the first bloom(sday)

bloomsday, the ancient celtic fertility festival, has not always been about watching theatre majors strut around in period sportswear, or listening to music majors strum the celtic harp, or (worst of all) enduring english majors as they grab you by the shoulder and tell you how to read ulysses is to see the face of god. indeed, bloomsday used to be about lowbrow carousing under the pretense of discussing highbrow literature. take for example this account of the first bloomsday:

The day was 16 June, 1954, and though it was only mid-morning, Brian O’Nolan [Flann O’Brien] was already drunk. This day was the fiftieth anniversary of Mr. Leopold Bloom’s wanderings through Dublin, which James Joyce had immortalised in Ulysses .

To mark this occasion a small group of Dublin literati had gathered …just below the Martello tower in which the opening scene of Joyce’s novel is set. They planned to travel round the city through the day, visiting in turn the scenes of the novel, ending at night in what had once been the brothel quarter of the city, the area which Joyce had called Nighttown.

Sadly, no-one expected O’Nolan to be sober…The rest of the party, that first Bloomsday, was made up of the poet Patrick Kavanagh, the young critic Anthony Cronin, a dentist named Tom Joyce, who as Joyce’s cousin represented the family interest, and John Ryan, the painter and businessman who owned and edited the literary magazine Envoy.

Kavanagh and O’Nolan began the day by deciding they must climb up to the Martello tower itself, which stood on a granite shoulder behind the house. As Cronin recalls, Kavanagh hoisted himself up the steep slope above O’Nolan, who snarled in anger and laid hold of his ankle. Kavanagh roared, and lashed out with his foot. Fearful that O’Nolan would be kicked in the face by the poet’s enormous farmer’s boot, the others hastened to rescue and restrain the rivals.

With some difficulty O’Nolan was stuffed into one of the cabs by Cronin and the others. Then they were off, along the seafront of Dublin Bay, and into the city. In pubs along the way an enormous amount of alcohol was consumed, so much so that on Sandymount Strand they had to relieve themselves as Stephen Dedalus does in Ulysses… Eventually they arrived in Duke Street in the city centre, and the Bailey, which John Ryan then ran as a literary pub.

They went no further. Once there another drink seemed more attractive than a long tour of Joycean slums, and the siren call of the long vanished pleasures of Nighttown.

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from: flann o’brien, an illustrated biography by costello and van der kamp (1987)

pictured above on the first bloomsday: john ryan, anthony cronin, brian o’nolan (flann o’brien), patrick kavanagh & tom joyce; (1954). source.

the world’s first book club

way back in 1812, when you and i were just a bunch of lazy gametes chillaxing in our great great great grandparents’ private parts, the world’s first book club was established in london, england. it was called the roxburghe club because its members were the georgian era literati who were friends of the recently deceased duke of roxburghe, a noted bibliophile.

the roxburghe club, which is only rivaled in prestige by my own book club, still exists today. its membership is capped at 31 notables from “the nobility, the professional, and the academic classes” and has included famous poets, rascally lords, and oxford dons. each member is expected to underwrite the publication of a rare or curious volume for presentation to each of the other members. these editions are limited to 100 copies and their publication standards are exceedingly high. also, fine dining features prominently into each of the club’s annual meetings.

if you are a member and would like to sponsor me to become another member when some crusty old duke kicks the bucket, i will gladly give you my 1987 topps bo jackson rookie card as a bribe. it is in near mint condition. facebook wallpost me if interested.

face merkins

everywhere i go, people are always telling me about their trendy new merkins, but nobody is paying much attention to the pubic wig’s northern cousin—the chin wig. yet, the fake beard is almost as old as beards themselves (with a history just as lush).

egyptian pharaohs (and even she-pharaohs) donned gold plated chin wigs (called atefs) despite the cultural penchant for hairlessness. the charming specimen above was recovered from the 4th century b.c. frozen grave of a central asian chieftain by indiana jones.

and then medieval europe caught onto the chin wig craze:

False beards crop up again in medieval Spain. By the mid-fourteenth century they were so much in fashion that a wealthy gentleman might have possessed a whole range of them in various colors, shapes and sizes to suit different moods and occasions. In fact the abuse became so widespread that the king of Aragon banned them. At Rouen, in France, false beards were made illegal in 1508, but the edict had to be repeated in 1513. The fact that there were two official efforts to ban them in such a short space of time suggests that they were immensely popular.

our 16th century rallying cry: they may take our lives, indeed they may even take our beards, but they will never take our face merkins.

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source: ancient inventions (1994) by james & thorpe
an additional account of anti-facial hair legislation can be found here.

on beyond zebra

we’ve talked about the alexander graham bell and george bernard shaw phonetic alphabets before and we have discussed benjamin franklin’s writing, but we have yet to talk about franklin’s own super kooky phonetic alphabet.

franklin was more than just a political revolutionary—he was also an alphabet one. he figured (much like the citizens of azerbaijan) that a new alphabet was essential in promoting a new national identity. and unlike shaw and bell who invented zany moustache alphabets, franklin determined that the best course of action was to build upon our already existing latin letters. while his spelling reform ideas were taken up by his homey, noah webster, webster thought his alphabet reform was too radical for the time. perhaps it was but honestly, those six new letters at the end are some of the illest glyphs going.

