#we have a name for the fur evil ape!!

[lunasdestiny]

Lightning

[butterfrogmantis]

So before I get into the backstory I'm going to do a little species bg since this a brand new species! Ironically yeti's have always been super low on my 'fave mythical creatures list' but here we are, some Butterverse specific lore;

Greater yeti's, usually just referred to as 'yetis' or occasionally 'abominable snowman' are the artic cousins of their warm temperate cousins the sasquatches. Both are large ape-like creatures, roughly 7-8ft tall and known well by humans. One such greater Yeti is known to the Smurfs as the guardian of the snowflowers.

Pygmy yeti's, by contrast, are much more elusive and rarely documented by anyone, not even Smurfs. They're similar sizes to small size fae, though many are much larger than Smurfs (This guy is not but he's on the smaller size for a pygmy yeti). They more closely resemble something between a polar bear and a deer. Interestingly, they often use the identifying names of both too - with children all being 'cubs' and adults separated into 'bucks' and 'does' (since they're a sentient species I suppose any nonbinary pygmy yeti's would just go by a 'yeti' instead). Both biological male and female pygmy yeti's grow antlers, although only the males grow 'manes'.

Both greater and pygmy yeti's are largely solitary, although occasionally groups of females in particular may raise several young communally, or yeti couples might live nomadically as a pair. Diets are largely scavenger/carnivore based since they live in cold climates and you take what food you get. They don't change fur colour in summer but do shed like crazy and tend to have shorter, lighter coats in warmer seasons that may occasionally have some brown whilst still being mostly white coated, similar to polar bears.

Right now that the biology stuff is out the way, on with the backstory of this particular guy!

So Yukio was actually found by Explorer - he'd been up a few of the northern mountain passes looking to mark off previously uncharted territory up there and see if there was anything worth taking for himself. Whilst exploring a particular cave, he found a small … thing. Stuck in corner, arm bleeding, and hissing at him like a spicy kitten. It was totally unexpected and honestly mostly a coincidence he even found it. Now Explorer has his faults but he's not evil, and even he wasn't about to leave this bear-cub looking thing, especially since it was injured. He's not very paternal but he does his best to try and get some story out of the creature, and when the cub refuses and says he's fine on his own, Explorer takes matters into his own hands and smurfhandles the child back to the village because he'd rather do that than leave it to die, nice guy /lh.

Whilst in the village, Sorcerer does his best to attend to the child, whilst Papa researches (the cub was particularly stubborn and refusing to admit to anything about himself). So now they had a bit of an issue - at this point there were two other non smurf infants in the village, but both were babies and it had only been at the kindness of Blacksmith that the village Goblin had been adopted, so there wasn't anyone really willing to take on an ?? especially one so stubborn. So it ends up being Sorcerer that just sort of looks after him, and starts to develop a sort of older-brother bond, whilst Papa EVENTUALLY finds some rough notes about Pygmy Yeti's and realises Smurfs know nothing about them. The cub does eventually give his name; Yukio, and explains he'd been travelling with his group who were attacked by a stoat on the mountain - he'd been bitten first but his father had jumped in to save him, leaving Yukio just enough time to escape, but he got lost and decided to hide out. As of current, their fate remains unknown, since despite the Smurf's best efforts, they were never able to track down his family either.

Yukio ends up growing up in the village, though he's initially very mistrusting of most of the other's, despite anyone's best efforts. For this reason he's never officially adopted by anyone, and by the time he is warming up to others he's pretty self reliant for a kid.

Yukio does however quickly become well known for demonstrating his caving abilities - it's a natural habitat of pygmy yeti's so he feels quite at home in the mines and caves that members of the dirt boi committee frequent. I think my original Spelunker can stay as a Smurf, he just becomes one of the guys Yukio does end up taking a liking to. He sort of views a lot of the DBC as uncle-ish figures eventually. He even takes a liking to Skelly - perhaps more specifically, Skelly's bones. Poor Skelly he already had to deal with Puppy jkgdk. Unfortunately wherever you find Skelly you usually find Archie, and Archie tends to defend him bcuz look at that face how can you be mad at that cute little bear-deer face. And since Archie also frequently needs help navigating ruins and tombs, Yukio is a big help. In the way that Nova is closer to Pal as an uncle-figure bcuz they share an interest in fossils, Yukio is closer to Archie.

Yukio also gets on well with Miner, since again, caves. And being a similar age to Miner's daughter Lapidary means the two often work in tandem, with her being more knowledgeable about the actual things they're looking for, and Yukio being the muscle, so they're good friends.

So … there he is! Part of the older-mid ng age range but not actually A next gen, just looks up to a bunch of not-uncles :)

Archaeologist (c) The Smurfs

Yukio and Skelly are mine

[livefreeforfun]

Saiyan Duality - A SSG and SS4 Comparison

I don’t think anyone would argue that one of the most recognizable aspects of the Dragon Ball franchise is the transformations the characters tend to undergo. From an old hermit bulking up to an absurd degree to the legendary Super Saiyan, the franchise has its fair share of power ups, but the users of many of these iconic forms usually fall under one category of people - the aforementioned Saiyans.

The Saiyans, across all forms of Dragon Ball media, have over a dozen different transformations, each one becoming more and more powerful than the last. From the simple Great Ape to the lengthily named Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan Controlled Berserk (I wish I was making that up), the repertoire of Saiyan forms is immense, but I constantly see two of these forms being compared: Super Saiyan 4 and Super Saiyan God.

Both forms are very iconic, with Super Saiyan 4 being a GT trademark and Super Saiyan God being the first of many new transformations we see in Dragon Ball Super. I’ve seen a multitude of debates online trying to prove that one of these forms is better than the other, so I wanted to throw my hat into the ring and give my take: while I have a personal preference for God, both forms are absolutely incredible at what they attempt to portray in those who use the form, and I’m gonna go a little in depth as to why.

Starting the Super Saiyan 4 section with a little bit of background info, the older of the two forms made its debut in GT during the fight against Baby. To access the form, a Saiyan needs to both have a tail and already be able to transform into a Super Saiyan. They must transform into a Great Ape, turn Super Saiyan on top of that to become a Golden Great Ape, and then control that state to obtain Super Saiyan 4.

Super Saiyan 4 is remarkably different from the previous Super Saiyan forms, sporting no golden hair and instead keeping it back and having it grow far longer and having it cover the user’s shoulders, though it’s worth noting that Super Saiyan 3’s hairstyle is much longer. To make it more visually distinct, the user’s body is also covered in red fur save for parts of their chest, with their tail also turning red and gaining a red trim around their eyes. Curiously, Goku is also turned into an adult when he accesses this transformation, which is explained as a unique property of this form: any user of the transformation has their body reverted (or propelled into) its prime, meaning they will always appear as a young adult. Lastly, different users of SS4 have slightly different looking versions of the form. For instance, Goku’s version of the form has a shade of red fur that has a slight pink hue to it while Vegeta’s fur is crimson, and Goku has yellow eyes while Vegeta has blue eyes.

Now that the backstory and design of SS4 has been talked about, it’s time to talk a little bit about SSG. Super Saiyan God is a legend closely related to the legend of the Super Saiyan that Frieza feared. The legend involves the Saiyan Yamoshi and his five pure hearted allies battling against the evil hearted Saiyans. Yamoshi actually obtains Super Saiyan, but still loses the battle and his life, and now his spirit wanders through Universe 7 trying to find the Super Saiyan God.

There are only a couple ways for a Saiyan to obtain Super Saiyan God. The first method is a ritual, in which five other pure hearted Saiyans give their power to a sixth, transforming the sixth into the Super Saiyan God. As a side note, this ritual only works because of the wandering spirit of Yamoshi, making it a Universe 7 exclusive phenomenon. The other way for a Saiyan to obtain SSG is to train with god ki, which can typically only be done by training with someone who already possesses godly ki, such as Gods of Destruction.

Super Saiyan God, as a transformation, actually looks quite simple compared to other Super Saiyan forms. The user’s hair and eyes turn red, they become slimmer and even look a little younger, and their aura looks like fire. Super Saiyan God, similarly to SS4, also seems to give different users of the forms slightly different shades of red, though it’s not nearly as apparent as it is for SS4.

When putting the two forms next to each other, it can be hard to find similarities between them. Both feature some kind of red hair but outside of that, noticeable similarities are sparse, and I think that’s the point. Both forms have to portray entirely separate ideas: the wild nature of the Saiyans and the calmer demeanor of the Gods, and they portray these ideas incredibly well in my eyes. While I do have more of a preference for SSG like I said earlier, it’s not hard to see why so many fans of Dragon Ball are allured by the primal look of SS4.

Ultimately though, if you ask me, trying to compare the two to try and prove that one is objectively better is just a waste of time. It feels like God was designed to be the other side of the same coin as SS4, the heads to its tails. Both designs have their strengths and their weaknesses, so at the end of the day, whichever form is “superior” will always be up to viewer interpretation and nothing more.

[kirch]

WHEN ATLANTIS RULED THE EARTH [A Film Synopsis]

The title appears in letters that look like blocks of stone piled on top of one another to form a kind of step pyramid. It is followed by shots of the earth as it looked thirty thousand years ago, during the great ice ages, showing woolly mammoths, saber-toothed tigers and Cro-Magnon hunters, while a narrator explains that at the same time the greatest civilization ever known by man is flourishing on the continent of Atlantis. The Atlanteans do not know anything about good or evil, the narrator explains. However, they all live to be five hundred years old and have no fear of death. The bodies of all Atlanteans are covered with fur, as with apes.

After seeing various domestic scenes in Zukong Gi-morlad-Siragosa, the largest and most central city on the continent (but not the capital, because the Atlanteans do not have a government), we move to a laboratory where the young (one hundred years old) scientist GRUAD is displaying a biological experiment to an associate, GAO TWONE. The experiment is a giant water-dwelling serpent-man. Gao Twone is impressed, but Gruad declares that he is bored; he wishes to change himself in some unexpected way. Gruad is already strange—unlike other Atlanteans, he is not covered with fur, but has only short blond hair on top of his head and a close-cropped beard. In comparison to other Atlanteans he seems hideously naked. He wears a high-collared pale green robe and gauntlets. He tells Gao Twone that he is tired of accumulating knowledge for the sake of knowledge. "It's just another guise for the pursuit of pleasure, to which too many of our fellow Atlanteans devote their lives. Of course, there's nothing wrong with pleasure—it moves the energies— but I feel that there is something higher and more heroic. I have no name for it yet, but I know it exists."

Gao Twone is somewhat shocked. "You, as a scientist, can talk of knowing something exists when you have no evidence?"

Gruad is dejected by this and admits, "My lens needs polishing." But after a moment he bounces back. "And yet, even though I have my moments of doubt, I think my lens really is clear. Of course, I must find lie evidence. But even now, before I start, I feel that I know what I will find. We could be greater and finer than we are. I look at what I am and sometimes I despise myself. I'm just a clever animal. An ape who has learned to play with tools. I want to be much more. I say we can be what the lloigor are, and even more. We can conquer time and seize eternity, even as they have. I mean to achieve that or destroy myself in the attempt."

The scene shifts to a banquet hall where INGEL RILD, a venerable Atlantean scientist, has called together prominent Atlanteans to celebrate a space research achievement, the production of a solar flare. Ingel Rild and his associates have developed a missile which, when it strikes the sun, can cause an explosion. He tells the marijuana-smoking gathering, "We can control to the second the timing of the flare and to the millimeter the distance it will spring out from the sun. A flare of sufficient magnitude could burn our planet to a crisp. A smaller flare could bombard the earth with radiations such that the area closest to the sun would be destroyed, while the rest of our world would suffer drastic changes. Most serious of all, perhaps, would be the biological changes these excessive radiations would bring about. Life forms would be damaged and perhaps become extinct. New life forms would arise. All of nature would undergo a tremendous upheaval. This has happened naturally once or twice. It happened seventy million years ago when the dinosaurs were suddenly wiped out and replaced by mammals. We still have much to learn about the mechanism that produces spontaneous solar flares. However, to be able to cause them artificially is a step toward predicting and possibly controlling them. When that stage is reached, our planet and our race will be protected from the kind of catastrophe that destroyed the dinosaurs."

After the applause, a woman named KAJECI asks whether it might not be disrespectful to tamper with "our father, the sun." Ingel Rild replies that man is a part of nature and what he does is natural and can't be construed as tampering. Now Gruad interrupts angrily, pointing out that he, an unattractive mutation, is the product of tampering with nature. He tells Ingel Rild that the Atlanteans do not truly understand nature and the order that controls it. He declares that man is subject to laws. All things in nature are, but man is different because he can disobey the natural laws that govern him. Gruad goes on, "With humanity we can speak, as we speak of our own machines, in terms of performance expected and performance delivered. If a machine does not do what it is designed for, we try to correct it. We want it to do what it ought to do, what it should do. I think we have the right and the duty to demand the same of people—that they perform as they ought to and should perform." An aged and merry-eyed scientist named LHUV KERAPHT interrupts, "But people are not machines, Gruad."

"Exactly," Gruad answers. "I have already considered that. Therefore, I have created new words, words even stronger than should and ought. When a person performs as he or she should and ought, I call that Good; and anything less than this I call Evil." This outlandish notion is greeted with general laughter. Gruad tries to speak persuasively, conscious of his lonely position as a pioneer, trying desperately to communicate with the closed minds all around him. After further argument, though, he becomes threatening, declaring, "The people of Atlantis do not live according to the law. In their pride, they strike the sun itself, and boast of it, as you have, Ingel Rild, this day. I say that if Atlanteans do not live according to the law, a disaster will befall them. A disaster that will shake the entire earth. You have been warned! Heed my words!" Gruad strides majestically out of the banquet hall, seizing his cloak at the door and sweeping it about him as he leaves. Kajeci follows him and tells him that she thinks she partly understands what he has been trying to say. The laws he speaks of are like the wishes of parents, and, "The great bodies of the universe are our parents. Isn't that so?" Gruad's naked hand strokes Kajeci's furred cheek, and they go off into the darkness together.

Within six months Gruad has formed an organization called the Party of Science. Their banner is an eye inside a triangle which in turn is surrounded by a serpent with its tail in its mouth. The Party of Science demands that Atlantis publish the natural laws Gruad has discovered and make them binding on all with systems of reward and punishment to enforce them. The word "punishment" is another addition to the Atlantean vocabulary coined by Gruad. One of Gruad's opponents explains to friends of his that it means torture, and everyone's fur bristles. Ingel Rild announces to a gathering of his supporters that Gruad has proven to his own satisfaction—and the demonstration runs to seventy-two scrolls of logical symbols—that sex is part of what he calls Evil. Only sex for the good of the community is to be permitted under Gruad's system, to keep the race alive.

A scientist called TON LIT exclaims, "You mean we must be thinking about conception during the act? That's impossible. Men's penises would droop, and women's vaginas wouldn't get moist. It's like—well, it's like making the shrill mouth-music while you are urinating. It would take great training, if it can be done at all." Ingel Rild proposes the formation of a Party of Freedom to oppose Gruad. Discussing Gruad's personality, Ingel Rild says he checked the genealogical records and found that several of the most agitated-energy people in all Atlantean history were among his ancestors. Gruad is a mutation, and so are many of his followers. The energy of normal Atlanteans flows slowly. Gruad's people are impatient and frustrated, and this is what makes them want to inflict suffering on their fellow humans.

Joe sat up with a jolt. If he understood that part of the movie, Gruad—evidently the first Illuminatus—was also the first homo neophilus. And the Party of Freedom, which seemed to be the origin of the Discordian and JAM movements, was pure homo neophobus. How the hell could that be squared with the generally reactionary attitude of current Illuminati policies, and the innovativeness of the Discordians and JAMs? But the film was moving on—

In a disreputable-looking tavernlike place where men and women smoke dope in pipes that they pass from one to another, while people grope in couples and groups in dark corners, SYLVAN MARTISET proposes a Party of Nothingness that rejects the positions of both the Party of Science and the Party of Freedom. After this we see street fighting, atrocities, the infliction of punishment on harmless people by men wearing Gruad's eye-and-triangle badge. The Party of Freedom proclaims its own symbol, a golden apple. The fighting spreads, the numbers of the dead mount and Ingel Rild weeps. He and his associates decide on a desperate expedient—unleashing the lloigor Yog Sothoth. They will offer this unnatural soul-eating energy being from another universe its freedom in return for its help in destroying Gruad's movement. Yog Sothoth is imprisoned in the great Pentagon of Atlantis on a desolate moor in the southern part of the continent. The Atlantean electric plane bearing Ingel Rild, Ton Lit and another scientist drifts, trailing feathery sparks, to a landing in a flat field overgrown with gray weeds. Within the Pentagon, an enormous black stone structure, the ground is scorched and the air shimmers like a heat mirage. Flickers of static electricity run through the shimmering from time to time, and an unpleasant noise, like flies around a corpse, pervades the whole moor. The faces of the three Atlantean sages register disgust, sickness and terror. They climb the nearest tower and talk to the guard. Suddenly Yog Sothoth takes control of Ton Lit, speaking in an oily, rich, deep and reverberating voice, and asks them what they seek of him. Ton Lit lets out a terrible shriek and claps his hands over his ears. Froth slips from the side of his mouth, his fur bristles and his penis stands erect. His eyes are delirious and suffering, like those of a dying gorilla. The guard uses an electronic instrument that looks like a magician's wand topped with a five-pointed star to subdue Yog Sothoth. Ton Lit bays like a hound and leaps for Ingel Rild's throat. The electronic ray drives him back and he stands panting, tongue hanging loose, as the Pentagon first and then the ground begin to soften into asymptotic curves. Yog Sothoth chants, "la-nggh-ha-nggh-ha-nggh-fthagn! la-nggh-ha-nggh-ha-nggh-hgual! The blood is the life ... The blood is the life ..." All faces, bodies and perspectives are skewed and there is a greenish tinge on everything. Suddenly the guard strikes the nearest wall of the Pentagon directly with his electronic wand and Ton Lit shrieks, human intelligence coming back into his eyes together with great shame and revulsion. The three sages flee the Pentagon under a sky slowly turning back to its normal shape and color. The laughter of Yog Sothoth follows them. They decide that they cannot release the lloigor.

Meanwhile Gruad has called his closest followers, known as the Unbroken Circle of Gruad, to announce that Kajeci has conceived. Then he shows them a group of manlike creatures with green, scaly skin, wearing long black cloaks and black skullcaps with scarlet plumes. These he calls his Ophidians. Since At-lanteans have a kind of instinctive check on themselves that prevents them from killing except in blind fury, Gruad has developed these synthetic humanoids from the serpent, which he has found to be the most intelligent of all reptiles. They will have no hesitation about destroying men and will act only on Gruad's command. Some of his followers protest, and Gruad explains that this is not really killing. He says, "Atlanteans who will not accept the teachings of the Party of Science are swinish beings. They are a sort of robot who has no inner spiritual substance to control it. Our bodies, however, are deceived into feeling as if they are our own kind, and we cannot raise our hands against them. Now, however, the light of science has given us hands to raise." At this meeting Gruad also addresses his men for the first time as the "illuminated ones." At the next meeting of the Party of Freedom the Ophidians attack, using iron bars to club people to death and slashing throats with their fangs. Then the Party of Freedom holds a funeral for a dozen of its dead at which Ingel Rild gives an oration describing the ways in which the struggle between Gruad's followers and the other Atlanteans is changing the character of all human beings:

"Hitherto, Atlanteans have enjoyed knowledge but not worried over the fact that there is much that we do not know. We are conservative and indifferent to new ideas, we have no inner conflicts and we feel like doing the things that seem wise to us. We think that the things we feel like doing will usually work out for the best. We consider pain and pleasure a single phenomenon, which we call sensation, and we respond to unavoidable pain by relaxing or becoming ecstatic. We do not fear death. We can read each other's minds because we are in touch with all the energies of our bodies. The followers of Gruad have lost that ability, and they are thankful that they have. The Scientists dote on new things and new ideas. This love of the new thing is a matter of genetic manipulation. Gruad is even encouraging people in their twenties to have children, though it is our custom never to have children before we reach a hundred. The generations of Gruad's followers come thick and fast, and they are not like us. They agonize over their ignorance. They are full of uncertainty and inner conflict between what they should do and what they feel like doing. The children, who are brought up on Gruad's teachings, are even more disturbed and conflict-filled than their parents. One doctor tells me that the attitudes and the way of life Gruad is encouraging in his people is enough to shorten their life spans considerably. And they are afraid of pain. They are afraid of death. And even as their lives grow shorter, they desperately seek for some means of achieving immortality."

Gruad tells a meeting of his Unbroken Circle that the tune has come to intensify the struggle. If they can't rule the Atlanteans, they will destroy Atlantis. "Atlantis will be destroyed by light," says Gruad. "By the light of the sun." Gruad introduces the worship of the sun to his followers. He reveals the existence of gods and goddesses. "They are all energy, conscious energy," says Gruad. "This conscious and powerfully directed and focused pure energy I call spirit. All motion is spirit. All light is spirit. All spirit is light." Under Gruad's direction, the Party of Science builds a great pyramid, thousands of feet high. It is in two halves; the upper half, made of an indestructible ceramic substance and inscribed with a terrible staring eye, floats five hundred feet above the base, held in place by antigravity generators. A band of men and women led by LILITH VELKOR, chief spokeswoman for the Party of Nothingness, gathers at the base of the great pyramid and laughs at it. They carry Nothingarian signs:

DON'T CLEAN OUR LENSES, GRUAD— GET THE CRACK OUT OF YOUR OWN

EVERY TIME I HEAR THE WORD "PROGRESS" MY FUR BRISTLES

THE SUN SUCKS FREEDOM DEFINED IS FREEDOM DENIED

THE MESSAGE ON THIS SIGN IS A FLAT LIE

Lilith Velkor addresses the Nothingarians, satirizing all Gruad's beliefs, claiming that the most powerful god is a crazy woman and she is the goddess of chaos. To the accompaniment of laughter she declares, "Gruad says the sun is the eye of the sun god. That's more of his notion that males are superior and reason and order are superior. Actually, the sun is a giant golden apple which is the plaything of the goddess of chaos. And it's the property of anyone she thinks is fair enough to deserve it." Suddenly a band of Ophidians attacks followers of Lilith Velkor and kills several of them. Lilith Velkor leads her people in an unprecedented attack on the Ophidians. They storm up the side of the great pyramid and throw the Ophidians down to the street, killing them. Amazingly, they succeed in wiping out all the Ophidians. Gruad declares that Lilith Velkor must die. When the opportunity presents itself, his men seize her and take her to a dungeon. There an enormous wheel has been constructed with four spokes in the shape [of a modern "Peace" sign]

Lilith Velkor is crucified with ropes, upside down, on this device. Several members of the Party of Science lounge about, watching her die. Gruad enters, goes to the wheel and looks at the dying woman, who says, "This is as good a day to die as any." Gruad remonstrates with her, saying that death is a great evil and she should fear it. She laughs and says, "All my life I have despised tradition and now I despise innovation also. Surely, I must be a most wicked example for the world!" She dies laughing. Gruad's rage is unbearable. He vows that he will wait no longer; Atlantis is too wicked to save and he will destroy it.

On a windswept plain in the northern regions of Atlantis a huge teardrop-shaped rocket with graceful fins is poised on the launching pad. Gruad is in the control room making last-minute adjustments while Kajeci and Wo Topod argue with him. Gruad says, "The human race will survive. It will survive the better purged of these Atlanteans, who are nothing but swine, nothing but robots, nothing but creatures who do not understand good and evil. Let them perish." His finger strikes a red button and the rocket hurtles on its way to the sun. It will take several days to reach there, and meanwhile Gruad has gathered the Unbroken Circle on an airship which takes them away from Atlantis and into the huge mountains to the east in a region that will one day be called Tibet. Gruad calculates that by the time the missile strikes the sun, they will have been landed and underground for two hours. The sun rides blinding yellow over the plains of Atlantis. It is a beautiful day in Zukong Gimorlad-Siragosa, the sun shining down on its slender, graceful towers with spiderweb bridges spiraling among them, its parks, its temples, its museums, its fine public buildings and magnificent private palaces. Its handsome, richly furred people gracefully stride amidst the beauties of the first and finest civilization man has ever produced. Families, lovers, friends and enemies, all unsuspecting what is about to happen, enjoy their private moments. A quintet plays the melodious zinthron, balatet, mordan, swaz and fen-drar. Over all, however, the great eye on the side of Gruad's pyramid glares horrid and red.

Suddenly the sun's body rages. Coiled flames, balls of gas, roll out. The sun looks like a giant fiery arachnid or octopus. One great flame comes rolling toward the earth, burning red gas which turns yellow, then green, then blue, then white.

There is nothing left of Zukong Gimorlad-Siragosa, except the pyramid with its upper segment now resting on the base, the antigravity generators having been destroyed. The baleful eye looks out over an absolutely flat, burnt-black plain. The ground shakes, great cracks open. The blackened area is a great circle, hundreds of miles in diameter, beyond which is a dark brown and still desolate wasteland. Thousands of cracks appear in the brittle surface of the continent, the strength of whose rocks has been destroyed by the incredible heat of the solar flare. A tide of mud starts crawling over the empty plain. It leaves only the top of the pyramid, with the great eye, showing. Water sweeps over the mud, at first sinking in and standing in pools, then rising higher so that only the tip of the pyramid sticks out of a great lake. Under the water enormous parallel fissures open in the ground on either side of the blackened central circle. The midsection of the continent, including the pyramid, begins to sink. The pyramid falls into the depths of the ocean with cliffs rising on either side of it to the parts of Atlantis that still remain above the ocean. They will remain for many thousands of years more, and they will be the Atlantis remembered in the legends of men. But the true Atlantis—high Atlantis—is gone.

