Previous: Fun-Sized Zidbits
Welcome back to News on Eschatological Art History. We’ve just gotten off the phone w/ Dave, who has told us many remarkable things abt The Unnamed Site’s (TUS) choice to kick off its smear campaign w/ this image:
This does not show a bull, a griffon, & a big, happy fish. This shows the Behemoth, the Ziz, & the Leviathan.
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This is brilliant. This is sly. This is unexpected gold from TUS that made us jump up & down. Ofc we begged Dave to tell us all abt that Ziz: what sort of monster are we dealing w/?
We are… not dealing w/ a monster. We are dealing w/ the King of the Birds! He was created on the 4th day, along w/ the sun, moon, & stars, & he is essential to life on Earth. His gigantic wings protect us from storms which would otherwise blow us away.
Every summer, autumn, & winter, he gathers w/ his two friends for sthng v. special. He gathers to scream while his two friends roar & stir up the sea, respectively. This warns the other animals: don’t exceed your limits! Don’t grow so excessively that you choke out others’ survival. In short, he & Behemoth & Leviathan ensure ecological balance for us all.
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The Ziz is associated w/ apocalyptica, but in a way which neither we nor Dave could make heads or tails of.
During the endtimes, it is proposed that Behemoth & Leviathan will fight each other to the death, then be served to the righteous at a heavenly banquet. The Ziz will be served as well, even tho he did not engage in the fight, & this will herald the beginning of the Messianic Age: the age in which there will be no more evil.
Why are we eating our ecological protectors? How will this ring in an evil-free era? Who, if not the Ziz, the Behemoth, & the Leviathan, will prevent evil’s characteristic, pondscum-like creep? We think this is a bad plan. The Levites of the 8th-6th centuries BCE disagree w/ us 🤷🏻♀️ We will leave them to it.
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We will leave the Levites, & bring up a post which made Dave frown, & made us laugh a lot:
Timothy’s apologia for the Ziz has been published by the Vermont Daily Chronicle (VDC)— even tho VDC self-describes as limited to “Vermont state government and policy”? If News on News can branch out into ancient cryptids, why can’t the Chronicle!
Timothy is v. upset that the Ziz remains so under-appreciated, while Mz. Ziz has skyrocketed to global fame. He laments that “this remarkable figure [which] has survived in religious and cultural memory for thousands of years” has now been “appropriated” by a “violent cult”!
We will put a pin in this q.: does Mz. Ziz even know what the Ziz is? Is this gentile Alaskan atheist referencing a 3,000-year-old Jewish giant bird myth from the Levant? We will get back to this. First, let’s talk abt what made Dave so unhappy from Timothy’s analysis.
Dave despaired over Timothy’s use of 6 academic sources from schmancy university presses— U. of Chicago, Princeton & so forth. These books are typically expensive; they are tricky to get, & are no fun to read. What is all this for? What proof is backing his central gripe: that Mz. Ziz has ripped off the Ziz to nefarious ends?
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We liked Timothy’s dedication; it made us imagine him giving talks to the Audubon Society abt the importance of Ziz preservation. But Dave would not stop grumbling abt how Timothy has drawn a parallel b/w Ziz’s name & the Nazis’ appropriation of the swastika; he noted that Timothy was either ignoring or ignorant of the fact that only Ziz’s foes (minus some brave reclaimers of the term) actually call her friends “Zizians”.
He also thought it was weird how Timothy simultaneously equated the Nazi’s swastika to “Wiccans co-opting the Triquetra”. Timothy chose this comparison bc both, according to him, are symbols “co-opted… by people opposed to the original meanings”. But Dave pointed out that the Celtic & Wiccan Triquetras are not opposed: both represent triplicity; both represent balance, unity, & interconnection. Is Timothy calling the Wiccans unstable, divided, & isolated? That would be an interesting article; but why— how— is this Timothy’s bone to pick? It is a little strange.
Anyway, we thought Dave was underplaying one v. cool thing from Timothy’s post: Timothy has pointed out that there are “remarkable parallels” b/w the Levantine Ziz & the Persian Simurgh.
The Simurgh just happens to be the topic about which we would like to give Audubon lectures. It is, along w/ its relative the Slavic Firebird, v. personally meaningful to us. You can read all abt the fascinating Simurgh here.
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Timothy’s reference to the Simurgh brings us back around to the q.: whence has Mz. Ziz drawn her name?
The prevailing theory— which many on social media like to chat about— is that her name comes from John C. McCrae’s sci-fi web serial “Worm”— not from the ancient Levant.
Maybe Timothy didn’t get the memo— which is refreshing. If we never had to hear this “Worm” origin myth (OM) ever again, maybe we could die happy.
