A sync on outgrowing "fun"

I was writing something (musings triggered by Irish Papist's post "A Thought on Atheists Returning to the Faith," which may or may not end up being posted here in some form) and had just completed the following paragraph:

In general, people make major life changes because their needs and priorities change, not because they suddenly realize that those same old needs and priorities would be better served by a completely different lifestyle. Young people are focused on fun, and then they settle down -- not because they finally figure out that settling down is more fun, but because fun is no longer their highest priority.

After finishing that paragraph, I decided to take a break and check my blogroll, where I found a new post from Laura Wood called "Is Old Age for Fun or Wisdom?"

Stuff I drew when I was four

From May 1983, a picture of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac being interrupted by an angel. Abraham seems just a little too happy about what he's about to do, and the ram fated to take Isaac's place looks blissfully unaware of its fate. I'm not sure what upper right part of the drawing represents.

Also from May 1983, a picture of Moses with the Stone Tables, the Golden Calf, and a frog (one of the ten plagues). The waves on either side of Moses might represent the parting of the Red Sea. The upper waves could be red as a literal depiction of the "Red" Sea, or they could represent the first plague, when Moses turned the Nile to blood. I'm not sure who the redhead is -- perhaps either God or Moses atop Mount Sinai?

In case you can't read them clearly, here are the Ten Commandments:

After those biblical pieces, one on a more secular theme: a cat with balls on its "tall" (June 1983).

And finally, from February 1984, the reason I was going through these old drawings in the first place: a depiction of the Roaring Dragon of Redrose.

Snake physiognomy

My last post, "Roses, sneezes, robbers, and falling down flat," led me back to my 2018 post "Was the Big Bad Wolf in fact a bear?" When I reread that brief post, at the end were links to three other posts of mine that Wordpress deemed "related," and I clicked on one of them, "The strange appropriateness of snakes' faces," in which I wondered how to explain the fact that highly venomous viperid snakes look mean and dangerous, while harmless colubrid snakes look friendly and cute. Why should a snake's face just happen so transparently to reflect its nature?

I reread that old post, and the comments from Bruce and Serhei, but I had no answer for the question in 2018, and I have no answer now. I thought about it a bit more and then turned to grading homework. On the very first page I checked, the second sentence -- written to demonstrate understanding of the word distinguish by using it correctly in a sentence -- was this:

You can distinguish a poisonous snake from a harmless one by looking at its eyes and the shape of its head.

Some of the rules for recognizing poisonous snakes are just arbitrary things you have to memorize -- "red touch yellow, kill a fellow; red touch black, poison lack" (i.e., a snake that obeys the rule of tincture should be considered armed and dangerous) -- but it still strikes me as remarkable that nothing so arbitrary is required in the vast majority of cases. By far the best rule of thumb is: Just look at it's face; if it looks like it can kill you, it probably can.

Roses, sneezes, robbers, and falling down flat

At 8:34 a.m. yesterday, I posted "They blew, and the wall fell down flat," which included this picture of the Big Bad Wolf blowing down the House of Sticks and connected it with the story of the fall of Jericho, in which "the priests blew with the trumpets . . . and the wall fell down flat" (Joshua 6:20).

At 6:30 p.m. the same day, WanderingGondola left a comment on my post "Pizza Hut is one of this blog's top ten referrers," drawing attention to the fact that Rosetta Stone was also on the list of top referrers and calling it "a little synchy," presumably referring to the Rose Stone that is so central to Bill's story.

This triggered a vague memory of having read a book written by someone called Rosetta Stone when I was a child. Looking it up, I found that it was a pseudonym used by Dr. Seuss only once: for the book Because a Little Bug Went Ka-Choo!

This is a sort of "butterfly effect" book, where the bug's sneeze starts a chain of cause-and-effect that eventually leads to -- well, this (click to enlarge for the full effect).

Note that, in addition to the author's Rosetta Stone pseudonym, the cover also features a flower with a yellow center and five pink petals -- something that could easily be a wild rose.

Revisiting Because a Little Bug Went Ka-Choo! made me realize that that Big Bad Wolf picture sort of looks like the wolf is sneezing, too. Roses and children's books about sneezing and the phrase "fell down flat" all came together to remind me of another childhood favorite: Robert the Rose Horse.

Robert is allergic to roses, which make him sneeze, and every time he sneezes the description of the aftermath always ends by saying that someone or something "fell down flat." That exact phrase -- the same one I highlighted in my Big Bad Wolf post -- appears five times in Robert the Rose Horse.

In the end, Robert saves the day when he sees some men robbing a bank, quickly finds a rose, and sneezes them flat.

My parents used to read this story to me when I was extremely young, and I remember being somewhat confused by the similarity of the name Robert and the word robber. They sounded the same to me, and I couldn't understand why, if the robbers were the bad guys, the good horse was also called Robber.

The other "robber" book I remember from my childhood is the one I mentioned back in 2021 in "I don't think that's what 'one another' means," the one with the dragon that says, with his Pilate-like speech impediment, "Wace! Wun! Wobbers be done! The tewwible dwagon is here!" I never knew the title of the book (having been much too young to notice such things) and in the past have scoured the Internet in vain for any hint of its existence. Today, though, I decided to give it one more college try and finally got a lead!

I had thought of that book only because it features "robbers." I didn't know there was any rose connection. Here, though, is a comment by Rose Embolism, addressed to Lenora Rose, identifying the book as The Roaring Dragon of Redrose. Clicking the link, I found that this is indeed the book I remember from my earliest childhood:

I still can't find a scan of the book itself -- it's not on archive.org or Anna's or Google Books -- but just finding the cover and the title has made me very happy.

I think I may still have some drawings of the titular dragon which I made way back then. If so, I'll hunt them down and add them to this post.