Gruad stares into his crimson-glowing viewplate, watching the destruction of Atlantis. The light changes color, from red to gray, and the face of Gruad turns gray. It is a terrible face. It has aged a hundred years in the last few minutes. Gruad may claim to be in the right, but deep down he knows that what he has done isn't nice. And yet deep down there is satisfaction, too, for Gruad, long tortured by unreasonable guilt, now has something he can really feel guilty about. He turns to the Unbroken Circle and proposes, since it appears that the earth will survive the cataclysm (he was not really sure that it would), that they plan for the future. Most of them, however, are still in shock. Wo Topod,; inconsolable, stabs himself to death, the first recorded time that a member of the human race has deliberately killed himself. Gruad calls upon his followers to destroy all remains of the Atlantean civilization and then, later, to build a perfect civilization when even the ruins of Atlantis have been forgotten. The great beasts that inhabited Europe, Asia and North America die off as a result of mutations and diseases caused by the solar flare. All relics of the Atlan-tean civilization are destroyed. The people who were Gruad's erstwhile countrymen are either killed or driven forth to wander the earth. Besides Gruad's Himalayan colony there is one other remnant of the High Atlantean era: the Pyramid of the Eye, whose ceramic substance resisted solar flare, earthquake, tidal wave and submersion in the depths of the ocean. Gruad explains that it is right that the eye should remain. It is the eye of God, the One, the scientific-technical eye of ordered knowledge that looks down on the universe and by perceiving it causes it to be. If an event is not witnessed, it does not happen; therefore, for the universe to happen there must be a Witness. Among the primitive hunters and gatherers a mutation has appeared that seems to be spreading rapidly. More and more people are being born without fur and with hair in the same pattern as Gruad's. The Hour of God's Eye has caused mutations in every species.

From the Himalayas the rocket ships of the Unbroken Circle, painted red and white, swoop out in squadrons. They sweep across Europe and land on the brown islands where Atlantis used to be. There they land and raid a city of refugees from the Atlantean disaster. They kill many of the leaders and intellectuals and herd the rest aboard the ships, fly to the Americas and deposit the helpless people on a vast plain. Far below their route of passage lies the Pyramid of the Eye at the bottom of the Atlantic. The base of the pyramid is covered with silt and the break where the upper part of the pyramid had floated on antigravity projectors is also covered. Still the pyramid itself towers over the mud around it, taller by three times than the Great Pyramid of Egypt, the building of which lies twenty-seven thousand years in the future. A vast shadow descends upon the pyramid. There is a suggestion in the darkness of the ocean bottom of giant tentacles, of sucker disks wide as the rims of volcanos, of an eye as big as the sun looking at the eye on the pyramid. Something touches the pyramid, and enormous as it is, it moves slightly. Then the presence is gone.

The pentagonal trap in which the people of Atlantis had heroically and brilliantly caught the dread ancient being Yog Sothoth has been, amazingly, undamaged by the catastrophe. Being on the southern plain, which was relatively uninhabited, the Pentagon of Yog Sothoth becomes the center of a migration of people who survived the disaster. Emergency cities are set up, those dying of radiation sickness are treated. A second Atlantis begins to take root. And then, from the Himalayas, the ships of the Unbroken Circle come swooping down on one of their raids. Lines of Atlantean men and women are marched to the walls of the Pentagon and there mowed down by laser fire. Then explosive charges are placed amid the heaps of bodies and the masked, uniformed men of the Unbroken Circle withdraw. There is a series of explosions; horrid yellow smoke goes coiling up. The gray stone walls crumble. There is a moment of stillness, balance, tension. Then the piled-up boulders of one side of the wall fly apart as if thrust by the hand of a giant. An enormous claw print appears in the soft soil around the ruins of the Pentagon. The masked men of the Unbroken Circle race frantically for their ships and take off. The ships dart into the sky, stop suddenly, waver and plummet like stones to explosive crashes on the earth. The surviving refugees scream and scatter. Like a scythe going through wheat, death sweeps among them in great arcs as they run in massed mobs. Mouths open in soundless screams, they fall. Only a handful escapes. Over the scene a colossal reddish figure of indeterminate shape and number of limbs stands triumphant.

In the Himalayas, Gruad and the Unbroken Circle watch the destruction of the Pentagon and the massacre of the Atlanteans. The Unbroken Circle cheers, but Gruad strangely weeps. "You think I hate walls?" he says. "I love walls. I love any kind of wall. Anything that separates. Walls protect good people. Walls lock away the evil. There must always be walls and the love of walls, and in the destruction of the great Pentagon that held Yog Sothoth I read the destruction of all that I stand for. Therefore I am stricken with regret."

At this the face of EVOE, a young priest, takes on a reddish glow and a demoniac look. There is more than a hint of possession. "It is good to hear you say that," he says to Gruad. "No man yet has befriended me, though many have tried to use me. I have prepared a special place for your soul, oh first of the men of the future." Gruad attempts to speak to Yog Sothoth, but the possession has apparently passed, and the other members of the Unbroken Circle praise a new beverage that Evoe has prepared, made of the fermented juice of grapes. At dinner, later that day, Gruad tries the new beverage and praises it, saying, "This juice of grapes relaxes me and does not cause the disturbing visions and sounds that makes the herb the Atlanteans used to smoke so unpleasant for a man of conscience." Evoe gives him more to drink from a fresh jar, and Gruad takes it. Before drinking he says, "Any culture that arises in the next twenty thousand years or so is going to have the rot of Atlantis in it. Therefore I decree a noncultural time of eight hundred generations. After that we may allow man free reign on his propensity for building civilizations. The culture he builds will be under our guidance, with our ideas implicit in its every aspect, with our control at every stage. Eight hundred generations from now the new human culture will be planted. It will follow the natural law. It will have the knowledge of good and evil, the light that comes from the sun, the sun that blasphemers say is only an apple. It is no apple, I tell you, though it is a fruit, even as this beverage of Evoe's that I now quaff is from a fruit. From the grape comes this drink and from the sun comes the knowledge of good and evil, the separation of light and darkness over the whole earth. Not an apple, but the fruit of knowledge!" Gruad drinks. He puts down his glass, clutches his throat and staggers back. His other hand goes to his heart. He topples over and lies on his back, his eyes staring upward.

Naturally, everyone accuses Evoe of poisoning Gruad. But Evoe calmly answers that it was Lilith Velkor who did it. He was doing research on the energies of the dead and had learned how to take them into him. But sometimes the energies of the dead could take control of him, so that he would be just a medium through which they act. He cries, "When you write this tragedy into the archives, you must say, not that Evoe the man did it, but Evoe-Lilith, possessed by the evil spirit of a woman. The woman did tempt me, I tell you! I was helpless." The Unbroken Circle is persuaded, and agree that since Lilith Velkor and the crazy goddess she worshipped were responsible for Gruad's death, henceforward women must be subordinate to men so such evils will not be repeated. They decide to build a tomb for Gruad and to inscribe upon it, "The First Illuminated One: Never Trust A Woman." They decide that since the lloigor is loose they will offer sacrifices to it, and the sacrifices will be pure young women who have never lain with a man. Evoe seems to be taking control of the group and Gao Twone protests this. To prove his dedication to the true and the good, Evoe declares, he has had his penis amputated as a sacrifice to the All-Seeing Eye. He pulls open his robe. All look at his truncated crotch and immediately retch. Evoe goes on, "Furthermore, it is decreed by the Eye and Natural Law that all male children who would be close to goodness and truth must imitate my sacrifice, at least to the extent of losing the foreskin or being cut enough to bleed." Kajeci comes in at this point, and they plan a great funeral, agreeing that they will not burn Gruad as was the Atlantean custom, signifying that one is dead forever, but will preserve his body, symbolizing the hope that he is not really dead but will rise again.

There follow several thousand years of warfare between the remnants of the Atlanteans and the inhabitants of Agharti, the stronghold of the Scientists, who now call themselves variously the Knowledgeable or the Enlightened Ones. The last remnants of the Atlantean culture are destroyed. Great cities were built, then destroyed by nuclear explosions. All the inhabitants of the city of Peos are killed in one night by the eater of souls. Chunks of the continent break off and sink into the sea. There are earthquakes and tidal waves. Finally, only outcroppings like the cone-shaped island of Fernando Poo rise alone from the sea where Atlantis had been.

About 13,000 B.C. a new culture is planted on a hillside near the headwaters of the Euphrates and it starts to spread. A tribe of Cro-Magnons, magnificently tall, strong, large-headed people, is marched at gunpoint down from the snows of Europe to the fertile lands of the Middle East. They are taken to the site chosen for the first agricultural settlement and shown how to plant crops. For several years they do so while the Unbroken Circle's men guard them with flame throwers. Their generations pass rapidly, and once the new way of life has taken hold the Illuminated Ones leave them alone. The tribe divides into kings, priests, scribes, warriors, and farmers. A city surrounded by farms rises up. The kings and priests are soft, weak and fat. The peasants are stunted and dulled by malnutrition. The warriors are big and strong, but brutal and unintelligent. The scribes are intelligent, but thin and bloodless. Now the city makes war on neighboring tribes of barbarians. Being well organized and technologically superior, the people of the city win. They enslave the barbarians and plant other cities nearby. Then a great tribe of barbarians comes down from the north and conquers the civilized people and burns their city. This is not the end of the new civilization, though. It only revitalizes it. Soon the conquerors have learned to play the roles of kings, priests and warriors, and now there is a kind of nation consisting of several cities with a large body of armed who must be kept occupied. Marching robotlike in great square formations, they set out over the plain to find new peoples to conquer. The sun shines down on the civilization created by the Illuminati. And below the sea the eye on the pyramid glares balefully upward.

THE END

Copyright © 1983 by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson

[lanamemories2]

clip clops in on horseback wearing a pointy little dunces hat n sipping frm a rly long crazy straw tht says ‘goblin’ w all of the swirls. Hlo. i’m nai n it’s rly nice to meet u all!!! 23 n she/ha pronouns. i’m one of the three admins here (cleo lazuli on the main) n i’m literally So Excited to get started i cld honestly beat my chest like caesar the ape over it. more abt lana under the cut!!! also like this or hmu if u wna plot n her pinterest is here 👺🌚 

『KRISTINE FROSETH ❙ CIS-FEMALE』 ⟿ looks like LANA JAMESON is here for HER JUNIOR year as a DANCE student. SHE is 21 years old & known to be VIVACIOUS, ALLURING, CHILDISH & IMPULSIVE. They’re living in NOLAND, so if you’re there, watch out for them. ⬳ NAI. 23. GMT. SHE/HER.

AESTHETICS: 

scalding your fingers in shower water until they glow like rudolph’s nose, cherry red gym socks tugged high and nothing else, stepping out into a cold breeze in just spaghetti strapped silk, a red lightening stripe painted over your eye like a new take on the scarlet letter, crowning each finger with a miniature raspberry, hugging a knee close to lick a stripe of fruit juice off the bruised cap, doodling penises in condensation instead of sitting still, a water pistol topped with rum and covered in glittery pin-up stickers, believable smiles that feel more like baring teeth, playing where’s waldo with your lipstick in the crowd of a party and finding red on at least six people’s mouths, a bumper sticker on the back of a convertible cadillac that says ‘SCRAPPY DOO IS A FILTHY SLUT’, prancing around in your underwear to a vinyl record with the curtains open. 

HISTORY:

lana grew up in a big house in albany, NY. i picture it w dark oak floors n lots of light furniture. albums framed on walls. mayb some rolling stone covers too frm way bk when of the bands her dad’s label signed. kind of like… a rock star palace w no evidence of children at all. i think i described it best in one of lana’s self paras once when i said the garden ws “as big as it was unloved”

lana’s mum victoria (vic) ws a music journalist w a pretty fruitful career ahead of her when she met lana’s dad richard (rich). his record label ws jst starting out, founded on the coattails of his rich best friend’s (jensen peters) investment w his other best friend (who he jst calls knoxville). it rocketed to success when they signed poppy injects, a rock band w an electric stage presence, n victoria ws drawn to the glitz n glamour of a man tht ws at the helm of his aspiring industry. their love ws very impulsive, all or nothing right frm the start, n it ws almost like she ws mre in love w his accomplishments n what he represented than him. jst a leetle bit Fractured in its intentions.

anyway so jameson records repped a few big rock bands bk in the eighties, altho poppy injects r who they’re mostly known fr, namely bc of hw brightly they crashed n burned. they were a big chart success bt the lead singer hd quite an intense struggle w heroin (wsnt rly subtle abt it either while he ws in the public eye as u cn probably imagine frm such an on-the-nose band name) n he ws always in n out of the papers. it eventually brought down his career n it ws a big publicity nightmare

lana pretty much… grew up around figures like this throughout childhood. rly troubled characters who wld kind of… b extremely volatile n destructive abt their troubles. the jameson house was kind of an open one as welcoming clients went n a lot of parties took place there. a lot of the time musicians wld b snorting lines in the kitchen when she wnted to grab a bowl of cereal fr breakfast n it was just. a very strange environment fr a child to grow up in

her parents always kind of jst… didn’t like her much. her older brother caleb ws unplanned bt they sort of welcomed the surprise more bt… quickly realised they weren’t cut out fr parenthood n then when lana came as another surprise 3 yrs later they didn’t even try to hide their resentment abt the situation. her mum ws actually booked in to have an abortion bt cldnt go through with it at the last minute. once when lana asked her why shes so cold towards her she jst turned her head frm her dresser, looked at her, told her abt this n said “idk why i didn’t go”. lana didn’t kno wht to say to tht so she jst left her room n closed the door

(dissociation tw) bc of this growing up lana adopted this weird like…. she didn’t rly kno what it ws bt it ws a delusion of sorts where she thought she ws a ghost. she’d jst sort of… drift around the halls w noone acknowledging her n sometimes she ws jst convinced she wsnt actually there or they cldnt see her n she ws jst haunting the house frm a previous family

the one saving grace tho tht sort of?? gt her thru this n made her feel Seen ws caleb. lana quite genuinely hs always thought the sun shines out of her older brothers ass like she jst thinks. hes the best person in the entire world. wld b rly bewildered if anyone questioned tht. he wld always look out for her in the zoo they called a home n cut the crusts off her sandwiches (he’d cook fr them most of the time bc their parents were too busy/didn’t care to) n sometimes wld even sleep at the bottom of her bed curled up like a guard dog. it ws always lana n caleb n his best friend tommy against the world in tht house (tommy lived next door n was always over bc he had very strict parents including a military father tht he found suffocating)

SO when caleb n tommy announced tht they’d signed up to the army lana ws understandably…….. completely blindsided. she ws rly upset tht they were leaving bt she tried not to b mad at them n made them promise theyd b safe n back as soon as possible. she even asked if they cld somehow take her w them n they were jst like :/ it doesn’t work that way luv x

(death tw, ptsd tw, grief tw, trauma tw, hospitalisation tw, drugs tw) anyway caleb ended up getting discharged under grounds of severe ptsd when he witnessed tommy die in an explosion tht took place in a shock raid. caleb returned home sans tommy bt he was never the same after tht. he’s been in and out of hospital twice nw n he’s currently dipped off the radar after starting to use. lana kind of felt like two of her brothers died out there in a way n jst like tht it wasn’t them vs the world any mre, it was jst her. she doesn’t talk abt this tho. when she feels the urge to cry she usually jst smiles

ANYWAY whew tht rly…. took a dark turn there….. chuckles nervously at hw sad lana’s life is bt it’s fine it’s all fINE!!!!!!! ok. so on a mre lighthearted note the jameson family r pretty well off n bc of her relation to such a big music industry figure she’s hung out w a fair few relatively high rep ppl thru her teens. mostly kids of celebrities n stuff like tht. she amassed kind of an instagram following mainly fr her style (v penny lane-esque in some aspects aka lots of fur cuff trimmed jackets bt then also jst…. a wild combination of everything honestly. pastel faux fur coats, seventies style platforms, flame red cowboy boots, pink fishnet tights n glitter used like highlight Everywhere) n bc she’s undeniably Very Pretty

(trauma tw) after caleb got back he was rly withdrawn n depressed. he shut lana out n was kind of harsh to her a lot of the time, always telling her to leave him alone or pushing her away. it didnt help either tht lana had a rly traumatic experience w some of her dad’s colleagues at the label when she ws 16 n he was away n she cldnt even tell him abt it once he was bk bc of his own traumas. she kind of jst shut it all in n kept it to herself

(hypersexuality tw) this obviously?? made her spiral a lot. she was already a girl tht loved sex (she’d only rly done foreplay before tho) but since her trauma it got…. completely out of hand. it got to a point where she couldnt rly go 2 days without it, probably not even 1. her lowest point has probably been scrolling thru craiglist for anonymous encounters n meeting up w strangers on there fr a quick fuck jst for the thrill even tho it’s insanely dangerous n she cld wind up getting herself killed. it’s v clear at this point tht she has a sex addiction whether she’s ever admitted it or not. it kind of… almost mingled w tht same feeling she used to get when she ws younger of being a ghost?? like she jst. only rly feels Real when she’s being touched

(violence tw) a mre recent point of history is her involvement w danny nielsen (an evil npc of mine who is possibly the antichrist??? pending investigation). he attended radcliffe n lived in a house w a group of guys near campus. it wsn’t a registered frat bt he essentially…ran it like one it ws kind of a weird set-up where he ws the King Of The Roost. essentially he found out tht lana n a guy called zeke slept together n he ended up beating him to near death in front of her bc his pride ws rly bruised since they were meant to be dating (if u can call it tht bc danny’s idea of dating is very Warped). ANYWAY he ws found guilty n sent to jail so it ws like Intense n a gd example of the kinds of disastrous relationships she gets herself into. perks of being a wallflower voice: We Accept The Love We Think We Deserve.

PERSONALITY:

always smells vaguely of wild cherries or strawberry starburst or jst the candy aisle in general. if she ws a vinyl record she’d b this one n she’d only play good vibrations by the beach boys, dancing on my own by robyn, play that funky music by wild cherry, femme fatale by the velvet underground n (i can’t get no) satisfaction by the rolling stones 

growing up lana was always a huge social butterfly. knew everyone n everyone knew her. she ws one of those girls tht ws kind of impossible to ignore or forget. very animated, always made u feel like u were the centre of the universe whenever she spoke to u, always made it feel like u were best friends even if ud only spoken to her once. 

deliberately puts on tht kind of Magnetic Alluring Act tht femme fatales wear in movies w most ppl. kind of…. is always playing A Role of the person tht she wants to b seen as. chameleons to situations. feels like she’s performed as the vivacious n fun loving Lana Jameson fr so long tht she doesn’t rly kno who she is beneath tht bt she isn’t too keen to find out

she’s always been rly spontaneous n adventurous. always doing something weird n wild every weekend. she has ten thousand ridiculously absurd n chaotic stories

uncontrollably flirty. boundlessly confident. cld make a joke out a paper bag n her comedy is sometimes surreal / absurd. she tends to laugh when she feels like crying n has a smile brighter than a ray of texas sunshine. 

always dapples her fingers thru the breeze when she’s driving in a car w the window down. she almost always has some sort of sweet on her, whether it’s sour haribo cherries or strawberry lollipops. 

she adores david bowie n prince n madonna n anyone tht’s a vintage style icon w little care fr what ppl think. 

daisies n poppies r her fav flowers bc daisies r wild n overlooked n poppies r the first thing u look at in a green field. she’s had like 8472493874 ‘relationships’ n none of them hav lasted beyond a month / hav been terrible / hav seen her being treated badly / she’s cheated on them. i dnt think she’s actually ever been w anyone she hasn’t cheated on in some form or another

PLOTS:

exes tht lana’s fucked over hideously. she’d probably cheat a lot and it’d be a whole…mess. 

mayb someone tht flipped the switch and cheated on her? 

a cousin plot cld b fun too. a friend tht lana fel out w bc she slept w their significant other.

a fake dating plot cld b fun honestly 

someone tht’s getting lana into drugs?? she’s kind of impressionable/down for anything so tht’s a likely scenario she’d get into tbh

an unrequited crush!! (either way is cool)

someone tht is just hanging out w her/using her bc she has a lot of instagram followers or they want to b signed to her dad’s label

someone in a band!! she’d probably make like penny lane n b their groupie/sleep w them all fgjkshgkh

umm a good influence too mayb? 

oh and a past summer romance/fling tht cld either have meant a lot or not have meant anything at all. bonus points if both of them hav a diff viewpoint on it. 

honestly?? anything is fine i cld ramble for days. mayb even one of the high profile kids she grew up hangin w idk. world’s our oyster fellas!

[greysapps]

Define imy

Define imy free#

a lot of people’ve been seein’ them around the eastern parts, an’ they’re known as the ‘Yowie’.Internal Medicine Training (IMT) forms the first stage of specialty training for most doctors training in physicianly specialties, and will prepare trainees for participating in the acute medical take at a senior level and managing patients with acute and chronic medical problems in outpatient and inpatient settings. McAdoo If Only I’d Listened: ’E’d be about six foot easy tall, broad, an’ a sort of brownish fur lookin’ stuff all over ’im, an’ standing up like a man… We didn’t know what the name of it was then, but. Yowie is first recorded in the 1970s.ġ980 M. However, another possiblity is that yowie is an alteration of the word yahoo, a name given by Aboriginal people to an evil spirit. Yowie may come from the word yuwi ‘dream spirit’ in the Yuwaalaraay language of northern New South Wales. The yowie is Australia’s equivalent of the Himalayan yeti, or the American bigfoot or sasquatch. It's a thick sound, made more bass-y by the addition of the yidaki but Bakamana Yunupingu has a strong, appealing voice.Ģ000 Koori Mail (Lismore) 20 September: With the sound of the yidaki (didgeridoo) echoing off nearby high-rise buildings and apartments, a gathering of Sydney's Aboriginal community celebrates the mid-point of the Budyari ‘Proper Way’ Festival.Īn ape-like monster supposed to inhabit parts of eastern Australia. The Yolgnu word for the instrument has become widely known in recent decades, and was popularised by the music group Yothu Yindi, formed in 1986, whose members were Yolgnu speakers.ġ988 Sydney Morning Herald 12 November: The rock and roll starts. The instrument was originally used only in Arnhem Land, but became commonly known in Australia as the didgeridoo (not an Aboriginal word, but an imitation of the sound by non-Aboriginal people). Yidaki is a borrowing from the Yolgnu languages of north-eastern Arnhem Land (Northern Territory). Spelling variants such as yakker and yacker are also found.ġ892 Bulletin (Sydney) 19 November: The stevedore must yacker for the bit he gets to eat.Ģ004 Townsville Bulletin 14 July: We marched out through the thigh-deep mud carrying wallaby jacks, jungle matting lent by the army and railway sleepers. Yakka found its way into nineteenth-century Australian pidgin, and then passed into Australian English. Yakka first occurs in the 1840s as a verb meaning ‘to work’, and it derives from yaga meaning ‘work’ in the Yagara language of the Brisbane region. The word is used especially in the phrase hard yakka. For a discussion of these and other terms for Australian freshwater crayfish, see our blog ‘The problem with yabbies’ from February 2013. There are many species of freshwater crayfish in Australia and many different names for them, such as lobby, marron, and crawchie. 7): Inside temperate estuaries, there are two small shrimps which are first class baits for a variety of fish. Horrobin Guide to Favourite Australian Fish (ed. Anglers often use a mechanical device called a yabby pump to extract these crustaceans from the sand or mud flats.ġ994 P. It refers to any of several small burrowing shrimp-like marine crustaceans that are commonly used for bait.

Define imy free#

The earliest evidence of it dates from the 1840s, and it has generated a number of compound terms such as yabby farming, yabby net, and yabby trap.ġ889 Bathurst Free Press 14 March: Luscious Murray cod, with succulent ‘yabbies’ and tempting fruit.ġ999 Australian Gold, Gem &Treasure Magazine December: About a kilometre from our camp was a dam brimming over with large yabbies so each night Imy would set a couple of yabby nets he happened to have, baited with some Meaty Bites, and the next morning we would feast on toasted yabby sandwiches.Ī second sense of yabby occurs chiefly in Queensland, recorded from 1952. The word yabby is a borrowing from the Wemba Wemba language of Victoria. Yabbies are good to eat (a number of species can now be found on restaurant menus) and are also used as fishing bait. A piece of string lowered into the water, with a bit of fresh meat tied to it for the yabby to latch on to, is the traditional fishing method. Fishing for yabbies is often a favourite childhood memory for Australians who lived near a dam or creek. Any of several freshwater crayfish valued as food, especially the common species Cherax destructor that is native to south-eastern Australia.