Ziz, to our knowledge, has not confirmed this OM. It could, as always, be mentioned on a yet-unexplored corner of her blog; but, until we see this corner w/ our own eyes, our working hypothesis is that the Ziz/“Worm” connection was popularized by none other than J. Oliver Conroy 🙃
Like we said in our J. segments, we originally thought this connection was strikingly poetic. We now think that it’s “BIZARRE”. What’s bizarre about it is that J., or his sources, have cherry-picked traits from the “Worm” character- the (non-Persian) Simurgh (aka “Ziz”)- in order to push a “mesmeric Ziz LaSota” plotline which we do not feel has basis in reality.
In “Worm”, the Simurgh has a magic scream which can psychologically manipulate those who hear it. W/ it, she can change ppl’s behavior, plant messages in their minds, & create compulsions. She can drive to madness those who are already vulnerable. These powers are, by J., projected onto the Zizster, & used to explain the episodes of violence (EOV) which erupted around her friend-group. As we have said countless times, we cannot explain these EOV. Maybe her friends are guilty; maybe they are not— we are leaving it an open q. until more non-coerced info emerges.
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We asked Dave: why are all these journalists so averse to open q.s? We said— maybe they believe that open q.s will make for tepid headlines.
If so, Dave replied, this is too bad; bc prematurely-closed q.s make for superficially-poetic but fundamentally silly analysis.
Where else have we seen journalists slip into ~poetic modes~ of analysis— beyond J.’s Simurgh comparison? We asked Dave to slow down & get specific so that we stood a chance of keeping up.
Their analysis is poetic, he said, when they focus not on facts, but on the feelings Ziz stirs up for them. It is poetic when they imply their wildest Ziz conjectures, rather than state them outright— when they trust their readers to infer unproven connections.
It is poetic when they imagine Ziz as a sort of emissary for timeless patterns, themes, & cultural myths: everything from “the struggle between order & chaos” (Wired Mag) to “the kids these days are too online”. & ofc, it is poetic when they— having never met Mz. Ziz; having little sense for her as a person— fall back on similes to describe who they fear she is: she may be like the biggest bird in the world, or like a hypnotic sci-fi character— the jury’s still out.
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This made us shift uncomfortably in our seat. If Dave is right, these journalists are showcasing the opposite of journalistic work (JW). JW would not so much care what Ziz “makes them think of” or what she “feels like”— even if those vibes could be directly attributed to verifiable information.
Dave laughed & said they are, tragically, also writing bad poetry! He flattered us: “You said it yourself, Drosselmeyer. They seem allergic to ambiguity. They seem afraid to embrace the contradictions & tensions which are inherent to this unresolved story.”
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We thought of how we’d jumped up & down at The Unnamed Site resorting to illuminated manuscripts for its opening zcharacterization (Ziz characterization).
We thought of how, if this zcharacterization was meant to come across as menacing, it instead came apart at the seams as soon as we got Dave on the line.
We thought of how J. had omitted our fav piece of "Worm" Simurgh lore, in order to paint Mz. Ziz as unequivocally monstrous.
He’d omitted that the Simurgh is driven by an urge to collect, sort, & consolidate information, & that she calls this urge as fundamental as the need for food or water.
We mention this purely as a fun fact— not as a suggestion of what may drive Mz. Ziz: she is not a sci-fi bird woman; she is a stranger growing paler & thinner w/ each passing day in our local jail.
We thought of how these comparisons weren’t just shallow & brittle; they were cruel. They were dehumanizing. They seemed meaningful from a distance, but masked the fact that none of these writers knew how to describe their subject as a person. At first we’d wondered if, w/ Dave’s help, we couldn’t come up w/ some better Ziz comparisons— but the idea suddenly seemed to us repugnant.
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Which was too bad, bc we’d also wanted to talk abt that “author” of The Unnamed Site (TUS)— Apollo Mojave, whose “name” we’d either ignored on our last TUS read-through, or had blissfully forgotten.
We’d wanted to say:
Apollo Mojave sounds like he could be a tabloid writer, or lounge singer, or romance novelist, or stripper. But in fact, his name seems to come from yet another sci-fi series, called “Terra Ignota”. In this series, Apollo Mojave is not just “a Utopian”: he is an ambassador for all of Utopia. He is “universally respected and admired for being able to ‘describe Utopian thought in words the rest of us could understand.’” He, is, unfortunately, deceased. His body was found in the gutter, ripped limb from limb. He bled out w/ no one to mourn for him. What does this tell us abt John David Pressman? Nothing; it’s just a strange anecdote.
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We thanked Dave for his time, & said we always enjoyed our little talks. We thank you for your time as well ☺️ This brings us to the end of tn’s program, but don’t worry: we haven’t forgotten abt Treasure #2 from Know Your Meme!
It’s rather a big treasure 🤑 The boys in archival are dusting it off as we speak. We’ve called in an appraiser, & are waiting for his official valuation before we can proceed.
Until then— so long, & stay safe.
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