Saint Pablo"? That guy. This bit coming up is about him, just so you'll know who I'm talking about. (It’s slightly scary just how many random facts I turn out to know about him, isn’t it?)

So what color is this rap star’s skin, and what is his racial background? His skin is dark, and that’s on account of his family originating in Africa. This chap is a soi-disant individual of color, or what, according to Philip Roth's Human Stain (an award-winning work of fiction with a film adaptation starring an all-Caucasian actor, Sir Anthony Hopkins, as a biracial chap, a mulatto, which indubitably wouldn’t fly in today’s world), racists would call a "spook," although I don’t know any racists who actually talk that way. (If you think that at this point I’m about to throw out that most taboo of all words, don’t worry. I can’t put that word in this post without violating my own constraint, or not with a hard r, anyway.) To cut a long story short, what I’m driving at is this: This guy I’m talking about is Black.

Now if you'll click in that box to look for things on this blog and put in that word, falcon, you'll find this old post linking Saint Pablo (who is Black) to an old North African god with a falcon's noggin. This falcon god also had to do with a particular compass point -- that point by which our hip-hop icon's family is known. Plus, Atlanta, city of Saint Pablo's birth, has an NFL gridiron football club known as Falcons, with a raptor of that sort as a mascot. Click to look at that old post for additional information on links of this kind.

So black and falcon go hand in hand, not just now but in that past post, too, which isn't about plastic Danish building bricks at all.

Warning: If you want to add your bit to this post by typing in a form and clicking "Publish," you must follow this post's linguistic taboo and abstain from using that fifth Latin glyph. If you slip up and I catch it, I will put it in spam so that nobody can look at it.