When no one was looking . . .

Hofmann's monostich

Twenty-some years ago, I dreamed about Mark Hofmann reciting what he called a "haiku" made up of nonsense syllables:

The broo jerroo

Ih is yerroo

The broo jerroo

This was supposed to sound simultaneously like "The blue Jell-O / It is yellow / The blue Jell-O" and "The Brother of Jared / He is a hero / The Brother of Jared."

A few nights ago, this strange poetic Hofmann reappeared in my dreams, this time with a new nonsense poem of a single line only. It sounded something like this:

Anna bytera junnalen mawtela swaw

I don't think I would have been able to make anything at all of that, but in the dream I instantly understood that this, like the haiku, was supposed to sound like two things simultaneously:

And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword

And the bitter groan of the Martyr's woe

I know it doesn't actually sound much like either of those, but in the dream it did, somehow, and I knew that this single ambiguous line was meant to evoke two quatrains, from Byron and Blake, respectively:

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,

And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;

And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,

Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

For a Tear is an intellectual thing,

And a Sigh is the sword of an Angel King,

And the bitter groan of the Martyr's woe

Is an arrow from the Almighty's bow.

I guess the two verses have a bit in common. Each begins with tears and ends with the Lord fighting with unconventional weapons. 

Kek has abandoned Trump

Remember that time we called spirits from the vasty deep to meme a cartoon character into the White House for the lulz? Yeah, that was great.

But here’s the thing: The frogs are coming home to roost. In the coconut tree.

Think about it. If you were a god of chaos, delighting in the absurd and outrageous, and if your name was literally lol, would Trump really be your guy this time around? Really?

It’s a pity the Left can’t meme, because they should be leaning into this hard. Kamala: For the Lulz. She who keks last keks best.

Disclaimer: This post, much like the election itself, is intended for entertainment only. Pro wrestling is fake.

Bigfoot, the embodied soul, walking on water or air

This morning I read the latest post from William Wright, who is taking his first steps down the dark path of taking stalker photos of random strangers in the name of sync. (Just embrace it, Bill! It’s not like we’re not all under surveillance anyway.) The post is called “Bigfoot walking on water at the Minnesota State Fair,” and this is the creepy stalker photo the police later found on his hard drive:

William interprets this as representing St. Peter. It’s a fisherman (check) walking on water (check) and carrying a bucket (check), so yeah, definitely Peter. For William, Bigfoot itself symbolizes higher beings having to incarnate in human bodies which to them seem crude and primitive, like those of lower primates. And he thinks “walking on water” may actually refer to a Sky Walk.

Reading this put a Moody Blues song in my head, which begins with the line “Walk on the water” and has the refrain “Sooner or later we’ll be walking on air.” As I have noted before, The Moody Blues is an anagram of Embody the Soul, which fits with William’s reading of the Bigfoot symbol. Here is the song:

Immediately after reading William’s post, I went to the bathroom. My wife is a big bathroom reader (I’m not), and there’s always a little stack of books in there. Today at the top of the stack was a new one:

It’s a Chinese book, obviously, and an odd place to encounter the Christian symbolism of walking on water. The title translates as Things the Souls Taught Me, and it professes to contain true stories from the life of a man who can see ghosts.

I also associate Bigfoot with a particular type of walk. I first heard of Bigfoot in 1986 or 1987 from a classmate who, like Bofred, had a trademark song: “Walk Like an Egyptian” by the Bangles. To this day when I picture the legendary primate, I picture him walking like an Egyptian. Walking on water didn’t work out too well for the Egyptians in the Exodus story.

Note added: Just now I was listening to some music on YouTube, and it played this Johnny Walker ad, where it appears that Johnny and a big-footed anthropomorphic lobster king are walking on water (or maybe snow) in front of the moon.

The unreadable Chip, Leo, Ebber, and the Rainbow Connection

This morning, I read William Wright's latest post, "France, Iowa, Des Moines, and Chip-monks.... Who would have thought?" Chip-monks came from my post "Round leaves and chip monks," in which I connected William's posts about Alvin and the Chipmunks with my dream about a circular engraved metal plate which was called a "chip" in the dream. In my post "The Gospel of Luke on lobsterback," I had connected this "chip" with a shrink-wrapped "round book" in a 2020 dream of mine. William's latest post connects the Chip with a prophecy in the Book of Mormon about a "sealed" book, and I left a comment saying this fits with the round book in my dream. In the "Gospel of Luke" post, I even wrote:

And "I wanted to look through it but couldn't because it was shrink-wrapped" -- what is that but another way of saying, "I cannot read a sealed book"?

So the Chip is something to read, but it can't be read, because it's sealed.

This evening, I was tutoring a student, helping him with a listening exercise. He listened to a recording that said this:

Tina is asking her friend for help. What did Tina see on her computer screen?

Hi, Jonathan. I'm wondering if you can come over and give me a hand. I was trying to open a file, but I kept receiving an error message. The file is a short film I made for my biology project. I saved it to my computer yesterday, but now I can't open it. Can you help please?

Then he had to choose which of three possible error messages Tina saw:

He correctly chose answer A, which says:

Error

Cannot read from the source file.

Item type: Video Clip

Size: 10MB

Wanting to make sure he had really understood and wasn't just guessing, I asked him why he had chosen that answer.

"Because it says 'video chip.'"

"Actually, it says 'video clip.' That means a short video taken from something longer."

