Holiday Favorites & Facts
Bloomsday & Pie!
By Amelia Bosque
Summer Holidays: In which I get all educational on y’alls …assets…
I decided to do something just a tiny bit different with this column, which really shouldn’t be here at all, so everyone, please feel free to thank Pan Historian Editor for contributing to your edification (after you look that up, of course.)
No, as I understand it, dear reader, this edition is based around fan-fic, so I decided in turn to write about a couple of things that I am a fan of. So bear with me, my dears, and prepare yourself for Holidays Dedicated To Things That Amelia’s A Fan Of!
Bloomsday
Bloomsday is a yearly celebration on June 16 to commemorate the life of James Joyce and (mostly) cosplay (to a degree) the events in his novel Ulysses. Widely considered one of the most important works in modern literature, all of the events in Ulysses took place on the same day in Dublin in 1904, and it was one of the first novels to use stream-of-consciousness as a writing technique. The name of the holiday derives from Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Ulysses. In short, Ulysses chronicles the passage through Dublin by its main character, Leopold Bloom, during an ordinary day, June 16, 1904. The title indicates that the tale is a direct parallel to that of Homer's hero of the Odyssey and there are many explicit and implicit correlations between the two stories. First celebrated in Paris, France in 1929, Bloomsday is now celebrated as a secular (and usually unofficial) holiday around the world.
Celebrations of Bloomsday typically involve many activities based around the book, ranging from pub crawls and (attending) dramatic performances of events in the story to cosplay, marathon readings of the novel and Bloomsday specific trips to Dublin, Ireland to follow Bloom’s path through the city. Many of the individual events are held or hosted by various literary societies, libraries and museums.
Pi Approximation Day
Pi Approximation Day and its companion holiday, Pi Day are recently created secular holidays that celebrate the mathematical constant pi.
Celebrated on several times a year (probably one of the sources of its popularity,) Pi Approximation Day is held on any date that approximates (in some way) pi. Such dates are July 22 (22/7), November 10 (the three hundred fourteenth day of the year, or 3.14), or December 21/20 (the three hundred fifty-fifth day of the year, divided by 1:13pm for the Chinese Pi Approximation Day, or 355/113.) Pi Day itself is celebrated on March 14 at 1:59:26pm (Pi second,) or 3.1415926. Originally founded by Larry Shaw, a physicist at the Explatorium in San Francisco, Pi Day and Pi Approximation Day have spread (primarily among geeks) around the world and has even recently spread to public social networking sites such as Half Life.
The best thing, or perhaps only the most popular, is the official food of Pi Day and Pi Approximation Day…pie. Pie of all sorts. Fruit pies, custard pies, pizza pies…you name it…if you can put it in a pie crust (or even if you just decorate the top of it with pi,) it’s an “official” food of this unofficial holiday.
Recently, and for some unknown reason, Pi Day and its Approximations have also been embraced, much like Towel Day, by some sects of the Discordian Church. This recipe is from one of them.
Ice Cream Pi
1 pt (I think) black cherry ice cream
1 pt (maybe) lemon sherbet
1 pt (probably) lime sherbet
1 pt (my best guess is, anyway) vanilla ice cream
1 small can crushed pineapple (or a bit of fresh pineapple if you have the patience to do all that work for less than a cup of fruit)
1 pt whipping cream and someone who's arms don’t get tired (a whisk would probably come in handy as well, and you’ll pretty obviously need a bowl.)
A few graham crackers or vanilla wafers. Animal crackers are good too, but they tend to make you feel guilty when you bite their little heads off before crushing them up. It’s the big sad eyes, really.
Some butter, obtained with the blessings of the small, apple wielding chao that no one but you can see. Melt the butter, it makes things easier on the animal crackers. And your strong-armed but not so smart friend/roomate/sibling/cat.
1 small goldfish to sing to.
Gather all ingredients on a counter. Get prepared to carefully measure everything out into those little rubber bowls all the cooking snobs have.
Look at mess on countertop. Say “ah, to hell with it all” or some variant thereof and go back to the grocery store.
Return with prepared graham cracker crust and tub of Cool-Whip.
Return to kitchen.
Return to grocery store to replace ice cream that melted/the cat ate.
Return to kitchen.
Attempt to pour yourself a drink.
Put ice cream in freezer.
Return to grocery store.
Return to kitchen.
Pour yourself a drink.
Wonder why the hell it’s suddenly gotten so hot.
Pour yourself a drink.
Sing to goldfish.
Pour yourself a drink.
Wonder why you’re standing in the kitchen without your shirt and pants on.
Pour yourself a drink.
Reason through your situation, then take off shoes. See, that’s what was wrong!
Pour yourself a drink.
Sing to goldfish.
Remember what you were supposed to be doing.
Attempt to retrieve ice cream.
Leave bathroom. Ice cream is not what was taped to the bathroom wall behind the toilet tank.
Wonder if what was taped to the bathroom wall behind the toilet tank would make a good addition…
Wonder if too many people would be suspicious if you sprinkled an ice cream pie with…”oregano”.
Return to kitchen.
Wonder why you have no clothes on.
Wonder why the hell the goldfish is looking at you like that.
Go get dressed.
Return to kitchen.
Retrieve ice cream, which is as hard as a brick at this point.
Drink yourself a pour.
Spit out goldfish and refill fish bowl.
Apologize profusely.
Check label, then pour yourself a drink.
Big out get bowl and spooden woon.
Stop.
Make coffee.
Drink coffee.
Try again.
Get out big bowl and wooden spoon.
Wonder why it’s so damned hot!
Take off shirt.
Check biological clock.
Realize you’re being silly and pour another cup of coffee.
Put shirt back on.
Put all the ice cream into the big bowl…
Go to bathroom and pee.
Return to kitchen.
Mash ice creams all together until they look somewhat uniform in color.
Dump half the can of pineapple and all but a tablespoon of the pineapple juice into the bowl.
Mash all together.
Put into pie crust.
Put into…wonder why the coffee pot is in the freezer. Remove and pour cup of iced coffee. Put ice cream pie into freezer to re-freeze. It should be firm, but not hard.
Mix remaining pineapple and reserved pineapple juice with Cool-Whip.
Take pie out of freezer and top with pineapple and Cool-Whip mixture.
Serve.
