What's this lame-ass racist meme doing in my sync stream?

The Most Censored Publication in History posted this the other day. As I may have mentioned once or twice before, the sync fairies ain't got no class. I appreciate a good racist joke as much as the next guy, but do note the qualifier good. Lame is lame, and this is like post-birdemic Stephen Colbert tier lame. Anyway, it's got the Wizard at the Green Door and, so the sync fairies must be in on it somehow, and it would be remiss of me not to post it.

I'm sorry, but this is just bottom-of-the-barrel memesmanship. The whole joke is that the first syllable of Gandalf's name rhymes with the last syllable of the KKK? That's it? They might as well have the wizard show up with a box of breakfast cereal and Bilbo say "Raisin Brandalf!" In fact, that would probably be funnier, since hobbits like to eat breakfast and all. Anyway, it wouldn't be any worse than this. This is about the level of that guy in the Balzac novel who thinks he's being witty by sticking -orama on the end of everything (Hey, guys, Klanorama!) -- except that guy actually is funny, because he's written by Balzac, and because the endless repetition of the same non-joke becomes funny in spite of itself. The elephant-joke method -- or, if we want to be gratuitously offensive like the present meme, the dead-baby method. One dead-baby joke in isolation can't be funny, and neither can one random-words-that-sound-a-little-bit-like-Klan joke.

Really, what is this garbage doing in my sync stream? If anyone wants to try to winkle some meaning out of it in the comments, have at it, but don't expect too much.

I demand that the synchronicity fairies apologize, and I will be contacting their employers.

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Update: I should have known it's too stupid not to have been done already.

I can see how a whole series of these could reach elephant-joke status.

Dreams, shifty-eyed owls, and the white Starbucks cup

Last night I had another of those "channel-surfing" style dreams, a disjointed series of vignettes.

In the first vignette, I was ascending a spiral staircase inside what I reckon was a lighthouse or something of that nature. The interior walls were white stucco, and the stairs were white as well. I was with a Spanish gentleman (shortish, mid-thirties, bearded, a bit nebbishy, wearing a brown suit and black-rimmed glasses) named Marcelo. Up ahead of us on the stairs was a group of young Spanish children. They kept calling "Marcela! Marcela!" and Marcelo kept thinking they were addressing him, pointing to his own chest and looking around quizzically while mouthing "Who, me?" Indicating one of the niñas on the stairs, I said (in English), "I think they're talking to her. Her name must be Marcela." She turned back and replied, "Así es, pero no me llamo Marcela, me llamo Gabriela." Later, one of the boys came down the stairs and started getting mouthy with us, and I was considering whether or not it would be acceptable to punch him in the face.

In the second vignette, I was with my parents and siblings. We were outdoors somewhere admiring a tall "tulip tree" -- not the familiar American Liriodendron, but simply a red tulip flower scaled up to the dimensions of a coconut palm. It had no leaves, just a long green stem with an enormous red flower at the top; the overall effect really was palm-like. Not far from this tree, I found a stump where another such tree had been cut down, and it was wide enough for a person to sit on it. I had the idea that I should take a photo of my youngest sister sitting on the stump, with the towering tulip tree in the background, and that the stump and the tree together would make clear the impressive size of these trees. I couldn't really make the photo work, though. The stump was far enough from the tree, and the tree tall enough, to make it quite difficult to get everything into a single shot.

In the third vignette, I stepped out my front door at twilight and saw two large owls circling overhead. Even in the half-light, I fancied I could identify them as an eagle owl and a great horned. I thought, "About time! After all these owl syncs, I finally get to see some flesh-and-blood owls!" Then the two owls swooped down, and I noticed that they were really enormous -- the size of condors -- and didn't look much like owls at all. I still thought of them as "owls," but what they really looked like were Chinese phoenixes (fenghuang) with the buff-and-white coloration of barn owls.

Like this, but less colorful; note the owl-like "horns"

One of these "owls" swooped down and grabbed a rat; the other picked up what I was horrified to see was a medium-sized white dog -- scruffy, white, and a bit elderly-looking, obviously a stray. This second "owl" landed on top of my neighbor's parked sedan, depositing the dog on the roof of the car. I quickly grabbed the dog and took it down, relieved to see that it had not been harmed by the bird's talons. I shooed the dog away to safety and made a Chinese fist-palm salute to the "owl," an expression of apology for taking away its prey.

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In my September 1 post "Since we're doing knocking syncs . . .," I posted a picture of the cover of the March 4, 2019, Time magazine (recently seen in an FBI photo of items seized from Trump's home).

In the comments, Debbie focused on the man with a white cup, thinking it might be George W. Bush, and connecting it with a dream she had just before the Heaven's Gate mass suicide. In the dream, a "spaceman" had told her "It's time to go," but offered her a white Styrofoam cup from which she should drink if she wanted to stay on Earth and remain human. Later, commenters here identified the man with the cup as Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who in March 2019 was considering a presidential run.

After the identification had been made, Debbie noted that a cup was a yonic symbol, and that the original Starbucks logo -- a two-tailed mermaid spreading her "legs" -- featured that symbolism much more explicitly. Interestingly, even though the Starbucks logo had been changed to its present form in 2011, the Time cover seems to show Schultz drinking from a cup with the original logo.