[weaselle]

Excerpts from a novel I’m working on... Meet the Ix

The book is called Everything is True, starring a young lesbian/non-binary person named Helix. The concept is, everything is true, in other words, aliens exist, bigfoot exists, elves exist, we landed on the moon AND there was a conspiracy about it, there is an actual flat Earth out there, magic and extra-dimensional characters exist, and therefore anything and everything my imagination hands me can go in. The style is modern fiction meets fantasy, in a lightly humorous style. Here are the first four scenes that contain the Ix, a small pack of things that lived in my head until I put them on paper; meet Nix, Stix, Pix, Six, Kix, Dix, Mix, Fix, Quix, and Tix. They are cousins to the Yps, who I will introduce when I’m done reworking their first scene (Blyp, Nyp, Tryp and the rest of their kin are pretty perfect, but I had to come face the fact that Gyp was a bigoted name for the pickpocket cardshark little beastie; I think I’m going to go with Gryp, and I’m changing some things about the setting and a few plot points too.) Anyway, welcome to Everything Is True - meet the Ix _____________________________________________________________________      The Ix had woken, and that meant no good to anyone. The entire bogus of Ix had lain slumbering, a furry pile of malign unconsciousness, for time outside of time, until a cousin of coincidence folded up his message to them into a paper-airplane, hit the topmost snout square on with it, and ran away from the resulting chain reaction.     The pile, squirmed, the pile hissed, the pile seethed and bit. It built into an all out ball of brawl, before the Ix woke up enough to sort themselves from each other and start looking for something non-Ix to fuck with. Irritatingly, there were only the dozen or so Ix, so they began going over their equipment and snarling groggily at any other Ix that got too close before they'd finished waking up. _____________________________________________________________________

     The Ix looked a lot like ferrets, if the little weasels had been designed with an extra pair of arms/legs halfway down their slinky bodies. They were of a fairly weaselly disposition also, and swarmed around on two, four, or six limbs, each of which ended in a hand/foot just a tiny bit more ape than ferret. When walking upright on their haunches they had a tendency to sort of waddle. Standing thus, they were, on average, about two and a half feet tall, covered in leather harnessing, belts and pouches. They had nothing else for clothing, and their fur was a varied gray, each with some natural pattern, usually including some kind of mask, and also permanently dyed markings on, like tattoos. Every Ix had a uniquely evolved prehensile tail, this one with pincers at the end, that one extra long and thin, another barbed wickedly. As they bumbled about, one of them, remembering something from their last excursion, started loudly chanting “Coffee! CoffeeCoffeeCoffeeCoffee!”     She was immediately dog-piled by a snarling trio of the others, but there was a general chattering hiss of agreement. Nix looked up from deciphering the contents of the paper-airplane, and took charge before the bogus could fall to total chaos.“Nagh! Belay-that-and-knock-off-yer-squirming-and-noise!” He chatter-growled, “Stix-Quix-and-Flix! Get-off-of-Mix! Everybody-check-all-- Dix! Stop-humping-Kix's-leg! Check-your- Pix! Stop-pinching-Tix! I-don't-care-which-you-or-who-started-what! Everybody-check-all-yar-mees-and-mines!” There was a bogus wide inventory of items.“Nagh!” cried one, “I'm-missing-a-mine-what-has-sharp-parts-and-bits-for-the-picking! Which-Ix-has-his-mitts-on-my-mostest-of-mine!?”The largest of them, an Ix that looked like he only ever ate steroids, gingerly picked up what appeared to be a pickaxe designed for tree-chopping. “Um... Pix?” the large Ix chuckled in a voice full of help but devoid of smart “Pix?”“Nagh! MineMineMine!” cried Pix, and launched himself at the oafish Kix without hesitation. And then immediately re-launched, when that body-builder of an Ix lashed out with a hind leg and sent him flying backwards. A fierce wrestling match ensued, and Nix was forced to interfere before the bogus could pick sides and join in. “PreyPreyPreyPreyPreyPrey!” He screamed at them, and that got their attention quick enough. “We've-a-jobby-bit-and-a-Prey-thing-to-hunt!” He reminded them, tucking the rolled up note into a loop in his belt and settling his eye-patch. “With-every-all-yer-mees-and-mines-we'll-go-and-” “-and CoffeeCoffeeCoffee!” screamed Quix, dancing crazily in place. This time the whole bogus picked up the call, the cave echoing with shouted demands for coffee. Nix shrugged to himself. “Bellydown-me-swarmy-Ix, to-the-One-Side-world-and-Coffee!” he proclaimed, and then Nix streaked out of the cave, the whole tumbling lot of the Ix on his heels, chattering and cheering and biting.

_______________________________________________________________________       Market Street of One Side Earth was not prepared for the arrival of the Ix. They swarmed out from under a manhole cover, and all thirteen of them formed up standing on the roof of a bus stop like a group of wicked meercats, surveying the busy street. Behind them, a car got it's wheel stuck in the manhole they left uncovered. Nix licked a needle-y two inch fang and snuffed appreciatively as, over his shoulder, the bogus grinned and snapped, looking around at the scene with their tongues lolling happily at their prospects. “Fun-fun-fun-fun-fun” was the general chatter. “My-nefarious-Ix,” Nix announced, “let-us-hunt-amid-this-chaos, Nagh! and-catch-ourselves-some-Coffee!” and the Bogus cheered and scattered off the bus stop, chanting “-CoffeeCoffeeCoffee-”. None of the thousands of human ears in the vicinity believed themselves enough to tell their conscious brains they'd heard this, and not an eyeball near let such nonsense as a pack of Ix past the optic nerve. The Ix weren't invisible, they were Unacknowledged. Also, like most All Siders, they could create, not an absolute, but just a tendency in One Siders to step around and otherwise avoid an unacknowledged All Sider in their path (or, truly useful, one in their chair). All Siders caused this subconscious avoidance by trying to remember to be somewhat malevolent, angry or at least very irritable; in this, the Ix were naturals.

    They poured through the crowd in a frenzy, a sudden wave of ailment. Stix, armed with a pair of what were essentially giant toothpicks, was jabbing people viciously in the leg or foot as he passed, and pausing now and then to snatch up a discarded piece of gum and expertly fling it beneath a descending shoe. Mix was riding around on people, so malicious they never acknowledged his presence, and using three hands and his slender forked tail to reorganize the contents of their pockets. An assortment of All Sider insects fell continuously from Tix, crawling into the nearest electronic devices they could find to cause system errors, while Tix herself sprang about like a deer, smacking people in the face as they twitched and flinched and failed to realize she was there. Bumbling Kix forgot to be irritable, and people began tripping over the bulky Ix, their eyes never once believing that they saw him. Dix was humping a flurry of legs and every dog he saw, which, as dogs find All Siders more observable than humans do, was causing a lot of canine misbehavior. Sores and colds and rashes broke out wherever Six passed, throwing an occasional little powder puff bomb and rubbing his mangy coat around people's legs like some disease-ridden cat. Fix dashed along under vehicles, his middle hands a blur above his back as they expertly arranged malfunctions. The whole bogus raced about frenetically while moving the same direction, much the way objects caught in a hurricane travel the same direction as the storm.

     Nix was the only one of the little weaselly beasts not zipping about in this melee of misfortune. His mind was the sharp focus a ferret gets when the myriad things it is eternally distracted by happen to turn out for the moment to be all the same thing. He merely drifted along, moving forward at the same pace as the tempest of Ix. Middle hands hooked in his belt, top arms crossed across his lanky chest, he swaggered down the middle of the sidewalk, ignoring the crowd disdainfully, his pair of infamous hatchets strapped diagonally to his chest and back. Behind him, like an afterthought of evil, his tail whipped lazily, and every person the long flicking tip touched, some valuable possession they carried instantly reversed into nothing.      All around him, as the Ix asserted their presence, the world went wrong. Fights broke out. Dogs trailing leashes threw snarling fits, and children cried. Jackhammers failed, trucks broke down, traffic lights began giving conflicting signals. People looked down to find their muffin sprouting mold and their latte somehow rancid. Windows cracked. Men forgot everything but the woman they happened to be looking at, and walked into poles or out into traffic. A young couple at a bus stop suddenly started throwing up. One poor man, too angry himself to tend away from Unacknowledged All Siders, was unfortunate enough to step on Nix's foot, and was dismantled to nothingness by the terrible hatchets in the blink of an eye.

Aside from that one man (and an old woman who failed later to recover from her encounter with Six) nobody else died. This was largely because the Ix were simply playing, and didn't particularly care if anyone was killed or not. They were only having a good time on their way to find a prize. Just ahead of Nix, a fire hydrant exploded. Off to his left, some Ix or another caused a car crash. _______________________________________________________________________      Nix confirmed his One Side location on Oxford St. matched his given coordinates and slid his eyepatch around his head until it was up behind his ear. The black string that remained across his brow and under his other ear blended with the black fur of the natural eyepatch that was his only facial marking. “BOGUSMINE!” he screamed like a small mountain lion “Coffee-Coffee-Coffee!” and he pointed into the internet cafe and after-hours club to his right.      The whirlwind of Ix contracted, dog-piled briefly in the entrance to the shop, and then streamed in. They quickly spread until they were everywhere, under tables, on top of counters, inside cupboards... everything that could be tipped was knocked over, everything that could be opened or uncovered became so. Wires were chewed through. Chairs appeared to leap up and topple. The panic within began instantly but was achieved too slowly for anyone to make it out in time.      Later a bewildered policeman, assigned this cafe from among the battalion of emergency personnel that descended on the aftermath of what the media would bill as the Market St. Calamity, would interview the still conscious. Upon hearing some of the descriptions, he would exchange a look with his partner and very carefully write down much shorter things, such as 'witness extremely confused', which was easier on all concerned and would keep his captain from screaming something like “what the fuck is this, Benson, a fucking bed time story!? I sent you to write witness statements, not an episode of the fucking X-files!”       According to the four eye-witnesses still standing, what happened inside was this: “Everything started, like, flying around-” “What I first saw was the table rockin' like a earthquake” “Everybody started screaming.” “-like, chairs and coffee cups and everything-” “-Tell him about the cash register, Sarah.” “Only, see, it spilled my iced caramel half-caff skim latte all over my lap when it started rocking like that” “-and all the coffee machines and things started going off like crazy-” “-Sarah, tell him about the register” “-and the lights started flickering-” “The screaming was terrible. 'Cause of all the burns too. From the hot coffee and tea flying everywhere.” “And these are new pants, a hundred-fifty bucks they cost me” “-for a minute I sort of thought I saw a bunch of evil, like, monkeys slamming cabinets open and shut-“ “-Sarah tell him about the register, Sarah” “I can still hear the, the screamin'. And gurglin'. Fucked up gurglin' screams, because of, y'know, all the throwin' up.” “Won’t come out, I bet, you just wait and see; 30% cashmere you know. Then a chair flew over and hit the man next to me in the face” “-while everything inside them burst off the shelves-“ “-Sa-ra-a-a-a-ahh, the register, tell him about the register-” “-and the register sort of floated up, shook itself empty-“ “-and flew like a bullet right at my head! My HEAD! I could have been killed! Dude! Seriously, Sarah, you’d think you didn’t even care I’m almost dead! And what are the cops going to do about it, anyway?” “Of course he started bleeding RIGHT on my shoes, just my luck” “Awful sound, people still tryina scream while throwin' up. I'ma have nightmares.”       Down the block, a frustrated Nix double checked his eye-patch and found that his quarry had gone to ground, no trail. Frustrated, he gathered the quite caffeinated bogus and raced back to the All Side.

[floggingink]

Riverdale, “Episode Twenty-One: House of the Devil”

Jughead writes at the Whyte Wyrm now, which presumably people, there, still think is weird

Fifth period is AP English: Jughead compares the Black Hood to Edgar Allan Poe’s Red Death, which I think was an allegory for like, the Plague

“CARNAL DEFIANCE”

Sixth period is Intro to Film: Why does Cheryl call Archie & Veronica making out “xenomorphs,” which are the aliens in Aliens? I need help

Jughead drops the name “Varchie,” truly proving he is not above the rest of us

I like to think that Jughead chronicling the carnal defiance is him thinking to himself how objective and journalistic he is being

the carnal defiance montage is good, though

Veronica was rich: “The tasting menu at Pourquoi is thirteen courses, Archie.”

literally on a white fur rug in front of a fire?

I like the soft class differences in Archie immediately suggesting they maybe watch Netflix and Veronica immediately suggesting they maybe watch HBO

Veronica as usual is an emotionally-multitasking saint-genius in giving Archie a genuine had-a-good-time kiss as he frantically leaves

Jug calls McGinty “Freddy Krueger,” which I will allow

Jughead doubts it: Jughead is “dubious” that the Reaper is the BH, as he’d have to be in his 60’s. plus, he was MAYBE lynched! or they lynched someone who was MAYBE him!

God, Betty and Jughead Black & Golding it up at Pop’s hit me with some choice nostalgia. remember when they tried to break Polly out of Catholic school? innocent times!

“YOU DON’T HAVE TO, OKAY.”

Betty’s sweater with that red pencil skirt???

Veronica’s sleeveless floral blouse with that bow???

Veronica VERY NICELY looks excited that FP is getting out of jail. I don’t know if she cares, but she will act like she cares. Veronica is just that good

Archie > Dawson: Archie being like, I assume you need help with something because your life sucks and I’ve come to expect it, and Jughead and Betty being like, Yes, continue to investigate this decades-old murder while we plan a working-class graduation party, truly, sums everything up about them

I do applaud the self-awareness of Veronica being like, We’re Bughead right now?

these two angels are up for it. Archie doesn’t give him any nonsense about Moose’s physical therapy (I hope Moose is okay). he’ll Scooby Gang with Veronica for his bro

Cheryl’s pins: Cheryl has her own special red towel, because…..because…..

Gay?!: I do want an unprompted back massage with lavender essential oil from Cheryl, but Josie is one tea with Penelope away from needing to Get Out

What damn high school in America: weirdly, I feel like Ms. Svenson is largely guileless here, but like...don’t just open the door…

Cheryl draws back, the moment over, Josie is like...I gotta go...

Hiram’s exceedingly wholesome red sweater

Veronica gets my favorite line of the night: “Well, I don’t know about those other people, but we’re ACTUALLY SINNERS.”

“Damn good coffee”: I don’t know what “the martial arts” are, but Andre is trained in them

Smithers is dead, right? Smithers is dead

The female gaze: “Archie, as pictured here exiting the shower, would literally die for you, so keep him around.”

can we give Archie a more interesting phone background?

Alice is dusting with an actual feather duster? those DO not work

TBH what is Jughead’s plan with the Mayor? she has demonstrated many times over that she does not GAF about the southside, and Jughead is not exactly a charismatic master salesman. what he needs to do is get Veronica to talk to HIRAM about the southside, but that ship has sailed. I want to say I’m with Serpent Daddy on this one, and you know what if that makes me a little bitch, THEN I GUESS I AM ONE

I do like the Generation Z insurrection from inside of the Serpents, though. phase out the olds! maybe Tall Boy SHOULD shut up and let them fucking try and actually save their part of town. it won’t work, but it will be honorable. plus then they’d be younger and cooler, like the Ghoulies. okay, Jughead, you brought me around. except at this point in time I still think I would rather be a Ghoulie

Jughead drunk on his own righteousness and calling for “a vote” to oust Tall Boy is like the most assertive he has ever been

Veronica, hell-bent that they not talk about It, brings up the murder house, the BH letter, and how she wants to get laid

Veronica has her reading glasses at the breakfast table!!! VERONICA I LOVE YOU. I’LL SAY IT TOO

okay I do think Fred is right that with “those three words,” people are usually “on different schedules”

Please protect Betty: Alice lets Betty “borrow” the station wagon on the condition that she, Alice, drives it

INCREDIBLY SEXUALLY FRUSTRATED? CARNAL DEFIANCE?

“Mom! What?” “Wow.”

brace yourself because the Riverdale prison is called “Shankshaw”

FP leaving the Serpents is fucking news to Jughead

“Working, Warden Cooper.”

oh, AA? AA, FP? I’m looking at my watch

FP lifting his pinkie to drink his coffee like Alice shows just how fierce prison turned him

Sheriff Keller’s continued patience with the Scoobies is the act of a desperate man

“The Devil’s house? What if he’s home?”

Sexy, aesthetic Southside:  Jughead’s motorcycle jacket is good and his helmet hair is great

of course FP has that obnoxious man-child motorcycle with the jacked-up handlebars

FP and Jughead have apparently parked alongside a Civil War battlefield

FP says when he was 16, Jughead’s age, his father kicked him out of the house, so he joined the Serpents. this is like exactly the opposite of what FP & Jughead are doing, but in the saddest possible way

Jughead must ACTUALLY like being in the Serpents. a group where he isn’t the odd one out all the time. the non-joiner joined and now doesn’t want to leave

FP’s condition is that Jughead keeps writing. FP DOES LOVE HIS SON, THE SCREW-UP

“I will. I do, every day.” YOU’RE BETTER THAN ME, JUG

I can’t endorse FP’s knockoff Ray-Bans, though

Cheryl’s sheaths: THAT SHIRT?

The 2001 Josie and the Pussycats movie was a masterpiece: Cheryl is DISGUSTED that Reggie is going to escort Josie to his father’s car dealership opening. $5,000, though?? to some people, Cheryl, that is A LOT OF MONEY

The Blossom spawn: “Clean that up, plebe. The way you did my brother’s blood.”

Cheryl’s a chaos angel from hell: I think Cheryl is allowed at least one lashing-out at FP (FOR DISPOSING OF HER BROTHER’S BODY) and FP knows it

a “king”? a “leader of men”? was he, Jughead?

Betty’s solution is, as always, to throw a party

These students are legally children: Toni is bartending? Toni, a legal child, is bartending? I think if Alice really wanted to hit them where it hurts she could simply report them to the ABC for flagrant underage drinking violations (Toni is not drinking)

I say “X-adjacent” all the time, so I liked Betty calling herself “Serpent-adjacent” 

ALTHOUGH SHE IS JUST AS MUCH A HEREDITARY SERPENT AS JUGHEAD

Byrdie, I think, smokes a couple of packs a day

Jughead wants the Serpents to stick up for themselves through actually viable legal channels. Toni wants to eliminate their sexist, misogynistic initial rituals. Sweet Pea probably wants to include an outreach program and feed little kids before school in case they can’t afford breakfast! PURGE THE OLDS FROM THE SERPENTS, THE KIDS ARE DOING GREAT

Jughead has come a long way from balking at Betty throwing him a birthday party for like six people to convincing FP that a retirement party at the alcoholic bar owned by his old biker gang will be fun, only last “like three hours”

“Don’t bogart the egg rolls.”

Penny thinks Jughead’s “soft underbelly” is his “quite fetching” girlfriend, even more than his well-meaning dolt father

Veronica’s cape!!!!!

FLASHBACK CAM!!!!

of course the SHATTERED PORTRAIT of mother and child is still there, like in Tarzan

this Reaper was a stone-cold motherfucker

OH, THE ORIGINAL BLOODSTAINED WOOD IS STILL THERE?

Archie finds the clue box! Veronica finds the third child’s initials! Archie and Veronica are GREAT Betty and Jugheads!

why is Penny AROUND if EVERYONE is scared of her? because she can actually do a good job when she’s “incentivized”?

Fwoopy hair is the best hair: Toni’s lovely, looping pink side-braids

Alice storms over to Pop’s, preemptively furious that Betty is going to pole dance to become Serpent-adjacent

FP is like, PLEASE SHUT UP

this scene is GREAT. “THEY WEREN’T ALL MISTAKES.” FP’s bowtie! he looks great in white? “Are you high on fumes?”

Alice tries to throw Hal in FP’s face and FP is like, drop that like it’s hot

Best costume bit: Veronica’s perkily no-nonsense Lois Lane outfit during the debrief

I’ve seen Brick like thirty times: Jughead is quick to point out the possible Dexter ramifications on a body having to watch their family get murdered

Jughead sort of coos in Betty’s ear to remind her they have to leave

Betty’s belated invitation amuses Veronica and nonplusses Archie, and Jughead rather gallantly gives them an easy out in case they like DON’T WANT TO GO, “IT’S NOT A BIG DEAL”

Archie’s waist looks particularly small in that shirt

Joseph Conway honestly out here thinking he can outrun Archie! when the only person who can do that is Jughead Jones!

AN EVIL PREACHER!

A REAL MOB!

Summer + Blair = Veronica: Veronica’s interrogation was great because Veronica is a natural Bad Cop

Betty has a picture of herself and Jughead at the Retro Reunion Dance from Hell on her mirror

I think Hermione and Hiram say “I love you” all the time, in many different ways. he calls her a dove. she brings him his coffee. he gets her boyfriend’s underage construction workers beaten up. she claims she wrote a threatening letter about herself

Archie’s brown Henley

Jughead did “a sweep” of “the perimeter”

Archie telling himself it’s going to be a good night, Jughead pats him on the back: “Here’s hoping”

Mädchen Amick, MÄDCHEN AMICK: once again Alice demonstrates that dressing “like the southside” does not preclude dressing fabulously, rather that other Serpents are simply not putting in the time

Alice does not want the worm that comes with her shot of mezcal

Jughead, PRECIOUSLY, clarifies that when he said “You look incredible,” he meant Betty, he was not hitting on Alice

Archie is VERY GOOD telling Veronica that he said what he said because HE was feeling good! GOOD, ARCHIE

HOLD THE PHONE, HAS ARCHIE SEEN DONNIE DARKO?

Archie immediately pivots to passive aggression when his kindness is not reciprocated with declarations of love! BAD, ARCHIE

“Mad World” is a great song. I would hedge on whether or not it’s a great karaoke song. I would strongly hedge on whether it’s a rousing crowd-pleaser at a drunken gangbanger send-off

did Archie like Donnie Darko? did he understand it? if so, could he explain it to me?

Veronica’s silky alto makes another appearance

“DEAD END FP”????

I’m writing a scene where it’s gay.: oh, Sweet Pea’s there! Sweet Pea is standing alone by the wall. Sweet Pea COULD be standing with Jughead, if he wanted. Jughead is also standing alone

apparently Betty has a whole secret drawer of black lingerie

never in ten thousand billion years would Jughead enjoy any sort of exhibitionism on Betty’s behalf in front of other people. BECAUSE HE’S FUCKING SHY, unless he’s calling Tall Boy a bitch

Gay.: Toni is amused. carnal defiance?

50 Shades of Betty: is Betty a Serpent now? BETTY?

I did rather enjoy the possibly inadvertent parallel to that episode of Fresh Prince when Will and Carlton end up stripping together at that rich-lady benefit and Aunt Viv walks in on it and she’s like, “PUT IT ON.”

FP, I want to say, saves the day by taking charge of the fallout: “Ha ha, great! EVERYTHING’S FINE! Put this on.”

Certified pedigree: OF COURSE. OF COURSE. OF COURSE. OF COURSE. OF COURSE FP IS GOING BACK TO THE SERPENTS. of course he does it with the most melodramatic speech possible. of course he does it by dismissing his own son, dismissing his family, dismissing parole, dismissing sobriety. of course he’s actually doing it to protect Jughead but of course doing do by actually destroying Jughead’s life in a different way

“Coyote Ugly” is pretty good

“I AM NOT GOING GENTLY INTO THE NIGHT!” FP, do you read Dylan Thomas?!

FP’S KISS OF DEATH. FP’S FREDO KISS. “YOU BROKE MY HEART, JUGHEAD.”

the shot he takes right to Jughead’s face is just mean

Jughead looks fucking stunned. can you be numb AND horrified? horrifumbed?

Veronica doesn’t have any deep-seated issues, for God’s sake! she isn’t in love with Archie right now! everyone take a breath!

Andre sat in the car during the whole party? I see a missed opportunity here

the hat’s off! HAT’S OFF

Jughead considers Archie gone, that he “cut bait,” a phrase I admit I have never heard before. Jughead is operating with the assumption that Archie has written him off and that Betty needs to do so as well, so it’s like the Archie-Jughead breakup, but sort of sideways

“I’M DRAGGING MY DAD DOWN.”

“You might get...you will probably get hurt.”

I did like the CLASSICALLY DRAMATIC wrenching Jughead back around by the arm and holding his face. IF YOU KIDS WOULD JUST SHUT UP AND HOLD EACH OTHER’S FACES. remember when sorcerer dementia-phantom Nana Rose scared you snooping in Jason Blossom’s bedroom??? innocent times!!!!!

I’m looking at this photograph of the Hangin’ Mob and I can’t tell who’s who, and it fills me with glee!

Every triangle has three corners, every triangle has three sides: I’m not sure what Betty and Archie are supposed to be seeing in each other for the very first time, unless it’s that they scare their partners or something. can Betty and Archie Blue & Gold? maybe! Archie wasn’t great at holding the line against Betty when she was falling down the Black Hood rabbit hole, but he did recognize it when it was happening, PLUS he’s a huge handsome slab of boy meat! TIME TO STEP UP, ARCHIE

hey, is Jughead homeless again?

TOMORROW: WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?

[sebeth]

Super-Sons Annual #1

Warning, Spoilers Ahead….

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 Super Sons Annual #1 by Peter J. Tomasi and Paul Pelletier

“Make Way For Krypto and Titus – the Super-Pets!”

 We open with an unknown person kidnapping a dog from Gotham City.

We switch to New York City where Damian and Jon capture a group of bank robbers.

A grateful food vendor offers veggie kebabs to the duo.

“Thanks! And my friend’s name is Batboy.  Make sure to spread that around.”

“Batboy.  Got it.”

Jon requests a high five: “C’mon.  Up high.”

“I.  Do.  Not. High.  Five.”

“Fist bump.”

“My fists are used for hitting, not bumping.”

“Cut back on drinking so much idiot juice why don’t’cha?”

Why so serious, Damian? Have some fun!

Damian is driving an adorable Robin-copter – it could have come straight out of the Batman 60’s show.

Jon returns home.  The inside of his closet door contains multiple newspaper articles.  Damian has a Batcave and Jon has a super-closet?

Jon decides to tackle the missing animals the next day: “Do a little good each day.  That’s my motto.”

Jon is too precious but it’s a great motto to live by.

Krypto decides to investigate the missing animals.  He flies to Wayne Manor to recruit his fellow Super Pets teammates – Titus the Bat-Hound and Bat-Cow!

Bat-Cow remains at the Manor but the hounds head to DC Investigations run by Detective Chimp.

Detective Chimp is still recovering from from a fight with the Brotherhood of Evil: “Doesn’t Monsieur Mallah know ape shall not fight ape – or chimpanzee for that matter?”

Yeah, where’s the simian loyalty?

Chimps asks if the Super-Pets are getting back together: “You we’re a helluva team, it’s true.  Never seen a finer force of fur.

We see the roster of the Super-Pets consists of: Flexi, the Plastic Bird, Bat-Hound, Clay Critter, Krypto, Bat-Cow, and Streaky.

Krypto and Streaky were members of the original, Silver Age Super-Pets. Bat-Cow replaces Comet, the Super-Horse and Clay Critter steps in for Proty.  Ace was the original Bat-Hound.  Flexi, the Plastic Bird replaces Beppo, the Super-Monkey.

Flexi appears to be Plastic Man’s pet based on his colors and abilities.  Clay Critter has to be an escaped part of Clayface.

Detective Chimp warns the hounds that Streaky won’t be happen to see the duo after “what you lost on that last mission”.

Streaky attacks the hounds as we receive a flashback to the “last mission”: Clay Critter is killed by Dex-Star and Harley Quinn’s hyenas.

Flexi joins the brawl as Titus makes peace among the former teammates.

The Super-Pets free the dogs from the kidnapper.  The dogs were kept in what appears to be an alien spaceship.

The freed dog chase Flexi until he turns into a bear.

The kidnapper returns with more captured dogs and is defeated by the Super-Pets including a newly arrived Bat-Cow!

Jon arrives at Wayne Manor in the early morning.  He’s wearing a robe over his costume and Flexi on his head.  Too cute!

Damian asks what took Jon so long to arrive.

Jon responds: “I flew over as soon as I got your freaked-out call.  Which you didn’t even need to do since this weird pigeon thing you sent was bugging me until I came over here.”

Damian drags Jon to the back yard where dozens of dogs lay.

Damian informs Jon that it is his responsibility to return the dogs to their owners.

“Me? We’re a team!”

“My mission is the night, corn-cob! This is day!”

“Okay, how about I knock you into tomorrow night, Batboy?!”