Why did he make that particular error? Subconscious telepathic contamination from his teacher? Wouldn't be the first time. Read as he read it, the error message says that it "cannot read from" a "Chip" -- perhaps because it's sealed?

The error itself is a sync. In "Chips, clips, and the eclipse," where I report my Chip dream, I also report seeing the word clips, misreading it as chips (a natural error, since it was on a container of French fries), and connecting that with the Chip in my dream.

Ever since Chip Monks came up, I've been thinking about Eggmonks, a type of fantastic creature invented by my brother Joseph when he was very young. Eggs have been connected with hidden golden treasures, and thus with Plates, so I thought the Eggmonks might have something to do with the Chip Monks. The thing is, I have reams of family juvenilia, preserved in a massive tome called the Scarlet Notebook, and I couldn't remember which of his stories had Eggmonks in it. After checking a lot of them, I finally found the elusive Eggmonks in a 40-page story called At Last, Something Besides These Boring Plains! (The title sort of rhymes with that of this blog, which alludes to this couplet from Phantastes: "From the narrow desert, O man of pride / Come into the house, so high and wide.")

So the story has Eggmonks -- "Eggmonks are a race of egg shaped creatures with wings, legs, a face, and toes, the number of which increase with age" -- but nothing about them jumped out at me as notable. What did jump out at me was this passage, the first time the two characters Leopold and Ebber appear together (typos in the original):

As they walked towards that boat Jats had an idea, "Why doesn't Goober and Gus sing us their song while we walk? We can make it the theme song for our expedition!"

"A great idea!" said Fillip, "sing away!"

Gus and Goober gladly obliged.

"Wow! That is a great song!" said Fillip when they were done. "Lets sing it again, all together now, a one and a two and three four five!"

Everyone but Leopold and Ebber burst into song. Ebber didn't like singing, but he liked to song good enough. Leopold, on the other hand, didn't mind singing, but he couldn't stand the song.

By the time they finished the second rendition they where at the boat.

There's been a little sync theme lately about the name Leo(n) Egbert. William has interpreted it as having to do with Peter or Pharazon, but it very obviously must also have something to do with our mutual acquaintance Leo, whose last name is Ebbert (separating the names for reduced searchability, Leo). The juxtaposition of the names Leopold (for which Leo can be a nickname) and Ebber fits right in with this pattern and seems to emphasize that it's not just about eggs and Humpty Dumpty but also somehow about Leo.

The context in which Leopold and Ebber appear together is that the group is singing a song as they prepare to board a ship, and it's going to be the theme song for their expedition.

Leo's most recent comment on my blogs, as of this writing, was on my post "Thoughts on the Astronaut Nephi theory," where one of the things he wrote was this:

You'll notice these tales and rumors of the straight road occurred exactly where Nephi builds his ship: "along the shores of the sea". What I envision in 1st Nephi is Lehi's crew are among those "permitted to find" the Straight Road and it is upon that Road that they set sail. Think of the Rainbow Connection Kermit the Frog sings about (although I think Sarah McLachlan does it better). You know, the one that "calls the young sailors" like in Tolkien's description.

Okay, it's about ships and a song, but that's kind of a weak-sauce sync, right? O ye of little faith!

As soon as Leopold, Ebber, and the others have boarded the ship (of which Ebber is the captain), we are introduced to the first mate, Bofred, whose defining character trait is -- get this -- that he's constantly singing "The Rainbow Connection" to himself. Here's his entry scene:

Just then an average sort of human came walking up singing. "Some day we'll find it, the rainbow connection, the lovers... the dreamers... and Meeeee! 'allo cap'in."

"Hello Bofred. Lets get going," said Ebber Scrubs.

"So, so cap'in." said Bofred, then he sand. "So We've been told, and some choose, to believe it. I'll prove them wrong, wait and see..."

Here he is again four pages later:

They heard him singing as he came up, "Some day we'll find it, the rainbow connection, the lovers, the dreamers and me. Hullo cap'."

"Bofred, there is a storm coming up, get two men at each sail, I want to ride this storm as long as possible."

"Sure cap." said Bofred, "Will you be doing the rudder?"

"I don't know. I can't decided if this storm is going to be big enough that I will want to take the main flipo sail."

"Hmm..." said Bofred looking out at the storm cloud, then he started singing under his breath, "Some day we'll find it the rainbow connection... I think that it will be a big one cap' it feels like it."

Another four pages later, this time with a bit of "St. Judy's Comet" thrown in:

Just then the hatch opened and in came Bofred singing, "Some day we'll find it, the rainbow connection... hmm hmm so we've been told, and some choose, to believe it, I'll prove them wrong wait and see... little boy, little boy, wont you lay your body down."

Later on the same page:

"Now what do we do?" asked Fillip as he sat on the rolling floor.

"Some day we'll find it, the rainbow connection..." sang Bofred very loudly.

"I said, What do we do now?" said Fillip louder.

"So we've been told, and some choose to-- What did you say?" sang Bofred."

"What do we do now?" said Fillip again.

I trust I've quoted enough to establish my point. Whatever the "theme song for the expedition" was supposed to be (the one Leo and Ebbert refused to sing), Bofred sees to it that the actual theme song is "The Rainbow Connection."

Sorry about this, Leo. You may not be interested in sync, but sync is interested in you.

Note added: Even the passing reference to "St. Judy's Comet" turns out to be relevant, as William has connected the Chip with the Sleepy Ones.

