Famous First Words: Well, here we are... Dave Garroway's first day on the Today Show 8/15/52
Today is Bloomsday. For the non Literature majors out there, Bloomsday is the day on which the action of Jame Joyce's Ulysses takes place. Leopold Bloom runs around Dublin all day having various non-adventures and telling various fart jokes. The scariest thing about my college experience (which I loved) was not the FBI at my door claiming I knew who was blowing stuff up nor the people who were blowing stuff up (whom I did not know – at the time). Nope, the scariest thing was the realization that English Literature graduate students were the people who would decide what the next generation of great literature would be. My fears have manifested. The world is celebrating Bloomsday.
..........Knows not what it means.........Nirvana …..In Bloom
Every living thing is a masterpiece, written by nature and edited by evolution. --Neil DeGrasse Tyson
It is an incredible Friday morning. The blue sky is laced with a few curds of clouds and thin wispy jet trails. There is little wind and even the willow branches are dangling in stillness. 70°F is a wonderful temperature for outdoor activities. Birds flit about the yard and sing to one another providing grace to two senses at once. There are three distinct bird conversations (or oratorios, perhaps) being sung simultaneously but there is no disharmony. I am drinking from a cup of Nuttin' but Kisses coffee; it steams up my nose with sweet creaminess and sets my mouth watering in anticipation. Gee, the only thing that would make this morning perfect, is writing to you.
Here's hoping your weekend is as sweet as fudge, ePistliers.
First Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: Totally Straight – a beer for the man who needs to be constantly reminded that he's not gay.
In researching whether I could, indeed, come up with 10 Joyce jokes that WERE NOT fart jokes I came across this website: Ulysses Quotes | Explanations with Page Numbers. English Graduate students are impressed that you once read the Odyssey and figured out a way to include it in your book. (Few of them read Greek.) If you need to convince graduate students that your novel is “real” literature, give them the opportunity to write books explaining bits and pieces from your work.
..........In the merry month of June from me home I started.........The High Kings …..The Rocky Road to Dublin
Trivia Questions: Happy Birthday to the Ford Motor Company !
- ^ What do you know about the very first Ford automobile ever sold?
- ^^ What very strange souvenir of his friend, Thomas Edison, did Henry Ford keep?
- ^^^ In what decade did the toy Mustang (pedal-powered) go on the market?
- ^^^^ What was the only car that Jim Morrison (the Doors) ever owned? Spoiler alert, it was a Ford.
- ^^^^^ How did Henry Ford treat his workers?
Big Hello: Wĩmwega – Kikuyu (Kenya) https://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/hello.htm
Second Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: The only thing sadder than an adult with an imaginary friend is an adult with an imaginary enemy.
Image of the Week:
Fake Library Statistics of the Week: Concerning the picture above Secrets Bathroom (SB) Oh, no, the high humidity in a bathroom is bad for paper. https://www.facebook.com/FakeLibStats/?fref=ts
To steal a quote from Dorothy Parker: This is not a novel to be thrown aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force. (I believe the book she was reviewing was Rand's Atlas Shrugged.) / How could a book like Ulysses ever have made it to print? --Bad Reviews of Good Books / One of the books that caused great harm was James Joyce's Ulysses, which is pure style. There is nothing there. Stripped down, Ulysses is a twit. --Paulo Coelho
..........Making all his nowhere plans for nobody.........Beatles …..Nowhere Man
Moonbeam: A mistake is simply another way of doing things. --Katharine Graham
Question of the Week: What is life......but a mutually agreed upon hallucination? --Submitted by MMS
Next Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: You're too young to have such painful joints! Really? You think they'll stop hurting if I show them some ID? --Submitted by aeb of kc
Puzzle of the Week: The letters of SWITZERLAND can be rearranged to spell LIZARD and NEWTS — LIZARD being the singular name of an animal, and NEWTS a plural. Name another country with this same property. That is, name another country whose letters can be rearranged to spell two animals — one singular and one plural. It's a major country. What country is it? NPR Sunday Puzzle 4/18/18
First or Third (depending on how you're counting) SB Joke of the Week: SB: Even Liberace would find two bathroom chandeliers tacky. ~By the way, the second “chandelier” is really a sconce.