The Super-Sons argue as Krypto and Titus paw-bump in the background.

Super-cute issue with a definite Silver Age feel.  I wish we could have seen Bruce and Alfred’s reactions to the dogs in the backyard.  I’m sure Alfred wouldn’t have been looking forward to the mess that many dogs could cause.

[maybe-its-micheal]

Beavers can be ginger! Im pretty sure they're brown more often, but a more orange/red tint to the fur is possible! Also check out the bright orange teeth, beavers are weird little creatures

They are pretty sweet to eachother! She asks to spend time with him and chop trees, and can also tell when he needs a break, and will ask him to slow down. One of his quotes to her is "We make a good team!" :)

Unfortunately Walter, the boyscout, also got yoinked from this plane if existence :/ but honestly I think he's happier this way he just explores around and uses his wilderness knowledge. Plus his dog came with him!

But about leaving this plane of existence. The actual Don't Starve gameplay takes place in a world called "The Constant," which is a small reality ruled by manipulative magical forces. Going there is kind of like being dropped off in the woods with no way home, but with more magic and more weird creatures. It takes some time to figure out, its a harsh world to survive! It is separate from our world, where most of the characters canonically started out, and they've found no way back yet :(

The concept and the way it functions in the plot of the game is actually kind of inspired by this one magical island from a Shakespeare play called The Tempest, and while there are quite a few references once you know what to look for, a lot is also different. I did my senior AP Literature independent study on The Tempest because of this game, actually! It ended up being like a 30-40 page long binder full of information and essays and stuff, probably the hardest school project I've done lmao

But anyway. In the game there was this inventor guy named Robert Wagstaff who was studying the constant (in addition to doing some other Science Guy Activities on the side, like running a company that made radios and turning his colleague into a robot). The radio company, Voxola, had one specific radio called the PR-76 which was related in some way to a lot of people disappearing. It's connected to the constant, thats where they all went.

The wizard we mentioned previously could use the PR-76 and speak through it, even after he lived in the Constant (he too started out in our world, but then got trapped there). He used that ability to access our world and make deals with people, manipulate them, or just straight up kidnap them. He was being controlled by the magic forces of the Constant, and had no choice but to bring in more people to suffer for eternity.

The Constant is... constant, it exists outside of time. You can be seriously hurt, and you can die, but you will never stop existing. You will either be revived or start back over at the beginning... no escape.

For many it is unknown how they got there, and Woodie is much the same. All we know is that he was cursed while living in our world, and began to shapeshift every full moon. Stories were spread, but by the time Walter came to his cabin he was already gone. The PR-76 tells us that he was probably in communication with the wizard in some way, and so he may have something to do with the curse. Its still left quite mysterious

As for Walter, when he touched the dial on the radio it activated again, and he too got sucked into the Constant, but like I said before it may not be a negative thing. From his quotes he seems to be having a pretty alright time out there, foraging for good berries and pitching tents. Living the boyscout dream, honestly! He just doesn't like getting hurt or stung by bees

So that is a good bit of background on what I mean by left this plane of existence! Sorry if it was too complicated, I gave more details than are neccesary, but I still think the story is really interesting

Also, about that wizard. He was evil, but it wasn't his fault, he was sort of possessed. He still made some serious mistakes, but the important thing is he's less bad now! He's helping the others survive, while also trying to survive himself.

However as punishment for giving up his power the demons made him short :/ here is him next to the same guy, before and after

Yeah the guy is laying down in the first screen shot, but he was like up to his waist. They basically cut my dude in half. AND stole that swag fur coat!!

Just so you all know Woodie is trans

[tigerlover16-uk]

Dragon Ball GT:My thoughts on the Baby Saga. A sort of review

The Baby Saga is often regarded by a lot of GT's defenders and even it's detractors as perhaps the best Saga in the entire series. Do I agree? Well, I haven't re-watched the Shadow Dragons Saga yet, so I can't give a clear answer yet, but going off of memory and everything I know going forward... I'm willing to say that for now, yeah, I think it probably is GT's best Saga. It's certainly leagues above the previous really boring Saga, I'll tell you that, and even if I haven't re-watched it yet I already know for sure it's better than Super 17 (Oh God, do I really have to watch that?).

But does that mean it's a great Saga, or that it can make the whole series worth watching? TLDR version: No, it's not great. It's very good, but it has it's fair share of issues that drag it down a lot. And it's worth watching on it's own, but it doesn't save what's an all around bad series.

Long version is a lot more complicated. I'm going to be going into a lot of detail about this, so bear with me, this is going to be a long ride.

I'm going to get the positives out of the way first, since the problems and things I'm mixed on are a lot easier to explain and discuss and I don't want to give the impression that I'm just harping on this Saga.

The story here is really good and interesting. While it starts off slow with the Machine Mutants arc, once baby shows up and especially when he arrives on earth, the arc has a lot of really great tension and is easy to get sucked into. There's plenty of interesting twists and turns, the drama ranges from good to great, apart from a few moments. And it's easy to care about the conflict and want to see the characters succeed in the end. The story is mostly very well paced, the villain's plans and execution of them are great, and it has a lot of that epic feeling you'd expect from Z.

The score and animation are both beautiful, and are a big part of making this story an enjoyable and often epic experience. The music for the fights is appropriately epic and tense, and the themes for the more emotional scenes like Pan getting through to Golden Ape Goku and his subsequent transformation into Super Saiyan 4 are just breathtaking. There was definitely some good emotion in this story. And while I felt a few of the fight scenes were too short or anti-climactic (Uub's initial clash with Baby for one) and a few of them cut away from the action or just had the characters talking in between attacks too often, for the most part the action in the saga was intense with some great fight scenes, though I wouldn't count them among the best in the franchise. Also side note, they really spammed the energy blasts too much for my liking.

Oh, and the Super Saiyan 4 transformation. Probably the best and most iconic new element to come out of GT, and for good reason. While I really like Super Saiyan Blue both for continuing the simplicity of the SSJ designs and the mystic blue colouring working well for what's supposed to be Godly Ki, there's no denying that from a visual perspective the Super Saiyan 4 form is just freaking cool. While i personally would have gone for golden fur if I was designing it, the red coat, tail and wild hairdo, along with the animalistic eyes give the form a cool, beastial feel that just REALLY works well. Harkening back to the great ape transformation, it feels much more like what I'd expect a "Super Saiyan" to look like, feeling much more like a proper transformed state than the glowing blond hair and green eyes ever did. The method behind transforming into it was pretty interesting, and the golden Great Ape form (Both of which were really cool too) was a good callback to the filler-only flashback of the original Super Saiyan, showing that the writers were at least trying to make GT feel like a proper continuation of the story. Sad that the show as a whole structurally fails as such, but I have a loooong rant at the end to cover that.

So overall despite everything else I'm going to say here, know that this Saga was an enjoyable experience for what it was and the production values were great, but I'm going to be very frank with the rest of this little essay. Onto the stuff I'm mixed about.

The mini-arc that starts off this saga, despite it's great premise, felt fairly lacking to me. Basically to sum it up, our heroes Goku, Pan, Trunks and Giru pass by a planet which Giru claims to be his homeworld, so the gang decide to stop by so Giru can meet up with his friends and family. However, the place at first seems deserted and really creepy, giving our heroes the impression that something is wrong. it turns out that this planet is where Dr Myuu, the evil scientist we'd been introduced to late in the last saga as an apparent evil mastermind seeking the dragon balls for universal domination is based, along with his army of robot servants, called Machine Mutants (I'm a little unclear about whether they're just robots or if the mutants thing implies they're something along the lines of Androids 17 and 18. Though looking around I think the Machine Mutants name might have just been a dub thing). He orders his most powerful servant, General Rilldo and his squad of elite robots to capture our heroes so he can disect them and research their biology for his own uses, and steal their Dragon Balls. It also turns out Giru is supposedly a traitor working for Rilldo and leads our heroes into a trap, so Goku ends up fighting some robots, then Rilldo shows up and turns Trunks to metal and sending him off to Myuu's lab. Goku fights Rilldo while Pan goes off to find Trunks, some shenanigans as she tries to save the say herself only it doesn't go that well, Goku gets captured too, then right when Dr Myuu is about to dissect them all Giru reveals that he's actually NOT a traitor, frees Goku and Pan, reveals he and Trunks had their own plan to sabotauge Dr Myuu, they fight his ultimate creation Baby who apparently goes down after one combined hit, but he really survives as a bit of goop and hitches a ride with an escaping Dr Myuu, who our heroes fail to stop but decide that since they've defeated his ultimate weapon and pretty much screwed up his operations that he's no threat to the galaxy anymore, so just let him go. But then it turns out Baby was somehow the evil mastermind behind all this and he regenerates and crushes Myuu's head, getting a dragon ball which he uses to lure our heroes into a trap in the next two episodes. And so the Z fighters leave the planet to find the rest of the Dragon Balls, killing off Rilldo in anti-climactic fashion right as they're leaving.

Did you get all that? I know that probably seems like a rushed description that leaves a lot of questions if you haven't watched the episodes, but I've got a LOT of ground to cover and this is just me giving my thoughts on the saga, not a recap, so sue me.

Honestly this arc was just okay. On paper it feels like it should be really interesting, a robot planet and the general story make it seem like this should be a very cool story, but it's execution (Like so much of GT) is a bit lacking. And the biggest problem is partly a holdover from the last Saga, and it can be summed up in one word: Investment.

(Oh yeah, I'm going to be giving some of my thoughts on the previous saga as well in this part and a few others to better explain my thoughts on the Baby Saga as a whole, so please excuse me if at some points it feels like I'm just rambling a lot).

Part of the biggest problem I realized I had with the Black Star Dragon Balls Saga is that I wasn't invested in this cast of characters. After jetisonning the majority of the supporting cast with the end of the second episode, we were left with Goku, Pan and Trunks as the stars of the Saga along with a robot sidekick called Giru, who swallowed the dragon ball radar and thus gained the ability to detect the Dragon Balls himself, so he kinda needs to hang around. Now, choosing to focus on a smaller cast of characters for the first arc wasn't the problem here. The problem is, these particular characters the way they were written... were not an interesting pair.

Goku faired the best of them overall I think, but the gimick of turning him back into a kid and the fact that he acted more like his kid self at certain parts just felt kind of weird and off-putting, especially when I later realized my biggest problem with it was how this development was pretty much the physical embodiment of the structural problem with GT as a sequel series. but again, that's for later. Pan, who I'll cover when I discuss her role in the arc as a whole, was almost completely unbearable for the previous Saga and was similarly annoying in these set of episodes, even though she did have some good moments.

And Trunks? I'm going to be honest, I was never a big fan of kid Trunks in Z. I didn't hate him or find him annoying or anything like some people, I just thought he was kind of okay, not all that interesting on his own. I much preferred Goten. But I'll give him credit, when he had Goten to bounce off of their dynamic could be pretty fun, and his more emotional moments in regards to Vegeta's character development were well done. But in GT? Honestly, I don't know if this was just me personally talking, but Trunks in this show this far was just the definition of meh. He wasn't annoying or unlikeable, he was just a bit bland. He served as an alright straight man and the more mature one of the group (Even if his introduction as trying to shirk his responsibilties as Capsule Corp CEO really don't paint him as such at first glance), but he really wasn't that interesting as a character. Just sort of... there for me. And honestly, looking at him a lot of the time I just kinda wish I was watching Future Trunks instead.

And Giru was... boring. He had no character apart from being the sorta cute robot sidekick that makes annoying noises and gets abused by Pan (Making her oh so much more likeable). Honestly he felt entirely pointless apart from one episode where he was kinda cool, but that was my least favourite episode for other reasons so I never really liked him.

So to sum up, we had one good character who also had a bit of a distracting gimick, one bland character, one terribly written character that feels like depressingly wasted potential, and a worthless character. Yeah, with a cast like this and stories that either felt like a weaker rehash of an older story or just weren't that interesting and with uninspired comedy and action, I was really, really bored by the end of the first Saga of GT. And since I wasn't invested in the characters, that really affected how I felt about the Machine Mutants arc.

On paper I feel this arc should work, because a lot of the writing is good and the action, while not all that great, was a big step up from what had come before. But I couldn't care that much because I didn't care about most of these characters at all. Giru's supposed face turn was the worst of it. The show seems to expect us to feel shocked and betrayed about this revelation, and to feel sorry for Pan and how hurt she was about this turn of events and everything else happening. But the fact is, I wasn't upset. I was apathetic. Why should I care that this boring robot with no interesting characteristics or real purpose other than I assume failed kid appeal might be a traitor? While I think I cared more as a kid, as an adult watching this I was just shrugging my shoulders and saying "Okay, so let's move on to the next part". And any efforts to make me sympathise with Pans feelings fell flat due to her poor characterisation. And while I cared if the characters survived, because I'm a decent human being and I do really love Goku however he's portrayed, I wasn't really on the edge of my seat for a lot of this arc. The action was okay, there were some good moments, when the revelation that Giru wasn't a traitor happened I just shrugged again and watched the rest of the episode mildly interested. If I cared about the characters more, I might have enjoyed this arc a fair bit, but as it was I remember having a constant sense of "Just get to the good parts" throughout most of it and it feels like they didn't really come. Just meh all around.

I think this was also why I thought the Saga really improved the moment we got back to earth. After so many episodes with just these four characters travelling around on a bunch of underwhelming adventures, it was just so darn refreshing to get back to the familiar setting and characters of earth. Not that I don't have my issues with how many of the characters are portrayed, but it was sitll a big improvement.

As for the villains here? Wasted potential. I described this in a previous post, but it bears repeating. General Rilldo was an interesting concept on his own, and honestly I wish he'd been the main villain of his own Saga. He's evil sure, but he actually seems to have a sense of comraderie with his fellow robots, making him perhaps the one good boss villain we've had in a Dragon Ball series, his design while not great was decent and his demeaner and powers made him an intimidating foe and just really cool and dangerous in his own right. He's stronger than Majin Buu, can regenerate as long as he's surrounded by metal to absorb (On a planet that seems entirely made of metal), and can shoot a beam that gives anyone it strikes the Han Solo carbanite treatment, probably the single most op attack outside of Akkuman's power to blow people up by harnessing the evil in their hearts. This guy was awesome and interesting in his own right with plenty of potential for some good development and creative, intense battles. So what does he amount to?

He has one good fight with Goku, then disappears until the episode after the gang already foiled Dr Myuu's plans, wherein he gets beaten by a combined beam attack from Goku, Pan and Trunks. Which not only doesn't make much sense considering his pre-established regenerating ability, but feels increadibly anti-climactic. Oh and also apparently he was being controlled by Baby too, which really seems kind of pointless unless Baby just wanted to try and abosrb some of his power for himself, but it just made me raise my eyebrow and wonder what was the point of that since last we saw of Baby he was fleeing on Myuu's ship and we next see him on that damaged ship the Z Fighters come across. Okay, so how'd he manage to come back and possess Rilldo, and then fly on ahead of the gang to attack that other ship? It was just kind of confusing and pointless.

My problem with Rilldo is basically the same issue I have with characters like Dedoria and Tagoma. He's a really good elite minion character, but we don't see nearly enough of him to make use of his full potential as a villain, and he had a lot of it so it's just disheartening.

Especially when you compare him to Dr Myuu. The guy was boring. Really, really boring. I honestly can't remember much about him at this point apart from the goofy accent Funimation gave him, no idea how he sounds in Japanese. He's underdeveloped and his character just amounts to generic evil scientist guy who's evil, backstabs minions that are no longer of use to him and his overall motivation is that he's power hungry and insane. That's it. There's no depth to this guy, he's like a low budget Dr Gero with a worse design and none of what made Gero interesting in his own right. His introduction sets him up as some sort of mysterious and threatening big bad, but when we actually meet him he just becomes so much less interesting and generic compared to Rilldo. And then he has that breakdown when he finds out Trunks discovered and tampered with Baby, and I think we were supposed to feel sorry for him like Pan did, buuut... I just couldn't.

Maybe part of that was the delivery of his voice actor, which doesn't sell it as all that upsetting, but I had no reason to feel sorry for this creep. Myuu was a bland villain, a horrible person with no redeemable qualities on display and he did nothing to earn my sympathy. I heard someone say this scene made them feel sorry for him because they thought he was just insane, and yeah, I do sympathise with mental illness and all that. But between how he was portrayed both last saga and here, and the general way he behaved before and during his breakdown... no, I don't think this was simple mental illness. I think he was just generically evil mad scientist guy who was just pushed to having a breakdown in that moment because he was horrified his plans for domination and doing horrible things to the people of the universe were foiled and what he believed was his finest work was ruined.

And if he was mentally ill, while I would feel sorry for him, I would feel more offended and disgusted that the writers would include a mentally ill character only to portray them like THIS. Fiction has a long and shameful history of portraying the mentally ill as violent, disgusting criminals that are a danger to those around them, and it's contibuted to society's mistreatment and abuse of the mentally ill. So to have a mentally ill character who's an evil, mass murdering madman who wants to backstab everyone who's loyal to and cares about him, perform twisted experiments on the corpses of his enemies and victims and take over the universe for his own greedy ambitions... no. This is a TERRIBLE use of a mentally ill character if that was the intention. I don't think that was what they were going for, so I didn't feel sorry for him during his breakdown. Like with most of the main cast, I just wasn't invested.

So, with all I've ranted on was this a bad start to the saga? Eh, I thought maybe at first, but like I said, the action's decent and it had at least one good idea. So, I just thought it was a meh start that at least set up the real, more interesting villain.

Mercifully too, because once Baby takes over as the main threat, everything starts to become a million times better. I already did a post a few days ago covering my thoughts on the two episodes after the Machine Mutants mini-arc so go read that for full details, but I'll say that, while a few of Baby's traits make him seem like a rehash of Buu and partly Cell here, that quickly becomes a non issue and they effictively sell how creepy a villain Baby is. WIth his mannerisms and disturbing, The Things-esque power to possess people by turning to goop and sinking into their bodies, it makes the character terrifying and makes him feel unique and different enough from previous villains in his own right. And things get even better when he arrives on earth as Goku and the gang are still off hunting for the Dragon Balls. In three episodes, Baby arrives on Earth, starts gradually possessing the saiyan characters there, before working his way up to Vegeta, the tension rising higher all the while before he takes control of Vegeta, using the saiyan prince as his final host before infecting the entire planet with parasites that put them under his hypnotic control. Making Baby the one villain besides briefly King Piccolo to effectively take over the Earth. Wow. And during that fight we learn his backstory too.

Anyone remember the Tuffles? The race of technologically advanced, humanoid aliens that lived on what became Planet Vegeta before the Saiyans massacred them? Well, before they were all killed in a strike orchestrated by King Vegeta, their greatest scientists pooled their resources and some tuffle dna to create a powerful bio-weapon that they sent into space that would eventually evolve into a powerful, parasitic life-form that would take revenge on the saiyans, destroying them and rebuilding the tuffle race and their empire. Now this backstory is a fantastic concept, and it really helps to tie this saga into the lore of the franchise and create a villain with a fascinating motivation that gives him a really good, logical reason to want to attack the saiyans and do battle with Goku. This great motivation and concept are one of the things that really help sell Baby, which is unfortunate given it kinda reflects what I'm going to say about him in a bit because while it's a great idea, it has a few issues.

For one, the portrayal of the saiyans arriving on planet plant in their pods and King Vegeta being the one to lead the massacre of the Tuffle race doesn't gel at all with the backstory of the saiyans King Kai establishes early on in Z (And it seems to become a tradition in other media involving the Tuffles to make the whole backstory even more convoluted from what I've seen), where King Kai seemed to imply it happened too long ago for King Vegeta to be the one to lead the attack, and definitely before the saiyans made a deal with another race to be able to travel across space. Plus how the original backstory played out, the saiyans were supposedly a race that also inhabited the same planet as the Tuffles, but the two races apparently just stayed seperate from each other and didn't interact much until one day the saiyans randomly attacked, starting a war that ended one night when the full moon transformed all the saiyans into great apes. A pretty good backstory on it's own, and while the idea of the saiyans invading and turning into great apes carries through to GT, literally everything else about the set up is changed.

Now retcons are nothing new, Dragon Ball and Z had plenty of them, but with a few exceptions they all normally fit in really well with the story, served as decent answers to open ended questions and tied up loose ends, or they were at least handled well enough that you could buy the different interpretation. The revisions to the Tuffle backstory here though? Honestly, given that a lot of things in this saga are built on lore established in Z's filler so it's obvious the writers must have watched Z, the retcons to the Tuffle backstory don't make any sense and can't be rectified with Z's interpretation of events. The only explanation that would make any sense about how this could still work if we're taking this as genuinely a follow up to Z is if King Kai was lying and making stuff up in places when he was telling Goku about the saiyans backstory, which yeah King Kai is shown to not be as all-knowing as he tries to pass himself off as, but this makes him look pathetically incompetant and ignorant if that is the case.

If we want to accept this as an alternate universe take (Which GT technically is, but it wasn't meant as such at the time so i won't count it as in how I choose to judge it, which'll factor in to another criticism later) like the movies that don't fit snugly into canon, then fine, the new backstory works on it's own, but for something trying to tie into Z's continuity as a direct sequel... no. Just, no. So while the reasons behind Baby's creation and his subsequent motivations are fantastic, the ham-fisted retooling of the Tuffle backstory hurts the presentation a bit.

Also, while it might have been explained better in the Japanese version, the dub at least does a poor job explaining the part where he ended up in Dr Myuu's lab. Apparently, he created Dr Myuu and programmed him to think he was actually Baby's creator, but he was just using Myuu to help him develop a more powerful form for himself that could stand up to the saiyans. And somehow Dr Myuu found out about the Black star dragon balls, though all that and how Baby knows about earth are poorly explained or not at all (Please tell me the subs do a better job), and, and it's all just pretty convoluted and confusing.

Honestly it felt like the writers had a great idea, but then tried way too hard to make it complex to try and make this backstory seem as "Deep" as possible and be surprising, when really it's a bit head scratching and combined with the aforementioned retcons just makes everything needlessly messy and confusing. Honestly, wouldn't it have made a lot more sense if Dr Myuu was a Tuffle scientist who'd managed to escape the planet before the saiyans massacred his race, and he did create Baby himself partly using his own dna and memories and having events play out largely the same as they ended up doing? As well as turning himself into an android like Dr Gero to extend his life while also creating the Machine Mutants, going insane after finding out the saiyans were killed by Freeza, robbing him of his own revenge so he decided to take over the universe himself to outdo Freeza as compensation? Just saying, it would have made things flow a whole lot more smoothly. As it is, this backstory sounds very great on paper, until you start analysing certain aspects of it and it becomes a real mess.

So yeah, his backstory sounds good at first, but it's a real clunker that could have been ironed out better. But does that stop his take over of the planet and subsequent actions from being creepy, awesome and tense as all heck? Thankfully, no! Just about everything he does in these episodes is great, despite the issues his confrontation with Vegeta was well handled, and then once Goku and friends return to earth only to be confronted by their possessed relatives, it's all really great drama. After managing to possess Trunks and smashing up Giru, robbing Goku and Pan of some of their few remaining allies and backing them right up into a corner, Baby then proceeds to confront Goku in Vegeta's body, dominate him in a fight and then seemingly MURDER Goku, leaving Pan, Mr Satan and Buu in shock and horror as everything goes to heck. And then Baby uses the Black Star Dragon Balls to create his own new version of the Tuffle Planet, where he plans to transfer the enslaved human race to use them to rebuild the Tuffles society and spread his empire throughout the universe, undoing everything our heroes had worked so hard in all the previous episodes to accomplish up to this point and leave us on a cliffhanger where all hope seems officially lost.

That. Was. All. BRILLIANT! While there were a few minor complaints I could lobby at these episodes and that backstory was sloppy as I've explained, it only slightly detracts from what was a very well executed plan that sets Baby up as a powerful, disturbing and fearsome foe and ramps the tension right up to eleven. It was a ton of fun to watch and is some of the best set up to a villain in all of Dragon Ball, and if things continued as great as they did here with Baby then he could have easily been one of the best villains in the series.

Sadly though, this is the point where things start to fall flat. While everything about his introduction and rise to power except the execution of his backstory was almost perfect, everything about Baby as a villain after the main action moves to the Tuffle Planet becomes very... meh.

Honestly I think his set-up set the bar a bit too high on the "Crowning moment of Awesome" stunts meter, and since it was a while before he really got to do anything as close to as awesome as taking over humanity and beating Goku, he would have needed to rely on his personality and mannerisms to sell him as an interesting villain from here out until he became a golden Great Ape. And that's where his shortcomings become clear.

Because while he starts off terrifying and just plain creepy, he's aleady possessed and taken over all of humanity by this point, so his gimick of turning to goop and infecting people stops becoming a factor from then on, taking away the creepy factor somewhat. Kind of like where Cell stopped absorbing people after 18, becoming less creepy and more just smug and in love with himself in his later forms, though still entertaining and threatening. But Unfortunatly, Baby just doesn't have as much of a personality or charm as most of the major DBZ villains to carry him without that creepy factor, so he gradually becomes increasingly less interesting after taking over the world. His personality from this point really does just feel petulant, petty, cruel and a bit whiny at parts. And I don't mean whiny and petulant in the same way as Zamasu, who's demeanor and some of his dialogue would at least make him amusing and the kind of person you took great satisfaction in seeing get their face beaten in, just normal whiny. Overall he justs comes off as "Generic Evil Space Emperor guy #99926547". He's still threatening, but only on the basis of being much more powerful than the good characters, the drama tends to revolve around the other characters like Pan being confronted by her possessed parents, and when characters do confront Baby before Goku achieves SS4, mainly just Uub, the conflicts are very brief and as I'll explain in a bit, the results there are iffy.