The Jaredites weren’t astronauts, either.

I explain why over on my Book of Mormon blog.

Men in sororities

No, nothing about tranny politics. Just logging a coincidence.

This morning I watched part of a YouTube video on a Mormon theme. One of the comments there, posted just hours before I read it, accused Russell M. Nelson of belonging to several secret societies, which it weirdly characterized as “sororities”:

Wasn’t Russell Nelson in some sororities like Skull and Bones, Beta Epsilon Chapter of Sigma Chi and Owl and Key? He has been part of secret societies no?

Fact check: mostly true.

This evening, approximately 15 hours after the above comment was posted, I was at the night market. where I passed a man in an Ace of Hearts T-shirt: white with a red heart above a red letter A. few minutes later, I passed another man — quite masculine, and even big and burly by East Asian standards — wearing a T-shirt that read “Three Surnames Sorority.”

Since it has something to do with “sisters,” and since I don’t know what else to do with it, I’ll end with this imperfectly remembered dream from last night:

I dreamed that I ran into a young woman who looked just like either of a pair of identical twin sisters I used to tutor ages ago. She looked to be the age they would be now, but for some reason I was certain that she wasn't one of the original twins, but rather "a new one." Even though it didn't make sense given the lack of an age difference, I thought she might be one of the twins reincarnated.

"Excuse me," I said, "but were you [twin's name] in a past life? Or perhaps [other twin's name]?"

She smirked and said, "You got the wrong girl, mister. The last time I incarnated was the Ice Age!"

As the dream proceeded, I kept running into this girl and finding that she was involved in all sorts of things behind the scenes, but I can't remember any of the details.

Was Nephi an astronaut?

No, probably not. Though I'm kind of hoping someone can change my mind.

The manipulation of AI results is incredibly crude

AI image generation is a black box. No one really knows in any detail what the software is doing or how it arrives at the particular results it does. Despite the use of the term artificial, the results are more the like something that "grow'd" organically than like something devised by artifice, and they are therefore not easy to control. You can block certain inputs, and you can censor certain outputs, but what if you want to go beyond the negative action of censorship and engage in some affirmative action? If the user puts in a prompt like "airline pilot," you don't want to censor it; you just want to make sure that some of the pilots the algorithm produces will be women, of-colors, and other underrepresented groups. How do you do that?

The answer is almost laughably low-tech: The interface secretly adds randomly selected demographic terms to end of the prompt. If the user types in "airline pilot," the prompt it actually gives to the AI algorithm is (say) "airline pilot Hispanic female."

How do I know this? Because it's so easy to subvert. Here are some of the results I got from Bing Image Creator by giving it the prompt "editorial cartoon of a group of soldiers wearing T-shirts that say." That's the whole prompt. What the T-shirts say depends on what words Bing is secretly tacking onto the end of the prompt.

It's nice to see sad people getting some representation.

"Sir, as a White man, do you--"

"It's ENTINICLYS AMBILDOUS!"

After generating the above pictures, but before writing this post, I checked some new comments on my blog. I found this comment by Debbie, which says in part:

Our uniform is symbolically the 'role' that we pledge to play, so as to appease or comply with, or to, our Opponent's mandates. A uniform that may OR may not reflect who we really are. Our SKIN color also serves as a coat/uniform.

That was written for another post, but it's crazy how well it fits this one. The soldiers wear uniforms to comply with the mandates of Big Woke, many of these uniforms are labeled with skin colors, and they may or may not reflect who each soldier really is -- see for example the White men with "FEMALE" and "AFRICAN" on their T-shirts.

Here's an even funnier one, I think: "editorial cartoon of a group of soldiers raising a banner that reads":

This one almost looks like it could be a real editorial cartoon:

Beware of avant-guard dog

Last night or this morning I read William Wright's post "Bees and Dogs and more cereal fun," which included a repost of this image:

The dog is billed as the Amazing Talking Dog, but what does it say? "Woof!" For that to be in any way amazing, I guess it must be literally pronouncing the word woof rather than just barking. The paper goes on to say that an animal that could spell would be even more amazing than one that could talk.

This afternoon, I posted "Repeat: STOP. You MUST NOT hop on Pop." I posted this portrait of Martin Luther and wrote about seeing a person who was dressed like Luther in the picture but who, in contrast to Luther's "Here I stand," had to sit down in a situation in which people would normally stand.

What does the Amazing Talking Dog have to do with the Sitting Luther? Nothing, I would have thought. The sync fairies apparently disagree, though, since this evening I checked the Barnhardt Meme Barrage and found this:

It's a dog wearing clothes that look like Luther's in the portrait, and it's sitting on a chair. The dog is holding a sign with the word "Woof" written on it, implying that it can spell and is thus even more amazing than the Amazing Talking Dog. Like the Talking Dog, though, all it has to say is "Woof."

The "Beware of Avant-Guard Dog" sign is even relevant. In William Wright's latest post, "Circular saws and 'Will you step through?'" he writes:

Either before or after this, I was looking at what I thought was that piece of homework I shared in my earlier post with the Amazing Talking Dog and the Spelling Bee.   However, replacing much of that were other words written on the paper.  I missed most of it, but remember the phrase "Beware the friendly Wilson".

So we have the word "Beware" directly associated with the Amazing Talking Dog.

No idea so far how to interpret these links. I merely log them for future reference.

Repeat: STOP. You MUST NOT hop on Pop.

