Okay, Wilson. I know the encounter with the other mad prophet had me convinced not to go off the deep end, but here in Jordan, particularly in the solitude of the Interzone since I got this partment by myself, I just can’t resist cataloguing some strange phenomena.
You already know I’ve been enchanted with the idea of synchronicity that was pioneered by the psychiatrist Carl Jung. That’s the idea that the internal world parallels the external world, so we see what’s going on with us in strange coincidences in our lives that mirror our psychological state.
This idea goes beyond psychology, however. We theists believe in a moral order to the universe that reflects our interaction with God. God punishes and teaches us with strange runs of bad luck and steers us in the paths that he wants us to go in. We say that prayer works, but science supposedly hasn’t captured that and proven it to the world at large.
Further, these ideas go beyond psychology and theistic religion to sorcerers and spiritists. There is the whole concept of “manifesting,” coming from books such as The Secret, where people just will their lives to go the way they want. Some claim success, others don’t have much luck. My daughter and talked about this not long ago when I was complaining that it seemed impossible to get her to upload a couple of movies that I had her rip for me back in the USA. She said, “you better start manifesting me uploading the movies. Maybe it will happen.” That engendered a long conversation about faith.
Then then back to more scientific frameworks, there is the idea of creative visualization. Baseball players visualize themselves hitting the ball perfectly over and over and over, and their ability to hit the ball improves.
You might want to see the movie A Dangerous Method about Jung by David Croenenberg. Now that director comes up with a lot of movies about the plasticity of reality. Videodrome, Naked Lunch, and Existenz are a few bizarre ones that showcase these ideas. I’ve always considered them downright Satanic. Sorcerous. I’m all in with the idea of a malleable reality with strange happenings and coincidences and miracles and moral orders and magic, but there has to be a governing principle to make sure the house doesn’t collapse under the weight of infinite possibility.
So in Method, we see Carl Jung separating with Sigmund Freud to go investigate paranormal phenomena and strange coincidences. He ended up writing The Red Book, where he journaled his voyage into madness, and then he made conclusions about it. His conclusions were consistent with his world view: there is no magic here. People just see what is going on in their heads in the world around them.
But as a theist, a guy who believes in messages from God, and about the demonic control over this fallen world we live in, I’m not so sure that’s the extent of it. So Wilson, let me tell you a bit about the Zack Snyder thing.
As I’ve said before, the dude and those movies have been significant to me for a while. I’m a legit fan. And fascinated by the whole turn of events around his movies and fanbase. And I connect with his story pretty deep. Now, on the bike trip, things started going wonky after Italy. I remember staying up one night thinking about the whole thing.
I was up in a tizzy at one point in Greece, and that meme came onto my Facebook feed, and I thought about Zack being a parent having to continue on after losing his daughter. His movie Batman vs. Superman didn’t do well with the critics, but they had committed to the next movie already, so they went ahead with shooting. Apparently the filming wasn’t fun. While shooting, Zack’s daughter Autumn took her own life. He took leave to grieve, and they effectively fired him and brought in Joss Whedon (the guy who did the first Avengers movies) to finish it up. That guy has his own story to tell, actually. “Finish Zack’s vision,” they told him, “but don’t…lighten it up…the critics are roasting him for tone…and keep it under two hours…have fun with all these actors who don’t even want to be there…” Not much later, Joss is destroyed in the media for being a pervert. Done and gone. It’s always about being a pervert.
So Zack is fired from being the head of Warner’s superhero movies while grieving the loss of the diamond in his crown. To me, the theist, it looked clearly like the forces of evil, the demons, the spirits that make sure this world goes the wrong way, were hell bent on making sure that movie about a crucified and resurrected Superman didn’t get made. So they crucified the director. That’s the whole “if you only knew what I know” line I added. Like, I was seeing the spiritual factors behind things. Yeah, not unlike the Other Mad Prophet with his stories about Lillith talking to him through his phone. I know. But I was impassioned. No parent should ever lose a child. I imagined the demons working their way into Autmn’s heart, trying to create a catastrophe that would take out Zack. That’s why I said it wasn’t suicide. The dogs of hell killed her.
My Electrochemical Girl book had to end on a cliffhanger. I never got to find out what was going on with those playlists and Noah van Ouwerkerk. Again I felt like the forces of darkness were moving the van Ouwerkerks to avoid me so I could never find out what was going on. So I would be driven nuts with uncertainty. And I would never finish the story.