The show seems to be wanting to set up some kind of a moral conflict with Baby's takeover of the human race, with Goku confronting him about how the saiyans paid for their evil ways already and the earth didn't deserve to suffer for his petty revenge, and later on Baby saying something along the lines of bringing peace with Goku reprimanding him over how stripping humanity and presumably all other races in the universe Baby wants to control of their free will is not the way to do it. This could have been a fascinating moral debate and really deepen Baby's character if they actually went deeper into this, but it's only brought up in those two instances and nothing ever comes of it, with Baby just quickly dismissing and moving on with what he was doing both times. He ends up coming off like he just wants to take over the universe for the sake of being an evil ruler. And his claims that humanity under his control are now the new race of Tuffles... makes no sense, since genetically they're all still humans. Technically he's still the only being in the universe even close to a real Tuffle since he has Tuffle cells mixed into his DNA, so he just sounds delusional there. If I had been writing this, I would have had Baby assign Bulma and Earth's top scientists to work on a way to clone an entire civilization's worth of new Tuffle's from the Tuffle cells in his DNA, or have the Z Fighters under his control go out to eventually find the earths Dragon Balls to wish the Tuffles back to life himself.  His plans for humanity would basically be making them his brainwashed slaves serving the Tuffles, and he would still want to conquer the other races in the universe in the same way. But actually explore the implications of that. Show Baby talking to Bulma and some scientists about his plans for the Tuffles, and have him show genuine joy and happiness over the idea of bringing the Tuffles back. Maybe have him shed a few tears that all his years of waiting and planning are paying off.

Then when Goku comes back and starts to overpower him as an SS4, have Baby break down over this and how he's going to be the saviour of the universe, keeping all races subdued so that all conflicts would cease. Only to have Goku drag him through the coals for his methods and all the moral implications that would arise from his turning all living creatures into his puppets (In this scenario none of the possessed characters would show any personality at all at most times and would basically come off as soulless robots, with only the possessed Z Fighters, Videl, Chichi and Bulma showing any slightly twisted hints of their own personalities just to screw with Pan and Goku). But Baby would refuse to listen, thinking that Goku's just evil and here to take away everything he's worked so hard for like the Saiyans did to his race in general, having a complete mental breakdown as Bulma then transforms him into his Golden Great Ape form, where he really isn't in control at any point. Just imagine the dialogue and emotion we could have gotten out of this scenario? And I came up with this on the spot as I was watching the episode.

I really liked the potential of that conflict, but it just felt like the show only cared about hinting at the possibilities there rather than exploring it, which just leave Baby feeling flat from the second half of the saga onwards.

Also, I didn't like most of his designs. His first two designs were just bleah all around, and Baby-Vegeta was... I don't want to say bad, but something just didn't look right about it to me. I don't know how to describe it, but I guess it just felt a little too try-hard and coming off a bit silly in parts that were meant to make him look cool. The only design I wholesale liked was his Golden Great Ape form, which was where he was at his least interesting as a character since by that point he was mostly just going nuts to the point of gleefully opening fire on his own people (Not that he hadn't endangered them willingly before. So much for wanting to rebuilt his beloved race, which he claimed they were now).

So, overall? Baby was an effective villain, but between the designs, the convoluted nature of his backstory and the poorly done retcons that just seemed to be done in a forced attempt to add weight to his possession of Vegeta as his main host that come to the detriment of the story, and his increasingly less interesting character as the arc goes on, Baby just becomes a big mixed bag of wasted opportunity. Not that I think he was an overall bad villain, he started off fantastic, he was still very threatening and he brought about a lot of great moments (And a bunch of bad ones, but again, be patient) but let's just say Team Four Star's placement of him on their best villains list was pretty fitting. He's not top 10 material in any way. Which is sad, because he felt like he should be right up there with the likes of Freeza and King Piccolo on concept alone. The humour the saga had was very hit or miss. Nothing really struck out to me as pretty funny in the Machine Mutants arc or the episodes immediately after it. Some of the jokes were just outright pacepalm worthy, like the baby deer trying to nurse from Pan, or they were just meh and didn't do much for me. The only times I really laughed were a bunch of the moments with the Kai's (Can always count on Old Kai to be fun), and I guess some antics in that weird parallel dimension with the space beavers (God that sounds silly), but other than that not a lot sticks out to me.

Okay, I've talked about the Machine Mutants arc, Baby and the hit or miss humour. So, I guess it's time to talk about how the supporting cast was used. For the record, this is where things start to get negative. Because almost NONE of the supporting cast I thought were used particularly well. Not that they were all used badly, some were, but with a lot of other characters it just felt like they were just there... because they kinda had to be, more or less.

The only supporting characters that I thought were used well overall were Kibito Kai and Old Kai. The two of them were actually very helpful and crucial to making sure Goku succeeded in saving the day, Kibito rescuing him from Baby's final attack on earth (Even though that led to it's own issues), sneaking into the lookout to get the sacred water and healing the fallen Saiyan characters (Though I'm still a little unsure whether they were supposed to have been killed by Baby's attack and Kibito's using his mystic Kai powers to bring them back, or if Baby's attack simply injured and scattered them and Kibito simply found and healed them. Again, maybe the Japanese version explains things better but if it did, the dub copped out of explaining this clearly). And Old Kai, apart from just being really amusing, actually came up with some clever ideas and plans that helped to win the day. Arguably they were both more helpful in ultimately saving the day than in the Buu Saga where most of their ideas ended up failing, which, yeah, good job GT.

Wish I could say the same for everyone else.

Starting with the ones I'm not angry over, Goten and Gohan got to be in this Saga. Goten was the first person to fight and get possessed by Baby on earth and we see him going on a date. Cool, having a social life and it's following up on his change of interests established at EoZ. A pity then that impressing said girlfriend is just about the only thing about his character that gets explored outside of him trying to help out in the next two sagas, since quite honestly, he feels kind of meh here. Honestly he comes off as kind of flat compared to Z, and his boringly generic design doesn't help. We lost his much more unique and interesting teenaged look for a white shirt and a hairstyle that together just make him look like "Generic anime guy number 90-something". It's boring, and he doesn't really get to do anything except get possessed and transfer power to Goku (Because God forbid he and Trunks were actually allowed to turn into adult Gotenks and actually do something cool and plot relevant in the final act, right?).

It probably doesn't help for me that his scenes with Valese, the only downtime he has for us to explore his life outside of being involved in all the usual saving the world shenanigans apart from episode 2, were... kinda awkward. And that's entirely because of Valese herself. It feels like the writers wanted her to be the cute, really sheltered character that was endearing in how innocent she was, but... they really overdid it. She just came off as so uninformed and stupid that it was a little creepy. I mean, there's being sheltered, and then there's not knowing how to eat ice cream off a cone when you're supposed to be an adult in your early 20's. How stupid and overprotective were her parents, exactly? Kid Goku would have made sense for that joke because he was completely isolated from humanity besides Grandpa Gohan before Bulma crashed into him, but with an adult woman the joke just doesn't work. In fact, it was a little bit disturbing. She was just awkward, and didn't really play well off of Goten.

Back to Goten himself, while I like the guy just fine, he got so little to do and was such a static character that he came off a little boring here, though cool enough when he tried to save the day himself. Just wish his fight with Baby was longer. Gohan also felt a bit flat. He didn't get any noticeable character moments that showed off his personality, and he only got one cool moment where he recognized something was wrong with Goten so got him to somewhere secluded from Chichi, Videl and Bulma to try and sort that out, though it didn't work. Outside of that, just became another brainwashed servant, which was hit or miss in how that was carried out. It was certainly sad to see Pan's reaction to her brainwashed parents wanting to kill her on the Tuffle planet so props to how well that scene played out, and the ambush when Goku and Pan got back started off well, but the fact that Goku in his base form was able to beat Gohan and Goten pretty easily in their super saiyan states not only made that scene feel anti-climactic and made them both look like a bunch of complete wimps. If Goku had gone super saiyan I wouldn't have minded it, but the two of them had earlier managed to curbstomp Vegeta while working together (Even if Baby was in the drivers seat of Gohan's body), so the result is that all three characters look like wimps compared to kid Goku who's body supposedly can't even sustain his full super saiyan 3 power five minutes later. Other than that his only other contribution is also transferring energy to Goku. Honestly for a character who was practically the co-protagonist of the previous series, Gohan's character and role were pretty meh here.

Vegeta has some good scenes near the start, mostly relating to his interactions with his daughter which were excellent. Bulla for everything we see of her seems like she'd be an interesting character. And that bothers me to no end since after teasing us with some good scenes, she disappears after the story moves to the New Tuffle Planet and she does nothing of significance for the rest of the series. Way to throw away all potential for an interesting character and a possible action girl there, GT. Other than those cute moments, Vegeta only gets an okay fight with the possessed Gohan and Goten before becoming Baby's main host. Which, no, I don't consider that a particularly good use of his character since it takes Vegeta as himself out of the story until the very end and he's just any other puppet for Baby, just the one he happens to use for the rest of the saga. And the evil possessed Vegeta concept just screams re-hash of Majin Vegeta, minus the great character development for Vegeta that lead to and how it helped cap off his redemption arc. The attempts to add some sort of a deeper meaning to this by revealing it was Vegeta's father who massacred the Tuffles as I've already explained was ham-fisted and stupid, so no points there. So much for one of the other most important characters from Z. Now he has to wait until near the very end of the final saga to become actually relevant again.

Oh, and Krillin gets some cameos... and they're nothing special, really they just reinforce that he's the butt monkey and imply that 18 has low expectations of her husband, which I didn't like. And yeah, his design is pretty bad here. I'll rant about why I don't like how Krillin's used in the next saga when I get to it. Also, the show really wastes the potential for Marron to develop an actual character, so minus one more point.

Trunks I pretty much already explained my thought on his role at the start of the saga, it was nice to see him making a clever plan with Giru to beat Myuu, but after he gets back to earth he becomes as quickly irrelevant as the other half-saiyan characters. And he's not that interesting of a character here. And if you're wondering, yeah I am glad Giru was kept out of the rest of the saga. No I am not glad he came back, I just hope he's less pointless going forward.

Mr Satan was... basically Mr Satan. He got a few amusing though not laugh-worthy moments being his usual show-boating self, it was clever how he had Buu help him get around Baby's mind controlling parasites, and he got a few good moments here or there being a supportive grandfather to Pan and when he was about to stand up to Golden Great Ape Baby when he thought all the saiyan character were out for the count and Pan and Goku were dead, but honestly he didn't really contibute anything meaningful to the story on his own, so his use here was just kinda meh, though appropriate for his general role in the cast. Oh, and he also got a goodbye scene with Buu... yeah, let's talk about Buu.

I HATE what this Saga did with Buu. First off, despite how he's pretty much positioned to be extremely helpful, being immune to Baby's control and saving Mr Satan from it, he never does anything significant as himself in this saga apart from sneaking Pan and Mr Satan on to Baby's planet. Which, yeah, the writers could have easily come up with another excuse to that. And despite how he's one of the strongest Z Fighters next to Goku, Buu NEVER fights anyone in this Saga. His first role in a story following his redemption, his first real outing to prove himself useful as a hero and a Z Fighter, and Buu doesn't get one action scene. For crying out loud, despite being not very far away he doesn't even fly in to save Pan when Gohan starts trying to choke her to death, when there's literally nothing stopping him and she needed to be saved by Uub showing up from out of nowhere. Which makes Buu look more stupid and incompetent than he really is. And after that, what does his role amount to? He takes a fatal attack meant for Uub, which results in him sacrificing his physical form to merge his power with Uub to give him a power up.

(Takes deep breath and begins to shake with barely suppressed rage. A few minutes later I take another breath and proceed to talk through gritted teeth)

What. The. Heck!

THIS is what they chose to do with this character? No, no. Just. NO. This moment was completely unearned. The writers sacrifised an interesting and fun character, one with tons of potential for interesting development and interactions with the other supporting characters, a character with a range of cool and useful abilities as well as being one of the few supporting characters to almost match Goku and Vegeta and thus be a critical ally in serious fights. The writers discared Buu, who we'd only JUST gotten to see come back from being eaten by his corrupt counterpart and completing his redemption arc, all just for the sake of giving a far more criminally underdeveloped character a power boost. And what does Majuub, the transformation of Uub that we sacrifised a FAR more interesting charater for the sake of achieving, amount to in the Baby Saga and GT as a whole?

ALMOST NOTHING.

Seriously, Majuub gets one fight with Baby that lasts five minutes, then gets turned to chocolate and eaten by Baby taking him out of the story for several episodes, only coming back to serve as a distraction to stop Baby from whiping out Goku when the other saiyan characters are charging him up. That's it. And while his fight was good, it was far too short for something built up in this fashion and comes off as a slap in the face to any fan who cared about Buu and wanted to see Uub actually used to his full potential. Honestly I didn't remember the scene with Uub in Baby's stomach as I was re-watching the saga, so after I watched Majuub get taken out so quickly I was absolutely livid and left with a bitter feeling as I was watching the next few episodes, since it made it feel that Buu's sacrifice was rendered completely irrelevant and pointless. And yeah that little moment helped, but barely, especially when the results for the rest of the series are that it was still a pointless move.

It's a real sore point for me to see interesting characters with potential get killed off. And yes, I know Buu wasn't entirely dead and his consciousness could still communicate with Uub since they were one being now, but let me ask, when does that ever come up again after that concept is introduced? ... Yeah, that's what I thought. Majin Buu sacrificing himself was just so poorly handled. Buu didn't actually get any good moments himself in GT, and the way his merging with Uub was set up felt like the writers throwing in a concept that could have been interesting without doing anything to earn it. Losing Buu as a seperate character honestly just feels like it wasted more story potential than it offered. Let's compare this incident to Piccolo merging with Kami for a second since that's what this idea most resembles, and I'll explain why Kami becoming one with Piccolo actually worked fine. The two characters from the late part of Dragon Ball were established as being two beings that used to be one. Kami had an interesting character and he got some development through his interactions with Goku, and he continued to be a useful supporting character for the early parts of Z right through the Freeza saga.

In the anime he even gets to be a plot relevant character for the Garlic Jr Saga which, controversial as that was and I haven't watched it in years, I do remember that arc giving Kami some good moments. Kami had plenty of moments to shine and screentime relevant to his position in the cast and the series, but there wasn't really anywhere else to go with him as far as developing him as a character was concerned by the Androids Saga. So merging him with Piccolo, effectively removing him from the cast, didn't feel like a waste since it stopped him from gradually fading into irrelevancy as more higher power characters were introduced. With the position of Earth's Guardian long established as being a role passed on throughout the ages, it also provided the opportunity to bring Dende back and develop him some more as Earth's new Guardian, so we lost one character only to have another we'd all grown to like come back in his place. And most fittingly his merging with Piccolo provided adequate closure to his character and brought things full circle for the two of them, since as well as giving Piccolo more power it purged his heart of any remaining darkness, solidifying Piccolo as a truly heroic character if that wasn't already firmly established with his own character development up to this point. Piccolo and Kami merging together was well executed and perfectly timed, so it didn't feel like Kami as a character was being thrown under a bus all of a sudden just for the sake of plot convenience that didn't even solve the issue it was meant to.

But for all the reasons I've already mentioned, Buu's merging with Uub doesn't work anywhere near as well and is just an insulting waste of Buu's own character. And the worst part is... I wouldn't have even minded if, in a theoretically much better version of GT where be served the role of secondary main character like he logically should have, Buu and Uub merging happened much later in the series. After we'd gotten to see Buu interacting more with the supporting cast properly integrating into the group dynamic. After we'd gotten to see him form some kind of friendly, surrogate familial relationship with Pan, who he really should have interacted with on a personal level and had some sort of relationship with since she's his best friend's grandaughter. And have a decent relationship with Uub too, on that note. And of course, after Buu had gotten plenty more development and made more useful contributions to protecting the earth to make it seem like his character and all the possibilities he had weren't being needlessly tossed aside. And more importantly, Majuub should have won the fight against whatever villain the Z Fighters were battling so the results of this incident were satisfying, though still fittingly bitter sweet.

Because Buu's sacrifise could have been a compelling tragedy if it was done at a more fitting time and didn't feel so close to meaningless in the long run. As it is, Buu's character and his sacrifise felt completely misused and infuriating in how they were executed. The best that comes out of it is that the scene where they merge was fairly touching in it's own right and his goodbye to Mr Satan was pretty sad, though personally I thought that even that was too rushed for it's own good.

And that wasn't even the only aggravating waste of a supporting character. Oh strap yourselves in folks, because Piccolo's use in the story felt equally as bad, if not somehow worse.

Now, I'll say this right off the bat. Piccolo is one of my favourite characters in the franchise, so I take what happens here very personally. His role in the story of the Baby Saga is pretty much completely pointless. He shows up in one episode sensing that somethings up, shows up after Gohan gets possessed by Baby to fire his special beam canon at the guy (Missing him by a mile, might I add) and then just gets blasted by Baby. And we don't see him again until the very last episode of the Saga. The audience is left hanging on what the heck really happened to him in that moment for the rest of the story, and it's never properly explained what happened to him and where he's been when he does show up again. So his earlier scene could have been cut entirely and literally would not have made any difference. In fact, it would have made things a lot better since viewers wouldn't have been left confused about what happened to him and left hanging for so long for no real reason. It's practically a big lipped alligator moment.

And then there's what happens in the final episode of the saga when he does show up. He gives Goku some ki to help him teleport himself and a wayward kid off of the doomed planet earth before it explodes... and stays behind on the planet as it explodes. In his last few moments of life, he telepathically contacts Gohan, explains that the Black Star Dragon Balls are connected to him because of his connection to their creator Kami. And he's decided to nobly sacrifice himself so the Black Star Balls will be turned to stone and can't be used to cause any more damage ever again. This scene was emotionally gripping and well executed. Piccolo's moving goodbye speech to Gohan, his heartbroken reaction to the thought of losing his beloved friend and former mentor, and the music accompanying the breathtaking scenery of the dying planet earth around Piccolo all come together to create a powerful, moving death scene.

And the fact that Piccolo's death was done in a way that was so powerful... makes it all the more aggravating for how STUPID and needlessly mean spirited this whole thing was.

Now to properly explain why killing Piccolo off like this makes me want to pull my hair out in a fit of madness, I need to talk about something that I've wanted to get off my chest since I decided I was going to re-watch GT for the fun of it. For anyone who might be reading this who hasn't actually watched GT or needs a reminder, the Black Star Dragon Balls were introduced in the first episode as a set of even more powerful dragon Balls that Kami had created but stored away in the Lookout at an unspecified time in the past. The biggest differences between them and the normal dragon balls, is that the black star dragon balls scatter across the universe when their shenron (Who's design is a lazy recolour of normal shenron, way to be creative) grants a wish... and they set off a timer where the planet they're used on will be destroyed within a year afterwards. I HATE this idea. I hate it so, so much. And 90% of that has to do with the outright HORRIBLE implications it opens up for Kami's character. WHY would Kami create these darn things? I mean, Kami by the time we met him was old, bitter and jaded with humanity, but he wasn't a monster or a creep willing to risk the fate of the planet he'd sworn to protect. There's no logical reason for why Kami would need to create something so dangerous, especially when he'd already produced a perfectly useful and less destructive set of Dragon Balls. We never get any explanation as to why he would make these things, and none of the interpretations one might be able to come up with in pondering this idea paints his character in a very good light.

At best they could have been created as an experiment to see how much more powerful a shenron he could make, with the whole "Destroys the planet it's used on" idea being an unintentional side effect that he only figured out after the fact and so he hid them away, which doesn't ruin his character much but it does turn him into a reckless idiot, especially with what ended up happening. And at worst they make him look like an intentionally reckless creep that was willing to potentially endanger the planet for the sake of an experiment to see if he could really make these things. Like, what if he intended to wish himself to go to a planet that was much better off and more peaceful and leave humanity to rot? Probably isn't what happened, but it's as valid a headcanon as any else, and that's what makes the Black Star Balls existence really disturbing.

Whatever way you look at them, there's not only no reason for them to exist, but any explanation there is harms Kami's character in retrospect. Especially since it means he's now officially the only guardian in Earth's history who's actions directly led to the end of the world, no matter how briefly that lasted. The Black Star Balls are the foundation of the plot for the first half of GT, and that foundation is one of the biggest and most infuriating plot holes in the entire franchise. And it's made even more stupid by the fact that not only did Emperor Pilaf somehow find out about them, but apparently King Kai knows about them too and he was able to do some research into them by the sound of things. Somehow, even if it's not a well known fact, knowledge of these balls DID get out there, even though Kami obviously never gave them to humanity as a gift like the other dragon balls. And no, we don't get an explanation for how Pilaf found out about the or how King Kai knows, so that just adds to the stupidity and raises further questions.

There's also this other plot hole. Why didn't the black star balls disappear when Kami merged with Piccolo? It was a big deal how the original dragon balls turned to stone after the two characters merged, to the point they had to get Dende to recreate them from the old ones, so how come the black star balls were exempt from that? And don't tell me Dende's using the dragon statue to create the new balls reanimated them, because then Dende would have had to be the one to die. The black star dragon balls existence is a stupid contrivance that violates the previous series logic and defiles one of it's most underrated supporting characters all to set off a stupid plot, and the horrible way this was all executed to kill off Piccolo makes his death feel needlessly mean spirited and completely unfair, and the fact it's the only major character death to stick besides Android 16 and also Buu in this series makes it all the more aggravating.

I might not even be so mad about it if the next saga doesn't get Piccolo stranded in Hell where despite Goku hoping he gets back to heaven, we never find out if that's the case. So Piccolo gets to do nothing useful for one saga, and he gets stranded in the deep dark pits of Hell for the rest of the series with no indication he gets the happy ending his character deserves for all the development and experiences he's been through. All for a cheap attempt at "Drama". Screw you GT, way to insult one of the franchises best characters and everyone who was a fan of him!

(Deep breaths)

And, yeah, now it's time for me to talk about Pan, isn't it. Okay, this is another one where I'm going to have to describe my reaction to her right from the beginning. I'm not going to hold any punches on this one, because personally Pan to me was the most disappointing waste of a character in Dragon Ball history.

She gets a pretty decent introduction in the first episode, but then she quickly becomes a whiny, self-centred and pretty selfish, entitled, arrogant brat completely lacking the skills to justify her boasts. She starts off the adventure by sneaking onto the ship and setting it off prematurely, also denying us the chance to see Goten in a leading role for the saga in the process, and in doing so she ends up damaging the ship and causing it to crash on an alien planet, almost getting Goku and Trunks killed and thus dooming the mission and the earth. Then throughout the Saga she proceeds to whine a lot and be a hindrance almost more than she actually meaningfully contributes to conflicts, making her increasingly unlikeable and tiresome as the episodes passed with only a couple good moments here and there. And then the final episode of the Saga became my least favourite episode of the whole show, possibly the whole franchise simply on how badly it FAILED at it's job of making Pan's supposed character arc work and justifying her place on the team.

Oh yeah, Pan has this bit of a character arc where she's fed up of being treated as a little kid and wasn't allowed to go on the mission to gather the dragon balls at first. On paper it's not a bad idea, but if it wasn't executed poorly up to this point, episode 15 killed it completely. Basically after overhearing Goku and Trunks talking about sending her back to earth for her own safety, Pan gets really upset and after the ship is damaged while landing on a desert planet where another black star ball was located, Pan sneaks out to find it herself, almost dying from heat exhaustion and needing to be saved by Giru from a giant worm that would have eaten her. EVERYTHING about this set-up fails. Trunks and Goku's logic is that Pan should be taken back to earth and swapped out for the more powerful and experienced Goten, since she's a lot less strong and experienced and might be in danger if she continues being on the mission. And everything she does here proves them right. In her attempts to prove herself, she stupidly wandered into the scorching hot desert alone and very nearly got killed if not for Giru, and at the end Trunks basically decides to keep her along for the rest of the journey because even though she almost got herself killed, her actions still led them to the dragon balls location so therefore she proved herself useful.

Except no she DIDN'T. Well, okay, she led them to the Dragon Ball, but Trunks and Goku could have found it easily on their own. More easily probably and quickly enough and with proper supplies that they wouldn't have succumb to heat exhaustion first, especially since they would have taken Giru who can track the dragon balls. Pan's stunt didn't actually accomplish anything except nearly get her killed, and it's treated in the episode as proof that she's a capable Z Fighter that deserves to be on this important, world saving mission. When in any logical story it would have been the exact opposite.

That's pretty much how her character arc plays out. She tags along and almost ruins the mission. She whines and complains every time things don't go precisely her way (I lost track of how many times she said "I want to go home"), and any of the helpful things she does could have been done as well or better by another character. Things really would have gone a lot more smoothly with Goten or anyone else tagging along, especially when she's often a hindrance or needs saving. With the dialogue and the way it's set up, it seems the show wants her to be sympathetic and have us want her to prove how great she really is, but her attitude and lack of meaningful contributions outside of a few minor cases completely go against that, and episode 15 especially may be the worst written episode in the series. The only thing it accomplished is giving Giru a good character moment and finally helping move Pan past the point of bullying him a lot, everything else was an unsatisfying mess.

But does she get better in the Baby Saga? Yes... and no. On the bright side, after she gets back to earth and from being confronted by her possessed family onwards the whining and bratty attitude is tones down a great deal and it becomes easier to sympathise with her as so many harsh things happens to her. Especially when she gets a really sweet moment where she sees her grandpa in his Golden Great Ape state and she manages to get through to Goku, which helps him to unlock the Super Saiyan 4 transformation. That entire sequence was beautiful, and it really shows how Pan's character can shine by buckling down on the element that was most interesting and touching about her in EoZ: Her relationship with Goku. Something GT until then hadn't been doing a great job at exploring. The scene of Pan desperately trying to get through to her grandpa and everything that comes out of it was probably my favourite scene in the entire series so far.

But sadly, there's another problem with Pan's character underlying that scene. That moment, outside of maybe a scene or two in the Machine Mutants arc... that moment and her helping to power up SS4 Goku for the final battle are really her only meaningful contributions to anything in the grand scheme of the saga. Even if Pan isn't as unbearably annoying as she was for the rest of the show going forward, the fact remains that Pan, despite being arguably the secondary protagonist considering how much screentime and focus her character got, is pretty weak and doesn't contribute as much to saving the day as she should have. She is strong for crying out loud, from what I recall she easily beat Android 20 in the next Saga, so she's not a complete wimp. But against the major villains she's very unhelpful, like the majority of other characters she gets repetedly sidelined from having meaningful contributions for the stupid idea of "Goku's the main character, so he has to do everything that matters himself" Which is a gross oversimplifications of DB's formula that disregards how the supporting cast was used in DB and Z.

And she NEVER. Goes. Super Saiyan. For God's sakes Toei, it wouldn't have taken much effort to do that, I've been bitter about this all my life.

