Happy Bloomsday! and Word #1

Happy Bloomsday!

What is Bloomsday?  Why is it on the 16th June?  These are questions that I, having spent a minimal amount of time researching, discovered today.

Bloomsday is a celebration of James Joyce, and his most famous novel, Ulysses.

James Joyce - is it me or is he cross-eyed?

Why the 16th June?  That was the date of Joyce’s first outing with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle, when they walked to the Dublin village of Ringsend.  Although with a name like Nora Barnacle, one wonders whether it wasn’t a leisurely swim down the river rather than a walk.

And that’s all you need to know about Bloomsday.  Now go forth and celebrate!

What am I doing to celebrate this event, this highlight of the Gregorian calendar?  I pulled this from the shelf:

That says "Ulysses", for those of you who do not have superior vision capabilities

I flipped through it quickly, then promptly put it back on the shelf.  I have far too much to read to bother tackling the apparent monstrosity that Ulysses is at the moment.  But I think we can all agree that I did my part for Bloomsday.

I also finished reading Rock ‘n’ Roll by Tom Stoppard yesterday, and have to say that I wasn’t all that impressed.  It definitely pales in comparison to some of his more famous works, which gives one hope.  It’s good to know that supposed “geniuses of the modern theatre” get things wrong from time to time.  I do realise that reading a play is quite different from seeing it on the stage, but even so, Rock ‘n’ Roll seemed to fall short.  And I’m stopping there, because I’m not saying anything particularly intelligent about it at the moment.

This blog post is quite short, though, and so to fill up some space (the space left by my creativity that has packed up its bags and gone on holidays today), I decided to bring the audience’s attention to a wonderful new word that I discovered today; a word I discovered after a long and perilous trek through a forested wilderness known as the dictionary.  (There was no dictionary involved at all, actually, but it sounds nerdier/cooler/dangerous/awe-inspiring if I describe it as I did.)

The word?  Pandiculation.

Pandicu-what?  How dare you call my mother such a bad name!  Apologies, sir or madam, I didn’t mean to offend.

It actually refers to the action of “stretching and yawning” – it isn’t a stretch of the imagination to guess what I’ve been doing for a sizeable majority of my day today, is it?  Indeed I was considering how pandiculatory I was today as I pandiculated after seeing an actor on TV in the throes of his own personal pandiculations.  But this story of mine is a bit pandiculate-worthy, so I will cease telling it.

Happy Bloomsday again!

Stoppard the Press!

I just finished reading Conversations with Stoppard by Mel Gussow.  That would be Tom Stoppard he’s referring to:

Tom Stoppard. Keep smoking, old man - one less fish in the playwright sea when you die of cancer!

I saw the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Travesties recently (one of Stoppard’s plays) – thoroughly enjoyable, except for a person in the back row who laughed after virtually every single line, including the “this is a serious moment” lines.  Slightly annoying.  Although if you define the quality of the play by a laughter-to-money ratio, that back-row pest would come out on top.  The only major problem I had with the play was that it was very good – not leaving much room for a budding playwright to stick their theatrical foot through the stage door.  He is 71 though, so, assuming no accidents, I have quite a few more years than he does.  Oh, and the Romanian Tristan Tzara character (one of the founders of the Dada movement – that will be a post in itself later on), who was speaking with a French-cum-Romanian-cum-confused-memory accent (it will make sense if you know the play) let slip an Australian accent every now and then.  (“Oh, the horror!” you exclaim.  I know, I know.)  Not that I found it particularly undesirable, but I do like to nitpick.  And having never had head lice, I have to search for other ways…

(Criticising the actors is the easiest way to get into theatre, right?  I can’t help but feel there’s a fatal flaw somewhere.)

I recently read an article that David Williamson, a famous and renowned Australian playwright, had retired, leaving a huge hole in Australian theatre that would be hard to fill.  “Great!” I thought, “this is just the opportunity I need.  Finally there is some breathing room at the top!”  Cut to two months later and I hear on the radio that one of the presenters is going to see the “new Williamson play, Let the Sunshine.”  Needless to say, it seems some people don’t know when they’re not wanted, yes?  And needless to say, I will be going to see it, hoping that some of the genius will rub off on me (in a completely non-swine-flu-passing way).

What do I need?  I need to finish writing my play.  What else?  I need hope.  I decided to provide myself with some:

Willy Shakespeare - dead

Sammy Beckett - six feet under

Anton Chekhov - far, far away (but not in another galaxy)

Ha!  Let’s see you write from the grave!  What’s that?  Your bodies have been digested by worms?  What.  A.  *censored*.  Shame.

A tea party for dead writers in Hades – now there’s an idea for a play.

On a different note, I’ve committed myself to blogging for a few posts about nothing.  These posts are in the pipeline and will be coming to a computer screen near you soon!  (It takes awhile to get enough material to blog about nothing, you see.)

Fluctuations

Tuesday is cheap petrol (aka “kill the planet” day).  As the petrol companies haven’t gotten around to building an oil pipeline near my house for me to siphon fuel from, I had to make my way to one of their petrol stations.  I had some problems with the pump:

An antique petrol pump - this is what people used to fill their horses up with

The LCD display that shows how much you’ve pumped, and the price, and other wonderful statistics, decided not to work today.  Indeed, the whole pump decided not to work.  It didn’t work for an entire minute – it finally “restarted”, with a one cent price reduction (so I was rewarded for my troubles).

The curious thing was, I had no idea what was happening – apart from assuming that something was wrong.  Obviously, the people waiting in the cars behind me didn’t know that the pump wasn’t working.  I knew that they didn’t know, and so I struggled with the nozzle, squeezed the trigger multiple times, checked the screens on the other side of the pump (they were working), and so on.  Everything I could to try and let these complete strangers know that something was wrong and that I wasn’t just standing there doing nothing.  Why do I care what they think?  I shouldn’t.  I don’t know if I was more annoyed at the petrol pump or my reaction to the situation I was put in.

Aim for the day: stop caring what complete strangers think about me.  Nothing they will do will affect my life, and yet I worry what they think.  If they think I’m an idiot but they can’t affect my life, then what’s the point of worrying?  I suppose this calls for a big “STFU NOOB” to all the anonymous readers out there!  God, that felt good.  Very cathartic.

That was a first for me – I’ve never had a petrol pump I’ve used not work before.  Another first – borrowing a book from the library.

Do I smell burning?

The first time I’ve borrowed a book from the library at university, that is.  Three and a half years (almost) and not one single book borrowed.  How was it?  It was beyond my wildest expectations, it was.  I enjoyed it so much that I spontaneously orgasmed and had to visit the bathroom afterwards.  The sensual swiping of the book under the barcode scanner, the presentation of the student card, the self-(abuse)service of it all!

The book?  Conversations with Stoppard by Mel Gussow.

On the way home from the petrol station, I noticed flickerings.  Flickerings.  Then the street lights went dark.  As did the street:

What the street looked like - an artist's impression

As I neared home, I drove past a tennis court.  There were people on there playing in the dark, as the lights hadn’t come back on yet.  This would be a problem for most players (myself included) – although some of the umpires I’ve played under wouldn’t see it as much of a barrier.  (I’m not bitter at all.  Sweet as anything, I am.)  I found out later that there had been a power surge.

So there have been two electronic mishaps today – the petrol pump, and the power surge.  They do say bad luck comes in threes though, so I’m anxiously waiting for the impending blackout that will shut off my compu–