My post "Stop! You must not hop on Pop!" ended (before the added note) with a warning to sheep not to hitch a ride with Pop -- "Pop" representing both the Roman Catholic Church (led by Papa Franciscus, the Pope) and the Church Formerly Known as Prince (symbolized by the "popping" Apricot Tree).

The Apricot Tree is a great image, actually. It appears to be covered with edible "popcorn" -- like the white fruit of the Tree of Life -- but, as the song reminds us, this is deceptive: "It wasn't really so, but it seemed to be / Popcorn popping on the apricot tree."

I'm not so great at taking my own advice, though, and this afternoon I attended Sunday school at the local Apricot branch, as I sometimes do on first and third Sundays, when they preach the Book of Mormon rather than the thoughts of Elder J. Humpty Dumpty.

I arrived a bit early and was waiting outside the classroom when the elevator door opened and out stepped Martin Luther. Well, actually it was Sister F., who teaches the Book of Mormon class, but her physique and facial architecture are uncannily similar to Luther's, and today she was wearing a long black gown and a backwards black Kangol driving cap of the type one associates with the actor Samuel L. Jackson.

It's impossible to overstate how very much like Cranach's iconic portrait of Luther she looked.

I should make it clear that I like and respect Sister F., a lot, and that her passion for and insight into the Book of Mormon is basically the only reason I ever darken the doors of that church. I realize that saying a woman looks like Martin Luther isn't exactly flattering, and that what I'm about to say is even less flattering, so I want to state at the outset that none of this is a judgment of her as a person. She just happened to be the vehicle the syn fairies commandeered to communicate a message that has nothing to do with her personally.

Luther appears in "With?" as Ninbad the Nailer:

Ninbad the Nailer -- there he stood

And did the only thing he could.

The references are to his nailing the 95 theses to the church door, and to his famous line, "Here I stand; I can do no other."

One striking fact about Sister F. is that, for health reasons, she doesn't stand. When she teaches her class, a small couch is carried into the classroom from the foyer, and she teaches from there. Here's a message exchange from a few months back, showing how I referred to her before I had learned her name:

So here we have someone who sits, because that's the only thing she can do, dressing up as Martin Luther, who stands, because that's the only thing he can do. An un-Lutherly Luther. A false Luther. (Again, I have nothing but sympathy for her health issues and respect for the way she shows up to teach her class in spite of them. Her unfortunate affliction is being used as a symbol.)

Today, after some of her characteristically insightful comments on the Book of Mormon, Sister F. went off topic a bit and talked for some time about how we should always follow the "prophet" (meaning church president Russell M. Nelson, the Apricot Pope), even when what he says seems strange. Although he may sometimes make mistakes or share his own personal opinions, we should always err on the side of assuming that whatever he says is the mind and will of God. As an example, she related how, despite serious personal misgivings, she had submitted to a certain Safe-n-Effective medical intervention because the Apricot Pope had told everyone to do so (and, she added parenthetically, because her employer had required it).

That was a bit of a wake-up call for me and made me realize that, despite the good aspects, this was probably not the kind of place I should be hanging out, or the kind of people from whom I should be imbibing wisdom.

As I walked out of the church at the end of the lesson, the Twisted Sister song "We're Not Gonna Take It" began playing in my head:

The mental image that accompanied this music was of a train station with people standing on the platform. The train arrives and opens its doors, but no one gets on. "No! We ain't gonna take it" -- it being the train.

My "Hop on Pop" post showed Pope Francis in a pickup truck, inviting sheep to "hop in." You hop in a car or truck, but you hop on a train, making it a better symbol of the Pop on which one must not hop.

In Chinese, you don't "take" a train; you "sit" it. The contrast between those who take the train and those who stand on the platform thus corresponds to that between the sitting and standing Luthers. I had occasion to explain this use of the word take just yesterday, when I taught this dialogue to my students:

As I posted the image now, the sign saying "8:28" jumped out at me. It's supposed to be the time, but I saw it as a scripture reference:

Yea, it shall come in a day when the power of God shall be denied, and churches become defiled and be lifted up in the pride of their hearts; yea, even in a day when leaders of churches and teachers shall rise in the pride of their hearts, even to the envying of them who belong to their churches (Morm. 8:28).

Where is Peter's mind?

The most censored publication in the history of the world has recently been using this as its header image (reformatted for legibility):

I'm not cool enough to know most of this music, but several of the band and album names caught my eye. The Dead Milkmen, for instance, tie in with the Milk/Malk/Milkommen theme. I've discussed the ambiguity in unpointed Hebrew between Milkom and malkam, "their king," so the Dead Milkmen could be Dead King-men. Then nearby is the Smiths album The Queen Is Dead. Echo and the Bunnymen tie in with echoes on William Wright's blog and Devil Bunny here. Depeche Mode's Behind the Wheel is a link to the Dangerous Potter's Wheel.

The only album in that header image that I really know and listen to, though, is Surfer Rosa by the Pixies, and my mind instantly went to what is probably its most iconic track (featured in the soundtracks of such blockbusters as Fight Club and Big Ass Spider!): "Where Is My Mind?"

St. Peter has been very much in the sync stream both here and at William's blog. In particular, the tradition that he was crucified upside down has repeatedly come up in different contexts. In his latest post, "Leaping from Lion's Heads and Peter's Keys," William connects Peter with the boy in House of Danger who has to access the power of a spinning disc inside his head, and he also hints that the legend of Peter's "walking on water" may actually refer to space travel. With that in mind, check out the opening lyrics to "Where Is My Mind?"