From this point on, my fan ideations about the whole Snyderverse movement and Zack’s life took on a new level of intensity. Nobody was buying my book. I hadn’t marketed anything, but I was asking friends to check out the book and give me feedback, and nobody would ever find time to read it. Nobody would ever even read it to tell me it sucked. I got the idea that people just don’t read. I wanted to move to do film. People still watch movies. Documentaries were a good place to start. Relatively easy to make. Cheap.
Again being the theist, the next phase of Zack’s storyline reminded me of the history of the Christian Church. So Jesus ascends to heaven, and the apostles go out and set up the first churches. What’s the first thing that happens, Wilson? The forced conversion of the Roman Empire. The slaughter of the Jews. The Crusades. The slaughter of the Native Americans in the New World. Wilson, the history of the Christian Church reads like an evil Superman destroying the earth. Then there are all the wars and martyrs of the Protestant Revolution, dying and fighting to restore the Church to purity. Kind of like Batman and the league fighting and dying to restore Superman to his goodness.
That is supposedly the plot to the next movie in Zack’s arc. A movie that hasn’t been made yet. Batman dies restoring a hopeless Superman who has been turned into a villain. Of course looking at today’s Christians, they aren’t exactly like a restored Superman saving the universe. So I’m not going to say the fourth Snyder Superman movie is about the Protestant Reformation. It’s about a bigger restoration. A different church.
The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
John 3:8
So the fans want these sequels to get made. They are making all kinds of videos and memes on the internet. They want Warner to sell some of the superhero IP to Netflix, where Zack is working now, so he can make the rest of the movies with his current studio. Zack himself was completely quiet. He apparently doesn’t want to tell the fans to go home, it ain’t happening. But he isn’t out there campaigning to make the movies himself either. Just quiet. The actors are getting older. Other superhero movies are being made. Some are compatible with Zack’s unmade sequels, others aren’t.
Since I had so much passion for the Zack Snyder phenomenon, seeing all these spiritual angles to it, I thought it would make a good story. Within the movement there is a huge obsession with the last two movies being made. Currently it is a trilogy, but it also ends on a cliffhanger, with the forces of evil preparing to invade earth. Entities from another dimension, by the way. Kinda like demons. Not from another planet. But from another dimension. In the fourth movie, yet to be made, Lois Lane is killed, and Superman supposedly loses the hope that he is famous for and gets corrupted, and Batman supposedly dies bringing him back to his true self. Superman loses hope when he loses Lois. That’s what the demons hoped Zack would do when he lost Autumn. And that’s what they hoped I would do when I lost Noah van Ouwerkerk, the Electrochemical Girl.
I actually wanted to find out what the heck was going on myself. I thought to do some research, so I wanted to collect some information and make some phone calls to Netflix, Warner, whoever I could think of in Hollywood to find out more about the situation than was in the press and circulating among the fans. Of course my devices were going crazy. I couldn’t get through to anybody. I couldn’t find any numbers. It was like an impossible nightmare. I was like an old lady who can’t figure out how to turn on the TV. So I started asking other fans if they would want to help get info. Absolutely nobody wanted to help. It was like my problems getting into Israel with bizarre rebuffs from the Times of Israel, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Israeli politicians, etc. Nobody wanted to help the guy whose devices wouldn’t work talk to a press agent at Netflix or something. I was frustrated. On Reddit I complained that the fans used to be so animated, and now I couldn’t get anyone interested in actually doing anything. I couldn’t find other motivated fans. I complained on the Reddit that we needed another fan conference to network and get motivated and find out a way forward for these movies. We needed another Snydercon.
Then this pops up on Zack’s Vero feed:
I’ll try to dig up the Reddit conversations where I was saying we needed another Snydercon later, Wilson. I took a quick look a bit ago, but I can’t find them. I’m pretty out of it right now. I’m still going crazy in solitude in the Interzone. Or maybe the Parademon Marvel Chat GPT AI Bot Trolls from Satan altered the internet. You tell me, Wilson. You tell me. But the point is, I wanted a Snydercon, and we are getting a Snydercon.
Also, remember when I wrote that Batman story, Wilson? The one about the car chase scene in Matt Reeves’ The Batman? Not long after I wrote it, I find out Zack is a Matt Reeves fan too.
