The Sirens of Titan

A sync review of Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan on 222.

Kurt Vonnegut is one of my sci-fi prophets who’s influence on sync is the equal of P. K. Dick and Paul of Tarsus. The personal reason is because of a dream of Varen’s several years ago:

He was visited by a translucent jellyfish creature who first told him to “Be not afraid”, and then went on to disclose some things about his future, and closed with …”but for now, you are still in Dresden”.

“Sill in Dresden”. That line lead to finding Slaughterhouse Five, and after that I wondered if Var wasn’t contacted by a Tralfamadorian. I was reading "Sirens" during the anniversary of the Slaughter of Dresden on 2/19.

Since then I’ve read Cat’s Cradle and now The Sirens of Titan. If you haven’t read it then I highly recommend it, but you won’t understand much of this post unless you have, and it’s all spoilers from here on down, FYI.

The essential plot is a faked Martian invasion of Earth in order to create a new world religion based upon God the Utterly Indifferent. Opportunities for Vonnegut’s singular brand of humor/pathos abound.

The Pope of this new religion is Winston Niles Rumfoord who was a wealthy Newport aristocrat who was “infundibulated” and turned into a wave energy thought form spanning from Sol to Betelgeuse, who had perfect foreknowledge of events. He’s the one who engineered the Martian invasion. The plot is oddly similar to Alan Moore’s The Watchmen, with Dr. Manhattan as the man who can see his entire future and past in perfect detail. That book also featured a faked attack in order to bring about a global shift in human consciousness - or “new religion”.

On Mars, everyone is a mind controlled soldier with an antennae that causes pain whenever you think something not inline with the “message”. Heavily propagandized, in other words. “UNK”, the mind-wiped former earthling and current Martian soldier, gives himself a secret scroll of “what really happened”. In a way, Kurt Vonnegut is one of those scrolls: The KV Version.

I found out about mind control soon after 9/11, and how difficult it was to find people in meat space who would talk about 9/11 in a way that wasn’t spoon-fed from the media. We are all good soldiers. On Mars, there is a class of citizen who are not mind wiped and who do not have pain antennae installed and who control the other soldiers. They control things via a hidden control box in their pants pocket, and they are a secret class, few of the soldiers know who they are, or that they even exist, though they all take various low-level positions in the army.

The one we meet is named Boaz.

Boaz is one of two columns in the Masonic Temple of Solomon. Boaz is the column of the sun, severity and justice, which also resonates Mars. The other column is Yachin: the moon, mercy, and loving kindness. If Mars is Boaz, then Venus is Yachin. It is also true that the Freemasons are often accused of being a secret influence behind the scenes, much as described by Kurt Vonnegut above.

On Mars though, even the “Masons” don’t know who’s behind it all. They don’t know that Rumfoord is running the whole show. The only place from Sol to Betelgeuse on the entire spiral of the Infundibulated Man’s possible existences, where he is materialized permanently, is a moon of the planet Saturn: Titan. Saturn, Cronus, Chronos, the God of Time. Rumfoord is Satan. His great black dog is named Kazak, a palindrome. The palindrome reminds me of Janus: A Roman god who represented time, because he could see into the past with one face and into the future with the other.

Janus is often depicted looking both forwards and backwards in time. Also, dog = god, a clever Saturnian pun. Remember that pun, we’ll return to it later.

The Tralfamodorians control humanity as a sort of messaging system to others who can read the symbolic language. The meaning of Stonehenge is “Replacement part being rushed with all possible speed”. The Great Wall of China means “Be patient. We haven’t forgotten about you”. The Moscow Kremlin meant “You will be on your way before you know it.”

So in effect, all of human civilization, culture, religion and monuments large enough to be seen from space, are the result of Tralfamodorian meddling, up to and including even Saturn himself and his secret societies like the Masons. And all of this to get a spare part to a marooned Tralfamodorian on Titan. Apparently mythic messages travel considerably faster than the speed of light.

