Jesse Eisenberg: the connecting link between Chipmunks and Bigfoot

Chipmunks and Chip Monks have been a major theme lately, especially over at Bill's blog, so when I happened to check Clickhole today (which I don't do very often, since it long ago crossed that fine line), this caught my eye:

The article itself is stupid and unfunny, but it does confirm that the rodent perched on Eisenberg's shoulder is in fact "his roommate Chipmunk."

I was only vaguely aware of Mr. Eisenberg's existence. I correctly guessed that he was the guy who played Zuck in that one biopic. As I scrolled through his filmography on Wikipedia, the role that jumped out at me was this one:

That's right, one of Eisenberg's latest gigs has been playing a male sasquatch in a movie called Sasquatch Sunset.

Reading the summary of Sasquatch Sunset, I gather that it's just about as charming and witty as that Clickhole article with the chipmunk. But it's just weird that such a movie exists.

Then I checked Bill's blog. His latest post, "Joseph retracing down this first crafted star of stone," pursues the idea, introduced a few posts before, of mapping the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to the Chip Monks. The main difficulty there is that there are four Turtles but only three Chip Monks. The post ends with this paragraph:

I mentioned the Chipmunk Christmas special above, which I thought of earlier in relation to Raphael and the fourth Turtle-Chipmunk.  Although there are three chipmunks like usual, the group actually gains a fourth 'chipmunk' at the end of the movie, when Tommy (who I already identified with Joseph) joins them on stage at Carnegie Hall and plays his Golden Echo Harmonica alongside Alvin.  For some reason this seemed to further support the idea of Joseph as Raphael in my mind.  In addition, Tommy was a human boy, whereas the Chipmunks are, in fact, rodents.  This might also speak to the idea or concept that Joseph, as this fourth non-Chipmunk, was and is in another form or state of Being than the other three Chip Monks who had to take on hairy animal bodies as part of their role in the plan.

Here Bill introduces the idea that the reason the Chip Monks are portrayed as chipmunks -- furry rodents -- is that they are higher beings of some kind (Elves or Angels or whatever) who have had to incarnate as human beings -- which, from their point of view, means having to "take on hairy animal bodies."

The more usual symbol on Bill's blog for a higher being taking on a coarse primate body is, you guessed it, Bigfoot.

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.

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.

Fat Lion and Chip Monk

The August 26 Barnhardt Meme Barrage hits on two of our themes:

Fat Lion: "Terry the giant Irishman critiques my supposed literary preferences"

Chip Monks: "Round leaves and chip monks" and passim

Saved by fire -- featuring the Blessed Virgin, Jews named Jesse, and the Whale

I started a post on my Book of Mormon blog -- gave it a title, "So as by fire," and pasted a list of scripture references I wanted to deal with -- and then saved the draft and went to teach my final class of the day. As I was writing today's date on the board, I thought, for no obvious reason, "March 25, so nine more months till Christmas." A second later, I realized that that made today Annunciation Day -- i.e., the day Jesus would have been conceived if he was born on Christmas Day, assuming a pregnancy of exactly nine calendar months. Mormons have nothing like a liturgical calendar, so I rarely notice such things (though a dream about Annunciation Day is what started the whole "Chip Monks" thing). When I returned to the computer after the class, one of the other tabs I had left open was the Synlogos feed, which had been updated while I was away. One of the new posts, from Catholic blogger Mark Docherty, was titled "Feast of the Annunciation: 'By the fire of your charity, by the unction of your humility, you have drawn the Divinity to come within you.'" The quote in the title is from St. Catherine of Siena, who says in part:

O Mary, vessel of humility, you were pleasing to the eternal Father, and in His own singular love, He has captivated you and drawn you to Him. By the fire of your charity, by the unction of your humility, you have drawn the Divinity to come within you. . . .O Mary, my sweet love, you opened to the eternal Divinity the door of your will, and the Word immediately became incarnate within you. By this you teach me that God, who created me without my help, will not save me without it . . . but knocks at the door of my will and waits for me to open it to Him.

It was by "fire," says St. Catherine, that the Blessed Virgin opened the door to God, thereby teaching us that God can only "save" us if we do the same. Since my post is going to be about references to being "saved by fire" in the Book of Mormon (I'll add a link here once it's published), that's a solid sync.