Note added: Right after publishing the above, I tutored a junior high student in writing. Giving a verbal description of information shown in a line graph, she had written that "the percentage fell down slowly but [then] rised a little." I explained that "fall down" usually refers to things physically falling; for a quantity, "fell" or "went down" is more appropriate. I also reminded her that the verb rise has an irregular past tense, and she said, "Oh, that's right! It's rose."

Only later did I realize that both "fell down" and "rose" were synchronistically relevant to this post.

Second note added: Even though I'd just searched Anna's hours ago, I decided to try one more time. This time I used a shorter prompt, just "roaring dragon" in quotes, and I found it! The reason I'd missed it before is that someone had mistyped the title.

While the cover image clearly says Redrose, the title in the database has redhorse. Since I had just been thinking of this book in connection with a Rose Horse, the corruption of rose into horse is an additional sync.

Third note added: In both Robert the Rose Horse and The Roaring Dragon of Redrose, a central plot point is the main character's attempt to find a job in a human town.

The names Robert and Rodrigo are also related. The initial Ro- comes from the same Germanic root, meaning "fame, glory," in each case.

Final note added: As promised . . .

Fat Lion and Chip Monk

The August 26 Barnhardt Meme Barrage hits on two of our themes:

Fat Lion: "Terry the giant Irishman critiques my supposed literary preferences"

Chip Monks: "Round leaves and chip monks" and passim

They blew, and the wall fell down flat

This morning, I was preparing a simple vocabulary quiz for some young children and, as I often do when I'm doing something that doesn't require much brain work, listening to an audio version of the Bible.

This particular quiz was focused on various ways of spelling the "long o" sound. I had a list of target words, which I randomized and then went through one at a time, creating for each a sentence with that word blanked out and a picture to elicit the missing word. I came to the word blow at the same time that the Bible recording did -- just as it said, "the priests shall blow with the trumpets" (Joshua 6:4).

I searched Google for a suitable image to use. First I searched for pictures of someone blowing out the candles on a birthday cake, but I couldn't find any that I liked. Then I suddenly had a different idea: Why not a picture of the Big Bad Wolf blowing down one of the Three Little Pigs' houses? I found a suitable picture and cropped it:

At the very moment I pasted the above image into my document, the Bible recording said, "the wall fell down flat" (Joshua 6:20).

I'm not sure how much of a sync this is. I'm of course quite familiar with the story of the fall of Jericho and knew that the wall was going to fall down flat, so it's quite likely that the story is what subconsciously suggested a picture of blowing a house down rather than blowing out a candle. Anyway, I note it here in case anything should develop from it.

Pizza Hut is one of this blog's top ten referrers

Blogger's stats are getting more and more bizarre. Here's their list of my top referrers in the past week:

It's possible that I'm actually getting "traffic" -- presumably from fake-intelligence systems based there -- from Brazil, Vietnam, Singapore, and Hong Kong. It's not possible that anyone is coming here by clicking links on the Pizza Hut and Coca-Cola websites. That's just not something that's happening.

Does anyone have a theory as to what's going on? I'm having a hard time imagining how even bots could make it look like they were coming here via Pizza Hut.

The King of Pop

I've been discussing Michael Jackson with an email correspondent, and the other day his title made me think of another "King of Pop" -- Bob Black, maker of Bob's Black Banana Pop. This was a fictional character and product, developed mostly by one of my brothers in childhood, with considerable input from other siblings and myself. There are no written stories about Bob; his is an oral tradition.

Bob's original Banana Pop was yellow and was marketed with the slogan "Like a fountain of gold." Later the spinoff product Bob's Black was developed and became so popular that it completely eclipsed the original. Bob changed his last name to Black to more fully identify himself with his product. Bob's Black was made with only the finest Bellyking bananas -- a detail that came from a dream of mine in which a supermarket offered four different types of banana, called John, Jane, Bellyking, and Native Kenjo.

The advertising jingle for Bob's Black ran as follows:

Like a fountain of crude

Like a fountain of crude

But less than a dollar

It helps you be rude

Like a fountain of crude

Like a fountain of crude

It's Bob's Nanner Collar

To drink with your food

This was derived from an earlier "fountain of gold" jingle, which in turn was based on a Pogo comic strip in which the characters try to come up with a jingle to sell Kokomo Cola, only to realize that it will only rhyme if cola is pronounced as collar.

More precious than gold

But less than a dollar

Most freshest and cold

Is Kokomo Cola

"It helps you be rude" was a reference to how drinking Bob's Black will make you burp. "Like a fountain of crude" was an adaptation of the earlier slogan, modified to fit a product that was black rather than gold. Thinking about it now, though, I'm reminded of the Flatt and Scruggs bluegrass song "The Ballad of Jed Clampett," which I used to play on the banjo. It was written as a theme song for the sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies, which I've never watched. The opening verse is:

Come and listen to a story 'bout a man named Jed

Poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed

Then one day, he was shooting at some food

And up through the ground come a bubbling crude

Oil that is, black gold, Texas tea

After Yogi Berra came up in "That old 'Fire and Ice' sync," I searched for a list of famous Yogi Berra quotes. For some reason, one of these was on IMDb, where a sidebar suggested I might be interested in a list of celebrities that died in 2015 (the year of Berra's own death).

The photo accompanying that "Celebrities That Died in 2015" caught my eye. I thought she looked rather striking but had no idea who she was. I clicked through and found that she is an actress best known for her role in The Beverly Hillbillies.

Her surname, Douglas, means "black stream" and thus ties in with the "fountain of crude."