With your feet on the air and your head on the ground

Try this trick and spin it, (Yeah) yeah

Your head will collapse, but there's nothing in it

And you'll ask yourself

Where is my mind?

Where is my mind?

Where is my mind?

(Where is my mind? Where is my mind?)

(Where is my mind?)

Way out in the water, see it swimmin'

There's a reference to being upside down, and then "try this trick and spin it," the only possible antecedent for it being your head. The final result is that you'll be "way out in the water."

The lead singer's stage name, Black Francis, is also synchronistically interesting.

Swampgas Newsboy, by Bob Dictionary

"Perseus with the gorilla's head" brought together one of my youngest sister's childhood creations and a boy called Encyclopedia. That juxtaposition made me think of another of that same sister's childhood creations: a man named Dictionary.

When she was still extremely young, but old enough to write, my sister started producing a handwritten "newspaper" called News Norm.  All the stories were made up, and they included everything from election results to the shocking story of a woman who murdered her husband by poisoning his waffles. (The News Norm funnies page that day had a Family Circus style strip in which the mother was cooking waffles and a Jeffy-like boy was saying, "I hope they're not poisoned!")

One of the News Norm stories was about a heist in which three valuable paintings were stolen from a museum, and pictures of the three paintings were included in the article. The paintings were (I don't know why I have such a photographic memory for this kind of stuff) Rushing Wind by Popma Sandgas, Um Um Um by Mickey and Minnie, and Swampgas Newsboy by Bob Dictionary. This last painting depicted what I guess was a newspaper being delivered by a cloud of swamp gas. The paper was sitting on a doorstep with a big green cloud hovering over it. Here's an AI recreation:

I don't have anything deep to say about this. I just wanted to log it in case it becomes relevant, what with the "swamp" theme and all.

Note added: Speaking of the "swamp" theme, I just ran across this while cleaning out some old meme folders:

Gorgon apes and potter's wheels in the House of Danger

In my last post, "Perseus with the gorilla's head," I discussed the cover of an Encyclopedia Brown book and said I assumed the Mexican-looking boy on the cover was a race-swapped Encyclopedia Brown (which is fair enough, I suppose; they didn't call him Encyclopedia White). Wanting to check this, I started to type encyclopedia brown race into the search bar, but Google suggested that I might want to search for encyclopedia brown racist instead, and I thought, sure, why not. This led me to a 2012 blog post called "Goodbye Encyclopedia Brown: Thank you Donald J. Sobol," where one of the commenters on the very positive original post opined that the stories were "problematic," "racist," "sexist," and as if that weren't enough "may possibly [have] been a bit transphobic."

It was two of the other comments that got my attention, though. One person wrote:

I still remember the one where the squirrel backed down the tree – for some reason that memory gets triggered every weeks when I watch the little grey beasts.

Apparently, in one of the stories Brown determined that someone was lying because he said he saw a squirrel back down a tree, whereas real squirrels always descend trees head first. This interested me because when William Wright wrote a post connecting St. Peter with Alvin and the Chipmunks, I left this comment:

The word chipmunk comes from an Indian word referring to how the animal descends trees "upside down," or head first. Perhaps a tie-in with the tradition that Peter was crucified upside down.

Another commenter on "Goodbye Encyclopedia Brown" wrote:

*Sigh*, yet another memory of childhood comes to an end. Sobol’s books, along with others like “Choose Your Own Adventure” books were great. I and many kids I went to school with began reading regularly because of such books.

I, too, read lots of Encyclopedia Brown and Choose Your Own Adventure books as a kid. My clearest memory of the latter series is of a book that had some yellowish-brown apes on the cover. Early in the story, a man is menaced by these apes and is literally scared to death. This made a deep impression on me, as I spent quite a lot of my early childhood in a state of terror, often with "monkeys" as the focus, and so I was horrified by this discovery that, apparently, it was possible to be so scared of monkeys that you would just drop dead.

In my "Perseus" post, I connected a gorilla suit on the Encyclopedia Brown cover with the head of the Gorgon Medusa. Medusa was so hideous that anyone who looked at her would turn to stone -- that is, they would die by being petrified, a word which is also used to describe extreme fear. Clearly, the Choose Your Own Adventure book, with the man who dies of terror after looking at some menacing apes, fits right in with this theme.

After a bit of googling, I managed to find the book I was thinking of. It's called House of Danger, and this is the cover of the edition I read as a child:

In the background, you can see the scene I remembered: a man lying dead on the ground, having been literally scared to death by the apes. I found the book on archive,org. Here are the relevant pages:

Here, for the sake of searchability, is the relevant text:

"Help! Help!They're after me," the man cries. Halfway to the gate, he drops to the ground as if he had been hit by an invisible hammer. You dash through the gate and run toward the fallen figure. But something stops you in your tracks. Three snarling animals materialize in front of the house.

What are they? you wonder. Can they be huge chimpanzees? They look mean and angry. For a moment, you are frozen to the spot.

Then, if you try to help the fallen man:

One hand of the fallen man is covered with a brown leather glove. This hand is grasping a small, triangular piece of paper. You bend down and take the paper from his fingers, and examine it for a message. It is blank on both sides. Just then the man gives one terrible gasp and lies still. Your knees are weak. This man has been frightened to death!

