Things that make you go bloom!

Today is Bloomsday, an annual event in which people celebrate a writer that few people have read and even fewer people have understood by gathering in a bar, and reading the most unreadable passages to one another, and pretending to understand the reason why. Beer, which is a drink that is easier to understand than read - except in the latter stages of beer consumption, at which point it becomes easier to read and somewhat less easy to understand - facilitates this process. This is known as being 'cultured' and 'sophisticated', which is perhaps one reason why, when they are told what it means to be cultured, most people simply turn on the telly and watch the latest episode of Home and Away in preference.

Anyway, to celebrate these celebrations, let's partake in a little James Joyce reading ourselves:

There ensued a somewhat lengthy pause. (World Classics - p. 584)

Wowzers! He couldn't have made this more difficult if he tried! But such culture, such artistic sophisticiation, such complexity buried into every word! Clearly, the only such person who could even begin to unpick such a fine filigree of a sentence would have about as many degrees as the temperature is in Melbourne today, and half the alphabet (half the Russian alphabet), after their name. I'll leave it up to you to interpret as you see fit, but as for me, I've had enough.

Oh, and keep your hands off the beer. I've only got one left.

UPDATE! - Bloomsday, bah! How about we hold another event in which we read the most depressingly boring passages from the pages of accountacy textbooks, and the like? We can call it 'Gloomsday'.