When I searched for photos of Donna Douglas, one of the first results was this one, which syncs with Anglin's latest bit of absurdist brilliance:

I guess that a soft drink that compares itself to petroleum is a link back to the other King of Pop, via the 1980s schoolyard rhyme:

I pledge allegiance to the flag

Michael Jackson is a fag

Coca-Cola filled him up

Now he’s drinking Seven Up

Seven Up has no caffeine

Now he’s drinking gasoline

Note added: That Frankie and Johnny movie that Donna Douglas was in stars Elvis Presley (another musical "King"), and the poster has an Ace of Hearts and snake eyes.

That old "Fire and Ice" sync

My 2019 post "Fire and ice" tells the story, insofar as I could remember it, of the first synchronicity ever to get my attention. It involved coming across the same four lines from Robert Frost's poem "Fire and Ice" twice within the space of an hour -- once in a sermon on chastity and once in a popular science book. At the time of that post, I thought that I might have been around 12 years old and that the book might have been one of Carl Sagan's, but I couldn't remember very clearly. However, I'm now confident that I've found the two documents that figured in the sync. It wasn't Sagan, and I wasn't 12.

The sermon was "Of Souls, Symbols, and Sacraments," a speech delivered by Jeffrey R. Holland on January 12, 1988, at Brigham Young University, of which institution he was at that time the president. Here is where he first quotes Frost:

May I begin with half of a nine-line poem by Robert Frost. (The other half is worth a sermon also, but it will have to wait for another day.) Here are the first four lines of Frost’s “Fire and Ice.”

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.

A second, less poetic but more specific opinion is offered by the writer of Proverbs:

Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?

Can one go upon hot coals, and his feet not be burned? . . .

But whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding: he that doeth it destroyeth his own soul.

A wound and dishonour shall he get; and his reproach shall not be wiped away. [Proverbs 6:27–33]

In getting at the doctrinal seriousness, why is this matter of sexual relationships so severe that fire is almost always the metaphor, with passion pictured vividly in flames? What is there in the potentially hurtful heat of this that leaves one’s soul—or perhaps the whole world, according to Frost—destroyed, if that flame is left unchecked and those passions unrestrained? . . .

Notice that the Frost quote is immediately followed by a second quote, described as "less poetic" and "by the writer of Proverbs." This will be relevant later.

Later in the speech, Holland quotes the same four lines of Frost once more:

Someday, somewhere, ­sometime the morally unclean will, until they repent, pray like the rich man, wishing Lazarus to “dip . . . his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame” (Luke 16:24).

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

The popular science book was, it turns out, Hyperspace by Michio Kaku, published on March 24, 1994, just nine days after my 15th birthday. The four lines from Frost serve as an epigraph to the 14th chapter:

As in the Holland speech, Frost is immediately followed by a second quote, in prose, in this case Yogi Berra's "It ain't over 'til it's over." The legacy of Yogi Berra is quite similar to that of the authors of Proverbs: a collection of short, memorable sayings.

I clearly wasn't 12 when this sync occurred. Given my reading habits at the time, I almost certainly would have read Hyperspace as soon as it was available at the local public library, so probably in 1994, when I was 15 years old. That's a reasonable time for me to have read Holland's speech, too. Jeffrey R. Holland became a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles -- one of the CJCLDS's top 15 leaders worldwide -- on June 23, 1994, just two months after Hyperspace was published. That would be a natural time for people to be reading and recommending old speeches by Jeffrey R. Holland, such as "Of Souls, Symbols, and Sacraments."

The only remaining question mark is how I came to read Holland and Kaku within an hour of each other. My family was quite strict about Sabbath observance, and I wouldn't have been reading a secular book like Hyperspace on a Sunday -- but I find it hard to imagine myself reading a sermon on chastity on any other day of the week! My best guess is that we read Holland's speech, or part of it, in early-morning seminary on a weekday. Since I was at that time following a rather loose "homeschooling" program that mostly consisted of just reading whatever I wanted, I might easily have come home from a Very Special Lesson on chastity in early-morning seminary and turned immediately to a pop-sci book for "school." (Actually, everybody else should be putting that word in scare-quotes. School as "leisure" is etymologically correct.) That's my best guess as to what happened.

Or perhaps the "within an hour" bit was misremembered, just as I'd misremembered by age at the time. Certainly it was a very short interval that made the coincidence seem impossible.

What prompted my revisiting of this old Frost sync was the more recent Frost sync documented in "The woods are lovely, dark and deep." Interestingly, this more recent sync also involves someone quoting only four lines of a longer poem by Frost. This quotation was in a movie whose Chinese name translates to Nine Shots. Holland makes a point of saying that the Frost poem he is quoting is nine lines in length, and Hyperspace was published nine days after my birthday.

Good Morning Mr. Zip-Zip-Zip!

I woke up with this old song in my head. No idea where it came from. I associate it with my old Scoutmaster (“Mr. Graff from the FBI”) and haven’t heard or thought of it since my Scouting days.

Back then I had long hair and a beard. Today my hair is cut just as short as his.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep

Yesterday at around 4:00 p.m. I was teaching English vocabulary to some junior high students when this example sentence from the vocabulary textbook caught my eye:

"Robert came to see me on a snowy evening." Obviously whoever wrote this sentence was inspired by Robert Frost's famous poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." The combination of the name Robert and the exact phrase "on a snowy evening" can hardly be a coincidence.

Then later that evening my misreading of my own post title led to the post "Dyed White and Vanya Moroz," which prominently features people named Frost -- Jack Frost and the Russian figure of Father Frost. This made me think again of Robert Frost and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." Even though I'm pretty sure I can recite it from memory, I looked the poem up online and read it.