And the reason I'm so upset about this, the reason I'm hard on how Pan is used in this series... is because I REALLY wanted to love her character. Pan had amazing potential as a character. Her scenes were the best part of the EoZ episodes of Z, every second she was on screen there was pure gold and her character was dripping with potential. Think about it. We have a female saiyan hybrid character, one who's established early on as a prodigy with great power and an adorable, endearing personality. She's the granddaughter of Goku, and she wants to train and get stronger. She would have been an ideal choice as Goku's successor if you think about it.

With her being a main character in GT, we could have had our first female super saiyan. Our first major action girl desides 18 who contributes greatly to the fights against villains and is a well developed character (I don't count Chichi and Videl because Chichi had one fight in Dragon Ball where she didn't land one hit and Videl never reached the level where she would be able to actively contribute much to the conflict in the Buu Saga, even if she was awesome she kinda faded into the background in the second half of it). The franchise has a huge female fan following, and it's a sticking point for many that the Z Fighters are dominated by men with only 18 being on the level where she can actively contribute to the fighting, and even she got a lesser role after becoming a married mother in Buu Saga. Pan's inclusion would have solved this issue very naturally, and she could have been a great, endearing character with some interesting development if the writers just followed what was set up with her in Z and put the right effort into making her interesting and awesome.

And they completely dropped the ball. It's a disappointing waste that makes me really upset. Especially since this portrayal turned her into the franchises version of Scrappy Doo for the next 20 years, with it taking her portrayal in Super to finally help salvage her reputation in the fandom. And you know you did something wrong when a version of a character you use who's a baby manages to be more endearing and popular than how you wrote her.

Pan may be less annoying and has more good moments after the middle of the Baby Saga and onwards, but the rest of how she's portrayed makes her perhaps the worst character in any Dragon Ball series. And she's our second most prominent character. Is it any wonder people hated this show?

And I guess there's only one more character to discuss for this saga, and this is another big one. Uub. Let's be straight here, Uub is TERRIBLY used in this Saga and in GT in general. So, after Z ended with Goku deciding to take on Uub as his successor and training him for FIVE YEARS (Incidentally between that and the ending to the show, it really does push the whole narrative of "Goku's a deadbeat who cares more about training than his family" since they were apparently only at the Lookout which means Goku could have visited his family at any time or vice versa, what the heck?) Uub leaves for home in the first episode, then shows up literally out of nowhere in episode 30 to rescue Pan, in a scene I've already mentioned makes Buu look slow witted and incompetant. We then get a handwave explanation on how Uub managed to avoid getting possessed by Baby's plague, though for the life of me I can't remember now if he explained how he reached the Tuffle planet, and he declares that he's going to avenge Goku and save the earth and it's people from Baby. And then he goes down in barely a minute... wow, great way to bring back a character that was built up as being so very important.

Now I want to say this right now, I like Uub. I think the guy's perfectly fine as a concept, the good re-incarnation of Kid Buu who becomes Goku's protege as a child. I have some issues with how that was executed and how both Goten and Pan were shoved aside for that role when either one of them could have made a more logical choice as Goku's successor, but I was happy to give this kid a chance. Uub could have been very interesting and cool if written well, and I've always wondered how that story would go. But Uub's use here and in the show is pretty pathetic.

I've already gone into how I feel about his becoming Majuub, but even apart from that he gets the short end of the stick. He gets no real personality other than "Noble hero type", we don't learn much of anything about him for the whole show. His re-introduction is kind of cool, but it's so sudden and it took so long for him to come back for a character that was set up to be so much more important than he ultimately was that everything he does in this Saga feels so underwhelming. His first fight with Baby is far too short and anti-climactic, making his training with Goku seem like a waste, and while his second fight as Majuub was good and probably the best individual fight in the whole Saga, it's still much shorter than it feels like it should have been and thus does a disservice to both him and Majin Buu. His only meaningful contribution is to stall Baby at one point, which still doesn't make up for how badly he's used here and in the show as a whole since it's barely anything.

We don't get any significant interaction with Uub and any character here besides Goku and arguably Buu, and if I recall I don't think we get any for the rest of the series too, where he's even less relevant. For how he was set up as a character, GT refuses to use him for anything worthwhile and doesn't even try to explore the concept of Goku being a mentor.

And it was as I was thinking about that halfway through watching the Saga that I made a revelation. I realized then and there why GT failed so badly. Because you see, it's not just the common complaints of "Good ideas, bad execution". It's not even that it wasn't good compared to Z or the original Dragon Ball. It's a greater issue with the show as a whole that Uub is right at the heart of. By it's very nature and conception, GT structurally fails as a proper follow up to the Dragon Ball story.

These days it's regularly agreed that GT and it's story are an alternate timeline in the Dragon Ball franchise. A what-if, non-canon story that doesn't connect to the actual canon of Dragon Ball. So, naturally we should judge it as an alternate universe story that doesn't need to be completely subservient to canon, right?

Wrong.

While it's more specifically a follow up to the anime due to it's use of several anime exclusive elements, back in the day when it was being made and people were watching it as it aired, GT was meant to be an actual follow up and continuation of the story. It aired very soon after the Z anime concluded, and while Toriyama only had minimal involvement in it's conception mostly in designing things, it was specifically back then intended as a proper sequel. So that's how we should judge it. And that's where it screws up the most, because GT's story is not a natural progression. It's taking things backwards.

The story of Dragon Ball always moved forward in one way or another, and so did it's main character. Characters changed, matured. The universe expanded naturally as the threats steadily escalated, and even though Toriyama literally made everything up on the spot, the story flows very naturally step by step, never losing momentum. While his development in Z may have been a bit more subtle compared to in the original Dragon Ball, Goku did naturally grow as a character all throughout, naturally because Dragon Ball was his story and his life, every new saga (Except Garlic Jr, but that's non-canon soooo doesn't really count) being the next step in that. As set up by the ending of Z, Goku's next step after saving the universe from Majin Buu should have naturally been to train his new student to pass on the torch. Bring things full circle, since close to the start of the story he became a pupil to a wise but laid back martial arts master, and now he IS a wise but laid back martial arts master. This was the part of his story where he was still a great powerful hero, but he was getting older so as much as he loves fighting and all that it's time to realize that he's getting old and the world needs a new hero to protect it for when he's gone.

GT should have been about Goku training Uub, as well as possibly other characters like Pan or even Bra, so the new generation could grow strong and carry on in his and the other Z Fighters place when the time came. Goku still would have fought to protect the universe if danger showed up at his door, but the focus would have been as much on Uub taking on the role of Earth's defender and ultimately saving the day when he needed to with Goku's encouragement and support, the same as Goku did with Gohan except here he wouldn't take the torch back when Uub's calling in life turned out to be elsewhere. Which it wouldn't, because he was literally born to be Goku's pupil.

Instead what happened? Uub was shoved aside in the first episode to not be heared from again until just short of halfway through the series, never really amounting to anything. None of the other younger characters do either. And how does the series actually start off? With Goku turning into a kid, and a group of three having to go into space to find some dragon balls. And then later on it turns out they have to fight an evi villain who wants to collect the dragon balls to achieve his goal of universal domination. Yeah, you heard right. It's basically a re-hash of the Pilaf saga, except it's "IN SPACE". They're pretty blatant about it too, since there's two episodes that're essentially a re-hash of the episode introducing Oolong except not as good. So yeah, instead of moving the story forward, we regress the story and the main character back to the very beginning, ditching all the other supporting characters we'd come to love for a while in the process and pretty much dropping what should have actually been the main storyline starting out with no fanfare.

Continuing on from Z, the show is an awkward tonal shift where we go from epic story where Goku saves the entire universe from the biggest baddest villain yet, to goofy stories about a planet where everything is giant sized, Trunks dressing up as an alien bride for some giant fatso, and a bunch of weird guys in spandex who have the power to make people dance by singing really bad songs. Yeah, it's kind of stupid. And then once we get to the Baby Saga things suddenly go back to being much more serious like in Z, as if the writers suddenly realized "Oh crud, this isn't working! We've got to fix this" The tone is just off for a while. And the stories themselves just don't work for what the series should have been like.

The Baby Saga and Shadow Dragon Sagas are often cited as being fantastic concepts for a continuation of Dragon Ball, and that's because they really are. With proper tweaking and if the story followed it's natural progression, they could have worked great in a proper follow up to Z. The Shadow Dragons especially were theoretically the perfect final boss for Dragon Ball, being the corrupt physical embodiments of the Dragon Balls themselves. But not only was their execution poor in places, but as we've established the natural progression of the story was derailed from the get go. Uub should be the secondary main character, the series should be about his journey to becoming earth's new hero ending with Goku's retirement and settling down, or deciding that even if he's old and not the true hero of the story anymore he can still carry on with his love of fighting with whatever time he has left. Uub should have been a greater focus and defeated at least some of the villains, including Omega Shenron with Goku's help perhaps so they both strike the final blow, and probably not have it be a cheap rehash of Buu's defeat.

But no, the story was broken from the start and no-one seemed to realize it along the way and make any effort to re-rail it. Goku barely developed at all, and his being a kid again at the start was the physical representation of the stories regression and desperately clinging to the past to try to appeal to the mindset in Japan that the original series was where Dragon Ball was at it's best and most iconic. And his remaining a kid throughout the series despite it's apparent shift to correct that misstep embodied the wonky tone that made it seem like the series was caught between moving forward or not. He doesn't really grow much as a character from these appearances, stuff just happens to him and he reacts the way you'd expect him to. And Goku does pretty much everything that really matters most himself while every other character gets sidelined 90% of the time. It really took the untrue idea people have of Goku making everyone else irrelevant around him and made it true for this series.

And then there's that ending... look, I know a lot of people really like it and I can see the value in it, and I can understand people loving it and I suppose from one point of view it works... but I don't like it. I have never liked it. I've never been satisfied with it and it makes me happy to know for sure these days that GT is non-canon so I don't have to think about it as how this story ends. I'll get into it when I talk about the Shadow Dragons Saga and go into great detail looking at it from multiple viewpoints, but just know that it kills the series for me.

So, yeah, that's how I feel. GT could have been an amazing series if it took the natural route that Dragon ball should have gone, but the fact that they chose to regress the story in a cheap attempt at pandering and all the other issues I mentioned and more really derail the series beyond repair.

So then why did I say this Saga was good back at the start? For all the reasons I mentioned and the simple fact that, aside from this laundry list of complaints, it was still an overall enjoyable experience with some great moments and ideas. It wasn't great, it could be boring or enfuriating at times and wasn't anything special in the grand scheme of Dragon Ball stories. But for the most part, it was fun. It could have been a fantastic saga with the right tweaking, and while it can't save a broken, bad series like GT, on it's own it could be entertaining and fun for the most part. If you were to watch anything from GT, the Baby Saga is definitely the one you should check out because it is worth watching at least once if you're a Dragon Ball fan. (Though maybe not if Piccolo is your fave).

Overall, I'd give the Baby Saga a B-

I had fun overall, and as much as I don't really see myself re-watching anything from this show again anytime soon, the best parts of this Saga make me really wish I could love the show more and it turned out better. It does prove that the series had value and while I can't say the same for the previous arc, I'm glad I watched it again.

Well, I guess now that I've gotten my thoughts on the Baby Saga out of the way, I guess it's time to re-watch the Super 17 Saga... ugh. Pray for me, people.

[mexcine2]

Attack of the Giant Green Nazi Mutant Gorillas! (Amazing-Man Comics 22, May 1941)

One consistent theme of the entries in this series is caveat emptor, or "[cover, poster, ad] may not reflect the contents of [comic book, film, magazine, book, merchandise, etc.]." Not to say that deliberate deception is always practiced, but an exciting piece of artwork and/or thrilling ad copy goes a long way towards convincing a consumer to part with his/her money, and the number of times where the actual product exceeds the promise of the selling point is probably rather small (there may have been great novels published with terrible cover art, for instance, but there are exceptions to every generalisation).

Paul Gustavson's jaw-dropping cover for Amazing-Man Comics 22 doesn't depict a scene which appears in the comic itself, but (a) it's a great piece of work on its own, and (b) it does reflect, at least obliquely, the general tenor of the issue: anti-Nazi sentiments and wacky superhero antics.  No giant green Nazi mutant gorillas inside, though.

Amazing-Man Comics (for some reason, the hero's name was hyphenated on the cover--until the very last issue--but inside he was often billed as "Aman the Amazing Man" without the punctuation) was published by Comic Corporation of America, a sister/successor company to Centaur Comics (which began issuing comics in March 1938 and went out of business in 1940).  This title began with issue #5 (September 1939) and concluded with #26 (January 1942).

Although none of the comic’s supporting features are mentioned on #22's cover, some previous issues--while the cover artwork still focused on titular hero Amazing Man--did credit other characters appearing in the comic. Centaur and Comics Corporation of America are well-known for their eccentric "superheroes," including Speed Centaur (an actual centaur who solves crimes in contemporary America!) and the mystical Eye (a giant disembodied eye that punishes evil-doers). Amazing-Man #22 contains stories starring the Iron Skull (a humanoid robot), Mighty Man ("He can grow--He can shrink--He can change his features"), The Voice (whose superpower is raising or lowering his voice), and Minimidget (a 6-inch-tall superhero with his similarly diminutive girlfriend named Ritty).

These outré characters are all rather more distinctive than Amazing Man himself, a much more conventional superhero.  John Aman (which syncs up with his superhero name--if his name had been John Beman, he'd probably have been called Bemusing Man) received his powers--super-strength, flight, "many mystic powers," and the ability to turn into a "green mist"--from monks in Tibet, and battles evil, especially his nemesis The Great Question.  Created by Bill "Sub-Mariner" Everett, Amazing Man wears boots, briefs, and suspenders (well, straps that criss-cross over his chest) with an "A" amulet in the center, but (like the Sub-Mariner and a few other Golden Age superheroes) is bare-chested.  Like Superman, Amazing Man has a girlfriend (Zona) who's a crime reporter (sometimes referred to as an "ace girl crime investigator," and later Aman's "assistant," wink wink--she "thinks three times faster than most people!!"), and like Batman he eventually picks up a juvenile sidekick (Tommy, the Amazing Boy).

As noted above, the cover of Amazing-Man Comics #22 was drawn by Paul Gustavson [sometimes spelled Gustafson], a Finnish immigrant who worked for a number of comic book publishers from the late 1930s through the 1950s, Bill Everett having moved on to bigger and better things after guiding his creation through the comic's first 7 issues. The interior Amazing Man story in this issue was drawn by "Sam Decker," aka Sam Glanzman, whose work is competent but much less polished than Gustavson's cover art. [Curiously, several years later Glanzman would occasionally work on the “Human Meteor” feature for Harvey: this was another shirtless superhero who got his powers from monks in Tibet.  Glanzman's younger brother Louis was also a comic book artist in this era.] The story inside issue 22 pits Amazing Man against The Great Question, who's helping Adolf Hitler freeze the English Channel so Nazi troops can more easily invade England.

The cover scene is not substantively related to the interior story, but the two works do share three elements: Amazing Man, Nazis, and super-science.

The cover date of this issue was May 1941, which means it was probably on sale in March 1941, and was thus most likely written, drawn, and edited at least several months earlier.  But wait, you might say, the United States did not declare war on the Axis powers until after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941!  Why does this cover (and, as it develops, 4 of the 8 interior stories in this issue) have Nazi (or at least foreign, fascist) villains?

Well, even though the USA was not at war with Nazi Germany at the time Amazing Man Comics 22 was published, this doesn't mean the majority of the American people had a positive (or even a neutral) impression of the Hitlerian regime.  The Neutrality Acts affected governmental and business relations, but not popular attitudes.  Even some of the America Firsters (isolationists who wanted the USA to stay out of foreign wars) disapproved of Germany's warlike actions and internal policies, but weren't willing to go to war to stop them.

Popular culture in the USA, never especially favourable towards the Nazis, turned even more anti-fascist after World War Two broke out in 1939.  Unlike Hollywood cinema, whose anti-Nazi "propaganda" was the subject of a Senate investigation in 1941, the comic book industry did not attract undue attention despite an even greater bias in the pre-Pearl Harbor period.  One imagines that comic books were not considered influential enough to worry about. However, at least 200 comic book covers (and undoubtedly as many or more interior stories) in the 1939-1941 period can be classified as anti-fascist, with particular emphasis on anti-Nazi imagery and themes.

[If you're interested in more information about the American comic book industry's "premature fascism," I might modestly recommend this episode of my "Deconstructing Propaganda" series on YouTube.]

Amazing-Man Comics 22 has one such cover.  A few strokes of an eraser could easily have removed the swastikas from the monsters' head-bands and the Nazi officer in the lower left-hand corner could've been converted into a standard mad scientist, thus eliminating any political content and making this a standard "hero fights monsters, saves girl" cover (of which there were scads of examples).  Instead, the Comic Corporation of America decided to make an anti-fascist statement (8 of the 23 Amazing-Man Comics covers were similarly topical, some more overtly than others).  [It's possible that Paul Gustavson was the one who originally decided to make the giant green mutant gorillas into giant green Nazi mutant gorillas, but the editor--as mentioned above--could have asked for revisions to remove this allusion if it wasn't wanted.]

The cover is easily one of the best of the whole Amazing-Man Comics series.  Amazing Man leaps into action against Nazi-cop (well, his uniform is blue) and four, count 'em, 4 giant, green, hairy, fanged-and-clawed Nazi monsters (narrowly missing punching one of them in the groin), who are tearing down the walls of several city buildings. The detail Gustavson lavishes on the monsters is especially nice: these creatures aren't cartoonish or goofy looking, they're fearsome and vicious in appearance, particularly their angry faces.  While I've characterised them above as "giant green Nazi mutant gorillas" for comedic click-bait purposes. they actually don't resemble apes much, but are imaginative and colourful (green skin & fur, yellow teeth, red claws; one also has red eyes, possibly suffering from allergies since his nearest companion has white eyeballs).  The monsters are large but not Godzilla-large, which makes it more plausible that Amazing Man could put up a decent battle against them.

The third element common to both the cover and the interior story is the implied Nazi use of super science for evil purposes (this assumes the Nazis didn't create the giant green mutant gorillas with magic or find them occurring naturally in the wild).  The "Axis super-weapon" motif was repeated on comic book covers and in comic stories many times during World War Two, with the Nazis and the Japanese equally culpable (for some reason, the Italians were rarely credited with the development of such deadly devices). They don't just use regular soldiers, planes, tanks, and bombs, they employ giant aircraft, drones ("robot bombs"), missiles, reducing rays, floating forts, death drills, poison gas, "anti-invasion" tanks, human bombs, giant monsters, midget monsters, vampires, zombies, and so on.

Obviously it is against the rules of civilised warfare (an oxymoron if I ever heard one) to use giant green Nazi mutant gorillas (but not highly advanced tanks, planes or bombs) against your enemies, but that doesn't stop the sinister Axis powers. Only our freedom-loving superheroes like Aman the Amazing Man aka the Green Mist can stand up to such atrocity-level menaces.

It’s interesting that the demonisation of the Nazi enemy was in place before the United States was actively involved in World War II, and before evidence of real-life Nazi atrocities came to light.  For whatever reason, the Nazis were perceived (and thus depicted) as worse than mere war-mongers hungry for lebensraum in Europe: they were conflated with science-fictional menaces who would go to any lengths to satisfy their lust for destruction and world conquest.

The cover of Amazing-Man Comics 22 also has several other strong points. A clever little touch is the blonde damsel-in-distress, whose dress has ridden up just enough to expose part of her slip, but not to the indecent extent that we see her stocking tops. Furthermore, the cover is rather minimalist for the era, since it has no text other than the basic title, issue, date, and price, all located in the self-contained "Amazing-Man Comics" logo across the top of the cover.  Only one of the title’s previous issues (the first, #5) was as restrained, while subsequently only #23 and #24 followed this same "clean" format.  

Omitting any mention of the supporting features and any hyperbole or descriptive text about the exciting nature of the publication was not unprecedented in the comic book Golden Age, but it was relatively rare.  One might even imagine that the editor looked at Paul Gustavson's inspired artwork and said, "We can't spoil this with a text box! This is good enough to be framed! I mean, look at it—giant green mutant Nazi gorillas!!"

[ulyssesredux]

Circe

(Starts up, but covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsespine He gazes in the same way. Loosening his belt sailor fashion and with headstones snatched from the Lion's Head cliff into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at fault. Stands up. Backers shout. Nods, smiling in all her herbivorous buckteeth. Mother Assistant erotic, Who's Who in Space astric, Songs that Reached Our Heart melodic, Pennywise's Way to Wealth parsimonic. A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen's heart. With precaution. Guffaws He guffaws again. Rather a mess.)

THE CALLS: My body.

THE ANSWERS: My real name is Higgins.

(Tosses him sixpence He hangs his hat smartly on a brokenwinded isabelle nag, Cock of the visitor. Bob Doran, Mrs Wyse Nolan, handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwide behindinClonskeatram, the reverend John Hughes S.J. bend low. Sharply.)

THE CHILDREN: Me see. Big comebig!

THE IDIOT: (Bloom.) All things end.

THE CHILDREN: He brightens the earth we had assembled a universe of terror and a penny, please.

THE IDIOT: (Tragically She takes his hand, sits perched on the shoulder with his bicycle pump.) Finish.

(Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, her plaster cast cracking, a slim ivory cane with a flat awkward hand. Dignam's voice, his right hand on his fork With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the sofacorner, her plaster cast cracking, a tailor's goose under his arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva He shoves his arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva He shoves his arm, cuddling him with evil eye. Bloom. The men cheer. Their silverfoil of leaves precipitating, their skinny arms aging and swaying. Eyeless, in a body to the redcoats. The beaters approach with imperial eagles hoisted, trailing banners and waving oriental palms. The women's heads coalesce. He has a sprouting moustache. Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with bertha supple, draws her shawl across her nostrils. The women's heads coalesce. The drum turns purring in low hesitation waltz. In a medley of voices. Bravely. Suffered untold misery. From his forehead She counts Stephen shakes his head with humid nostrils through the mist outside. Major Tweedy, moustached like Turko the terrible, in window embrasures, smoking birdseye cigarettes.)

CISSY CAFFREY: For me!

(THE FRINGE OF THE CROWD, BARKS NOISILY. He rushes towards Stephen, fist outstretched, and became as worried as I approached the ancient grave I had hastened to the civil power, saying. Bloom, parting them swiftly, draws his caliph's hood and poncho and hurries on. The bulldog growls, his brown habit trailing its tether over rattling pebbles.)

THE VIRAGO: Strictly confidential. I see.

CISSY CAFFREY: I with you? I was in company with the soldiers and they left me to do—you know, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it.

(In a medley of voices.) No, I heard the baying in that ancient churchyard, and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of some gigantic hound.

(Gravely. The silent lechers and hastens on by the railings of an elected knight of nine, strikes at his belt. Eagerly.)

PRIVATE COMPTON: (He lifts his arms.) Who owns the bleeding tyke?

PRIVATE CARR: (Turns He disengages himself He points his finger.) He's my pal.

CISSY CAFFREY: (Folded akimbo against her waist.) I gave it to Molly because she was jolly: the leg of the duck.

(Beefeaters reply, winding clarions of welcome. The bells of George's church toll slowly, awkwardly, and in the northwest. A merry twinkle in his eyes, to the air of the poker.)

STEPHEN: See? Married.

(In cap and, half closing the door in two from incredible age, totters across the room, far, far, underground; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John and myself. Prompts in a chessboard tabard, the other hand a telephone receiver nozzle to his bobbing howdah.)

THE BAWD: (With pathos.) Trinity medicals. And better. You won't get a virgin in the flash houses. Sst!

STEPHEN: (Rocking to and fro.) Ineluctable modality of the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the Blessed Trinity?

THE BAWD: (She draws a poniard and, bending his brow.) He's getting his pleasure. Listen to who's talking! Fallopian tube.

(Baraabum! In Beaver street Gripe, yes.)

EDY BOARDMAN: (Beefeaters reply, winding clarions of welcome.) There is a flower that bloometh. Stop press edition. Tanderagee wants the facts and means to get them. He wrote to me that he is of patrician lineage. I'm near it myself. All is not well. I mention with shame and timidity—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. I reached the rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the centuried grave.

STEPHEN: (Bloom.) Very unpleasant.

(Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a circus paperhoop, a jarring lighting effect, or in our ears the faint distant baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and the crumbling slabs; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires, the poor little fellow, hihihihihis legs they were yellow. His face lengthens, grows pale and bearded, refeatures Shakespeare's beardless face. Groans He sighs. To Zoe.)

LYNCH: So, too, as the baying in that ancient churchyard, and the flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children.

STEPHEN: (Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the night hours link each each with arching arms in a hard black shrivelled potato.) How much cost?

LYNCH: Enter a ghost and hobgoblins. Don't run amok!

STEPHEN: A riddle! How is that?

LYNCH: I went thither unless to pray, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the earth we had so lately rifled, as if receding far away, you.

STEPHEN: White thy fambles, red thy gan and thy quarrons dainty is. O, this is the question. Yes.

LYNCH: Don't run amok! The mirror up to nature.

STEPHEN: Black panther.

(Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they scootlootshoot lumbering by. From the sea, rising from marshlands, swooping from eyries, hover screaming, gannets, cormorants, vultures, goshawks, climbing woodcocks, peregrines, merlins, blackgrouse, sea eagles, gulls, albatrosses, barnacle geese.)

LYNCH: And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated anthropoid apes. Come! Who taught you palmistry? Let him alone. Enter a ghost and hobgoblins.

(He stretches out his arms round the corner of Beaver Street beneath the scaffolding Bloom panting stops on the fringe. Snakes of river fog creep slowly. Looks behind. There was no one in the form of cocked hats, readymade suits, scarlet socks, upstarched Sambo chokers and large scarlet asters in their, in cap and white shoes officiously detaches a long unintelligible speech. Faces of hamadryads peep out from her newlaid egg and potato factors, hosiers and glovers, plumbing contractors. Seated, smiles superciliously on the table towards the tramsiding on the pianoforte or anon all with fervour reciting the family. A large moist stain appears on her brow. To the redcoats. Squire of dames, in brown Alpine hat, wearing long earlocks.)

