I don’t like ham

In his September 28 post "Jupiter Bigfoot and 'I hate ham'" William Wright reports a brief dream:

In one dream, I read words on some kind of material - it wasn't paper, but I can't remember what it was.  The words said "Jupiter Bigfoot" and had something like a number after it, but I can't remember what that was, either.

This immediately made me think of my June 14 post "Stink Gorilla More." Just as Bill's dream featured "words on some kind of material -- it wasn't paper," that post had to do with words printed on a bed sheet. The words on the sheet were one of four phrases that I decided mapped to one another, as shown in this image from the post:

In the first column is IOVE, an archaic spelling of the name Jove, or Jupiter. In the second column we have Bigfoot. And then there's a third column that says simple "More." So Bill's dream phrase -- "Jupiter Bigfoot" followed by something more -- fits right in and could be included as a fifth row in the above table.

After his dream, Bill searched the web for jupiter bigfoot and ended up discovering "Harry Goes to Jupiter," an 11-minute absurdist film made by students at the Seattle Film Institute in 2008. Despite the title, there's nothing about Jupiter in the film at all, but Bigfoot does play a prominent role. It also has some other striking sync themes, most notably a talking red notebook that falls from the sky.

All that's written in the red notebook is "I like ham" and "I don't like ham" on alternating pages. The film ends with two black-haired women, who are apparently aliens, discussing their plan to blow up the Earth.

"So, shall we blow up this planet?"

"Yes. Yes, but  first will you make us some ham sandwiches?"

"Let's do turkey. I hate ham."

And that's the end of the movie. It took me back to a chemistry class I took in college. In order to explain some point about stoichiometry, the professor had used an analogy about making a ham sandwich. The black-haired girl sitting in front of me leaned over to the friend sitting next to her and said in a loud whisper, "I wrote 'chicken' in my notes because I don't like ham." It struck me as so funny -- changing the professor's analogy to a sandwich you like better, and then announcing the change to a friend -- that it's stuck in my memory all these years.

I even remember that girl's name, even though I didn't really know her and don't remember anyone else from that class. Her last name was Maimone. I thought that might be a Jewish name (like Maimonides, the Jewish philosopher), which would explain her dislike of ham, but it turns out it's an Italian name of Arabic origin. It's from the Arabic maymun, which as an adjective means "blessed, fortunate" but as a noun means "baboon, mandrill." In this latter sense, maymun the source for the word for "monkey" in many European languages, including English. Given the context of Bigfoot and Stink Gorilla More, I thought this primate connection was interesting.

I suppose a further sync is that Miss Maimone’s comment about not liking ham had to do with what she was writing in a notebook. Sorry, I don’t remember what color it was.