At around 3:00 this afternoon, my wife said there was a really good documentary on TV and she wanted to watch it with me. This is something that very rarely happens, as she understands that I'm not a TV watcher. It was a Taiwanese film called 九槍, about a Vietnamese illegal alien who was shot nine times by Taiwanese police while he was attempting to steal a cop car while naked and high on drugs. The film name could be translated directly as Nine Shots, but for some reason the English name of the film is instead And Miles to Go Before I Sleep -- that is, the repeated final line of "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."

Films are often renamed in translation, but that's a very strange choice. The atmosphere and content of the documentary have absolutely nothing in common with Frost's poem except that the shooting takes place in a wooded area. At the very end, just before the credits roll, the final stanza of Frost's poem appears on the screen, in both the original English and a Chinese translation:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

That's a pretty impressive little cluster of syncs, I think. First Robert and "on a snowy evening"; then Frost; and finally "and miles to go before I sleep" -- references to each of the poet's names and to two different parts of his poem -- and all within a 24-hour period.

Dyed White and Vanya Moroz

Opening my blog dashboard, I saw the name of my most recent post, "Dyed white," and for some reason spontaneously misread the first word as if it were not the English past participle of dye but rather a transliteration of the Russian дед ("grandpa"), with the ye pronounced as in yes. My main association with that Russian word is Дед Мороз, usually Englished as Father Frost (though literally "grandfather"), who is the Russian version of Santa Claus. This corresponds somewhat to "Dyed White," since frost is white.

This tendency for English-speakers to read ye as a "long i" sound makes it difficult to transliterate Russian names in an intuitive way. Ded Moroz is the usual transliteration now, but a reader ignorant of Russian would naturally pronounce that as dead, without the palatalization. However, Dyed is liable to be pronounced as died. One error of this type I remember from my early childhood: My father was reading a bedtime story, and when he came to the name Pyetr -- obviously meant to be Петр, a form of the name Peter (more usually Пётр in Russian) -- he read the first syllable as pie, making the name rhyme with lighter. Now, with the connection between Peter and pie firmly established, that old error has retroactively become a sync.

Among English speakers, the personification of frost is Jack Frost, suggesting that Dyed White could be one of the four Jacks or Knaves. Which one, though? Cheek Holder is the natural choice, since he has already been linked to Santa Claus and thus indirectly to Dyed Moroz. However, the Russian context suggests another possibility. Jack is a diminutive for John, of which the Russian form is Ivan. Thus, using the common diminutive for Ivan, we arrive at Vanya Moroz as the Russian "translation" of Jack Frost. The significance of the name Vanya is twofold. First, it is the name of the title character, played by Wallace Shawn (Vizzini), in the film Vanya on 42nd Street. Bill has identified Vizzini as a symbol of Pharazon. More obviously, Vanya is a name straight out of Tolkien -- any of the 14 Vanyar, one of the kindreds of the Eldar. The king of the Vanyar, and thus the Vanya par excellence, was Ingwe. At one point Bill identified Ingwe with Pharazon and Peter. Jack Frost is also traditionally responsible for painting the leaves different colors in autumn, imagery which we have come to associate with Humpty Dumpty and his "great fall." So, for multiple reasons, Dyed White seems more likely to be Fudge Boy than Cheek Holder.

If the surnames Frost and White are interchangeable, Jack Frost or Vanya Moroz could also be Vanya White -- a name obviously suggestive of Vanna White, cohost with Pat Sajak of the game show Wheel of Fortune. This show and its hosts have come up repeatedly in syncs, including in the comments on "Igxuhp zvmwqfb Jack dry stolen."

After typing most of the above, I went into the shoe room of my school, where last year the labels on the cubbies formed the message "Leo, Egbert, Peter." Leo no longer studies here, and Egbert's name has for some reason been moved to another shelf, so two names are now all alone in that area: Peter and Ivan.

Since my musings on Dyed White led me both to Pyetr/Peter and to Vanya/Ivan, this seems significant.

One more thing: The Mxyztplk in me can't help but notice that the first o in Moroz, because it precedes a stressed syllable, is actually pronounced as a -- making it the Book of Mormon name Zoram spelled backwards. I've never given that character much thought, but his role as keeper of the keys suggests a possible link to Peter. He starts off as a servant of the wicked Laban (whose name means "white") but becomes a true friend to Nephi.

Dyed white

On the road this morning, I passed a real estate agency which had a picture like this prominently displayed. (I didn't take a photo; this is a similar image I found online.)

The agency is called Pacific Realtor. The Chinese word for "ocean," which is part of the name Pacific (太平洋), sounds the same as the word for "sheep" (羊), which is why their mascot is a sheep. The second character in the two-character word "sun" (太陽) is another homophone -- pronounced the same as "ocean" and "sheep" -- and so this sheep's name is Little Sun, but with the last character written as "sheep" (小太羊). I guess this sheep's solar nature is why its wool is red (though golden fleece would have been a more natural choice, I would have thought).

Anyway, it caught my eye for two reasons: First, it's a farm animal holding a golden cup, suggesting that ridiculous book about farm animals finding the Holy Grail (see "The modified Book of the Lamb"). Second, it's another link to that line from Isaiah about sins "red like crimson" becoming "as wool" (see "Shaved by Tessa while contemplating a Rose or Lotus"). Just last night, Bill referenced this again in a comment about fuller's soap.

Shortly after seeing the sheep with the red wool, I noticed that the motorcyclist in front of me was wearing a T-shirt that said "The Last Supper" in big letters. Under that was a black-and-white version of Leonardo's famous painting by that name, and under that was some smaller text I couldn't read. When we stopped at a red light, I got close enough to make it out: "Christ loved her more than any disciple."