The conceit of the book is that while absolutely every character in the book is intricately manipulated and controlled, sometimes openly but often secretly, Rumfoord’s new religion is based upon the concept that God is completely indifferent to human concerns, and therefor everything that happens is a random accident. This understanding brings about a new “Golden Age”. "Nothing above us, only sky."

Ironically, I happened to watch Mr. Peabody and Sherman last night, which was about a dog wearing a red bow tie who had a time traveling device named The Way Back Machine, which was a red ball made of hexagon tiles. He’s a master of time. By the end of the film, in a scene eerily similar to the Je Suis Charlie” meme in Paris, everyone is chanting “I’m a dog too!”, or in Illuminati palindrome speak: I’m a god, too!” Kazak returns.

Sync back to Sirens of Titan, Rumfoord’s wavelength spanned from Sol to Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse is the red star on the left shoulder of Orion, the Hunter, which forms a prominent bow tie in the heavens.

As luck would have it, Beetlejuice star Michael Keaton is up for an Academy Award tonight, all dressed up like a blue bird/angel.

A Blue Bird of Titan

In Sirens of Titan, Chrono is the product of an arranged rape/marriage by Rumfoord, and if we take all this Satanic shit as far as it will go, that would make him the “Son" of Satan, or the Antichrist, Rosemary's Baby. Chronos joins the “blue birds of Titan”, and wears a costume made of blue feathers.

I just don’t know what to say… except Fuck You Tralfamodorians!

Perfect for James Bond Villains

“Perfect for James Bond Villains”

I saw this luxury submarine today and it reminded me that I’d been going through some old Bond films. I saw Thunderball (1965) a few weeks ago, and then Never Say Never Again (1983) which is based upon the same Ian Fleming novel. Both star Sean Connery, but are by different production companies.

Disco Volante

Flying Saucer

Both films feature a lot of underwater action, and both feature a large yacht as the villain’s mobile HQ. In Thunderball, the yacht’s name is Disco Volante, and in Never Say Never Again, it is the Flying Saucer. Besides the fun of imagining luxury yachts as stealth UFO’s, I just plain like big yachts, even though they are also the classic example of capitalist wealth and greed.

In 1983, when I was in design school, the largest private yacht in the world was the 281’ Nabila, commissioned by Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. This is the yacht used in Never Say Never Again as the Flying Saucer. It was later bought by Donald Trump and renamed the Trump Princess.

Mic drop.

Who then sold it on to Al-Waleed bin Talal who renamed her Kingdom 5KR. It was designed by the prestigious London firm of John Bannenberg, who went on to set the avant-garde style of modern mega-yachts that continues to this day. His style was described as “Star Wars” or “space ship”.

But back to Nabila, and Khashoggi. According to muck-racking journalist Daniel Hopsicker in The CIA Double-Dip: Drugs, Fraud, & the JFK Assassination: “Khashoggi and his lieutenant Ramy El-Batrawi, both of whom have long histories in past CIA operations, also used their ability to operate with impunity—their get out of jail free card—to act like the worst sort of double-dealing flimflam men, bunco artists and grifters.”

In other words, a perfect James Bond Villain.

Another Bannenberg design: Never Say Never, was used in the 2009 The Lonely Island video I’m On A Boat, which was featured on SNL and went viral on Youtube and iTunes. 

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NOTES:

‘Never Again’ is the slogan of the Jewish Defense League.

Never Say Never Again starred Kim Bassinger as Largo's girlfriend. Oddly, the movie I watched right before this was Tim Burton's Batman, where she played Viki Vale, who was both the Batman's and the Joker's girlfriend.

The Number of the Sealed

Today was a 144 day. Started early in the morning with:

Had to go in to Seattle for a doctor's visit. Ferry Alert: The Kingston/Edmonds ferry was using a 144 car Super ferry for half the runs, rather than the usual 188 car Jumbo ferry.

Of course, then I seeing 144's all over, like a 144 plate BMW Z3 parked next to us.