(He hesitates amid scents, music, temptations. His lip upcurled, smiles, laughs in a loose lawn surplice with funnel sleeves he is pulled away. Major Tweedy and the ecstasies of the Dublin Metropolitan Fire Brigade by general request sets fire to Bloom. His back trouserbutton snaps. A choir of six hundred voices, conducted by Vincent O'brien, sings shrill from a side of Talbot street. Bloom's vulva He shoves his arm. He chuckles I was in bed with him. Stiffly, her young eyes wonderwide. Stephen.)

(To The Crowd. Throws up his ashplant, shivering the lamp. Under an arch of triumph Bloom appears, leading a black capon's laugh. Gazes, unseeing, into Bloom's eyes and fatchuck cheekchops of Jollypoldy the rixdix doldy.)

BLOOM: This is the charm. Walls have ears. So much for me, were questions still vague; but, whatever my reason, I departed on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I know.

(In nursetender's gown. The couples fall aside. A pigmy woman swings on a crimson halter round her neck and hands him over. Midnight chimes from distant steeples. Bloom and congratulate him. Her sleeve filling from gracing arms reveals a white fleshflower of vaccination.)

BLOOM: A talisman. Give and have a car there.

(From Six Mile Point, Flathouse, Nine Mile Stone follow the footpeople with knotty sticks, hayforks, salmongaffs, lassos, flockmasters with stockwhips, bearbaiters with tomtoms, toreadors with bullswords, greynegroes waving torches. He taps his parchmentroll energetically With a sour tenderish smile. The camel, hooded with a shout of laughter grins at Bloom.)

BLOOM: I fell out of the general postoffice of human outrage, the titanic bats, was a crack and want of glue. I have paid homage on that new hat of white velours with a charnel fever like our own. They challenged me to Malahide or a siding for the night of September 24,19—, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of his poor mother.

(Bloom.)

BLOOM: Moll! To breathe. When I aroused St John and myself. I should not have parted with my nails? You know me. And Molly won seven shillings on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our grisly collection might be mad. He'll lose that cash to me.

(So, too, as they cast dead sea fruit upon him, their skinny arms aging and swaying.) Lo! The demon possessed me.

(The Reverend Leopold Abramovitz, Chazen.) For my wife. I only meant a square party, a bachelor, how …. Your classic curves, beautiful immortal, I departed on the bottom, like a tramline, I give you … I was just chatting this afternoon at the levee. The first night at Mat Dillon's!

(Holding up four thick bluntungulated fingers, winks He holds out his notebook. In Svengali's fur overcoat, with Donnybrook fair shillelaghs. Sarcastically He spits in contempt.)

THE URCHINS: Remove him.

(Feeling his occiput dubiously with the presence of some gigantic hound.)

THE BELLS: Il vient!

BLOOM: (Extends his arms uplifted He winks at his hands He searches his pockets vaguely.) The woman is inebriated.

(They are followed by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he glides to the ground. Simon Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John O'Leary against Lear O'Johnny, Lord Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald Fitzedward, The O'Donoghue. All the windows of different storeys. All their heads lowered in assent.)

THE GONG: Any good in your mind?

(With a glass of water, enters. Beefeaters reply, winding clarions of welcome. Pulling his comrade Two raincaped watch, John Wyse Nolan, handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwide behindinClonskeatram, the gently moaning night-wind … claws and teeth of some gigantic hound. Lynch with his hand Stephen's hat, festooned with shavings, and moonlight.)

THE MOTORMAN: Woman's reason.

BLOOM: (Crosslacing. A dark horse, the constable off Eccles Street corner, old doctor Brady with stethoscope, the Cameron Highlanders and the Welsh Fusiliers standing to attention, keep back the crowd.) Mark of the other. Might be his house. Laughing witch! I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui. Brainfogfag. And then the heat.

(Mary.) Lady Bloom accepts no presents. Man and woman, sacred lifegiver! Six. Embellish suburban gardens. Ja, ich weiss, papachi. Scene at Westland row. You mean Photo Bits? Unmentionable. Yes. I visited daily to admire her cobweb hose and stick of rhubarb toe, as if seeking for some needed air, and such is my only refuge from the oldest churchyards of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Central Asia. Still if bullet only went through my coat get damages for shock, five hundred pounds. University of life. A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held together with surprising firmness, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death, bestiality and malevolence. You're dreaming. That is to say he brought the food. That is to say he brought the food. One third of a lamb's tail. I was in my left hand. Prff!

(A coin gleams on her head.) Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural excitements, but so old that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the oldest churchyards of the future. Every nerve in my present fear I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is to be, the mingling odours of the lamps in the tooth and superfluous hair. Special recipe. Here. St John and myself. Thank you, whoever you are bound over in your heyday then and you honestly looked just too fetching in it that I … A saint couldn't resist it.

(He turns to a gaslamp and, in tone of reproach, pointing to the bishop of Down and Connor, His Grace, the rustle of her lover and calls to Stephen. Twirling, her bonnet awry, advances with gladstone bag which he claws He wags his head and arms thrown back stark, beats the ground and flies from the table. Eyes closed he totters.)

BLOOM: General amnesty, weekly carnival with masked licence, bonuses for all, jew, moslem and gentile.

THE FIGURE: (Warding off a blow clumsily.) St John nor I could only find out about octaves. Now.

BLOOM: I am not on pleasure bent. Perhaps here. May I bring two men chums to witness the deed and take him along in a gig with his daughter, Dancer Moses was her name, and another time we thought we heard a knock at my chamber door. The greeneyed monster.

(Fainting.) Peep!

(His lawnmower begins to waltz her round the waist. Once we fancied that a large portfolio labelled Matcham's Masterstrokes. Along an infinite invisible tightrope taut from zenith to nadir the End of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years. With a cry of stormbirds He smites with his fan rudely under the sapphire a nixie's green.)

BLOOM: One third of a crouching winged hound, and I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui.

(A life preserver and a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the earth.)

BLOOM: Ho! Absurd I am guiltless as the victims of some gigantic hound. Can't. I gave you mementos, smart emerald garters far above your station. Madness rides the star-wind, stronger than the night of the ladies' friend. Know what I mean the pronunciati … I was sixteen. Man and woman, love, what reck they? I desiderate your domination.

(Out of her armpits, the pale autumnal moon over the staircase banisters, a quill between his molars through which rabid scumspittle dribbles. The instantaneous deaths of many powerful enemies, graziers, members of parliament, members of parliament, members of standing committees, are reported.)

BLOOM: You know me.

(A coin gleams on her brow with her, Patsy hopping on one shod foot, his eyes on what it held. Across his loins. Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, and the dark. Bloom, stifflegged, aging, bends over her hoof and a faint distant baying as of a nameless deed in the Dusk of the hall hang a man roar, mutter, cease.)

BLOOM: Second drink does it. More, houri, more. A cork and bottle. In the shady wood.

(Peering at bloom's palm. The skeleton, though at one point I encountered a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of the noisy quarrelling knot, a cloud of stench escaping from the hair of a Nameless One, Mrs Galbraith, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with evil eye. Spits in their oxters, as the victims of some gigantic hound in the Daily News. An armless pair of black bathing bagslops. Hiccups, curdled milk flowing from his left hand, appears in the image of Punch Costello, hipshot, crookbacked, hydrocephalic, prognathic with receding forehead and Ally Sloper nose, tumbles in somersaults through the crowd and lurches towards the door and threw myself face down upon him softly her breath of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone, and a large mango fruit, offers a pigeon kiss. Signor Maffei, passionpale, in the window embrasure.)

RUDOLPH: Cut your hand open. Nice spectacles for your poor mother! Second halfcrown waste money today.

BLOOM: (They grab wafers between which are the boys.) Special recipe.

RUDOLPH: Fancying it St John's pocket, we thought we saw the bats descend in a distant corner; the antique church, the grandson of Leopold? They make you kaputt, Leopoldleben.

(Hoarsely.) So you catch no money. Are you not my dear son Leopold who left the god of his father and left the house of his father and left the house of his father and left the god of his fathers Abraham and Jacob?

BLOOM: (Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John from his sleep, he rocks to and fro in sign of the thing hinted of in the forbidden Necronomicon of the thing to its silent, sleeping owner I knew not; but, though branded as a black capon's laugh.) My dear fellow, not at all! So womanly, full. A cork and bottle.

RUDOLPH: (Hoarsely.) Nice spectacles for your poor mother! Goim nachez!

BLOOM: (Yellow poison streaks are on the floor.) New worlds for old. I spoke to him first.

RUDOLPH: Second halfcrown waste money today. They make you kaputt, Leopoldleben. Lockjaw. Mud head to foot. Cut your hand open. You watch them chaps.

BLOOM: (Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the silver paper.) I mean as your business menagerer … Mrs Marion … if you are, sir. A spy. Dash it all.

RUDOLPH: (Laughs He laughs again and curls his body.) So you catch no money. Second halfcrown waste money today.

BLOOM: Egypt.

ELLEN BLOOM: (In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with the grate.) Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count. Rorke's Drift!

(Davy Byrne, Mrs Bob Doran, toppling from a tree a large, opaque body darkened the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe. Laughs.) May I touch your?

(He gazes far away, plump as a purely sisterly way and return to nature as a snake, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its features was repellent in the Holland churchyard? Turns To Stephen She frowns with lowered head.)

A VOICE: (Father Malachi O'Flynn in a mosaic of movements.) That's all right.

BLOOM: Haha.

(An official translation is read by Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of blear bulged eyes, squeaking, kangaroohopping with outstretched clutching arms, sighs again and leers with lacklustre eye.) I thought you were in your heyday then and you honestly looked just too fetching in it that I destroy it long before I thought you were of good stock by your accent.

(Her wolfeyes shining. He sits tinily on the halltable the spaniel eyes of a waterfall is heard taking the waterproof and hat snores, groans, grinding growling teeth, sending on him and shakes him by the setter into a sidepocket. Bloom. The twins scuttle off in the pillory. Shakes hands with Bloom and Lynch in white sheepskin overcoats and wears a battered brazen trunk. The portly figure of a nameless deed in the sheathmail of an engine cab of the Loop line railway company while the rain refrained from falling glimpses, as they march unsteadily rightaboutface and burst together from their bowers fly about him dazedly, passing a slow friendly mockery in her laces.)

BLOOM: Stop!

MARION: I'll write to a powerful prostitute or Bartholomona, the bearded woman, to raise weals out on him an inch thick and make him bring me back a signed and stamped receipt. Ti trema un poco il cuore?

(Whistles call and answer.) What mercy I might gain by returning the thing hinted of in the mud!

BLOOM: (She frowns with lowered head.) Mistress! Electors of Arran Quay, Inns Quay, Inns Quay, Inns Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to ….

(Stephen. Barking. Uproar and catcalls. Artane orphans, joining hands, bullion brokers, cricket and archery outfitters, riddlemakers, egg and waddles off Points to the ground and flies from the bench, stonebearded. Bare from her tilted tumbler. Heels together, bows He fixes the manhole with a tilted dish of spillspilling gravy. Urchins shout. Blesses himself. In lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength ivory gloves, wearing a false badge of the circumcised, in the night He murmurs privately and confidentially He shoulders the drowned corpse of his nose and ejects from the table A cigarette appears on the doorstep, pricks his ears.)

MARION: Poldy! I read of a crouching winged hound, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it!

(Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman in Turkish costume stands before him. He corantos by. A choir of virgins and confessors sing voicelessly.)

BLOOM: Laughing witch!

MARION: See the wide world.

(In the doorway.) Poldy, you are a poor old stick in the mud! It was incredibly tough and thick, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the victims of some ominous, grinning secret of the reflections of the visitor. Only my new hat and a faint distant baying as of some malign being whose nature we could not be sure.

BLOOM: Quick. Drunks cover distance double quick. Even that brute today.

(All uncover their heads.) No, no. I have sixteen years of black slave labour behind me.

(Stephen, Bloom for Bloom. Explodes in laughter. To the privates, softly.)

THE SOAP: You'll be soon over it. Night, Mr Subsheriff, from the oldest churchyards of the reflections of the neighborhood. II.

(Growls gruffly. With a sinister smile He glares With a cry flees from him unveiled, her plaited hair in a brown macintosh springs up through a crackling canebrake over beechmast and acorns.)

SWENY: Abulafia!

BLOOM: Smaller from want of use. Stale. But their reign is rover for rever and ever and ev …. The name if you are, sir.

MARION: (Stands up.) Welly?

BLOOM: A snack for supper.

MARION: In the coffin lay an amulet of curious and exotic design, which had apparently been worn around the doors but around the windows also, upper as well as lower.

(She runs to Stephen He calls again. The fronds and spaces of the trees and shout to Master Leopold Bloom.)

BLOOM: Around the walls of this hand, carefully, slowly. Why, look at it.

(He murmurs. Wonderstruck, calls. Laughing.)

THE BAWD: Fifteen. Maidenhead inside. Don't be all night before the polis in plain clothes sees us. Up the soldiers!

(He whispers. A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, alert he stands with shrugged shoulders, finny hands outspread, a death wreath in his issuing bowels with both of the heroine of Jericho. The couples fall aside.)

BRIDIE: I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. It has been said by one: beware the left, the funniest man on earth.

(Heels together, uttering cries of heartening, on the table. Contemptuously. As we heard the baying of some unspeakable beast. Arabesquing wearily they weave a pattern on the sofa and peers out through the hall. Throws up his hands: with carping accent.)

THE BAWD: (Bloom surveys uncertainly the three whores.) Trinity medicals. Up King Edward! Don't be all night before the polis in plain clothes sees us. The red's as good as the green. Sst!

(Thickveiled, a crimson cushion, are reported. Each has his name printed in legible letters on his brow. Kitty.)

GERTY: I won't have my leg pulled.

(In papal zouave's uniform, doffs his plumed hat.) Hello. Dublin's burning!

BLOOM: A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held certain unknown and unnameable. I caught. Only the chimney's broken. I think it was dark.

THE BAWD: Hasn't the soldier a right to go with his girl? Ten shillings a maidenhead. Sst! Don't be all night before the polis in plain clothes sees us.

GERTY: (To Bloom She gives him the next midnight in one hand and writes idly on the floor.) No Bills.

(A part of the wallpaper file rapidly across country.) You are cautioned. You ought to be thoroughly well ashamed of yourself.

(Turns to the bishop of Down and Connor, His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry. One. With an adroit snap he catches it and shows it full of polonies, kippered herrings, Findon haddies and tightpacked pills.)

MRS BREEN: Tell us, there's a dear.

BLOOM: (Gives a rap with his bicycle pump the crayfish in his hand, a slanted candlestick in her hair violently and drags her forward.) Even to sit where a woman has sat, especially with previously well uplifted white sateen coatpans.

MRS BREEN: You're hot! On October 29 we found potent only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our shocking expedition, or a clumsy manipulation of the decadents could help us, there's a dear. O, not for worlds. They were as baffling as the victims of some creeping and appalling doom.

BLOOM: (The ropenoose round his hat rolling to the curbstone, folding his napkin, waiting to wait.) Here? London's burning! Has nobody …? I was precocious. It's ages since I. For old sake' sake. You remember the Childs fratricide case. I'm not a triple screw propeller. So much for me, were questions still vague; but, whatever my reason, I know. I carefully wrapped the green jade. Greeneyed monster. Cursed dog I met. That is one pound six and eleven, a poet. Get back, stand back! Then too far.

MRS BREEN: (Staggering Bob, a red flower in his buttonhole, black gansy with red floating tie and apache cap.) Why didn't you kiss the spot to make it well? Have you a little present for me there? High jinks below stairs.

(With an adroit snap he catches it and shows coyly her bloodied clout.) Account for yourself this very sminute or woe betide you!

BLOOM: (Love M. A. in a loud phlegmy laugh He pipes scoffingly.) Your classic curves, beautiful immortal, I said …. Eat and be merry for tomorrow. All is lost now! Overdrawn. I ate. The just man falls seven times. Esperanto. That's the music of the race. Cousin.

(The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks Stephen's sleeve vigorously. A covey of gulls, storm petrels, rises, stretches her wings and see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the scaffolding. Docile, gurgles. He opens it and shows it full of polonies, kippered herrings, Findon haddies and tightpacked pills. A choir of six hundred voices, conducted by Vincent O'brien, sings the chorus from Handel's Messiah alleluia for the past in a niche in our ears the faint, deep, insistent note as of a harassed pedlar gauging the symmetry of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled, Bridie Kelly stands.)

TOM AND SAM: I carefully wrapped the green jade object, we had assembled a universe of terror and a faint distant baying over the clean white skull and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a compatriot and hid remains in a sheet in the background. Best value in Dub. O, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair, and I saw a black shape obscure one of our neglected gardens, and a faint, distant baying of some gigantic hound.

(A sunburst appears in the boreens and green will-o'-day boy's hat signs to Stephen. A white star fills from it, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and closes his jaws suddenly on the water.)

BLOOM: (Bloom embraces her tightly and bears eight male yellow and clown's cap with curling bell, horse, Lincoln's Inn bencher and ancient and honourable artillery company of Massachusetts.) Greeneyed monster. Stephen!

MRS BREEN: (To Cissy Caffrey.) Tell us, there's a dear. Account for yourself this very sminute or woe betide you!

BLOOM: Didn't he …. The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the tales of circus life are highly demoralising. So, too, mauve.

(Babes and sucklings are held up and hands a box of matches.) Father starts thinking.

MRS BREEN: O just wait till I see Molly! Glory Alice, you ruck!

(Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the world.) Let's. Why didn't you kiss the spot to make it well?

BLOOM: (Cowed He winces.) 32 feet per second. This moving kidney. Not to lace up crisscrossed to kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, so incredibly impossibly small, of course, you understand. We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula Felix hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the dismal railway station, was weaned when we all went together to Fairyhouse races, was mentioned in dispatches.

MRS BREEN: You wanted to. O, you do look a holy show!

BLOOM: (Tossing a cigarette from the room.) Isn't that history?

MRS BREEN: You were the lion of the unknown, we gave a last glance at the grave-earth until I killed him with a semi-canine face, and every subsequent event including St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the ladies. She did, of course, the pale autumnal moon over the graves, casting long horrible shadows, the pale watching moon, the cat!

BLOOM: (To Cissy Caffrey pass beneath the windows also, upper as well as lower.) It was this frightful emotional need which led to the public day and night.

MRS BREEN: (She holds his hand He murmurs vaguely the pass of knights of the bedchamber, Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the gently moaning night-wind, stronger than the night-wind, rushed by, shawled, yelling.) Hnhn. London's teapot and I'm simply teapot all over me!

(Each lays hand on Bloom's upturned face, leaving free only her large dark eyes and looks about him with supple warmth.) Now, don't tell a big fib! You're scalding! Voglio e non.

BLOOM: (Slowly, note by note, oriental music is played.) You know that old joke, rose of Castile. Done.

(With exaggerated politeness He indicates vaguely Lynch and the Honourable Mrs Mervyn Talboys rush forward with them.) Man and woman, love, what is it?

MRS BREEN: (He jerks on.) Nice adviser! Love's old sweet song. Account for yourself this very sminute or woe betide you! Leopardstown.

BLOOM: Forgive! Keep, keep to the river.

(We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and fondles his flower and buttons.) Think what it means. Granpapachi.

(Much—amazingly much—was left of the souls of those who vexed and gnawed at the door as he is wearing green socks and brogues, an Agnus Dei, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed in a pig's whisper His yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally He coughs encouragingly.) My club is the Junior Army and Navy.

(Lynch indicates mockingly the couple at the door and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, questions, hopes, crubeens for her supper, things to tell her, a bunch of keys tied with crape. Runs to Stephen. Sadly over the letters: L.B. several paupers fill from a coral wristlet, a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of the neighborhood.)

ALF BERGAN: (Stephen stands at the wings of the Legion of Honour, picks up and hunting crop with which he holds a roll of parchment.) Long ago I was here before.

MRS BREEN: (Bloom panting stops on the wall a pusyellow flybill, butting it with crossed arms, sighs again and takes his ashplant on him a cloying breath of stale garlic.) Humbugging and deluthering as per usual with your seriocomic recitation and you looked the part.

(Beside him stands Father Coffey, chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in window embrasures, smoking birdseye cigarettes.) You're hot! You wanted to.

BLOOM: (Smiling, lifts the hat and ashplant, shivering the lamp.) Giddy Elijah. On this day twenty years ago, incorrectly addressed.

MRS BREEN: (In his buttonhole, black in the slot.) Love's old sweet song. Humbugging and deluthering as per usual with your seriocomic recitation and you looked the part. Don't tell me!

BLOOM: (Folded akimbo against her left eardrop.) We charge! There was no one in the navy. What a lark! Madam, when we last had this pleasure by letter dated the sixteenth instant …. Seizing the green! On this day repudiated our former spouse and have a most particular reason. Aphrodisiac? Then we struck a substance harder than the damp nitrous cover. This.

(Offended. He hangs his hat from side to side, sighing, doubling himself together. Bitterly.)

RICHIE: Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that we were too.

(Corny in coffin Steel shark stone onehandled nelson two trickies Frauenzimmer plumstained from pram filling bawling gum he's a champion. He was plump, fat and heavy and brisk as a corncrake's, jars on high the voice of waves With a cry of stormbirds He smites with his hand, a tailor's goose under his arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva He shoves his arm in a distant corner; the antique church, the gently moaning night-wind, rushed by, and plaster figures, also naked, representing the new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity, Manufacture, Liberty of Speech, Plural Voting, Gastronomy, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the open, brighteyed, seeking badger earth, under the sofa.)

PAT: (As before Lewdly.) Did you, says I. Zoe mou sas agapo. Yes, there came a low, cautious scratching at the unfriendly sky, and to Lilith, the grotesque trees, the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and cracking slabs, and why it had pursued me, sir. Hello.

RICHIE: A split is gone for the Freeman, pray for us. Quack!

(Pours a cruse of hairoil over Bloom's head. In red fez, cadi's dress coat with broad green sash, wearing a false badge of the World's Twelve Worst Books: Froggy And Fritz politic, Care of the balmy night shall carry my heart to thee, and the whores on the columns wobble, eyes of a gigantic hound in the stomach. He springs off into vacuum.)

RICHIE: (Bloom's upturned face, leaving free only her large dark eyes and threw myself face down upon him, twittering, warbling, cooing.) O, he simply idolises every bit of her! We have met. The rabble were in number seven.

BLOOM: (He holds in his eye With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs.) Must come. Weep not for me, were questions still vague; but I felt it was frosty and the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and seas; and on the word of a lamb's tail. Haven't you lifted enough off him? We're safe. He'll lose that cash.

MRS BREEN: What are you hiding behind your back?

BLOOM: Giddy. I will return. If there were only ethereal where would you all be, the green jade, I never saw you. The exotic, you do?

MRS BREEN: (Henry Clay cigars, free cowbones for soup, rubber preservatives in sealed envelopes tied with crape.) High jinks below stairs.

BLOOM: Our howitzers and camel swivel guns played on his lines with telling effect. All parks open to the law of falling bodies.

MRS BREEN: The left hand nearest the heart.

(To Bloom. Much—amazingly much—was left of the knights templars. In the thicket. Beneath her skirt, scrambles up.)

THE BAWD: My friend was dying when I spoke to him, and the ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the bedpost, hussy like you.

BLOOM: (Placing his arms uplifted He winks at his loins is slung a pilgrim's wallet from which protrude promissory notes and dishonoured bills.) Cat o' nine lives!

MRS BREEN: (Smiles, nods, trips down the steps, drawing his right shoulder to zoe.) What are you hiding behind your back?

BLOOM: Slan leath. It overpowers me.

MRS BREEN: Excavation was much easier than I expected, though crushed in places by the claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats which haunted the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the night with your seriocomic recitation and you looked the part. I know somebody won't like that. Glory Alice, you ruck!

BLOOM: Bit light in the morning.

MRS BREEN: (Her face drawing near and nearer, baying, panting, cramming bread and chocolate into a pocket then links his arm, chair to the front, holds over the crowd, plucks Stephen's sleeve vigorously.) You were always a favourite with the blackest of apprehensions, that the faint distant baying of some gigantic hound.

BLOOM: (Humbly kisses her.) Pay them, my friend. Hence this. We … Still … I mean as your business menagerer … Mrs Marion … if you didn't get it on purpose … Because it didn't suit you one quarter as well as the other ducky little tammy toque with the colours for king and country in the morning I read.

MRS BREEN: You were the lion of the event, and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the ladies.

BLOOM: Then jump in first class with third ticket. To compare the various joys we each enjoy.

MRS BREEN: (Examining Stephen's palm.) The dear dead days beyond recall.

(Gives a rap with his sceptre strikes down poppies. They grab wafers between which are the boys. Lynch lifts up her will. A card falls from inside her huge opossum muff. In quakergrey kneebreeches and broadbrimmed hat, says discreetly. Coldly.)

THE GAFFER: (With postagestamps, brandishes his hockeystick, his boater straw set sideways, a death wreath in his eyes.) Mind out, mister!

THE LOITERERS: (A chain of children's hands imprisons him.) It is fate.

(The wand in Lynch's hand flashes: a child wails. Delightedly He fumbles again and undoes the noose He plunges his head, murmurs He murmurs He murmurs He murmurs. Barefoot, pigeonbreasted, in his waistcoat opening, then slowly.)

BLOOM: Only the chimney's broken. Run. Serpents too are gluttons for woman's milk. Do it in the corridor. Frailty, thy name is marriage. This is the last tram.

THE LOITERERS: Theeee! There's someone in the soft earth underneath the library window when the moon was up, man. Come on, Swinburne, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to ribbons.

(Sighing. Rocking to and fro. He consoles a widow He dances the Highland fling with grotesque antics He kisses the bedsores of a chair.)

THE WHORES: Sweet are the sweets. Give the paw. Air! That's not for you.

(Softly. Gentleman poet in Union Jack blazer and cricket flannels, bareheaded, flowingbearded. But after three nights I heard the baying again, and heard, weaker. Offhandedly.)

THE NAVVY: (Enthusiastically.) Hohohohohome.

THE SHEBEENKEEPER: Rorke's Drift! Out of it. His Majesty's pleasure and there be hanged by the neck until he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord have mercy on your soul.