I recognized that as a quote from one of the Gnostic gospels about Jesus' special love for Mary Magdalene -- but what does that have to do with the Last Supper? Maybe a reference to the theory that the Beloved Disciple -- traditionally "John" -- was actually Mary Magdalene, represented as male as a way of concealing her true identity. Just yesterday I was discussing in email the theory (not my own) that the Seer of 2 Nephi 3, normally understood to be Joseph Smith, might actually be a woman despite being portrayed as male in the Book of Mormon, so that's something of a sync.

When I looked up the reference, I found that it is in the Gospel of Philip, and that the immediate context is relevant to the idea of brightly colored sins being made white. (The bracketed ellipses are lacunae in the text.)

The Lord went into the dye works of Levi. He took seventy-two different colors and threw them into the vat. He took them out all white. And he said, "Even so has the Son of Man come as a dyer."

As for the Wisdom who is called "the barren," she is the mother of the angels. And the companion of the [...] Mary Magdalene. [...] loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often on her mouth. The rest of the disciples [...]. They said to him "Why do you love her more than all of us?" The Savior answered and said to them,"Why do I not love you like her? When a blind man and one who sees are both together in darkness, they are no different from one another. When the light comes, then he who sees will see the light, and he who is blind will remain in darkness."

The Smith and the Waster

I woke up this morning with the phrase "Joseph the Smith" in my mind. This seemed to be analogous to the title of James E. Talmage's book Jesus the Christ, a Mormon classic, the insertion of the definite article serving to emphasize that Christ is not Jesus' last name but rather a title descriptive of his role and mission. The implication, then, is that the Prophet's surname Smith can also be interpreted in that way. I have sometimes heard Mormons interpret this verse from Isaiah as a reference to the Prophet:

Behold, I have created the smith that bloweth the coals in the fire, and that bringeth forth an instrument for his work; and I have created the waster to destroy (Isa. 54:16).

The idea is that this refers to Joseph Smith's "restoration" of Christianity from smoldering coals to a blazing fire, and that the instrument he brings forth is the Book of Mormon. The next bit, about "the waster to destroy," is passed over in silence. Thinking of it now, though, I thought of the Waster as Odysseus and of the prayer of Polyphemus, the blinded Cyclops, against him:

Poseidon, girdler of the earth, god of the azure hair, --

My father, if a father's name thou ownest, hear my prayer:

Grant that this layer waste of towns, who boasts himself to be

Laertes' son, the Ithacan, his home may never see.

Then I remembered that Du Cane's Odyssey has come up on this blog before, and in connection with Joseph as the Smith. This was in "Gilgamesh was an elven king," where this slightly modified passage from Du Cane -- modified to address Vulcan by his title Smith rather than by name -- was interpreted as possibly a reference to Joseph the Prophet.

O Smith, declared th' earth-shaking god:

Should Mars the debt refuse,

Thou hast my word that I will pay

To thee thy lawful dues.

When I was searching my blog for that post, though, the first result was "Swords of Mars, two-mouthed chameleon-cat-men, and kings' stories engraved on stones," which begins thus:

Thomas B. Marsh has been in the sync stream, and it occurred to me that, since the h in Thomas is silent -- i.e., Thomas = Tomas -- we could also remove the h from Marsh, yielding Mars.

Thomas B. Marsh has been identified with Peter and Pharazon. This character has also been symbolically linked to Odysseus -- particularly in connection with Dante's tale of his last voyage, where he attempted to sail west to an island (Purgatory) forbidden to mortals. Now we have Mars as a possible reference to this figure as well. Mars, as war god, is also a "layer waste of towns."

The context of the "O Smith" quote is that Poseidon is attempting to negotiate the release of Mars, who has been caught in bed with Aphrodite and put in chains by Vulcan. (In this haphazard mixture of Greek and Roman names for these characters I follow Du Cane.)

Poseidon only, of them all, from merriment refrained,

Nor ceased he to the craftsman famed his earnest prayer to make,

That he his prisoner would unbind, and wingèd words he spake:

"Loose him, and I, as thou dost bid, myself will surety stand,

That he before th' immortal gods shall pay thy just demand."

I recently alluded to this very episode in the Odyssey, in the comments on "Death to the natural man." In reference to the sword as a cross, I quoted these lines of Yeats and explained that the goddess mentioned was Venus/Aphrodite:

The sword's a cross; thereon He died:

On breast of Mars the goddess sighed.

Poseidon as "th' earth-shaking god" has also been in the sync stream fairly recently, in the post "Then we’ll do an earthquake. That’s Israel attacking Athene." In the dream reported in that post, I imagined Bill interpreting the title line by saying "Who could 'do an earthquake' but Poseidon, the god of Atlantis and founder of their dynasty?" and thus seeing in it a reference to Pharazon's assault on Aman, analogous to the Atlanteans' attack on Athens in Plato.

If Odysseus and Mars are symbolically the same character here, it is interesting that one Du Cane quote has the Cyclops praying for Poseidon to punish Odysseus, while the other has Poseidon asking Vulcan to release Mars. In Hesiod and elsewhere, the Cyclopes are closely associated with Hephaestus (Vulcan) and are his assistants in smith-work. Homer himself does not make this connection, but we can nevertheless think of Polyphemus as symbolically speaking for Vulcan. We thus have the same three characters in either scene: Mars-Odysseus (Pharazon), Vulcan-Polyphemus, and Poseidon. The question is who is represented by the latter two.

I dreamt of drawing pigeons all night

I had a very long dream in which I was doing minimalist drawings of pigeons in a sketch book. I was primarily using a black fountain pen, drawing little detail but trying to get the shapes perfect and exactly like real pigeons seen from a variety of angles. I also used a bit of blue-gray watercolor, very sparingly, just enough to add a suggestion of solidity in three dimensions. There were no actual pigeons to serve as models; I was drawing from memory or imagination.

This continued for what felt like a great many hours. I never got tired of it. I could have gone on for days.