Debbie also wrote that on the Time cover, "Trump's shifting eyes looks similar to an owl looking sideways" -- to which I replied that actually it's physically impossible for an owl to do this. Owls can turn their heads remarkably far, but the eyes themselves cannot turn at all because they are not actually eye "balls" but rather cylinders. Nevertheless, the owl graffiti Debbie sent me earlier does show an owl turning its eyes off to the side.

This morning as I went out, I passed the recycling bins that are set out by the gate of my community, and this caught my eye:

There it is again -- an owl looking sideways without turning its head (something owls are noteworthy for not being able to do) -- and printed on a disposable white paper bowl (b-owl), which is basically another form of the disposable white cup the Starbucks CEO is drinking from on the Time cover, and the one the spaceman offered to Debbie.

The Time cover said "Knock, Knock, . . .," and recent syncs have associated the owl with the Green Door (often a circular green door; cf. the current Starbucks logo) and knocking. Debbie's dream connects the disposable white cup with Heaven's Gate, and thus with "Knock knock knockin' on heaven's door."

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The relevance of the dream fragments recounted at the beginning of this post is not yet entirely clear. I note that Marcelo shifted his eyes from side to side -- like Trump, or like the impossible owls -- while mouthing the words "Who, me?" Owls say "who," and the Hebrew word for "who," pronounced like the English word me, is the first element in the name Michael. The archangelic link is strengthened by the presence of a girl named Gabriela.

As for the "tulip tree," it was a sync related to red tulips that first led Debbie to contact me, and I replied with a story about a man who had been unrealistically excited about seeing the "tulip trees" of Ohio.

The condor-sized "owl" picking up a white dog is also a link to the Tintin book Prisoners of the Sun, in which Tintin's white dog Snowy (Milou) is carried away by a condor but later rescued unharmed.

Who's on the March 4, 2019, Time cover?

Here's the cover. (Click to enlarge.)

Now who are all these people looking in the window?

1. Kirsten Gillibrand
2. Michael Bloomberg
3. Tulsi Gabbard
4. Pete Buttigieg
5. Steve Bullock
6. Julian Castro
7. Amy Klobuchar
8. Stacey Abrams
9. Beto O'Rourke
10. Bernie Sanders
11. Cory Booker
12. Who is this guy???
13. Elizabeth Warren
14. Joe Biden
15. Kamala Harris

Seriously, who is this guy? I've pored over Wikipedia's list of 2020 Democratic primary candidates, which is what the cover is supposed to represent, but he just doesn't look like any of them. Debbie thinks he might be George W. Bush, which would be very weird, but he doesn't look like him, either.

Any ideas?

Un brandon de guerre civile

Not photoshopped; these are the optics they went with

I look at it this way: Either (a) our guys have infiltrated his team and are having him give speeches like this, or (b) his guys are so jaw-droppingly incompetent they they're having him give speeches like this. Either way, it seems like a hopeful sign.

Still waiting on that spontaneous human combustion, by the way -- unless, metaphorically, this is it.

Since we're doing knocking syncs . . .

This was discovered on 8kun; I got it from Anonymous Conservative.

In the photo the FBI released of "classified documents" seized in the Trump raid, a framed Time magazine cover is visible on the right.

The cover is from the March 4, 2019, issue of Time. It says "Knock, Knock . . ." and shows Biden, Harris, and various other Democrats peeping in the window of the Oval Office.

The blurb is about how "there's no front runner in sight" for the 2020 Democratic primary. Quite a lucky guess, putting Slow Joe front and center, with Harris right next to him.

On that same date, March 4, 2019, there was a Q drop suggesting that it might be beneficial to allow your enemy to open the front door.

I have no particular opinion about Q or about what's behind the raid, but I thought the tie-in with my own sync stream was noteworthy. One hopes this is not a sign that the sync fairies are about to get political again.

After seeing the above dots connected, I searched qanon.pub for "knock" just to see what would turn up. One of the four hits included this: "What they do not anticipate is POTUS declas[sifying] it all due to optics . . . to paint [it as a] political attack" -- oddly relevant to the recent FBI raid, where Trump's defense is that there were standing orders to declassify anything he removed from the White House.

"This is literally evil knocking" is a nice link to the Time cover, too.

Again, no real opinion on this, in the absence of any reliable source of information. I just note connections.

Syncs courtesy of Laura Wood (and 4chan)

Shortly after posting "I'm being shadowed by a red turtle dove," I checked Laura Wood's blog, The Thinking Housewife, for the first time in a bit. The latest post, dated August 31, is called "The Knock at Every Door" and was simply Revelation 3:20 ("Behold, I stand at the door, and knock . . ."), quoted without comment. I have been posting a lot of "knocking" syncs recently, including several references to that verse (eg), and to the phrase "knock on any door."

Scrolling down, the next most recent post, dated August 30, is called "Where Love, There Birds," and was about a Catholic saint called Saint Rose. The post ends with a YouTube video of Respighi's The Birds, the thumbnail for which is a picture of some turtle doves in flight -- not the red species, but still turtles rather than white doves -- with the label "The Dove."

