Gordon Lightfoot's UFO song

If you know the movie, you know this scene.

I wouldn't say that Communion (1989) is one of my favorite films, but I just love the fact that it exists: the story of alien abductee Whitley Strieber, played by Christopher Walken, with a soundtrack by the great Eric Clapton. Strieber comes from a Catholic family with deep roots in San Antonio, but Walken, apparently going by his German surname and Manhattan workplace, plays him as a neurotic New York Jew who says things like "Oy vey, what a day, what a schmear!" and describes his alien visitors as "little blue fuckers about that big."

I dreamed that I was watching that movie, but some of the scenes were different. There was a scene where Strieber was having a beer with Budd Hopkins (who does not appear in the real film, having been replaced by a fictional female psychologist) and kvetching about the aliens that had been making themselves at home in his cabin. "I'm telling ya, Budd," he says, "these rats run around like they own the place!"

Upon waking, I realized that that was a line from the Gordon Lightfoot song "Circle of Steel" (1974) -- and then that the opening lines of that song sound an awful lot like a reference to a UFO.

Rows of lights in a circle of steel
Where you place your bets on a great big wheel
High windows flickerin' down through the snow

A circle of steel with rows of lights sounds like a flying saucer, and the windows of a house don't "flicker down through the snow," so they must be the windows of something that is descending, such as an aircraft or spacecraft. (I honestly have no idea what Lightfoot is really talking about here. Roulette wheels aren't steel and don't have rows of lights. Is it a Ferris wheel? If so, how is that relevant to the rest of the song?)

There's also this line, which could as easily be about the wee folk as about Child Protective Services.

The child is strong
A week, a day, they will take it away

Although Lightfoot obviously intended nothing of the sort, this reminds me of "The Fairies" by William Allingham:

They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.

A further coincidence is that "Circle of Steel" is set at Christmastime, as is Communion.

Update: What is Walken best known for? The “more cowbell” sketch, featuring the song “Don’t Fear the Reaper.” Hours after posting this, I put my music on random shuffle, and the first song it played was this:

Roast Beast for lunch, roast Beast for dinner

A couple of weeks ago, I had lunch by myself in a cafe near my home and then met my wife for dinner at a hotel buffet in Taichung. Neither of us had been there before, so I had to look up the address. It was number 666.

Today I happened to eat at the same cafe where I had had lunch that day, and I noticed the street address. It's also number 666.

But didn't we just have lunch there?

Hate speech is a human right

Watership Down in the Year of the Rabbit

I've only read Watership Down once, and that was some years ago, but one of the most memorable parts of the novel has to do with a warren of rabbits that live in the lap of luxury. All sorts of food is provided, predators are controlled -- and the price for all this is paid only occasionally, randomly, when a loop of shining wire appears and an unlucky rabbit goes missing.

But rather than consciously choosing to accept this macabre trade-off, the rabbits assiduously avoid noticing it. Snared rabbits are simply no longer talked about, as if they had never existed. It is quite off-limits to mention that you haven't seen old so-and-so recently, or to wonder what happened to him, let alone to suggest that he appears to have #DiedSuddenly! Denial -- or rather something deeper than denial, refusal-to-notice -- is to be maintained at all costs.

I'm not sure why this particular episode came to mind recently, and, well, it's not really proper to even ask that question, is it?

Walking into a painting

I just finished reading The Omega Point by Whitley Strieber. Central to the plot is a painting which serves as an interdimensional portal: People can walk through the painting into another world.

Immediately after finishing this novel, I began reading an entirely different book, Sane Occultism by Dion Fortune. On p. 15, I found this:

The grandeur of [occult] theories ennobles human life and enables us to see our fate and acts in a perspective related to the cosmos; but is that glorious background interstellar space or painted canvas?

There is only one test, to walk straight up to it and see whether the stones of the Path are beneath one’s feet or if one has simply torn one’s way into the sordid back premises of a theatre.

Year of the Tortoise and the Hare

Did you know that the Tortoise and the Hare are implicitly a pair in Chinese astrology as well as in Aesop? Compare this section of the Chinese zodiac:

• Tiger (2022)
• Rabbit or Hare (2023)
• Dragon (2024)
• Snake (2025)

with the Four Symbols:

• White Tiger of the West (sunset, autumn)
• Black Tortoise of the North (midnight, winter)
• Azure Dragon of the East (sunrise, spring)
• Vermillion Bird of the South (midday, summer)

The Tortoise holds the same position as the Hare -- after the Tiger and before the Dragon. After the Dragon comes the Snake or the Bird -- calling to mind recent syncs regarding the bird-serpent Quetzalcoatl.

I've posted before about the appropriateness of the last few Chinese zodiac signs. The birdemic began in 2020, the Year of the Rat, rats being associated with plagues. The year of the pecks (called by a name which means "of or pertaining to cows" in French) was 2021, the Year of the Ox. The Year of the Tiger, 2022, saw the focus change to starting World War III. The White Tiger of the West is particularly appropriate, since the West was the aggressor, and the ineffectiveness of its attacks called to mind the old Chinese term "paper tiger."

In Aesop's fable, the hare loses to the tortoise because he forgets that just "being fast" isn't enough if you don't actually run. The Year of the Tortoise and the Hare opens with the U.S., personified in Sleepy Joe, complacent in its role as "superpower" and "leader of the free world." By the end of the year, no one will any longer be able to take that pretense seriously. The Tortoise -- also known as the Mysterious Warrior of the North -- will have pulled off the victory that was supposed to have been impossible.

The Chinese zodiac is actually a 60-year cycle, going through the 12 signs and the 5 elements. The coming year (beginning on January 22, 2023) is a Water Rabbit year (Water also being the element of the Black Tortoise). The last Water Rabbit year ran from January 25, 1963, to February 12, 1964. It was during this year that Bob Dylan recorded (October 24, 1963) and released (January 13, 1964) "The Times They Are a-Changin'."

The line it is drawn

The curse it is cast

The slow one now

Will later be fast

As the present now

Will later be past

The order is rapidly fadin'

And the first one now

Will later be last

For the times they are a-changin'

It’s not even controversial anymore

I just saw a tweet saying that the U.S. is a satanic nation at war with the Christian Fire Nation.

There were lots of replies protesting that the Fire Nation isn’t really Christian.

There were zero replies protesting that the U.S. isn’t really satanic.