I saw this sign in a window on Eastlake:

It’s just Seahawk fan nerdery, because the square root of 144 is 12, who is the “12th man”. You literally can’t go anywhere without seeing a 12 flag flying somewhere, be it a chimney, Toyota, construction crane or store front window.

But the thing is, I’ve been tracking the 144 for years, which in Revelation 7 is “the number of the sealed”:

144,000 Sealed 

After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on the sea or on any tree. Then I saw another angel coming up from the east, having the seal of the living God. He called out in a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm the land and the sea: “Do not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.” Then I heard the number of those who were sealed: 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel. 

From the tribe of Judah 12,000 were sealed,
from the tribe of Reuben 12,000,
from the tribe of Gad 12,000,
from the tribe of Asher 12,000,
from the tribe of Naphtali 12,000,
from the tribe of Manasseh 12,000,
from the tribe of Simeon 12,000,
from the tribe of Levi 12,000,
from the tribe of Issachar 12,000,
from the tribe of Zebulun 12,000,
from the tribe of Joseph 12,000,
from the tribe of Benjamin 12,000.

The 144,000 are simply 12 tribes x 12,000. Seattle and her Horus signifying Seahawks are also the “12”. A Twelfth Tribe?

Well, I’m not the only one: The Steven Spielberg produced TV series 4400 was set in Seattle. Yes, they left off the 1 to be coy, but you clearly see a 144 placard in the opening sequence. Their take on the 144,000 are that they are abducted by aliens and then sent back to earth with super-normal psychic abilities. This is apparently a subject in which the NSA is deeply interested.



But the thing is… while I was at the doctor, Var was at the NW Flower & Garden Show, talking in depth to someone named Zebulon about his mathematically inspired green house designs - even got his card. I mean…  really? Look back up the list of the 12 tribes. The patriarch of the tenth tribe of the twelve.

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NOTES:

Jumbo is the mother of Dumbo, the Horus/Harpocrates resonating Disney elephant.

This is the 747th post at Gosporn. 747 is the "jumbo" jet.

The Patriot Act

I watched my first Super Bowl in at least 10 years last night. The Seattle Seahawks lost in a last minute defeat to the “deflate gate” New England Patriots.

The reason the Super Bowl has become such a big deal over the years - but especially in the past decade - is because everyone has a subconscious desire to belong to a “tribe”, and the various teams satisfy this primal urge. It’s remarkable how successful this corporate take over has been, but only if you discount the power of the subconscious in our day to day conscious lives.

Before the 1960’s, it was possible for Americans to belong to the USA tribe. White Americans, anyway. OK, White, straight, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, anyway. However, as the US became more “integrated” and “progressive”, its ability to hold together as a tribe gradually withered away in equal proportion, and now we live in a country united in name only, but with huge swaths of the population who truly hate each other’s guts.

In a way, the NFL recreates the ancient city-state for us - complete with icons, colors, banners and flags, uniforms, “soldiers” and all the rest. And while we who live in a city may be very different from one another and treat one another like shit six days a week, on any given Sunday we are all members of the same team. Go Hawks!

So it was interesting to see this Super bowl with the New England Patriots on one side, representing the old school idea of the nation-state, vs. the Seattle Seahawks, a modern 21st century corporate feudal town. Seattle has been a sort of idealized corporate city ever since the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair. First it was a Boeing town, and now it is a Microsoft, Costco, Amazon town. It’s all very nice and modern and progressive, and everyone’s interested in sustainability and organic food. A corporate poster child - never mind the “externalized” costs. We are fortunate the corporate titans smile upon us.

The game was full of patriotic ads and iconography designed to pull on our old tribal heartstrings. But one ad in particular said it all:



The TurboTax ad shows the original patriots doing their Boston Tea Party thing, mad as hell, until the Brits offer that it won’t cost them anything to FILE their taxes, represented or not. The patriots reconsider, and join the corporate system.

Just like the Patriots are now simply a football team in the stadium that Pepsi built. As Paul Revere rolls over in his grave, I sign out with the only song that does justice to a sense of bitter irony.