Just after I had typed most of the above, a student came into my office to ask a question about her high school homework. It was a reading comprehension exercise, and the reading passage was an advice column called "Jesse Cohen Says." The "Chip Monks" link above goes to a word search for that phrase on this blog, and the first post that comes up is "Jesse Eisenberg: the connecting link between Chipmunks and Bigfoot."  (It's about the "Case of the Missing Acorn." The acorn recently came up in "Stones as seeds" as a symbol of Joseph Smith's seer stone.) The sync of a Jesse with a very Jewish surname prompted me to run a search for "jesse cohen says" just on the off chance that it was a real column. The top three results were all for the same news story, dated May 2, 2014: "Graffiti Tag Found on Dead Whale in Atlantic City." An ad the bottom of the page (no longer there when I refreshed, and I didn't get a screencap) showed some female celebrity standing in front of a wall that had the Virgin logo inside a red heart, so positioned as to appear as if it were crowning the woman's head -- a sync with the Blessed Virgin and her "fire of charity."

The whale in the story was found on May 1, just four days after I posted my many-eyed whale dream ("A beast with many eyes") on what I would discover years later was the 430th anniversary of Dee and Kelley's many-eyed whale vision. The graffiti tag on the whale said "ΤΕΦ 94," and Jesse Cohen was a spokesman for the Jewish fraternity presumed to be responsible. My whale dream included a precognitive link to the film 47 Ronin, and 94 is twice 47. Jesse Eisenberg, incidentally, starred in The Squid and the Whale.

This was originally going to be a brief sync prescript to my BoM post, but it got too long and involved for that, and now I've written this instead of writing the post. Well, as someone once said, tomorrow is another day.

James, Santiago, Eru, and Charles Wallace

I got to sleep in this morning (day off for the typhoon), which means an extra dose of dreams. Here's what I can remember:

Vignette 1: I was supervising a group of children of various ages who were "writing scriptures." This meant they were copying out Bible verses as a handwriting exercise, but the phrase we used for it, "writing scriptures," can obviously have other meanings. One of the children wasn't writing anything, and I kept asking him, "James, where's your scripture? Where's your scripture, James?"

Vignette 2: A man called Santiago, the patriarch of a large family, was telling me how one day, relatively late in life, he "turned on," started using the name Santiago, and adopted his wife's son to be one of his own sons. I think he had 11 sons of his own, and his wife's son made 12; or perhaps he had 12 of his own, and his wife's son made 13.

Vignette 3: There was an aluminum box with a slot in it, and you could write a question on a strip of paper and put it in the slot. I wrote, "Eru, when did you become Eru?" and put it in the slot, not expecting an answer. (Eru is Tolkien's name for God.) The voice of Eru did answer, though: "Like you, I was not created but born. Like you, I have existed for all eternity, but it was at the age of five that I 'turned on' and began acting as Eru."

Vignette 4: In a hypnopompic postlude, there was only a voice, with no visual component: "At the age of five, he became truly conscious. He became able to meditate and began to understand the nature of things. And that's the story of" -- I thought we were still talking about Eru and was surprised when the sentence instead ended with -- "Charles Wallace."

Comments:

Santiago is the Spanish form of the name James, and both names originally derive from Jacob, the original name of of Israel, the ancestor of the 12 or 13 tribes. (We have 13 distinct tribe names, but each list of the tribes includes only 12 of these; which one is left out varies.) In connection with "writing scriptures," the Book of Mormon refers to scriptures being written both by the Twelve Tribes of Israel (Jacob) and by the Twelve Apostles of the Lamb (two of whom, in New Testament tradition, were called James).

In the dream, I understood the "turning on" references as meaning that an already existing but latent consciousness was suddenly activated and became truly conscious. Of course, the phrase can also refer to using psychedelics. I also thought of the Simon and Garfunkel line, "Pigeons plot in secrecy / And hamsters turn on frequently."

Regarding Eru's answer, it's hard to know how to interpret "at the age of five" in reference to a someone who has "existed for all eternity." I guess it means five years after he was "born," even though he existed before being born.

Charles Wallace -- who apparently also "turned on" at the age of five -- is a character from the novel A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle, which I haven't read since I was nine or ten. His name showing up in the dream was quite unexpected. I don't remember too much about this character except that he's a sort of child prodigy and psychic, which I guess fits with his apparently becoming enlightened at the ripe old age of five. Incidentally, the title A Wrinkle in Time refers to the idea (called a "tesseract" in the novel) of traveling by folding the fabric of spacetime, a theme that has come up a lot recently.

The name Charles Wallace also made me think of the poet Wallace Stevens, and upon waking I took down his collected works and opened it at random. I found myself reading "World Without Peculiarity," and these lines jumped out at me as synchronistically relevant:

The red ripeness of round leaves is thick

With the spices of red summer.