Now Zack did an interview recently. I got a lot from it. It’s long, but I’ll post it anyway, in case you want to look at the details, Wilson. I know you’re always so thorough about everything.
The first thing I want to say from this is that in one of my chats on Reddit, I was saying that at Netflix Zack was working with original IP for the first time since Sucker Punch, and that the Rebel Moon world he is developing at Netflix had the potential for video games, tabletop RPGs, etc. In this video, Zack mentions that he is developing games for his new scifi world.
So Zack and I get into The Batman at the same time and have the same ideas about games with his intellectual property at the same time. I’m also a D&D nerd. I have been since 1984 with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons First Edition second print blue cover Player’s Handbook. And the D&D Basic red boxed set.
Zack is into metaphysical correspondence. He noticed that all the logos of the organizations involved with his project were round. That his theater had 214 seats is important to him. Correspondence is related to synchronicity. The Gematria of the Kabbalists is a form of correspondence. Also, the whole Bible Code phenomenon from the 90s that the Christians and Jews did together was a form of correspondence. You may want to look up those things to get an idea of what I am talking about. And yeah, Wilson, I am into correspondence too. I’d have to write you another post about the meaning of why I’m staying in apartment 218 here.
Zack and I have the same favorite comic book.
There is a lot more evidence of connection going on. This post is already getting long, so I’ll cut it short. But trust me, there is a lot more. The thing about it is, what am I supposed to make of it? I have some observations.
Let’s do some psychology. I went to Israel in 2018. It was a lonely time. While there, all I could think about was Fire Girl back in the USA. When I got back from Israel, I found out she had loved me all the time, but she was married now, and that necessitated some distance. The point here is that I yearned for a woman in the western hemisphere when I was in the eastern hemisphere. When I got back, I went through the Electrochemical Girl experience. I couldn’t feel satisfied with my life in Mexico in the western hemisphere because I was yearning for a girl in the eastern hemisphere. After two years of mad poetry, I gave up on her and her family’s commitment to forgiveness. I was just the prophet now, but my first attempt to go back to Israel as a mad prophet saving the land from the False Messiah ended in utterly bizarre failure, and I went back to the USA in defeat.
Unable to forget Israel, I decided to make another attempt. This time with an epic continent-spanning bicycle trip from Lisbon, the legendary home of Ulysses, to Mount Nebo, the final stop and resting place of Moses. That was followed by more fantastically bizarre difficulties entering Israel. And get this: along the way, I start developing a connection to my favorite film director. One that involves significant spiritual observations. And yes, I am connecting to a guy in California in the western hemishpere while I sit literally on the other side of the world in Amman Jordan in the eastern hemisphere.
From a psychological perspective, we have a guy who goes more places than anybody else he knows, and can’t ever feel comfortable where he is, and who is always connecting to the opposite hemisphere. But the pattern doesn’t stop there. The connection to Noah had obstacles. I was a middle-aged man, and she was a young woman barely an adult. That was a huge thing for me in light of everything that happened with the Army that I tell you about in my book. With that, there is a bit of a difference with Zack. I am a middle-aged man. Zack is a middle-aged man. So thank God Almighty, I don’t have to worry about Harold van Ouwerkerk parachuting out of a C-130 with a bowie knife between his teeth coming to cut my balls off for talking to his daughter.
But there is another potential obstacle. Zack is famous. Famous people keep walls between themselves and the public, and for good reason. These guys love their fans. They really do. I think Zack more than most, actually. But a lot of them really, really love their fans. But they can’t love them all absolutely all day every day. And yeah, they have some crazy fans. Some dangerous fans. And sure, they’re rich and famous, but they need lives like the rest of us.
I had that in mind when I started to contemplate just up and leaving my place here in Jordan and going to the AFSP event on 28 April to get a DVD signed and meet Zack Snyder. See, the Zack Snyder thing is like the Electrochemical Girl thing. Nobody really gets the totality of the Electrochemical Girl thing. They always think it is about a dude hot for a girl. But it was also about seeing if some Christians could love and forgive their enemy. The deepest part of it, however, was that I wanted to know if one of two miracles took place. The first miracle would have been that a middle-aged man and a young woman developed a connection without meeting. The second miracle would have been that a woman randomly put songs on her playlists that spoke to a middle aged man about personal destiny and human connection without knowing a damned thing about that man. In other words, was God using a woman in Israel to inspire a man in the USA? You’ve already read the book, so you know all about that, Wilson. Because of the limitations involved, the old man and the young woman angle, and if you ask me, the involvement of evil spirits intent on stopping the story, it never got finished. We never learned which miracle actually occurred. Somebody stopped that story.
