Human skull on the ground, turn around

The upcoming total eclipse of the sun has been in the sync-stream of late, which is probably what put Bonnie Tyler's 1983 song "Total Eclipse of the Heart" in my head.

That in turn made me think of the audition scene from the 2010 movie Diary of a Wimpy Kid, where the sing the intro to the Tyler song, with the repeated line "Turn around":

That led to the Tyler song being replaced in my head by "Turn Around" (1992) by They Might Be Giants, which is about turning around and seeing a human skull:

Turn around, turn around

There's a thing there that can be found

Turn around, turn around

It's a human skull on the ground

Human skull on the ground

Turn around

This train of thought occurred while I was on the road, and while I was thinking about the human skull on the ground, I saw this on the back of the jacket of the motorcyclist in front of me:

This reinforced the skull theme, and I found myself thinking about the scene in Hamlet where he addresses the skull and trying to remember the lines: "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times . . . ." And that was about as much as I could remember; I've only read Hamlet a couple of times.

Hamlet was borne on the back of Yorick, who is now a skull -- and now a skull was borne on the back of a motorcyclist.

After posting "Booby trap," which ends with a meme of a cat saying, "It's a booby trap!" I had a vague memory of having seen a meme years ago involving a cat and the Admiral Ackbar "It's a trap!" line. I couldn't remember any details, but I ran an image search for admiral ackbar cat just to see what would turn up. I didn't find what I was looking for, but among the search results was this old New Yorker cartoon:

I liked the drawing style, so I forgot about Admiral Ackbar and cats and just searched for benjamin schwartz cartoon. One of the results immediately got my attention:

That's the iconic Hamlet scene I had just been thinking of, with the twist that the prince is turning around.

On a whim, I searched for skull solar eclipse, and the first result was this T-shirt, about the very eclipse that started this whole train of thought:

The date of the eclipse is written as 04.08. In Hamlet, the next scene after Act 4, Scene 7, is the scene with the skull.

Searching for bonnie tyler skull also turned up "Total Eclipse of the Heart":