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. --Macbeth (V:5) Joyce's philosophy: “Horseness is the whatness of all horse. Streams of tendency and eons they worship. God: noise in the street: very peripatetic.” / “We can't change the world, but we can change the subject.” / “The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring?”
..........Philosophy is the talk on a cereal box.........Edie Brickell & New Bohemians …..What Am I
^ The very first Ford sold was to Dr. Pfennig in 1903, for a grand total of $850. The “Model A” had a 2-cylinder engine, and could reach a max speed of 30 mph
Almanac: It is Friday, June 16, 2023. The moon will be new on Sunday the 18th and is in Gemini. The United Nations has declared this International Day of Family Remittances (GC38/Resolution 189). It is also Bloomsday, Fudge Day, Ladies' Day at the baseball park, National Flip Flop Day, and Ugliest Dog Day.
Among those born on this day were Stan Laurel (1895), Nelson Doubleday (1899), Barbara McClintock (1902), E.G. Marshall (1910), Katharine Graham (1917), John Howard Griffin (1920), August Busch III (1937), Erich Segal (1937), Joyce Carol Oates (1938), and Brian Eno (1948).
On June sixteenth the Persian Era began (632), Mary Queen of Scots was thrown in the pokey (1567), the Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine was founded (NYC, 1871), HMS Pinafore debuted (1879), the NY Gothams offered the first "Ladies Day" at the ballpark (1883), Ford Motor Company was incorporated (1903), Bloomsday (1904), the first Congress of Soviets convened (Moscow, 1917), the National Industrial Recovery Act became law (1933), Dave Garroway was fired as Today Show host (1961), Brezhnev became president of the USSR (1977), and Boris Yeltsin became president of the USSR (1991).
Night Sky, 6/16: As we count down the last five days to summer (the solstice is on June 21st), the Summer Triangle stands high and proud in the east after dark. Its top star is bright Vega. Deneb is the brightest star to Vega's lower left, by 2 or 3 fists at arm's length. Look for Altair a greater distance to Vega's lower right. Altair is midway in brightness between Vega and Deneb. If you have a dark sky, the Milky Way runs across the lower part of the Summer Triangle from side to side. As night progresses, look lower left of Altair for little Delphinus, the leaping Dolphin. http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/sky-at-a-glance/
Fraternal Picture of the Week: Roll out the barrel, we'll have a barrel of fun. --Beer Barrel Polka by the Andrew Sisters
This Week: Saturday, June 17 – International Surfing Day & Mermaid Day & World Crocodile Day
Sunday, June 18 – Autistic Pride Day & Wanna Get Away Day
Night Sky, 6/18: After dark look south-southeast for orange Antares, "the Betelgeuse of summer." (Both are 1st-magnitude "red" supergiants). Around and upper right of Antares are the other, whiter stars of upper Scorpius, forming their distinctive pattern. The rest of the Scorpion curls down toward and along the horizon.
Monday, June 19 – Garfield the Cat Day & Juneteenth & World Sauntering Day
Tuesday, June 20 – American Eagle Day & World Refugee Day & Flitch of Bacon Day
Wednesday, June 21 – Go Skateboarding Day & Midsummer & Summer Solstice
Night Sky, 6/22: Leo the Lion is mostly a constellation of late winter and spring. But he's not gone yet. As twilight ends, look to the upper left of Venus and Mars for Regulus, his brightest and now lowest star: the forefoot of the Lion stick figure. The Sickle of Leo, the Lion's front part, extends upper right from Regulus. The Sickle is heading for the two planets. The rest of the Lion's constellation figure extends for almost three fist-widths to the upper left, to his tail star Denebola, the highest. He'll soon be treading off into the sunset.
