Fishy weather

Popular Mechanics reports that in San Francisco it’s raining anchovies.

“ITHACANS VOW PEN IS CHAMP”

The scene: outside the offices of the Freeman’s Journal, a Dublin newspaper. A professor, Hugh MacHugh, is speaking to Stephen Dedalus, who has visited the newspaper on behalf of his employer, Mr. Deasy. Stephen is to use his (supposed) pull with his literary friends to see that Mr. Deasy’s letter about foot-and-mouth disease gets into the paper. Stephen has been telling an odd story of his making about two old women who climb the stairs to the top of Nelson’s pillar. Too tired to look up or down, they sit there munching plums. From the “Aeolus” episode, in which each small section of the narrative receives a headline, my favorite:

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922).

As Elaine noticed, Stephen makes the names of the two Penelopes into something of a palindrome.

Related reading
All OCA Joyce posts (Pinboard)

[Gorgias: Greek Sophist and rhetorician. Of Helen and Penelope is a lost work: “in it Antisthenes apparently argued that Penelope’s virtue made her more beautiful than Helen, whose virtue was somewhat less solidly demonstrated.” Penelope Rich (c. 1562–1607): an unwilling and openly unfaithful partner in an unhappy marriage, and the Stella of Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella. Source: Don Gifford, Ulysses Annotated.]

Lendy’s in “th’ 1960s”

[“Somewhere in Roanoke.” Zippy, July 5, 2022. Click for a larger view.]

Zippy is time-traveling in today’s strip. As an unseen employee explains, it’s “th’ 1960s,” and KFC isn’t yet sold only in franchises. “We serve KFC as a sideline.”

You can see a 1960s menu from Lendy’s at Reddit, with the Buddy Boy, the Brawny Lad, the Long Fella, KFC selections, and more. Photographs of Lendy’s locations abound: here’s a photograph of this one.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

“Your hat is a little crushed”

Leopold Bloom and John Henry Menton have a history. “I fell foul of him one evening, I remember, at bowls,” Menton tells Ned Lambert. It was the night that Bloom and Marion (Molly) Tweedy first met, at a party at Mat Dillon’s. Menton danced with Molly that night, and he wonders why she ever married the likes of Bloom: “She had plenty of game in her then.” Attending the funeral of Paddy Dignam, Bloom spots Menton, Dignam’s one-time employer. From the “Hades” episode:

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922).

This moment reminds me of the familiar scene in group meetings of all kinds: one person makes a suggestion and it’s ignored. Another person then makes the same suggestion and it’s suddenly a great idea.

After the snub, Bloom thinks: “Never mind. Be sorry after perhaps when it dawns on him. Get the pull over him that way.”

Related reading
All OCA Joyce posts (Pinboard)

Darren Bailey posted to Facebook

And he said, among other things, “Let’s move on.”

Bailey is the Republican candidate for governor of Illinois. He campaigns with Mary Miller. They’re both endorsed by Donald Trump.

Mary Miller has tweeted

For contrast: here’s what my gun-loving representative in Congress, Mary Miller (R, IL-15), tweeted today. This tweet appeared hours after the murders in Highland Park. No other tweets have followed:

Independence Day reminds us of the reasons we defend our statues, our monuments, our liberty, and our history.

We are blessed to live in a land that is free because of the brave. We are born free, endowed by God with rights no government can take away.

Happy Independence Day! pic.twitter.com/nXoMEazjAz

— Rep. Mary Miller (@RepMaryMiller) July 4, 2022

The tweet is online, for now. But in case someone has the after-the-fact sense to take it down, here’s a screenshot:


I cannot help seeing the fireworks behind her as gunfire.

And what is this language about “our statues, our monuments” meant to suggest, Mary? Oh wait — I know what it’s meant to suggest. And what do you mean by “our liberty, and our history”? Does that liberty include the right to end an unwanted pregnancy? Does that liberty include the right to be who you are and use the bathroom that fits who you are? Does “our history” include the past that you and your allies want to eliminate from public education? Oh wait — I know the answers to those questions too. And as for God-given rights: if they exist, I do not believe that they include the right to carry weapons of war in everyday life.

There’s something about Mary.

Related reading
All OCA Mary Miller posts (Pinboard)

Highland Park

“This scene has repeated itself over and over again because of the unfettered access to weapons of war,” said Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat from suburban Chicago. “What was supposed to be a celebration of our freedom and unity today turned into yet another bloody massacre” (The New York Times ).

Artle

From The Washington Post: “‘Wordle’ fan? The National Gallery of Art has launched a copycat.” You get four guesses. I bit:

Artle #57
🎨 🟥 🟩 ⬜ ⬜
https://www.nga.gov/Artle

But I don’t expect to see such success often.

On the Fourth

Today would be a good day to watch Don’t Be a Sucker, a short 1943 film from the U.S. Department of War. Context at Wikipedia. Complete cast at IMDb.

Here’s an excerpt. A soapbox speaker is addressing a small crowd, presenting himself an “American American,” or what Tucker Carlson would call a “legacy American.” The speaker rails against “Negroes,” Catholics, Masons, and “alien foreigners.” A Hungarian-born professor (Paul Lukas) listens with dismay: “I’ve heard this kind of talk before, but I never expected to hear it in America.” When the speaker is done, the professor talks at length to another spectator who thought the speaker made “pretty good sense,” at least until he mentioned the Masons:

“We must never let ourselves be divided by race, or color, or religion, because in this country we all belong to minority groups. I was born in Hungary; you are a Mason: these are minorities. And then you belong to other minority groups too. You are a farmer; you have blue eyes; you go to the Methodist church. Your right to belong to these minorities is a precious thing. You have a right to be what you are and say what you think, because here we have personal freedom. We have liberty.

“And these are not just fancy words. This is a practical and priceless way of living. But we must work at it. We must guard everyone's liberty, or we can lose our own. If we allow any minority to lose its freedom by persecution, or by prejudice, we are threatening our own freedom. And this is not simply an idea: this is good hard common sense.

“You see, here in America it is not a question of whether we tolerate minorites. America is minorities. And that means you and me. So let’s not be suckers. We must not allow the freedom or dignity of any man to be threatened by any act or word. Let’s be selfish about it. Let’s forget about we and they. Let’s think about us.”

Everything old is new again. Including this post: it’s more or less a post I made in May. But I wanted to share it again today.

“Where’s the ‘T’?”

The dad joke in today’s Dustin is a worthy one.

I did not expect to be linking to Dustin on two consecutive days.