Asshat Asbalom

I've been going back and forth on whether I am going to introduce an updated style guide and naming convention for Saruman, but I think I am going to.

Similar to Doug, who received his new name in a dream, Saruman was called by another name in a dream I had a few weeks back that I thought was pretty funny.  I have been hesitant to fully adopt it, however, because it is a bit clunkier in everyday use.  Doug, for example, is just a nice, short name to pull in.  This other name for Saruman is a bit longer and doesn't roll off the tongue as easily.  Because, let's face it:  as evil a dude as Saruman is, his name is pretty cool and badass.  And it just a habit to refer to him with that name, I guess, and I really didn't see a major need to change it.  But Tolkien gave him that name, and it wasn't likely what he was known by in Middle-earth, so perhaps the coolness factor is more due to Tolkien than anything.

Regardless, Saruman's new name here on this blog is:  Asshat Asbalom.  

I think I might shorten it to either Asshat or Asbalom, or maybe alternate as the mood suits, or use various configurations.  Maybe AA?  We'll figure it out.  

The dream where Asshat was referred to in this way actually came the evening of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse.  This occurred on March 26, as many of you know.  On the day of the collapse, my family and I were actually heading out on Spring Break, and flying out fairly early for our trip.  Thus, I initially heard about it but didn't know many details until later in the day when I had a layover and got caught up to speed.

The fact that the bridge was named after Francis Scott Key caught my attention.  Exactly one week earlier, on March 19, I wrote a post called "Francis Scott Key".  In that post, I recounted a conversation I had with my youngest son as he was belting out the Star-Spangled Banner and asked me who the man was that wrote the lyrics.

Now, Francis Scott Key is not a usual topic of conversation in my house, or really a person I had thought of for quite some time.  It might be in the timeline of decades since the last time I would have spoken that person's name, or maybe even thought about it.  So, it was a bit strange to see a bridge named after him collapse so soon after I had written about not only the name, but in relating the name to a Key (France has got Key).  Further, I have tied this Key to travel between worlds, and in some posts related this to a 'bridge' between worlds.  For example, in reviewing some of those cryptic words from January and February 2022, I had interpreted the word "Eilendel" as literally "sky-bridge", and it was placed in the context of people walking or travelling to other worlds, perhaps (if any of those interpretations are correct, which they may not be).  There are other examples of bridges, or doors, gates, passageways, etc. - basically something that one travels on or through to go over Many Waters to another place.

So, it was interesting to see a collapsed bridge with that name all over the headlines.

Anyway, I didn't know what to make of it but my imagination cast a wide net as to potential implications, as I sometimes do.  In one scenario, I actually became worried that this was an act of the 'good guys', in perhaps sending a message relative to some things.  It was a dark thought, I didn't like it, but it kind of sat there.

The 'good guys' in question, in this scenario, would have been the 7 Daughters of Asenath.  Why did my mind go there?  Well, they had been top of mind due to another 'dream' I had the week prior to the bridge collapse.  On the weekend of that prior week, I was just tired and decided to try and take a quick nap in the early afternoon.  As I rested on my bed, I looked over to the side of the room across my bed, and a woman was standing there .  With a loud voice she yelled "Fun!".  I blinked and she was gone, and I realized in blinking I must have nodded off to sleep and so had a mini-dream.

A couple days later, I had a dream with the phrase "Don't blink".  At the time, I took it as potentially referring back to that experience (perhaps from the Being who I saw?) but also potentially to things in the future.  You know, like when people say "Don't blink or you might miss it".  Like a magician might say before a trick, or when things move fast and they want you to pay attention. And that this all related to the "Fun!" that was yelled out by this woman.

In any case, I had associated (for whatever reason - I don't know exactly why, and it might not be correct) the woman I saw as one of the 7, honestly.  I know that sounds weird, OK, but that was my sense.

I am not fully sure what their version of "fun" is, but I had the dark thought that maybe involvement in this bridge collapse was encompassed in that, and I didn't really like that thought or why I was thinking thinking it.  As WJT mentioned in a later comment, the bridge collapse did happen exactly 7 days after my Francis Scott Key post, after all.