Leaves aren't usually described as "round," but on August 8 I posted "Round leaves and chip monks," introducing the "chip monk" idea that William Wright would later take and run with.

Lions, dandy and otherwise, and a ladybird -- plus, I eat a lot of bees

Found this today on a /pol/ humor thread:

I think the "virgin" flower on the left is meant to be a tulip. It's got dicot leaves, but obviously these MS Paint drawings aren't meant to be botanically correct. The "chad" flower on the right is definitely a dandelion, and has no problem busting through concrete. This ties in with the Jesse Lawrence song quoted in "There's treasure waiting for a dandy lion":

Yeah I think there’s a treasure

Waiting for someone

To prove himself worthy and true

Yeah like a dandelion

My love’s stuck roots for you

Like a dandelion

My love’s gonna break right through

Those concrete floors and the stone laid walls

Will all be made to part

And my dandelion love

Is gonna reach your heart

The dandelion in the song is "gonna break right through those concrete floors." Even the repeated "yeah" in the lyrics is a link to the dandelion's exclamation in the meme.

Shortly after seeing the dandelion meme, I checked the Synchromystic Blogspotters aggregator. It's been years since I've checked that site, since most of the blogs it aggregates are either long dead or low-quality, but today I just felt the urge. At the top of the list of links was "The State of The Electric State?" which includes this photo:

It's a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and prominently displayed in the foreground an arm tattoo that says "LIONS 2024," with a picture of a lion's head. That arm belongs to the blogger, an Australian, and was taken on his first day in the United States.

Lions -- namely the two lazy lions lounging in a local library -- entered the sync stream in 2024, with the post "This episode is brought to you by the letters G and L."

The Golden Gate Bridge is something Debbie has brought up repeatedly in comments, though for me its main association is literary: Vikram Seth's 1986 novel in verse The Golden Gate. I've only read it once, in 2012, and remember relatively little of it. Wondering whether it had any lions in it, I searched for that word and found two instances, one of which is juxtaposed with lazy felines:

For hours she stands and views Orion,

The Bear, the Dog, the Goat, the Lion,

The cats asleep now, slackly curled

Upon the surface of the World

Elsewhere it is intimated that these cats, though lazy, are not idle:

Only her cats provide distraction,

Twin paradigms of lazy action.

Wondering whether I'd ever mentioned the Golden Gate Bridge in any of my posts, I searched this blog and found that The Golden Gate -- the verse novel, not the bridge -- had appeared in just one post, "A red frisbee almost brained him." That was posted in 2024 and includes this image:

So the only previous instance of Golden Gate on this blog was also associated with lions and the year 2024.

The Lion's Den could be the library in which the lazy lions are lounging. According to Wikipedia:

In North America, the type of rooms described by the term den varies considerably by region. It is used to describe many different kinds of bonus rooms, including family rooms, libraries, home cinemas, spare bedrooms, studies or retreats.

Also, in connection with my recent post "Ladybird WOW, and She had no choice but to be rescued by the Abelards," a reader emailed to say a large spotted ladybird had landed on her leg and stayed for over half an hour.

A large spotted ladybird landing on a lady's leg, with a left hand also in the photo, would be right at home on the L page of Animalia, with the lazy lions.

⁂

Update: I ran an image search for chad dandelion to find out what the other flower was supposed to be. Most of the results were for the meme in this post, labeled "The Virgin Rose vs. the Chad Dandelion." Okay, so it's a rose, not a tulip; either way, the leaves are wrong.

Of the first five image results, numbers 1, 2, 3, and 5 were all identical: the meme I had in mind. But the fourth result, for some reason, was this:

Just a random absurdist anti-meme. What makes it potentially noteworthy is that I have twice -- in "St. Christopher, Deseret, and -- bear with me, it's all connected" and "Be he moth or be he bird" -- posted the phrase "bees in the belly of the beast." The beast in question referred both to a lion (in the story of Samson) and to the Jaredite barges as metaphorical "whales."

Thinking that I might be the only person on the whole Internet to have used that particular turn of phrase, I ran a search out of curiosity. I only searched for "bees in the belly," leaving out the beast. Nevertheless, the very first result was "Digimon-like show with a scene where a kid fought bees in the belly of a sea monster." My search, remember, did not specify who or what the belly belonged to, but the synchronistic context was bees in the belly of the Jaredite "whales" -- and the Jaredite story links whales with sea monsters -- "no monster of the sea could break them, neither whale that could mar them" (Ether 6:10). Here's what it says at the link:

Years ago, I watched a Digimon-like show. I have hunted for it, but I don't think it's Digimon. Country is America. I saw the show somewhere around 5 or 6 years ago. It was very much an anime. I'm pretty sure it wasn't on live TV, I almost never watched that at the time. Made for kids definitely like Digimon age range .