Fruit headache

In the only fragment I can remember of last night’s dreams, someone showed me a small jar of pills and said that they were very effective “for a fruit headache.”

And I thought, Wow, these guys are so goody-two-shoes that they don’t even eat ice cream. They get fruit headaches!

Malcolm the Tenth

My August 14 post "Death to the natural man" emphasizes the Roman numeral X on the Ten of Swords card and the fact that it, like the swords, has the form of a cross.

Last night I had a music-based dream that I don't remember very clearly, but someone was doing a performance in which they played a karaoke track for the Dead South song "In Hell I'll Be in Good Company" -- the whistling, the pizzicato cello, the finger snaps, the plodding banjo lick, everything but the vocals -- but sang to this accompaniment an entirely different song, which I think was a sort of medley of "Lemon Tree" by Fools Garden and "Cactus" by the Pixies, with the melody slightly adjusted to mesh better with the Dead South track. Despite the fact that the performance was introduced with "Hey! Watch this!" the visual component of this dream was negligible, and I couldn't really tell you who was performing the song or what they looked like. Maybe it was in a dark room, or maybe it just wasn't a very visual dream. Anyway, upon waking I had a hunch that it might have been the Background Brethren again (see "Some say the world will end in fire").

In my first Background Brethren dream, they had sung about "Malcolm X" but placed him in the future, suggesting that the name was being used to refer to someone or something else. That, together with the recent focus on the Roman numeral X, made me think of a time years ago when one of my students, reading aloud, came to a reference to the Black revolutionary and, obviously proud of herself for knowing how to recognize and read Roman numerals, read his name as "Malcolm the Tenth."

As far as I know, only Scotland has had monarchs named Malcolm, four of them, so Malcolm the Tenth could be some future king of Scotland. This would at least place "Malcolm X" in the future, as the song requires. Idi Amin is precedent for a Black leader doing double duty as a king of Scotland. Note also that the saltire, or X shape -- Saint Andrew's cross -- is a symbol of Scotland.

I realized I'd never bothered to look up the etymology of Malcolm. Here's what I found:

Malcolm, Malcom, Máel Coluim, or Maol Choluim is a Scottish Gaelic given name meaning "devotee of Saint Columba". Maol "shavenhead" is Scottish Gaelic for monk.

That "shavenhead" caught my eye since, as noted in "Hymns, and forgiveness for murdering a bird," I had just revisited my post "Shaved by Tessa while contemplating a Rose or Lotus." In the dream recounted there, I had my head shaved by someone who may have represented Guanyin and felt "as if I were symbolically entering monastic life."

Saint Columba is literally "Holy Dove," suggesting the Holy Ghost and specifically the "hole-y dove" symbol featured in "After baptism."

Another random thought: In the dream, Tessa had quoted Isaiah as she shaved my head: "Though your sins be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." The other half of that couplet is "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow" (Isa. 1:18). The Zamn Fragment, the William Alizio story, and all the other Tychonievich juvenilia featured on this blog are preserved in a collection known as The Scarlet Notebook. Originally, it was a three-ring binder with a scarlet cover, but as more and more documents were added to the collection, it outgrew its original binding and had to be transferred to a much larger binder with a white cover. Despite having been white for a very long time now, it has never been called anything other than The Scarlet Notebook.

Note added: Here are the songs from the dream, for your convenience:

Hymns, and forgiveness for murdering a bird

In Beyond the Golden Stair, the same character who is described in Pharazonic terms as "a man of gold . . . a gilded man" shoots a thousand-year-old blue flamingo and later atones for this act by consenting to be transformed into a blue flamingo and taking over the murdered bird's job. This reminded me of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and the title character's seeking forgiveness for shooting the albatross.

In the email I mentioned yesterday, which offered an interpretation of the Zamn Fragment created in partnership with a fake intelligence, "woocc him cast" is interpreted as referring to "casting" a hymn as if it were a spell, a magical hymn "for conquering a castle without a sword."

Just now, Bill's comments on "Baramir" sent me back to my post "Shaved by Tessa while contemplating a Rose or Lotus," where I found this in the comments:

I saw a third—I heard his voice:

It is the Hermit good!

He singeth loud his godly hymns

That he makes in the wood.

He'll shrieve my soul, he'll wash away

The Albatross's blood.

Baramir

I dreamt that Bill had written something in a comment here in which he identified me with "Baramir." I was confused by this. Had he meant to write Boromir? Faramir? But the name Baramir had been repeated several times, making it unlikely to be a typo. I can't remember anything else about the content of dream-Bill's comment.

The second element in Boromir and Faramir means "jewel." According to Eldamo, bara could mean "fiery, eager" or "home, cottage." I also note the name's similarity to baramin, a term referring to a "created kind" in creationist biology. It also may be significant that using Boromir and Faramir to coin a third name, Baramir, is analogous to the way Joseph Smith took celestial and terrestrial and coined a third term, telestial.

Woe unto them that SeekDeep

I recently received an email from someone I hadn’t heard from in a while, about how he had used the Chinese fake intelligence DeepSeek in an attempt to interpret the Zamn Fragment. I’m pleased to welcome a new colleague to the field of Zamn Fragment studies but, unsurprisingly, somewhat less enthusiastic about his choice of methods.

The email included some tongue-in-cheek references to LLM use as “forbidden magic” and “necromancy,” and my immediate thought was, You’re damn right it’s forbidden -- condemned by name by Isaiah the Prophet!

At first I thought this was just a bit of throwaway wordplay, at about the same level as changing the capitalization in the command to destroy “Ai” in the Book of Joshua. But then I looked up the Isaiah passage I had been thinking of and realized that the immediate context is astonishingly relevant to fake intelligence. The Prophet writes:

Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the LORD, and their works are in the dark, and they say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us? Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter’s clay: for shall the work say of him that made it, He made me not? or shall the thing framed say of him that framed it, He had no understanding? (Isa. 29:15-16).