Just before posting this, I did a bit of random browsing on /x/, including a thread where an anon said he was being oppressed by a demon that disguised itself as a character he had invented and tricked him into inviting it into his heart. One of the responders offered some sort of Protestant/Evangelical exorcism prayer and wrote:

Pray this prayer, it will help. And remember have faith in Jesus Christ. He is there for you always.

Matthew 28:20

King James Version

20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

Revelation 3:20

King James Version

20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.

God bless you anon. Amen

I'm being shadowed by a red turtle dove

One of these little guys has been stalking me for the past few days. The photo is from Wikipedia, not my own, because he's extremely camera shy. It's an appropriate photo anyway because it shows him the way I usually see him: running off with a look on his face that says, Oh, no! He's seen me again!

When I open the front door, I see him flying off. When I get on my motorcycle, he pops out from behind the front wheel and runs for it until he's clear to start flapping.. While I'm on the road, he'll swoop down and cross my path once or twice, all casual-like, but mostly stays out of sight. He stakes out the school all day while I'm there and is usually loitering nearby when I get off. I may be exaggerating slightly, but only slightly. This bird is suddenly everywhere. I've never fed him or done anything else to attract him, so I'm really not sure what his game is.

I can't really be sure it's the same bird every time, of course. Back in America, I used to recognize individual Carolina mourning doves by slight differences in their wing markings, but red turtles lack any obvious distinguishing characteristics. (I guess the black "collar" mark would be my best bet?) So it's possible that it's a different dove every time, and that I've attracted the attention of the whole species. Which would be weirder?

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Birds generally mean something, of course, and I've naturally been wondering what this one means. Today my student's English magazine offered this interpretation.

"Doves are usually connected with peace." Yes, usually. Those are white doves, though, and red is universally the color of war. What could a red dove mean? Then I suddenly remembered that I had written about the red dove before, in my (very long) 2018 post "The Rider-Waite Magician," because a small red dove appears on the Magician's table on that card.

The front edge of the Magician’s table features a series of three carvings. The first appears to be ocean waves, the second is unrecognizable, and the third is a bird in flight. Comparing it with the bird on the Ace of Cups, which clearly represents the dove of the Holy Spirit, we see that they are almost identical in shape. The cup-shaped capital of the table leg just below the Magician’s bird reinforces the connection. While the dove on the Ace of Cups is white and flies downward, the Magician’s dove is red and flies upward.

This reminded me of something Valentin Tomberg had written in Meditations on the Tarot about the symbolism of prayers going up to God and blessings coming down. Not remembering that I had quoted that very passage in my 2018 post and just had to scroll down to find it, I instead brought up the Kindle app on my phone and searched for meditations. This is what came up.

Unsurprisingly, my Tomberg books came up as the first results -- but look what else it recommended: an edition of Marcus Aurelius with a red bird on the cover. Not a dove (it looks more like a red crow), but still!

I'm obviously being reminded of the need to pray -- I just went two days without praying the Rosary, the first such lapse since I began the habit, and this red dove -- who, besides having been identified in my own writings as a symbol of prayer back in 2018, also suggests the Rosary by his color -- is here to get me back on track. I open and close my prayer sessions with the Prayer to St. Michael, and that martial archangel is also well represented by the red dove. I suppose Marcus Aurelius, philosopher and commander-in-chief, who jotted down his Meditations in his spare moments at camp during a military campaign, is also a "red dove" kind of guy.

My reference above to "my" dove as simply a "red turtle" made me think of the famous line in the Song of Solomon about how "the voice of the turtle" (meaning the turtle dove) "is heard in our land" (2:12). (I've been reading the King James Bible since I was little, and it has never said anything other than "the voice of the turtle"; don't let those Mandela Effect people tell you any different.) Looking it up just now, I find that the chapter begins with "I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys" (2:1) -- in the Vulgate, "Ego flos campi, et lilium convallium." I quoted this, too, in my "Rider-Waite Magician" post, because Waite himself references it in his Pictorial Key to the Tarot, saying that the roses and lilies on the Magician card are "the flos campi and lilium convallium, changed into garden flowers, to shew the culture of aspiration." Commenting on this, I had written:

What did the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys mean to Waite? I could have sworn that they appeared in the Litany of the Blessed Virgin as symbolical titles of that personage, but that turns out to have been a hallucination of memory.

So there's another link to praying to Mary -- Mary as a rose no less -- and thus to the Rosary.

An even weirder sync came when I read the "voice of the turtle" verse itself and found what comes immediately after:

The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; the fig tree putteth forth her green figs . . . (2:12-13).

This is the only reference to "green figs" in the entire Bible. I recently had my own experience with green figs behind the Green Door, as recorded in "Owl time, and cold noodles":

I saw that the wall was covered not only with leaves but with hundreds and hundreds of what were unmistakably figs -- still green, but quite large.

Well, it's . . .

. . . for me to wrap this post up and go pray the Rosary already. Since lilies have come up, too, why not give this a listen?