Happy Blooomsday! June 16

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Today is Bloomsday. It is the day on which James Joyce's Ulysses takes place, in 1904. It's named after the main character, Leopold Bloom, and Joyce chose this day for the action of the novel to commemorate the first date he had with his future wife, Nora Barnacle, an uneducated chambermaid from Galway whom he met for a stroll  around Dublin. A few days earlier, Nora had stood him up for their scheduled date.
Today, Joyceans all over the world celebrate with staged readings of Ulysses.  Dublin has a long tradition of hosting celebrities, politicians, and international diplomats to do these dramatized readings. In fact, in Dublin, Bloomsday is not just celebrated for a day -- it's a weeklong extravaganza. There are Ulysses walking tours, where a person can retrace the steps of the  fictional Leopold Bloom, as well as literary-themed pub crawls, musical acts, and museum exhibits. There's also an annual Messenger Biker Rally, where people dressed in Joyce-era clothing ride old bicycles along the route that Leopold Bloom would have walked, and there are large-scale Irish breakfasts and afternoon teas devoted to Ulysses devotees.

and in a double spin, for those of you also into Firesign Theater:

O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.