Love Pop Follow-ups: Joseph and a Rainbow Stick

I coach my youngest son's flag football team, and we had our first game of the season this morning.  On the way to the game I realized that I missed, or at least did not sufficiently emphasize, one of the clearest references to "Pop" from my earlier post.

William Tychonievich wrote a quick post referencing that LovePop post, and he concluded with a paragraph which has me convinced that it was a miss that I should add here.  So, let me do that, and then there was something about the photo I took of the LovePop store that suddenly struck me as being fairly interesting, so I am also going to tackle that.

William concluded his post with a reference to Joseph.  He had shown a picture of Pepe the Frog, and stated that Pepe is a form of the name Joseph:

William Wright's post goes on to discuss Joseph. Pepe is a diminutive for the Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese forms of that name.

I didn't read William's post until I got back from our football game, but Joseph was the exact name that was on my mind as I was driving to the game.  So, I figured this meant something.

The LovePop symbol I had tied directly to the Rose Stone, being the Red "Book" in my mind.  I first started calling that stone the Rose Stone (I had formerly called it the Sawtooth Stone) following a dream I had that I related in my post "Rose:  Daz Papa's Book".  The dream was very short and simple:

In a dream image from this morning I saw something like a paper or a placard with the phrase "Rose: Daz papa's book".

OK, so first off, the writing was on a paper or placard - a Card, in other words. But there is the explicit mention of the Rose Stone (as I understand it) being "Papa's" book. Like "Pop". I guessed that this Papa was Joseph in that post, since he created or produced whatever story is on the Rose Stone, and that therefore this image must have been given from the perspective from one of his Daughters - the Daughters of Asenath.


Thus, one of the Pops that I did mention, but did not emphasize I think enough, was Joseph. This is his Stone, and on it apparently are words that seem to 'redeem' Israel, turing their crimson sins to white, at least from the dialogue I had included in my last post.


Anyway, I just wanted to add that - the specific mention and tie to Joseph here - because it was on my mind, and when I read William specifically linking Pepe the Frog to Joseph, it seemed like something I should do.


I should also note that I had traced the language of that earlier dream scene to Uncle Remus' tales - the "Daz" reference seeming to me as something that would come from those stories. I brought in Disney's version of those stories - both the book my dad would read to us when we were kids, as well as Disney's movie "Song of the South". This is also a direct wink, and a reference to Joseph perhaps, in that I saw the LovePop sign at Disney Springs, a shopping center owned by Disney.


Which gets me to my picture. In my earlier post, I just used a logo I pulled from the internet. One reason I did this is when I took the picture, I took it completely zoomed out, figuring if I were to ever use it I would just crop the logo.


However, the sign was horizontal, and to crop it out and paste it in here was problematic - the image didn't get big enough to see well before it was too wide, if that makes sense. So I just pulled in the online logo which was much clearer.


I went back, however, and looked at the photo one more time and saw a surprising detail. In the photo, I capture myself taking the picture, as I was reflected in the windows of the story front. Here is the shot - you'll see my reflection in the center as the dude holding and taking a random picture of the store:

So, you obviously have our poor random guy in the Red Shirt with the LovePop logo walking through a door (sorry I dragged you into this, random dude). That is actually pretty interesting in itself given the symbols and stories I've been working through as part of the Rose Stone (individuals stepping through doors).


And then you have me standing there taking the photo. I thought of Zelda holding her Purah Pad in that Mural video clip. She was capturing things by pointing and clicking there, and I made the, perhaps strange, association between that picture-taking device and the Ithil Stone. It was symbolic of Eowyn's Recorder, basically.

But all of this wasn't what I noticed and was somewhat shocked in realizing when it caught my attention.  Rather, it was what was in my hands in addition to my phone:  I was holding a stick.  Seriously.  I am sure you can't see from the zoomed out full picture as it is displayed above, so let me zoom in on my hands:

So, why am I holding a random Stick while I am taking this picture? Well, when he headed to Orlando during the latter half of the week to spend one day at Disney and the second at Universal (we had spent the first half of the week on the beach on the Gulf side of Florida), we had given the kids each a $25 gift card which they could use at Disney to buy anything they wanted, no parental approval required (which was probably more exciting before they saw how much things cost in those Disney stores!). My youngest son decided he wanted to buy an extremely large lollipop - something he would never have been allowed to do in normal circumstances. It was a lollipop that looked something like this:

It's like a rainbow swirl unicorn lollipop, and the thing was huge.   The one pictured above must have been the small version - he got something that was fairly massive.  He had been working on it off and on at intervals for a couple days.


I had let him take it to the stores to keep him occupied, but realized very soon that this was a mistake. He was accidentally getting sticky lollipop all over things in the stored he shouldn't have been, and nearly impaling innocent bystanders. So, we made a deal that whenever we were in a store, I had to hold it, but he could hold it outside as we were walking. In this case, however, they were hurrying off to the next store, so I just held on to it in transit.


So, quite a few things come together in this silly stick I am holding. I've likened the Rose Stone to a Stick - specifically one of the Sticks in Joseph's prophecy from 2 Nephi 3, and in Ezekiel 16. Further, as mentioned above, I have analogized Zelda's phone-like device to the Ithil Stone, which was the other Stick. The Rose and Ithil Stones were the Two Sticks that were to be joined together in someone's hands. And here, go figure, I am holding Two "Sticks", in their various forms, symbolically joined in my hands as I am taking this picture of LovePop.


In addition, the Sticks I have envisioned are like Hermes' Caduceus and the Rod of Asclepius, which have Snakes coiled around the Stick(s). That is the exact type of "Stick" I was holding here for my son, in terms of having something coiled around it, but rather than Snakes in this case we just had sugary goodness.

So, this was a fairly fascinating detail to note, particularly with all of these images and details coming together in one image like that.


One last thing to call out, however.

On William's post, Leo left a comment that ties to this Rainbow Lollipop Stick and to Joseph, I believe. William ended the post showing Pepe in the arms of Jesus, and making his reference to Joseph. Leo once again brought up the Rainbow Connection (3rd time's a charm!) in reference to the picture:

At the risk of being predictable, I can't help but think of Kermit from that picture. It looks like he found that rainbow connection and hopped on Pop.