Bloom's Day

I have to interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to make an announcement. Did anyone know today is Bloom's Day? Bloom's Day is named for Leopold Bloom, the protagonist in James Joyce's classic Ulysses. The entire novel takes place on June the 16th, in 1903, I think, if I remember correctly.

I've read the book, twice, and while there is some incredible writing in it, I have to say the story isn't necessarily one of my favorites. The whole Stream of Consciousness concept is not one I'm very into, and Ulysses is even harder for me to follow than The Sound and the Fury, which I do love, even though I'm still not sure I know what actually happens in the book.

Anyway, I do think James Joyce was a great writer, and Ulysses is worth celebrating, even if I don't get it.

Some fans of Joyce have put together an interesting celebration for the whole thing this year, and are condensing the novel into a 24 hour series of tweets. There is no hashtag (that I know of), but you can find the tweets on @11ysses's feed.

There is also a fun NPR story on the whole thing: Tweeting 'Ulysses': Fans Put A Twist On Bloomsday.

I'll be back tomorrow with more philosophy micro, so for now, have a great Bloom's Day.

Fun with Hashtags

First off, I've reached a couple of silly blogging milestones that don't mean much.

I like to celebrate the little things, though, so I'm still going to tell you about them.

This is my 250th post. I know that's a pretty arbitrary number, but I like to think it's a small thing to be proud of. Blogging has done a lot for me, and there's something to writing nearly very day, even if it's usually only nonsense, very short, or utterly ridiculous.

I also recently reached 25,000 total page views for my blog. I'm still not exactly clear what the difference between a hit and a page view is, but apparently page views are cooler, and generated less often. You can read more about nerdy stuff like that, here. Of course, 25,000 sounds like a lot, but since that's really only like 20 people, coming back over and over again, it's not that fresh.

There is also something about the 2 the 5 and the 0 in both those stats that feels kind of Zen to me.

And now to the point: I'm a Twitter noob. I'm never on there, and when I am, I rarely get it. But Simon C. Larter, my good friend and critique partner (and Twitter Guru), and I had a great time last night playing around with the hashtag #zombieproverbs.

Some of the tweets are better than others. Check it out if you're in the mood for a laugh.

Happy Thursday!