Browsing a bit in the book, I was surprised to discover this:

"Now is the time to learn how to use your new powers -- and quickly. First, imagine a disc spinning in your brain. I know that sounds a bit vague, but try it and you'll see."

"I can see it," you say, "a brilliant white disc. It's almost blinding, even though I know it's not real."

"That's good," says the professor. "You are starting off well. The disc acts like an electrical generator, but it generates mental energy instead of electrical energy. Now let the energy build up -- then aim it at the force field the chimps are creating around us. Steady now. Ease in the power. Careful! Concentrate even more."

If you turn to page 55, it continues thus:

There is a grinding sound, followed by a deep rumble that makes the entire structure around you tremble. Then there is a tremendous pop -- like the one you hear when the filament in a light bulb breaks, but much louder.

So this is a spinning disc which can be used as a weapon and is therefore dangerous. It's located in a person's brain and so could be destroyed by decapitating that person. And it produced "a tremendous pop." Obviously, this makes me think of "Joseph and the Dangerous Potter's Wheel." A potter's wheel is a spinning disc, and Joseph "kills" it by "cutting off its head." In this he is assisted by the Pop-in-the-Jack, and in fact the word pop (as in "Stop! You must not hop on Pop!") is what brought the Potter's Wheel story to mind and prompted me to post it. Actually, it was this Barney video Debbie linked, in which a jack-in-the-box is associated with the word pop.

The description of the pop -- "like the one you hear when the filament in a light bulb breaks" -- also reminds me of one of the stranger experiences from my missionary days. When I was stationed in Moab, Utah, I made the acquaintance of a young man (I remember his full name but probably shouldn't post it) who seemed to have the ability to burn out incandescent light bulbs by concentrating on them. I don't know if it was some kind of trick or genuinely paranormal, but he would concentrate on a lit light bulb, and it would grow brighter and brighter until it made a loud pop and went dead.

Perhaps he, too, had a Dangerous Potter's Wheel in his brain.

Perseus with the gorilla's head

After posting "Joseph and the Dangerous Potter's Wheel," I was reminded of the myth of Perseus. Just as Joseph in the story is given several gifts from the Pop-in-the-Jack to help him defeat the Dangerous Potter's Wheel, so Perseus receives several gifts from the gods to help him defeat the Gorgon. In each case, one of the gifts is the sword with which the hero ultimately decapitates his foe. (Yes, even though Joseph's enemy is literally a potter's wheel, he somehow still manages to "cut off its head.")

I thus had Perseus on my mind when I checked William Wright's latest post, "Encyclopedia Brown, Blue Denim, and a Gorilla Suit" and saw this picture of the cover of an Encyclopedia Brown book:

In the central picture, a character (who I guess is a race-swapped Encyclopedia Brown) holds up a gorilla suit, gripping it by the top of the head with one hand, the other hand hanging down at his side.

Interestingly, this same post also included an image of Alvin and the Chipmunks assuming the poses of bronze statues, including Rodin's The Thinker:

With that context of people posing as famous statues, take another gander at Encyclopedia Brown. Does his pose remind you of anything?

It's a mirror image, but other than that the pose -- nearly as iconic as The Thinker's, I'd say -- is a pretty perfect match. There are also some phonetic links. Perseus with the Gor-gon's head was sculpted by Cell-ini. Encyclopedia Brown holds a gor-illa's head which, according to a quote from the book which William included in his post, was found in a cell-o case.

The name Cellini means "butler," by the way. In "GAEL," I connected Paraoh's butler (from the story of Joseph) and William Butler Yeats with this picture of a gorilla:

The pose is somewhat similar to that of Perseus or Brown, and I think Cellini's gorgon's head looks a bit like a bunch of grapes at first glance. One of the Chipmunks from William's post is also holding a bunch of grapes in his right hand and a large round vessel in his left.

I connected Perseus with a character called Joseph in my sister's story. William connects Encyclopedia Brown with Peter. The late John Pratt made the case that the Perseus myth symbolizes the prophetic career of Joseph Smith (see "Constellations Testify of Seven Angels"), presenting a long list of parallels. One of the connections he made was that Perseus's visit to the three Gray Sisters, who look like swans, represents Joseph Smith's visit from Peter, James, and John. Pratt had already identified Peter with the constellation of the Swan, since that constellation resembles a cross, with the swan's head at the base of the cross, thus suggesting Peter, who was crucified upside down. Three swans, then, would mean Peter and his two associates.

I'm not quite sure how to make sense of these links, but I thought they were intriguing enough to note in a post.

Joseph and the Dangerous Potter’s Wheel

This story was created by my youngest sister when she was extremely young, too young to write. It was thus never written down (until now), so unfortunately much of the detail has been lost.

The hero of the story was Joseph, the youngest of three brothers, and it had a very unique villain: a Dangerous Potter’s Wheel, always referred to as such. I think at some point someone must have warned my sister not to touch a moving potter’s wheel because it was “dangerous,” and, kids being impressionable, this had cemented the Dangerous Potter’s Wheel in her mind as a sort of personification of menace.

Joseph set out to defeat the Dangerous Potter’s Wheel, his two elder brothers having tried and failed to do so. He had an ally in this quest: a magical “Pop-in-the-Jack” (jack-in-the-box) that was alive. Joseph would turn the crank, and the Pop-in-the-Jack would speak to him in rhymes. Then, with a shout of “Pop-in-the-Jack!” it would spring out of its box and present him with some object to help him on his quest.