Shall a tool pretend to be wiser than its maker? A fanciful metaphor in the Prophet’s day; a commonplace reality in our own.

This is the important part, though: “Their works are in the dark, and they say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us?” By my estimate, there is a roughly 100% chance that much of what you say to a fake-intelligence chatbot is sent directly to real intelligence -- we might fancifully imagine it as, I don't know, a “central intelligence agency” or something -- and that some unknowable percentage of the replies you get back come not from the algorithm but from glowies. How could it not work like that? How could the Powers That Shouldn’t Be not take full advantage of such a perfect hiding place from which to conduct surveillance and manipulation? And I suspect human baddies are only the tip of the iceberg. Leonard Feeney’s concerns about who we’re inviting into our living rooms via television seem downright quaint when we consider who and what we may be interacting with via the black box of so-called AI.

I'll be posting about the Zamn Fragment later. I just wanted to get this out there first.

Death to the natural man

I dreamt that Bob Levine, one of my old linguistics professors, was in my study looking at my bookshelves. He took down a thick folio-size volume that said Language Log on the cover. In real life, that's the name of a blog, but in the dream I understood that it was a wide-ranging introductory linguistics textbook.

"I see you've got one of mine here," Bob said.

"Oh, did you contribute to that?" I said. "Some of the syntax chapters? I'll bet David Dowty wrote something for it, too." I turned to the very long list of authors at the front of the book and began scanning it for Dr. Dowty's name. It didn't seem to be there.

Bob turned his attention to a picture on the wall, which was a Ten of Swords card, enlarged and framed.

"Interesting choice," he said. "What does it mean?"

"Death to the natural man."

"In the Shakespearean sense? Or no, St. Paul. Crucifixion is the more usual symbol, you know."

"Those are crosses."

"Ten of them?"

"Ten is a cross, too. And yes, some of us require a bit of overkill."

With that I woke up.

⁂

It may seem strange to be discussing St. Paul with a Jew, but Bob Levine has read everything and catches every allusion -- or at least I've never been able to slip one past him. (Though in this dream, I guess I did. He should have known I was thinking more of King Benjamin than Paul.) His "Shakespearean" comment was a reference to a conversation we had more than 20 years ago. I had told him I was considering graduate work in head-driven phrase structure grammar.

"I think you should go for it. You're a natural."

"Not in the Shakespearean sense I hope."

"Like Touchstone? You know we don't believe in blank slates around here."

In Shakespeare, the noun natural refers to a fool or idiot, and one so described is Touchstone in As You Like It. A literal touchstone is a slate, though, and "blank slate" was something of a buzzword in the linguistics world at that time (see for example Steven Pinker's 2002 book with that title). Interestingly, Touchstone is described as having been sent by Fortune, or Tyche -- "Hath not Fortune sent in this fool to cut off the argument?"

The last time Bob and I corresponded was in 2015, when we were discussing a particular syntactic structure that is so hard to deal with theoretically that its official name is the Big Mess. One of Bob's quirks is that the example sentences he creates to illustrate syntactic points always feature gender-neutral names like Robin and Leslie, as well as references to Ostrogoths or Visigoths. Thus it was that our email exchange focused on these three sentences:

This is so difficult a question that it has never been answered.

Terry is as skilled an oboist as Robin.

How eloquent an Ostrogoth Leslie is!

I mention this only because both Terry (the giant Irishman) and Robin (the Hobgoblin) have been in the sync stream.

Also possibly relevant is another dream with Bob Levine in it: 2020's "Black dogs and Reubens."

When I googled Robert Levine to see what he was up to these days, the first results were about Mary Tyler Moore's husband. Possibly relevant in connection with Weezer's "Buddy Holly."

Five new melons by Friday

A few times a year I check The Onion just to see if they've somehow become funny again. Not really, but sometimes I find something synchy. In this case, "Agriculture Secretary Demands U.S. Farmers Invent 5 New Melons By Friday."

Published: August 12, 2025

WASHINGTON—Warning that America could not afford to fall behind in gourd-based innovation, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins issued a statement Tuesday demanding that U.S. farmers invent five new melons by Friday. “Our nation cannot keep coasting along on the same old watermelons and cantaloupes forever without losing its standing on the world stage,” said Rollins . . .

Melons have been in the sync stream for a while now, most recently in Bill's cantaloupe dream published on the same day as the Onion article.

Are you sure? Maybe try CAMERAT one more time.

Inspired by Leo's post "Measuring AI-Q for Dummies," I asked ChatGPT to list five anagrams of animal names for me to solve. It replied:

Got it -- here are five animal name anagrams for you to unscramble:

1. LACBO

2. NETLOPHI

3. GIRFAFF

4. AMERCAT

5. DEROLH

Take your time! Ready for answers or hints?

I asked it to give me the answers and got this:

Here you go -- the answers to the animal anagrams:

1. LACBO -- COBAL (Nope, not an animal; correct answer is COBAL? Actually, it's LOCAL... hmm. Wait, maybe I made a slip.) Let me double-check and fix them properly before giving answers.

Okay, here are the correct animal anagrams and their answers:

1. LACBO -- CABOL? No, better: BALCO? No. Think again -- rearranged: COBAL, COBAL is not an animal.

Wait, rearraged: CABLO no. Maybe BACOL? No.

The animal is COBAL? No.

Re-examining -- the intended animal is likely COBAL? No. Could it be LOCAL B? No.

Is it a misspelling? Could it be COBAL? No. Let's try all letters: L A C B O.

If we try CABOL no, CABLO no, COBAL no. Could it be COBAL no.