But now maybe this thing with the Snyderverse is giving me another chance. You see, the van Ouwerkerks were somewhere, blocking me, avoiding me. But Zack Snyder splattered all over social media, “I’m going to be right fucking here, on this date, in this theater.” Like he is freaking daring me to go get that DVD signed and crack this mystery: is somebody on the other side of the planet connecting with me? Or is God using the experiences of two unconnected people to create meaning and purpose for one person without the other even knowing it?
I don’t think this is a case of simple “manifestation” a la The Secret. I mean, that would be a wonderful message for fans everywhere, right Wilson? Can you imagine a high school girl thinking to herself, “you mean, all I need to do is keep obsessing over Johnny Depp, and he will love me back?” There are indeed fortune tellers who say this is the case, but we know it not to be how things work.
You see, when it came to the mission of saving Israel from the False Messiah, people would always ask me HOW I planned on doing it. On that front things were very vague. I had ideas, but none of them have panned out thus far, and I have no idea which one would be the best.
In theology, there is the situation of the opened door. God closes all doors except the one he wants you to take. He will open other doors later, maybe even the doors that are closed for you right now. Could that be what all these signals surrounding the Zack Snyder film movement are indicating? The doors to Israel are closed. The door to Hollywood may just be open. And in Hollywood, there may even be a door to Israel. With that option on the table, should I take the door to Hollywood?
I do know that I have an idea for a film arc. It draws from my knowledge and experience, but it isn’t about me. I’m kind of sick of writing about myself, actually. So this three act arc I have in mind, it’s not like anything else I have ever come across in film. It doesn’t classify into any single genre of film I have ever encountered. It would have to be described as a cross between a few of them. It would require the best filmmakers in the world to make it. But it can’t be made without me. I hate to say it, but I can’t just get one person I know or have heard of with another person I know or have heard of to get the thing made. I’m very curious to see if anyone else is interested. I don’t think anyone in Amman would have any hope of making it.
That alone is enough to get me interested in going to Hollywood to start pitching. The fact that this synchronistic connection to Zack and the Snyderverse movement makes the idea more enticing. But Zack is famous, and famous people live behind walls. And honestly Wilson, what do you think is more likely, becoming a filmmaker in Hollywood with absolutely zero experience or getting a visa approved to enter Israel? Will Jonathan Bailey go to Hollywood and spend his life wandering around pitching a movie idea and trying to get a DVD signed by Zack Snyder like he is spending his life in Belgrade, or in Guadalajara, or in Amman, trying to get a visa approved? Is Jonathan Bailey a guy who just travels everywhere, never comfortable where he is, never getting to where he is going? Or has he been given a second chance to show the world actual miracles actually happening right in front of their eyes?
To know that, I’d have to tell you the story of the bag of fortune cookies. I can’t tell you about that one right now. It’s from 2010. Before the PTSD, before the Electrochemical Girl saga, and before all this I am telling you about now. I’ll tell you that one sometime later, Wilson. But this post is incredibly meandering and long.
I’m wrapping some stuff up here. I hope I get it done soon. This place is driving me nuts, if you haven’t already been able to tell. When I leave, well, I want to see my daughter, and if you ask me, I kinda need to swim around in a lake of indica lemonade for a while. But I want to get to Los Angeles. Everyone is telling me to go to the USA. The Israeli border guy, the Israeli politician from Yesh Atid, my mom, my sister, everybody. There is an Israeli consulate there. My Judaism conversion court is there. And yeah, that’s where Zack is.
But once I get up and out of here, and I head to Los Angeles, I’m not going to fly west. I am going to fly east. I’ll spend a few days in Bangkok or Seoul or somewhere. You see, Zack’s slogan for his new event is #fullcircle. To him, it’s about the amazing process of starting out with the idea of making a movie and the journey that results in the actual completed film. And also that all the logos that he has been seeing are round. Well, I tell people the bike trips from Lisbon started the journey to Israel. But really, the journey to Israel started in Los Angeles when I went to talk to my rabbi and pass my book out to the directors who inspired me. The earth is a circle, Wilson. There is no bigger circle that anyone has ever navigated. So I am going to go around it. We will see what happens.