Leo had actually reached out to me later in the day wondering if I had seen the news, and offering up some quick thoughts of his own.  His note was helpful in that it offered up alternatives, with one of them along the lines of the symbolism of the bridge collapse being something from the 'bad guys', to paraphrase.  In that if a Key is going to help build a bridge by which people will be able to escape, then evil forces would work to destroy that bridge. 

And I want to be sensitive here - real people died on this bridge, and I am not trying to take that lightly by bringing in elements that the vast majority of people would consider fictional or imaginary.  But at the same time, it is very hard not to try and make sense of the Francis Scott Key connection, or at least wonder through different possibilities, which is what I am doing.

Anyway, Leo's note kind of helped point my mind away more troubling thoughts and implications and toward options that sounded more "right", and believable, if that can be something said of like the subject matter covered here.   I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't like the idea of evil Beings taking out a bridge to send a message, but for some reason it made me feel better to imagine that than the good guys doing this.   And for what?  A message that on one gets or understands anyway?  It just seemed a frivolous and unnecessary destruction and loss of life to attribute it to people I hope are good, if that makes sense.

It was a big travel day with the kids, so I didn't put a whole lot more thought into trying to figure things out and largely just got caught up with the news developments like everybody else.

That night, however, I had a dream where a character by the name of Asshat Asbalom was introduced.  I don't remember much about the character - only his name really, along with the sense that he was involved with the bridge.  Those are really the only details I remembered when I woke up.

I looked up some things to see if I could make sense of the name.  "Asshat" seemed fairly straightforward - an alternative to Asshole, I guess.  Here is what I came up with for the rest of the name, based on an initial assumption the name was an Elvish construct (so I looked in Eldamo):

As = With

Bal = Evil/ Bad/ Power

Om = Voice

Put all of that together, we have Asshat Asbalom meaning: "Asshat with the evil voice".

Ha!  I literally laughed out loud when I figured that out and pieced it together.  This name game came together so cleanly.  As we have covered on this blog, the Being who is known for the power and wickedness of his voice is Saruman.  I felt with this name, we had fairly clear title for this Being - fairly obvious, I think.

It actually felt like a relief to get this name and dream, because it seemed to confirm that if anything was behind this type of thing (I know - big, questionable "if"), it would be Asshat.

Asshat is not a nickname I usually use.  I went back on this blog and noted zero times it has come up.  Same story with its synonym Asshole - zero times.  In fact, I have tried not to use too many, if any, 'curse' words in general on this blog, which probably makes my use of Asshat as a name kind of funny.  But Asbalom is and will be a cursed Being, and remain that way, so I figure a curse word to describe him isn't a bad way to go.  If we are going to apply that word to anybody, it may was well be him.

Interestingly, even though I haven't used the word Asshat on my blog, Leo in fact has.  I wasn't aware of this, but after I got back to him in sharing this name and letting him know my thoughts around it, he mentioned that he had in fact used Asshat.  Which post was it in?  The Curious Case of Thomas B. Marsh.  The post that kicked off all of this Marsh-Peter thought stream.  I thought that was interesting.  

In that post, he actually applied Asshat to Brigham Young.  For clarity purposes, I propose that we designate BY as Asshole if we need to refer to him in such terms, which Leo also did in that post ("The Great Asshole of the West").   This is a term Brigham has applied to himself in a few instances, by the way, which is pretty funny.  And then Asbalom can have Asshat all to himself.  

As mentioned at the beginning of this post, Saruman is likely not the name he was called in Middle-earth, anyway.  It's roots are in Anglo-Saxon English, and was likely a name that Tolkien inserted for a modern reader's benefit, much like Bilbo, Sam, Peregrin, etc.  What was his real name I wonder?  We may not know, but Asshat Asbalom is as good a substitution as any.

Leo had another insight relative to the name.  Asbalom is actually similar to a name found in the Old Testament, that of Absalom (just switches the B and the S... like B.S., but I have reached my new curse word limit of two on this post, so you'll have to complete that one yourselves).  Absalom was the 3rd son of King David, and sought to usurp David's throne.  His point was that this seemed an apt comparison for AA, who is a Being we have also painted here on this blog as a usurper.

I also looked into the meaning of Absalom (the OT name), and found that it meant "The Father of Peace", which I found to be interesting.

Anyway, there you go.  The new Coat of Skins Style Guide will from now on recommend that the Being formerly known as Saruman be referred to as Asshat Asbalom or abbreviations and variances thereof.