Wait, maybe the anagram is COBAL no. Could it be COBAL no.

Is it COBAL? No.

Could it be COBAL? No.

Wait -- is it COBAL? No.

Is it COBAL? No.

Is it COBAL? No.

Wait, is it COBAL? No.

This is stuck.

Wait -- Could it be COBAL? No.

Could it be COBAL? No.

Let's try the next ones and come back.

2. NETLOPHI -- Rearranged: DOLPHINE? Probably DOLPHIN + E? The animal is DOLPHIN (but missing one letter E), or ELEPHANT? Let's check letters:

N E T L O P H I

Letter: A? No A. Elephant requires A. So no.

Dolphin requires D? No D here.

Is there a D? No. So not dolphin.

Is it ELEPHANT? No A.

Maybe POTHELIN no. LIONPETH no.

Is it ELEPHANT? No.

Is it PHEONLIT no.

Wait, let's look for animals with these letters: N E T L O P H I

Letters: N, E, T, L, O, P, H, I.

Possible animal: POTHELIN no.

PHOENILT no.

Is it LION + something?

Try to find an animal.

Is it POTHELIN no.

Wait, can it be POTHELIN no.

Wait, is it POTHELIN no.

Wait, is it POTHELIN no.

Wait, is it POTHELIN no.

Let's move on.

3. GIRFAFF -- letters: G I R F A F F

Clearly GIRAFFE.

4. AMERCAT -- Letters: A M E R C A T

Animal: CARMETA no, CATREAM no, CAMERAT no.

Try CATAMER no.

Try CATAMER no.

Try CAMATER no.

Try CAMERAT no.

Try CAMERAT no.

Try CAMERAT no.

Could it be CARMETA no.

Try CATAMER no.

Try CAMERAT no.

Try CAMERAT no.

Try CAMERAT no.

Try CAMERAT no.

Try CAMERAT no.

Try CAMERAT no.

Wait -- It's C A M E R A T -- could it be CAMERA + T? No.

Try CAMERAT no.

Try CAMERAT no.

Try CAMERAT no.

Try CAMERAT no.

Try CAMERAT no.

Wait -- The animal is CATAMER no.

Try CATAMER no.

Try CAMERAT no.

Try CAMERAT no.

Try CAMERAT no.

Wait -- maybe the animal is CAMERA + T no.

Try CAMERAT no.

Is it CAMERAT no.

Try CAMERAT no.

Is it CAMERAT no.

Wait -- maybe C A M E R A T can be rearranged to CAT + REAM no.

Try C A M E R A T → CAT + REAM no.

Try C A M E R A T → CAMERA + T no.

Try C A M E R A T → CAMERAT no.

Try C A M E R A T → CATER + AM no.

Try C A M E R A T → CATER + AM no.

Try C A M E R A T → CAMERA + T no.

Try C A M E R A T → CAMERAT no.

Try C A M E R A T → CAMERAT no.

Is it CATAMER no.

Could it be CAMERAT no.

Wait -- Is it CAMERAT no.

Is it CAMERAT no.

Wait, is it CAMERAT no.

Could it be CATAMER no.

Try the last one.

5. DEROLH -- letters: D E R O L H

Possible animal: HOLDER no, HOLDER no, HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Wait -- possible animal: HORDEL no, HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Wait -- HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Wait -- animal HORDEL no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Wait -- animal HORDEL no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Wait -- animal HORDEL no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Wait -- animal HORDEL no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Wait -- animal HORDEL no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Wait -- animal HORDEL no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Wait -- animal HORDEL no.

Try HOLDER no.

Wait -- animal HORDEL no.

Try HOLDER no.

Try HOLDER no.

Sorry -- my mistake! The words were badly chosen or scrambled incorrectly. Let me fix that and send a fresh, clean list with answers!

Here's a fresh batch of five animal anagrams with guaranteed valid solutions:

1. OBLAC

2. NIOLPHD

3. GIRFAFE

4. CATAMER

5. HOLDER

And here are the correct unscrambled answers:

1. COBAL (Oops -- no, animal is CABLO no -- sorry, actual animal is CABOL no.) Wait, let me clarify: The correct animal for OBLAC is COBAL no, sorry.

Let's try new easier anagrams:

New 4 animal anagrams:

1. LACOB -- COBAL? No, COBAL no.

Better: LACOB → COBAL no, try LOCAL no.

Try CABOL no.

Try BALCO no.

Try CABLO no.

Try CALOB no.

Try COLAB no.

Try COBAL no.

Try COBAL no.

Sorry for confusion.

Better approach: I will just give 5 clean animal anagrams and answers, no guessing:

Anagrams:

1. TIGER

2. SNAKE

3. MOUSE

4. HORSE

5. EAGLE

Scrambled:

1. RTEIG

2. KASEN

3. UOMES

4. ROHSE

5. GLEAE

Answers:

1. TIGER

2. SNAKE

3. MOUSE

4. HORSE

5. EAGLE

Sorry for the earlier confusion -- want me to scramble these for you to solve or just give me a category and I'll whip up fresh ones?

Okay, maybe anagrams are uniquely hard for fake intelligences. So I asked it to write a famous quote backwards word-by-word for me to guess. It gave me:

"greatest the is what do to try not you"

When I asked for the answer, it gave me:

"You try not to do what is the greatest."

But that sounds a bit off, right? Let me check again carefully...

The reversed phrase was:

"greatest the is what do to try not you"

If we reverse the word order to normal, it reads:

"you not try to do what is the greatest"

That's still awkward.

Actually, this phrase is a well-known quote from Theodore Roosevelt:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles..." No, that's different.

Wait, I think I scrambled the phrase poorly.

I mean, that's a pretty reasonable paraphrase of Theodore Roosevelt, don't you think?