Thursday, June 22 – World Rainforest Day & Positive Media Day & Summer
But Bloomsday – according to the media – is not just a celebration of Bloom and his young friend Stephen Dedalus but a celebration of the life of Joyce himself. His vision issues caused Joyce to wear an eye patch for years and forced him to do his writing on large white sheets of paper using only red crayon. (That part is not the joke.) Joyce's son, Giorgio, stabbed him with one of his writing crayons; it drew blood. Whenever Joyce experienced writer's block he would write on Nora, his wife. Sometimes you just need a shoulder to crayon.
..........And a stroll on Stephen's Green.........Traditional …..Dublin Saunter
^^ Henry Ford and Thomas Edison were lifelong friends. As requested by Ford, Thomas Edison’s son captured Edison’s last exhale in a test tube and sealed it with a cork. Ford kept the tube as a memorial to Edison’s “life and breath.” ~~I think this is creepy.
Preantepenultimate Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: Well, he claimed to be pro-life but he died anyway.
Moonbeam: No one can avoid aging, but aging productively is something else. --Katharine Graham
Video of the Week: James Joyce reading from Ulysses (4:12) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhW0TrzWGmI
Not So Late Night Snacks of the Week: Ah, New York, the city that never breathes. A giant cloud of smoke from wildfires came all the way down to visit New York from Canada and it was devastated to learn it no longer gets free health care. --Peter Sagal Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, 6/10/23
I know of no time in human history where ignorance was better than knowledge. --Neil deGrasse Tyson
Joyce could “supposedly” speak 17 languages. However an unnamed friend insisted the 17 languages were a joke. He did teach English at a Berlitz school in what is now Croatia. English teachers are always write. / Seven days without a pun makes Joyce weak.
..........Oh, I'm not gonna waste your time.........Surfaces …..Bloom
^^^ In 1964, after Ford debuted the Mustang, 94,000 pedal-powered toy mustangs were bought for children the following Christmas season.
SB Video ( or joke SB5) of the Week: (:10) https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid02jxFQz6axA5iHcXYahWXDL52XL5xHuQubcC2wGEKSD6FPeeHMyfX3DGZvmPu2No1Xl&id=1041984870¬if_id=1686627817613787¬if_t=feedback_reaction_generic&ref=notif
Antepenultimate Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: Kids don't put anything back where they found it...unless it's an empty food box. --Submitted by bm of kc
Weird Word of the Week: Stymie – to obstruct. From Scots stymie. The modern game of golf originated in Scotland from where both the game and the word stymie came to English. In golf, a stymie refers to one player’s ball obstructing another person's ball https://www.dictionary.com/browse/stymied
Dragon of the Week: The Dragon Gate in Dublin
Wacky Uses for Common Products: Revitalize wilted flowers in a vase. Add a few ice cubes to the water and cover the flowers with a sheet of Bounty Paper Towel dampened with cold water. https://www.wackyuses.com/wacky/bounty2.html
Ulysses takes place in Dublin. Bloom and Dedalus traverse the city together and alone. Joyce grew up in Dublin moved away as soon as he was out of college and never moved back. He'd been away from Dublin for 11 years before the book was published. Joyce once walked into a bar in Toronto. The bartender noticed his accent and asked, “What brings you to Canada?”. Joyce answered that in a pub in Dublin he was having a drink and his coaster said, “Drink Canada Dry” so he decided to give it a shot. / The second largest city in the world is Dublin because it goes on doublin' and doublin. Of course the largest city is Tripoli.
...........As I was a goin' over the far famed Kerry mountains.........The Dubliners …..Whiskey in a Jar
^^^^ The only car that Jim Morrison, legendary Doors singer, ever owned was a 1967 Shelby GT 500.
Penultimate Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: Facebook Question: What do people pretend is in the Bible but is absolutely not in the Bible? Comment: White People
Science Fiction Convention of the Week: Cosplacon (15-18, Jefferson City, MO) Onward to Battle http://cosplacon-mo.squarespace.com/
Sixth or Eighth SB Joke of the Week: I guess the boxes forgot to lock the door from the inside. --Submitted by TDEIAH (Trickle Down Economics is a Hoax)
Actual Conference of the Week: TNW Conference (15-16, Amsterdam) Together for a more prosperous world. https://thenextweb.com/conference
Answer to Puzzle of the Week: Mexico → Ox and Mice
Joyce suffered all his life from a fear of lightning. It was said to date from his childhood governess who told him that storms were God manifesting His anger at Joyce. He created a 100 letter word to describe his fear: Bababadalgharahgtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronnt- uonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk / A cow struck by lightning is called ground beef.