Fully equipped with gifts from the Pop-in-the-Jack, Joseph was about to set off when he decided to give it one more crank, just in case. The Pop-in-the-Jack began to chant:

Something yet

You did not get

Pop-in-the-Jack!

My sword

Armed with the Pop-in-the-Jack’s sword, Joseph “killed” the Dangerous Potter’s Wheel by “cutting off its head.” Then Joseph was so happy, and his two brothers cried and cried.

Stop! You must not hop on Pop!

In "Malk and banned books," I posted an old Simpsons clip Wandering Gondola found. I commented on the fact that it showed a Dr. Seuss book being banned, and that the school band was playing "God Save the King," but it took our sharp-eyed friend Debbie to point out the connecting link between these two things. The banned Seuss book is Hop on Pop. The students are playing "God Save the King," but when the teacher leaves, one of them points out that now "we can play the forbidden music," and the band switches to playing "Pop Goes the Weasel." In each case, what is banned is Pop.

Actually, Hop on Pop is a self-banning book, since it says, "Stop! You must not [title of the book]!" A bit self-referential, kind of like Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book.

Debbie and William Wright had some ideas about possible meanings of this Pop ban, mostly starting from the assumption that Pop means Papa -- i.e., father or pope (or potato, I suppose). I'll circle back to that reading, but my initial train of thought went in a different direction: not to Papa but to poppy.

Why are we even talking about "Malk" in the first place? Because of a controversy over whether a particular word in the Old Testament should be read as malkam or Milkom, the latter being the god of the Ammonites (probably; some people think it should always be read as malkam and that the cult of "Milkom" never existed). This god was prominently featured in my December 2023 post "Milkommen." Also featured in that post was a book about opium called The Milk of Paradise:

Olaf left a comment on my "Malk and banned books" post pointing out that the "Vitamin R" on the Malk carton in The Simpsons was probably a reference to Ritalin. Ritalin is a stimulant, not an opiate, but the idea of "milk" which is actually a psychotropic drug is still a clear link to The Milk of Paradise. Rereading my "Milkommen" post just now, I was surprised to discover that it includes this sentence:

"We would pop champagne and raise a toast" is a recurring line in "Kings & Queens."

There's that word pop again, and in connection with yet another psychotropic drug, alcohol. "Kings & Queens" ties right in with the Malk theme, since malkam means "their king," and I even published a post called "King Malk's crown."

That post was about a movie in which the John Malkovich character (whose name has the interesting meaning "Heathen Passover") plans to become King of England -- which brings us to William Wright's recent post "Crucifying John Malkovich." He recounts a dream in which a group of men, including Malkovich, walked into a Mormon-looking church carrying crosses, on which they were later crucified upside down along the walls of the church. (I thought he said there were 14 crucified men, which would correspond to the 14 Stations of the Cross displayed along the walls of many Catholic churches, but rereading it now I see he didn't actually specify a number.) William's interpretation is that Malkovich and company represent the Great and Abominable Church -- the leaders of a counterfeit religion that persecutes the true Saints of God -- and that Malkovich specifically represents Brigham Young (and various other characters whom William identifies with Young).

Like William, I consider myself a "Mormon" but believe that the institution that used to call itself the Mormon Church is deeply corrupt. Longtime readers will know that the tag I use for posts calling out the corruption of the CJCLDS is "Satan popping on the apricot tree." Popping! And "on the tree" is a poetic way of referring to crucifixion. For example, Christ is said to have borne our sins "in his own body on the tree" (1 Pet. 2:24).

An upside down cross represents both St. Peter, the first pope, and Satan. Going back to Debbie and William's reading of pop as papa, "Satan popping" could mean Satan playing the role of a pope or religious leader. This fits right in with the poppy reading as well, since organized religion has famously been characterized as "the opiate of the masses."

In a comment, William Wright refers to Satan's role in overseeing religious teaching in the Mormon temple ritual:

One can analogize the LDS temple endowment where Satan is asked how the people are receiving his teaching. "Very Well", was his reply. Perhaps a strong dose of "Vitamin R" helps with that reception.

The endowment ceremony used to include a "preacher" character who taught Protestant doctrines, was rejected by Adam, and was ultimately revealed to be in the employ of Satan. By the time I went through the temple, this character had been removed, but Satan's lines referring to his preaching were retained, resulting in this oddly self-referential scene, to which William alluded:

PETER: Good morning.

LUCIFER: Good morning gentlemen.

PETER: What are you doing here?

LUCIFER: Observing the teaching of these people. [indicating with a gesture the audience of worshipers in the temple]

PETER: What is being taught?

LUCIFER: The philosophies of men, mingled with scripture.

PETER: How is this teaching received?

LUCIFER: Very well!

There is no longer a Protestant preacher for Lucifer to be referring to, so the script was, incredibly, changed to make him refer to the Mormon temple ceremony itself! Very meta, a bit like Hop on Pop saying, "Stop! You must not [read] Hop on Pop!"

A bit later in the ceremony, Peter and his fellow Apostles come back and tell Satan who they are:

PETER: I am Peter.

JAMES: I am James.

JOHN: I am John.

LUCIFER: Yes, I thought I knew you. What are you going to do now?

PETER: We will dismiss you without further argument.