This one kid (white kid, and in the 2010s) was going around and collecting these little chips (like Appmon Chips). He could use them to summon cool monsters. There was one time where they fought "bees" in the belly of a sea monster. The kid later summoned the sea monster with a chip.

Some of the bee creatures kinda look like Combees but either they could explode or they were delicious to the sea snake guy.

The sea snake thing looks kinda like a Seadramon.

The kid had to collect something near there (or in) I think, so it tried feeding said bee things.

They weren't bees, but they were yellow. They were like pods of a sort that are explosive. He had to defeat the beast with that and grab the chip to get out.

I don't think he was on a boat. I think he rode a turtle of a sort? That, or a bridge of monsters I honestly don't remember which.

"Chips," and the Chip Monks in charge of them, have been a very major theme here and formerly on Bill's blog. The "bee creatures" that "could explode" call to mind my 1991 dream about "a red bee" that "was going to explode, causing catastrophic damage" (see "More on 'Vineyard shouting with the bee whom hump'"). The bridge reference of course ties in with the present post, which features the Golden Gate Bridge.

Round leaves of gold resurface

I posted this image back in August 2024, in "Round leaves and chip monks":

It's the sign for a restaurant that closed long ago and was called Round Leaves, with a logo depicting golden leaves that aren't particularly round. I was interested in it at the time because of various syncs about "leaves of gold" being connected with gold plates, as well as a few instances of round gold plates.

Less than two months later, in October 2024, as recorded in "James, Santiago, Eru, and Charles Wallace," I had a dream with the name Wallace in it and followed up by taking down the collected works of Wallace Stevens and opening to a random page, where I found these lines from his poem "World Without Peculiarity":

The red ripeness of round leaves is thick

With the spices of red summer.

Just three days ago, on March 7, I found that my wife had put some sort of new air freshener thing in the kitchen, the lid of which looks like this:

Like the Round Leaves logo, it's a pinnate compound leaf, gold in color, and the circular lid out of which it is cut adds the "round" element. It thus reminded me of that old Round Leaves sync, so I snapped the above photo.

The next day, my wife asked me to buy lunch for her at a particular vegetarian restaurant that I hadn't been to in many months. While there, I noticed that one of the walls was decorated with a golden pinnate compound leaf. There was nothing "round" about it, but the fact that it was in a restaurant was a link to the original Round Leaves. I didn't get a photo of my own, but I found this one online:

That's a pinnate compound leaf on the left. On the right are two simple leaves, one of them lobed.

Today I started reading When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams, the author who came up in "Minor syncs: Omelette and Mormon tempest"; I wanted to see what she's like as a writer before shelling out for Glorians, the specific title which came up in the syncs, which was just published a week ago and isn't on Internet Archive or Anna's yet. I read this:

I found peace in an aspen grove shared with my grandmother. In this place of rich black soil sheltered by the shimmering round leaves of white-barked trees, my voice set down roots.

These handwritten words in the pages of my journal confirm that from an early age I have experienced each encounter in my life twice: once in the world, and once again on the page.

There's that exact phrase "round leaves" again -- an unusual one, since almost all leaves are pointed -- and they're "shimmering" as well. That verb comes from Old English scimerian "to glitter, shimmer, glisten, shine" -- like gold, maybe? The journal entry she is referring to was written in early August, when the aspen leaves would have been green. It's worth noting, though, that this is the first image on the Wikipedia page for "Aspen":

Aspen leaves, though also pointed, are relatively round. In Old English, the tree was called æspe, which Etymonline is unable to trace back to any word meaning anything other than "aspen." I noted the similarity to asp, though, and looked it up. It's "from Greek aspis 'an asp, Egyptian viper,' literally 'a round shield;' the serpent so called probably in reference to its neck hood." (This "asp" was most likely the Egyptian cobra; all cobras are called "glasses snakes" in Chinese, after the spectacled cobra of India, so there may be a spectacles link there, too.)

The aspis shield was made of wood but was often plated with metal and given a "golden" appearance:

I included the second paragraph in the quote above from When Women Were Birds because of its repeated reference to pages. I believe the first "leaves of gold" sync post was "Leaves of gold unnumbered" (January 2024), which begins with my attempts to find out "how many leaves or 'pages' there were in the metallic codex from which the Book of Mormon was purportedly translated." In Chinese, too, "leaf" and "page" are homophones.

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.