..........Nothing more invitin' than a good one comin' down.........Nitty Gritty Dirt Band …..Thunder and Lightning
^^^^^ In 1914 Ford offered its employees double the current market average, creating Henry Ford’s “$5-a-day.” The new salary, accompanied by a shorter working day and company profit sharing, minimized employee turnover, and was significant in growing the middle class and fair wages movement. Henry Ford was quoted saying he wanted to help his workers to a “life” not just a “living.”
Relevant Poem of the Week: The unhappy ghost of James Joyce / exclaimed in dispirited voice, / “Who needs bookish sissies / promoting Ulysses? / I'd rather be Oprah's first choice. --Richard Thompson
Quote of the Week: Not only do we live among the stars, the stars live within us. --Neil deGrasse Tyson
Final Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art. --Eleanor Roosevelt
Today's Peace of History, June 16, 1963: Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space aboard Vostok 6.
Fellow Modernist Virginia Woolf didn't much care for Joyce or his work. She compared his writing to "a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples," and said that "one hopes he’ll grow out of it; but as Joyce is 40 this scarcely seems likely." D H Lawrence said: “My God, what a clumsy olla putrida James Joyce is! Nothing but old fags and cabbage-stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest stewed in the juice of deliberate, journalistic dirty-mindedness.” (FYI, I could do a whole ePistle on Lawrence's less than stellar writing too).
..........Sure the lights that I see in my memory.........Bridie Gallagher & Glen Curten …..My Dublin Bay
Masthead of the Week: Friday ePistle June 16, 2023, bLooming ePistle. Online at: http://fridayepistle.blogspot.com/ Exclusive editor: Christine Smith. Lawrence, KS.
Moonbeam: If one is rich and one's a woman, one can be quite misunderstood. --Katherine Graham
Cost of War:
- As of 06/15/23 State Department War Costs since 2001: $209,447,921,882.
- As of 06/08/23 State Department War Costs since 2001: $208,912,253,258.
- As of 06/15/23 Interest on War Debt since 2001: $1,144,113,244,767.
- As of 06/08/23 Interest on War Debt since 2001: $1,142,617,095,007.
- As of 06/15/23 Homeland Security since 2001: $1,139,210,634,286.
- As of 06/08/23 Homeland Security since 2001: $1,142,617,344,148.
- As of 06/15/23 Veterans Care since 2001: $3,097,929,682,794.
- As of 06/08/23 Veterans Care since 2001:$3,086,593,796,569.
- As of 06/15/23 Military Costs since 2001: $3,028,363,553,730.
- As of 06/08/23 Military Costs since 2001: $3,027,228,128,357.
- As of 06/15/23 Total Cost of Wars since 2001: $8,619,068,996,031.
- As of 06/08/23 Total Cost of Wars since 2001: $8,603,982,670,447.
https://www.nationalpriorities.org/cost-of/
I love the smell of the universe in the morning. --Neil deGrasse Tyson
Famous Last Words: Does nobody understand? (Said to have been the last words spoken by James Joyce) --I almost used that as the question of the week.
..........Take a second, baby, slow it down.........Troye Sivan …..Bloom
Joyce and Ernest Hemingway hung out in Paris. In fact, As the narrator of the rare film clip of Joyce informs us above, Joyce would pick drunken fights, then duck behind his burly friend and say, “Deal with him, Hemingway. Deal with him.” / What do violent diarrhea and a bar fight have in common? Blood on the stool / Joyce was injured in a bar fight once. As he was laying on the floor the bartender said to him, Don't Worry. A Red Cross nurse is in the building and is coming down to help.” “Oh, no,” groans Joyce, “couldn't I have a blonde, cheerful one?”
May Peace lead the way
And Joy clear the path
prairie mama
christine
Last Laugh:
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