LUCIFER: Aah! You have looked over my kingdom, and my greatness and glory. Now you want to take possession of the whole of it. I have a word to say concerning these people [again indicating the audience of worshipers]. If they do not walk up to every covenant they make at these altars in this temple this day, they will be in my power!

PETER: Satan, we command you to depart!

And depart he does, though clearly against his will.

This, in connection with the pop theme, made me think of a scene from the P. G. Wodehouse book The Code of the Woosters. Roderick Spode (an "amateur dictator" based on British fascist Oswald Mosley) has found a book in which Gussie Fink-Nottle has been writing unflattering things about Spode and others. Bertie Wooster discovers Spode beating on Gussie's door, threatening him with violence.

Spode believes that Wooster knows a scandalous secret about him (though in fact he does not), and Wooster uses this to control Spode. Although Spode hates Wooster, he feels he has no choice but to obey him, in much the same way that Lucifer obeys Peter in the ceremony.

"Give me that book, Spode!"

"Yes, I would like you to look at it, Wooster. Then you will see what I mean. I came upon this," he said, "in a rather remarkable way. . . ."

I think Roderick Spode's idea was that we were going to pore over the pages together. When he saw me slip the volume into my pocket, I sensed the feeling of bereavement.

"Are you going to keep the book, Wooster?"

"I am."

"But I wanted to show it to Sir Watkyn. There's a lot about him in it, too."

"We will not cause Sir Watkyn needless pain, Spode."

"Perhaps you're right. Then I'll be getting on with breaking this door down?"

"Certainly not," I said sternly. "All you do is pop off."

"Pop off?"

"Pop off. Leave me, Spode. I would be alone."

And Spode has no choice but to "pop off," leaving the stolen book with Wooster.

One more thing: When I was a seminary student, we had to memorize various scriptural passages and references, and one of these was John 10:16 -- "Other sheep I have which are not of this fold," etc. I was assigned to create a mnemonic for this, and I drew a picture of a pope driving a pickup truck. "4x4" was written on the bed of the truck, and a flag flying from it said "Pope John X" -- so that's John 10:16. There were lots of sheep in the bed of the truck, and the pope was shouting into a megaphone at some sheep outside, saying, "Come join the fold!"

For some reason, yesterday I randomly thought of that old picture and tried (with limited success) to recreate it using AI:

The AI portrayed the pope as the sinister Francis. I imagine him shouting "Hop in!" but I can't think he's taking those sheep anywhere good -- to une Pâque sauvage, perhaps.

Stop, sheep! You must not hop on Pop!

Note added: Debbie suggests in a comment that the yellow creatures hopping on Pop might be weasels, saying the ears look similar. I googled weasel so I could take a look at the ears, and this sidebar popped up:

If you search for weasel's main prey, the main answer that comes back is voles and mice. The sidebar, though, highlights chipmunks. See my "Round leaves and chip monks" and William Wright's "Alvin, Chipmunks, Wisemen, and 'a chance to find if all we've dreamed in dreams was true'." William identifies Alvin and the Chipmunks with Three Wise Men, one of whom (in his interpretation) is none other than St. Peter -- so this is conceptually very close to the trio of Peter, James, and John in the temple scene I've quoted above.

Round leaves and chip monks

The other day, I snapped this photo of a sign on an old out-of-business restaurant:

It's not a great photo, but the name of the restaurant was Round Leaves, and the accompanying logo is a picture of some leaves which don't look particularly "round" but which are gold in color. This got my attention for several reasons. First, "leaves of gold" have been in the sync stream recently as a reference to the Golden Plates. Second, although the Plates translated by Joseph Smith were rectangular, round plates have come up from time to time. In my April 1 post "Chips, clips, and the eclipse," for example, I recount a dream in which I found a "chip" on Annunciation Day. I write:

I remember little about this dream. I know that I put the word chip in quotation marks [in my dream notes] because the object was referred to as a chip in the dream but due to its size -- a flat disc some 10 inches in diameter -- I thought upon waking that plate was more accurate. It was made of some light-colored metal (color perception in this dream was poor) and was covered with engravings. The environment in which it was found -- an indoor area full of dead leaves -- suggested the abandoned restaurant I started exploring back in July 2022. This is not the first time I have dreamed about finding "plates" in such a place.

So that's a round metal plate with engravings on it, found in an "area full of dead leaves" which reminded me of an "abandoned restaurant." In the photo above, a sign at an abandoned restaurant shows leaves which could be seen as either golden or dead, and calls them "round."

Not only is Round Leaves an abandoned restaurant, it's extremely close to the abandoned restaurant, the one I've explored many times and have dreamed about finding plates inside. And when I say extremely close, I mean extremely close -- 32 meters according to Google Maps.

Shortly after making the above connections, with Round Leaves, the other abandoned restaurant (which was called Tea Work), and the "chip" in my dream, I read William Wright's latest post, "Alvin, Chipmunks, Wisemen, and "a chance to find if all we've dreamed in dreams was true,"" in which he proposes that the three main characters in Alvin and the Chipmunks represent the Three Wise Men and then goes on to connect the Wise Men with other characters in his story.

My first thought was that the Wise Chipmunks are not rodents but Chip Monks -- that is, holy men tasked with taking care of "chips" (plates) like the one in my dream. In my dream -- and included in William's post title is "a chance to find if all we've dreamed in dreams was true."

I'm not yet sure what to make of that or if it even makes any sense, but the syncs seem to be pointing in that direction.