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another failed alphabetic reform: this.
recommended reading: this.

the coolidge effect

the sum total of everything that i know about calvin coolidge, the 30th president of the you-ess-aye is from his interaction with the quipster dorothy parker. she sat next to the famously quiet president at a dinner once and said, “mr. coolidge, i’ve made a bet against a fellow who said it was impossible to get more than two words out of you.” his famous reply: “you lose.”

so you will excuse my shock when it came to my attention that calvin coolidge has a sexual phenomenon named after him. the coolidge effect states that “males show continuously high sexual performance given the introduction of new receptive partners” and has been observed in nearly every species in which it has been tested.

so what has calvin “silent cal” coolidge to do with sexual promiscuity? here’s what »

During a tour of a chicken farm, Mrs. Coolidge asked the farmer how often a rooster can mount a hen. The farmer replied, “About 40 times a day,” whereupon the first lady replied, “Please tell this to my husband.” After the farmer conveyed that information to the president, Coolidge asked whether the rooster mounted the same hen 40 times and was informed that it mounted 40 different hens. Upon learning this information, Coolidge replied, “Please tell this to my wife.”

on the wickedness of bakers* -or- moldingbordegate

many people (even pimplefaces) enjoy a good scam story. one of my favourite scams is called the moldingborde gambit and was pioneered back in 1327. to understand the moldingborde gambit, you must first understand that in 1327, there wasn’t yet such a thing as a third generation ipod much less such a thing as a home oven. therefore, in order to bake the family bread, one had to take the family dough to a third party to bake it. this is how the scam starts:

and when his neighbours and others, who were wont to bake their bread at his oven, came with their dough, or material for making bread, he put such dough upon the moldingborde over an artfully concealed hole. He then had one of his household sitting in secret beneath such table. This person carefully opened the secret hole and piecemeal and bit by bit craftily withdrew some of the dough aforesaid, frequently collecting great quantities from such dough, falsely, wickedly, and maliciously, to the great loss of all his neighbours and persons living near, and of others who had come to him with such dough to bake, and to the scandal and disgrace of the whole City.

just imagine ALL THE FREE DOUGH that this wicked baker was able to nick over the years!!! what a scam! however, as testament to the fact that good always triumphs over evil, eight indictments were handed down to 6 bakers and 2 bakeresses in the subsequent moldingbordegate investigation. each party was wrapped with dough and then forced to stand in the pillory while the townspeople that they defrauded pelted them with moldy rolls and screamed disparaging things about their mothers.

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*does not apply to all bakers.
source: memorials of london and london life (1868).

worst translation ever

athanasius kircher was the 17th century polymath who [among many other things] invented the megaphone, worked on deciphering the [still undeciphered] voynich manuscript, and published a tract on magnetism which also explored other forms of attraction such as gravity and love. he has been credited as the founder of egyptology, despite the “translation” of the above cartouche that he published in 1666. his interpretation was:

Osiris’s protection against the violence of Typhon must be invoked in accordance with appropriate rituals and ceremonies, through sacrifices and through appeal to the protective spirits of the threefold world, in order to assure the happiness and wealth which the Nile usually bestows upon the enemies of Typhon’s violence.

150 years later, jean-françois champollion finally cracked the code of heiroglyphics for reals. we now know that kircher’s passage actually read:

Psammetichus

which was the name of an egyptian pharaoh.

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see also this.

the royal line

the other day, me and my three handsomest friends and orson went to a trivia night at a local pub. one of the first few questions was, “how many british sovereigns were alive in 1684?” orson, who is an actuary in real life* estimated that five was the maximum overlapage among generations. so we added one for good measure (ie. some sickly pipsqueak who ruled for 12 days, or whatever) and said six even though my other friends (who are more handsome than orson) thought this seemed way too high.

we were therefore quite floored when we found out that the answer was eight. it was at this point that i proposed that we adjourn the trivia game so i could go home and graph out the logistics of how exactly that this was possible.

a: it was a perfect shitstorm of joint sovereignty, the glorious revolution, and lord protectoring.

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* not professionally

polaris schmolaris

on this day in the year 1793 b.c., the star, thuban in the constellation, draco ended it’s two thousand year reign as earth’s de facto north star. it handed over the title to kochab (a scrappy upstart) whose successor would be (the much ballyhooed) polaris. while the succession was ineveitable, we can all be thankful that due to the 25,765 year axial precession of the earth’s platonic year, thuban will again start jockeying for the position in the year 29,707 a.d.

let us never forget that the north star is a title, not a name. (the much ballyhooed) polaris should not take its position for granted.

stop referencing yourself!

hey mathletes, get this: when the above formula is graphed using a set of predetermined ranges for x and y—it produces itself! it’s called tupper’s self-referential formula and was invented by lee iacocca when he was developing the rack and pinion steering on the dodge caravan (a wildly successful minivan in its day). many years later, a minivan fitting this description ran over my neighbor’s pet snake, betelgeuse. accounts vary as to whether the minivan was swerving to get out of betelgeuse’s way or to hit him (presumably as a social service). no matter the intent, we have the rack and pinion steering to hold accountable for the result (a smear of snake guts along west church street).

see also these robo-jokers.

for wunderkammer: a paleolithic flute

q: what were you doing 40,000 years ago when your stone age neighbors were rocking out on paleolithic flutes made out of woolly mammoth femurs? a: you were probably some stinking monkey scratching your hairy butt with pinecones.

in celebration of the fact that you and me have had a musical culture that spans over 40 millennia, let us start a paleolithic flute/theremin jam band. IT WILL BE A POLITICAL STATEMENT and we will rock out on the top of the sphinx wearing sequins and goat hides.