Wednesday, June 16
No, the Other Ulysses: Pinturucchio's Return of Odysseus, 1509. I doubt the hero of story and song would have worn such ridiculous trousers at his dramatic return to Ithaca, if he even knew what trousers were...
Today marks the centennial of Bloomsday: the entire action of James Joyce's Ulysses, with its central character of Leopold Bloom, took place on June 16, 1904. To which I answer: who cares? Give me the real Homeric Odysseus (alias Ulysses) any day over some one-eyed fancy-pants literarily incomprehensible gobbledygook. (Unless it's T.S. Eliot, in which case, it's not gobbledygook because I like it, and it's good incomprehensibility, por eso.) Or give me Ulysses S. Grant, that genial alcoholic strategist: at least he knew how to party. Or even Cuchulain (a.k.a. the Irish Achilles), if you have to have a Hibernian. And when Cuchulain's incomprehensible, at least it means he'll totally flip out and hack your head off beforehand so you don't have to listen to any modernist blank verse while alive.
Note to any Joyce fans out there: we kid because we love. Maybe.
![[SMMMHDH]](http://www.mgilleland.com/music/smmmhdh.png){kind=small}