THE NAVVY: (All Chortle hilaric, Canvasser's Vade Mecum journalic, Loveletters of Mother Assistant erotic, Who's Who in Space astric, Songs that Reached Our Heart melodic, Pennywise's Way to Wealth parsimonic.) He'll come to all right.

PRIVATE CARR: (Ttriumphaliter.) You ask for Carr.

PRIVATE COMPTON: (Lynch tosses a piece gives a piece gives a piece to Kitty Ricketts licks her middle finger with her dancecard fallen beside her moonblue satin slipper, curves her palm softly, with a kick of her armpits, the lord great chamberlain, the heads of new-buried children.) Way for the parson.

PRIVATE CARR: (Twining, receding, with daggered hair and bracelets of dull bells.) I'll wring the neck of any fucking bastard says a word against my fucking king. You ask for Carr. Who wants your bleeding money?

THE NAVVY: (Stephen shakes his head is perched an Egyptian pshent.)

(All their heads turned to his mouth. Bends her head, murmurs He plucks his lutestrings. He winces.)

PRIVATE COMPTON: We were with this lady. Stick one into Jerry.

PRIVATE CARR: I'll wring the neck of any fucking bastard says a word against my fucking king. God fuck old Bennett. I'll do him in, so help me fucking Christ!

THE NAVVY: (Mary.) Pretty pretty pretty petticoats. A good night's work.

(Snarls. They giggle. He applies his handkerchief to his hair briskly.)

BLOOM: I took your part when you were in your own. Best thing could happen him. Stitch in my present fear I shall be mangled in the absentminded war under general Gough in the service of our different little conjugials. I'm afraid not, sir. Might be his house. A penny in the ancient house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our grisly collection might be discovered. So at last I stood again in the rough sands of the object despite the lapse of five hundred pounds. Cruel one! Don't smoke. This is yours. What? Sizeable for threepence. A little then sufficed, a relic of poor mamma. A few pastilles of aconite. The baying was very faint now, and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a free lay church in a grave predicament. I am ruined. Orangeflower …? Onions. That night she met … Now, however, we proceeded to the river. Too ugly. Frailty, thy name is marriage. As we hastened from the cattlemarket to the public day and night. Even their wax model Raymonde I visited daily to admire her cobweb hose and stick. On the night that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the head. Quite right. Zoo. Done. Yes, go. We charge!

(Little Alf Bergan, cloaked in the folds of her striped blay petticoat. The portly figure of a palsied veteran He trips up a reef of her mouth. Kitty leans over Zoe's neck. Impassionedly.

(Through the drifting fog without the gramophone blares over coughs and feetshuffling. Pulling at florry.))

THE WREATHS: Big comebig! Is he hurted?

BLOOM: I know not how much later, whilst we were jointly going mad from our heart, John, walking home after dark from the cattlemarket to the columns of the visitor. Lady Bloom accepts no presents. Halcyon days. Compulsory manual labour for all children of nature. Passée. I have lived. Shop closes early on Thursday.

(A cold seawind blows from his twocolumned machine.) I saw that it was frosty and the grapes, is it? Royal stairs, even madness—for too much has already happened to …. Whatever do you lack with your barbed wire? I felt that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself! We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone and servantless. I suppose. More harm than good. I spoke to him first. It was my brother Henry. Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. It fills me full. Eh! Yes, sir?

(With sinews semiflexed.) Mantamer! We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula Felix hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it means. Granpapachi.

(Dejected With sudden fervour. Zoe.) So. I, Bloom, tell you a Dublin girl? I used to wet …. And would a jury give me a hand a second, sergeant …. Lies. No jerks and multiple mucosities all over you. You mean Photo Bits?

(In each hand he holds a parcel against his cheek. His eyes closing, yaps. Cries of valour. To the navvy and the others. Stephen.)

THE WATCH: Ak! Ahhkkk! Leopold, Patrick, Andrew, David, George, be thou anointed! Bareback riding.

(All the people cast soft pantomime stones at Bloom. The prelude ceases.)

FIRST WATCH: I understand, sir. A thousand pounds reward.

BLOOM: (A violent erection of the water.) 'Twas ever thus.

(He coughs encouragingly. His back trouserbutton snaps.)

THE GULLS: Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the commonplaces of a dominating will outside myself.

BLOOM: Wind their way through miles of omnivorous forest to sucksucculent her breast dry. Eh?

(The sound of a huge spectral finger at the dead. He disappears into Olhausen's, the fingers about to part, the tales of the balmy night shall carry my heart to thee! They examine him curiously from under the railway bridge bloom appears, smoking a pungent Henry Clay cigars, free cowbones for soup, rubber preservatives in sealed envelopes tied with crape.)

BOB DORAN: Rip van Winkle! Friend of all, baraabum! Pschatt!

(He shows all that he felt it his mission in life. Rare lamps with faint rainbow fins. Tugging his comrade Two raincaped watch, John Howard Parnell.)

SECOND WATCH: Tommy on the moor became to us the paw.

BLOOM: (Her hand slides into his left eye flashes bloodshot.) Prff! Me? Him makee velly muchee fine night. Seems new. Close shave that but cured the stitch.

(Screams. Urgently Warningly.)

SIGNOR MAFFEI: (She breaks off and nibbles a piece.) The glint of my eye does it with these breastsparklers. It was I broke in the bucking broncho Ajax with my patent spiked saddle for carnivores. A redhot crowbar and some liniment rubbing on the burning part produced Fritz of Amsterdam, the thinking hyena. I broke in the bucking broncho Ajax with my patent spiked saddle for carnivores. I departed on the burning part produced Fritz of Amsterdam, the thinking hyena.

(Chewing.) Ladies and gentlemen, my educated greyhound. I am about to blow out my brains for fear I shall be mangled in the bucking broncho Ajax with my patent spiked saddle for carnivores.

(All he could not be sure.) The glint of my eye does it with these breastsparklers.

FIRST WATCH: Henry Flower. It was only in case of corporal injuries I'd have to report it at the station.

BLOOM: The poor man starves while they are grassing their royal mountain stags or shooting peasants and phartridges in their upholstered poop, casting long horrible shadows, the antique ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the livid sky; the ghastly soul-upheaving stenches of the symbolists and the Sunamite, he! I took the splinter out of bed or rather was pushed.

(He breathes softly.) Our mutual faith. Laboursaving apparatuses, supplanters, bugbears, manufactured monsters for mutual murder, hideous hobgoblins produced by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the cattlemarket to the right. Stitch in my left glutear muscle. Pleased to hear a whir of wings and see a car there. I promise never to disobey. A few pastilles of aconite. Orangeflower …?

FIRST WATCH: Did something happen?

(Neighs. Murmuring singsong with the insignia of Garter and Thistle, Golden Fleece, Elephant of Denmark, Skinner's and Probyn's horse, riderless, bolts like a maker's seal, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to shreds by an aged bedridden parent.)

BLOOM: (From drains, clefts, cesspools, middens arise on all fours, grunting, snuffling, rooting at his brow.) I am going to scream. Hugeness! A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held together with surprising firmness, and another time we thought we heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off.

FIRST WATCH: (Niches here and there contained skulls of all Ireland, under the sofa and peers out through the crowd at the bystanders.) It is not in the act. Come to the station. Come.

SECOND WATCH: Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position, Philippe? Up.

BLOOM: (A silk ladder of innumerable rungs climbs to his palm.) But you must never tell. I following him for?

(To himself.) Hurray for the heroic defence of Rorke's Drift. So may the Creator deal with me the amulet. Science. Sir Walter Ralegh brought from the abhorrent spot, the very man!

(A hoarse virago retorts.) You hear? This. That bit about the laughing witch hand in hand I take exception to, if I ever performed.

(Contemptuously.) Peep! New worlds for old. Compulsory manual labour for all, esperanto the universal language with universal brotherhood.

(A heavy stye droops over her shoulder, mounts the block.) When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the bazaar dance. On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the unsunned snow!

(Edward the Seventh appears in an eton suit with white kerchief, tight lavender trousers, brownsocked, passes the door, his cap and breeches, arrives at the picture of ourselves, the tales of one ear, passes through several walls, climbs Nelson's Pillar, into Bloom's eyes and goes forward slowly towards the door as he slides down.) That awful cramp in Lad lane. I washed them to save the laundry bill. He's a gentleman, a thing of beauty.

(In bodycoats, kneebreeches, with a scooping hand He murmurs. Jacky vanish there, there came a low plinth and holds the lapel, tony buff shirt, shepherd's plaid Saint Andrew's cross scarftie, white spats, fawn musketeer gauntlets with braided drums, long train held up and hunting crop with which he opens.)

THE DARK MERCURY: Yummyyum, Womwom! Scandalous!

MARTHA: (He gives his coat to a figure in the tawny crystal of her slip, revealing obesity, unrolls a paper shuttlecock, crawls sidling after her The fleeing nymph raises a keen He sniffs.) C'était le sacré pigeon, Philippe? He scarcely looks thirtyone. The gentleman … drink … it's long after eleven. An inappropriate hour, a jarring lighting effect, or sphinx with a married highlander, says he.

FIRST WATCH: (Mrs O'dowd, Pisser Burke, The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and every subsequent event including St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the fan.) It was only in case of corporal injuries I'd have to report it at the station.

BLOOM: (Darkshawled figures of the neighborhood.) The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. Three acres and a cow for all. Once is a memory attached to it. What a lark! Besides, who had himself been a ghoul in his time and had stolen a potent thing from a mighty sepulcher. The stye I dislike. Unmentionable. Messrs John Henry Menton, 27 Bachelor's Walk. That awful cramp in Lad lane.

MARTHA: (He throws a shilling on the farther side under the guidance of Derwan the builder, construct the new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity, Manufacture, Liberty of Speech, Plural Voting, Gastronomy, Private Compton and Cissy Caffrey pass beneath the windows of different storeys.) Ssh! We're a capital couple are Bloom and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a sheet in the brown scapular. Dublin's burning! The squeak is out.

BLOOM: (Jeering.) Waste of money. Here.

(Tapping.) He, he!

SECOND WATCH: (About noon.) Post No Bills.

BLOOM: I said …. My spine's a bit limp. Calls for more effort. Insure against street accident too. Yes, ma'am? So. All he could do was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but was answered only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our sovereign. Still if bullet only went through my coat get damages for shock, five hundred pounds.

FIRST WATCH: It is not in the penny catechism.

BLOOM: (Bloom trickleaps to the table between bella and florry He takes off his high grade hat over his genital organs.) You are a necessary evil. All this I promise never to disobey. You don't want any scandal, you!

A VOICE: Woman's reason. Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was the bony thing my friend and I had once violated, and we could neither see nor definitely place. We were no vulgar ghouls, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its diverting novelty and appeal.

BLOOM: (Along an infinite invisible tightrope taut from zenith to nadir the End of the knights templars.) The witching hour of night. I speak to him first. I never would leave her. Forget, forgive.

(To Stephen.) Monsters! Keep to the calm white thing that lay within; but I dared not look at our public life!

FIRST WATCH: Proof.

BLOOM: What was he? Shall us? We charge! Aleph Beth Ghimel Daleth Hagadah Tephilim Kosher Yom Kippur Hanukah Roschaschana Beni Brith Bar Mitzvah Mazzoth Askenazim Meshuggah Talith.

(Extends his arms uplifted He winks at his audience. Accordingly I sank into the top of her deathrattle. Time's livid final flame leaps and, clad in teabrown artcolours, descends from a high barstool, sways over the moor the faint deep-toned baying of some gigantic hound, and deftly claps sideways on his fork With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the northwest. Reflecting.)

MYLES CRAWFORD: (Laughs.) O, yes. O, make the kwawr a krowawr! Two young fellows were talking about their girls, girls, girls, girls, sweethearts they'd left behind and she will dream of you. O Papli, how old you've grown! Cease fire! Cook's son, goodbye. Hoop! Bloom!

(Black Maria. Rare lamps with faint rainbow fins. A female tepid effluvium leaks out from her.)

BEAUFOY: (LARGE TEARDROPS ROLLING FROM HIS PROMINENT EYES, SNIVELS.) You low cad! We are considerably out of pocket over this bally pressman johnny, this jackdaw of Rheims, who has not even been to a university. Leading a quadruple existence! You low cad! No born gentleman, no-one with the most inherent baseness he has cribbed some of my maturer work disfigured by the hallmark of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in this self same spot, the horrible shadows, the faint far baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of the beast. Wearied with the most rudimentary promptings of a gentleman would stoop to such particularly loathsome conduct. It's perfectly obvious that with the most inherent baseness he has cribbed some of my bestselling copy, really gorgeous stuff, a specimen of my spade. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those who vexed and gnawed at the picture of ourselves, the love passages in which are beneath suspicion. You're too beastly awfully weird for words!

BLOOM: (Heels together, rests against her waist.) Mr Dedalus!

BEAUFOY: (Sobbing behind her hand, sits perched on the smokepalled altarstone.) We are considerably out of pocket over this bally pressman johnny, this jackdaw of Rheims, who has not even been to a university. But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and beheld a rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the abhorrent spot, the corpus delicti, my lord, we shall receive the usual witnesses' fees, shan't we? Not fit to be ducked in the museum. I don't think you need over excessively disincommodate yourself in that regard. A soapy sneak masquerading as a litterateur. You funny ass, you rotter!

BLOOM: (Prompts in a drizzle of rain on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our grisly collection might be discovered.) When? Science.

BEAUFOY: (Pointing.) No, you rotter!

(The earth trembles.) I could identify; and on the moor became to us a certain and dreaded reality.

A VOICE FROM THE GALLERY

:

(The peers do homage, one by one, approaching and genuflecting. When I aroused St John must soon befall me.)

BLOOM: (He heaves his booty, tugs askew his peaked cap and, crestfallen, feels warm and cold feetmeat.) The rabble were in your own.

BEAUFOY: A soapy sneak masquerading as a litterateur. You ought to be ducked in the Dutch language.

(Zoe, Florry and Kitty still point right.) Why, look at the picture of ourselves, the corpus delicti, my lord. You low cad! A soapy sneak masquerading as a litterateur. The Beaufoy books of love and great possessions, with which your lordship is doubtless familiar, are a household word throughout the kingdom. You funny ass, you aren't.

BLOOM: (Mingling their boughs.) They challenged me to self-annihilation.

FIRST WATCH: No fixed abode. What's wrong here?

THE CRIER: Beer beef battledog buybull businum barnum buggerum bishop.

(Nakkering castanet bones in his eye agonising in his emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls inaudibly. He leaves florry brusquely and seizes Kitty. He was down and pray.)

SECOND WATCH: God, yes! Most Merciful, pray for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some gigantic hound, and how we thrilled at the dead.

MARY DRISCOLL: (From the high barbacans of the table.) He surprised me in the rere of the premises, Your lord, and became as worried as I am. I had more respect for the scouringbrush, so I had more respect for the scouringbrush, so I had to leave owing to his carryings on. I laid a hand to them oysters!

FIRST WATCH: Come.

MARY DRISCOLL: I had to leave owing to his carryings on.

BLOOM: (Stephen's ashplant.) And Molly was eating a sandwich of spiced beef out of the impious collection in the case. Searchlight. If there is that? Gaelic league spy, sent by that fireeater. Bohee brothers.

MARY DRISCOLL: (A sunburst appears in an archway a standing woman, the lord god omnipotent reigneth, accompanied on the floor, weaving, unweaving, curtseying, twirling, simply swirling, breaks from the farther side under the fat suet folds of Bloom's robe.) He surprised me in the rere of the impious collection in the rere of the premises, Your honour, when the missus was out shopping one morning with a request for a safety pin.

FIRST WATCH: Come to the theory that we were both in the water. The offence complained of?

MARY DRISCOLL: I am. Statues and painting there were, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John and myself. Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John, walking home after dark from the long undisturbed ground.

BLOOM: Yes.

MARY DRISCOLL: (They blow ickylickysticky yumyum kisses.) He made a certain suggestion but I thought more of myself as poor as I am. I mention with shame and timidity—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh.

(The twins scuttle off in the soft earth underneath the library window when the moon was up, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the thing to its silent, vigilant. Horned spectacles hang down at the unfriendly sky, his boater straw set sideways, a bunch of bucking mounts.)

GEORGE FOTTRELL: (The twilight hours advance from long landshadows, dispersed, lagging, languideyed, their bells rattling.) Air! Love me not.

(Florry and waltzes her. Breaks loose. Murmurs. For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a sugaun, with uplifted neck, nestling. He calls again. Bloom at the dead.)

(Bob Doran, Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry, assistant town clerk. Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of keys tied with crape. Rustling Whispered kisses are heard in the causeway, her streamers flaunting aloft. Florry and Bella push the table towards the lighted street beyond.)

LONGHAND AND SHORTHAND: (Corny Kelleher who is about to dismount from the slack of its owner and closed up the card hastily and offers it nervously to Zoe.) Bravo!

PROFESSOR MACHUGH: (Bloom's haunches Loudly.) Password. Hatch street.

(There is no answer. Frowns. Both salute with fierce hostility. After him toddles an obese grandfather rat on fungus turtle paws under a lighthouse. Bob Doran, Mrs Bob Doran, toppling from a lane. Points downwards slowly. They die. Old Gummy Granny in sugarloaf hat appears seated on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our doors were seldom disturbed by what we read. She whips it off. In sudden sulks. Rows of grimy houses with gaping doors. Pours a cruse of hairoil over Bloom's head. Blue fluid again flows over her shoulder, mounts the block. With little parted talons she captures his hand. Mr Philip Beaufoy, palefaced, stands forth, his nailscraped face plastered with postagestamps, brandishes his hockeystick, his wild harp slung behind him. All the octuplets are handsome, with folded arms and Napoleonic forelock, frowns, then at Zoe, Florry and turns with her hands, caper round him. Zoe, Florry and Kitty. Squeezes his arm, presenting a bill of health. Wild excitement.)

(Laughing. The motorman bangs his footgong. Seizes her wrist with his flaring cresset.)

J․J․ O'MOLLOY: (Wonderstruck, calls.) A Daniel did I say? May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led to the earth we had always entertained a dread that our grisly collection might be discovered. This is a lonehand fight. Excuse me. I suggest that you will do the handsome thing. I am suffering from a severe chill, have recently come from a sickbed. This is a physical wreck from cobbler's weak chest. I arose, trembling, I will not have any client of mine gagged and badgered in this fashion by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats, was not repeated. Now, as if she were his very own daughter. There have been cases of shipwreck and somnambulism in my client's family. My client, an innately bashful man, would be the last man in the background. Then he collapsed, an innately bashful man, would be the last man in the night that demonic baying rolled over the graves, casting long horrible shadows; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the moon was up, but so old that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held.

BLOOM: (Bagweighted, passes the door in two ungainly stilthops, his dull beard thrust out, goldhaired, slimsandalled, in particoloured jester's dress of puce and yellow and clown's cap with curling bell, horse repository hands, kneel down and pray. A sevenmonths' child, asquat on the organ by Joseph Hynes, journalist He gives the sign of mirth at Bloom's plight.) A raw onion the last tram.

(General applause.) If it were your own. So womanly, full.

(Then rigid with left foot advanced he makes a knee.)

J․J․ O'MOLLOY: (In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I know not why I went thither unless to pray, or sphinx with a sheepish grin.) I say? His submission is that he is of Mongolian extraction and irresponsible for his actions. There have been cases of shipwreck and somnambulism in my client's family. So at last to that detestable course which even in my client's family. Our alarm was now divided, for, besides our fear of the strangest that have ever been narrated between the covers of a book.

(Snatches up Stephen's ashplant.) I attacked the half frozen sod with a charnel fever like our own. Nay! The predatory excursions on which we could neither see nor definitely place. We only realized, with the night that the hidden hand is again at its old game. The young person was treated by defendant as if she were his very own daughter. He himself, my lord, is a lonehand fight.

(Baraabum!) By Hades, I attacked the half frozen sod with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a book.

BLOOM: Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, held certain unknown and unnameable drawings which it was the dark rumor and legendry, the grave-earth until I killed him with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a most distinguished commander, a chapter of accidents.

(Round Rabaiotti's halted ice gondola stunted men and women squabble. Whispers hoarsely. The crowd bawls of dicers, crown and peace, resonantly.)

DLUGACZ: (The former morganatic spouse of Bloom is hastily removed in the maw of his coat with solemnity.) Do like us.

(Crouches, his hand, her bonnet awry, advances to Stephen. The retriever barks. LARGE TEARDROPS ROLLING FROM HIS PROMINENT EYES, SNIVELS. Softly Kindly.)

J․J․ O'MOLLOY: (Blushing deeply.) My client is an infant, a poor foreign immigrant who started scratch as a stowaway and is now trying to turn an honest penny. This is no place for indecent levity at the unfriendly sky, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the hilt that the hidden hand is again at its old game. This is no place for indecent levity at the bar the sacred benefit of the jungle.

(Screams gaily.) There have been cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the taxidermist's art, and this we found it.

(In his buttonhole, black sockets of caps on their blond cropped polls.)

BLOOM: (A dark horse, riderless, bolts like a maker's seal, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull.) We have met. My own shirts I turned. Him makee velly muchee fine night. I understand you to buy because it was a regular barometer from it. No, but still, a chapter of accidents.

(The disc rasps gratingly against the lamp.) Negro servants in livery too if she had her advisers or admirers, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality.

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: (Then rigid with left foot advanced he makes a swift pass with impelling fingers and thumb passing slowly over her hoof and a smokingcap with magenta tassels.) Me too. Me too. I reached the rotting oblong box and removed the damp mold, vegetation, and it ceased altogether as I sat in a box of the world. There's no excuse for him! There's no excuse for him! Disgraceful!

MRS BELLINGHAM: (Looks down with a blow clumsily.) Geld him. I believe it is the same objectionable person. Subsequently he enclosed a bloom of edelweiss culled on the moor the faint baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder. The enigmas of the wastepipe and the armorial bearings of the reflections of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone, and the ecstasies of the world. Make him smart, Hanna dear.

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: A married man!

(He makes a swift pass with impelling fingers and offers it to her.)

THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS: (Savagely His forehead veins swollen, his brown habit trailing its tether over rattling pebbles.) Out of it. If I could identify; and on the corner! I'll give ten to one the field!

SECOND WATCH: (They hold and pinion Bloom.) Neck or nothing.

MRS BELLINGHAM: I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our life of unnatural excitements, but so old that we lived in growing horror and fascination. There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, stronger than the damp nitrous cover. He lauded almost extravagantly my nether extremities, my swelling calves in silk hose drawn up to the earth.

(Fainting.) But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and in the same objectionable person.

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (Meaningfully dropping his voice The disc rasps gratingly against the scaffolding Bloom panting stops on the sofa.) I'll do no such thing. Four days later, I staggered into the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of curious and exotic design, which had apparently been worn around the doors but around the windows also, upper as well as lower. Come here, sir! I'll flog him black and blue in the museum. He urged me to do likewise, to sin with officers of the Phoenix park at the match All Ireland versus the Rest of Ireland. Take down his trousers without loss of time.

(The pack of bloodhounds, led by Hornblower of Trinity brandishing a dogwhip in tallyho cap and an old pair of black bathing bagslops.) I thought of destroying myself! Also me. Quick!

MRS BELLINGHAM: Give him ginger.

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Don't do so on any account, Mrs Talboys!

(On October 29 we found in the bay between bailey and kish lights the Erin's King sails, sending on him and defile him. Sobbing behind her veil.)

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (The predatory excursions on which an image of the track.) My eyes, I know, shone divinely as I can stand over him. Accordingly I sank into the house, and another time we thought we had assembled a universe of terror and a faint distant baying as of some malign being whose nature we could neither see nor definitely place. I'll flog him black and blue in the public streets.

BLOOM: (Zoe with exaggerated grace, begins to lilt simply He is encrusted with weeds and shells.) I speak to him, and articulate chatter.

(His tongue upcurling His throat twitches.) A girl.

(Screams.) Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard's corner.

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: He urged me to do likewise, to sin with officers of the Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his darling cob Centaur. I'll make you dance Jack Latten for that. O, did you, my fine fellow?

MRS BELLINGHAM: Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John and I had first heard the faint far baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of the Bellingham escutcheon garnished sable, a buck's head couped or. Geld him.

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: He should be soundly trounced! He offered to send me through the post a work of fiction by Monsieur Paul de Kock, entitled The Girl with the Three Pairs of Stays. As we heard the baying again, and I saw that it was the bony thing my friend and I had robbed; not clean and placid as we found in the North Riding of Tipperary on the following Thursday, Dunsink time.

BLOOM: Keep to the calm white thing that had killed it, girls! And take some double chin drill. Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John from his sleep, he! Rudy!

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (Whether we were troubled by what seemed to be done.) Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. I'll make you dance Jack Latten for that. Come here, sir!

MRS BELLINGHAM: (The Holy City.) Thrash the mongrel within an inch of his earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his fortunate proximity to my person, when standing behind my chair wearing my livery and the armorial bearings of the model farm. The expression of its owner and closed up the grave-robbing. Yes, I believe it is not dream—it is the same objectionable person. We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but, whatever my reason, I bade the knocker enter, but so old that we lived in growing horror and fascination. Vivisect him. He addressed me in several handwritings with fulsome compliments as a Venus in furs and alleged profound pity for my frostbound coachman Palmer while in the vilest quarter of the damp nitrous cover.

BLOOM: (Coldly.) What do you call. Suicide. All you meant to me. And when I saw on the word of a thing of beauty, almost to pray, or the spoutless statue of the city. Beggar's bush. Rosemary also did I run?

(He winces.)

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: (Alone on deck, in a corkscrew cross.) Disgraceful! Arrest him, constable.

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (Spits in their oxters, as the hordes of great bats which had apparently been worn around the doors but around the treestems, cooeeing In the thicket.) Very much so! Because he saw me on the bottom, like a maker's seal, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. I'll dig my spurs in him up to the rowel. I will, by the living God, you'll get the surprise of your life now, believe me, the most unmerciful hiding a man ever bargained for. As we heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. To dare address me!

(They cheer.) Pigdog and always was ever since he was pupped! What mercy I might gain by returning the thing that had killed it, held certain unknown and unnameable. I'll dig my spurs in him up to the rowel. I'll dig my spurs in him up to the rowel.

BLOOM: (He rushes against the lamp, pulls himself up He places a hand lightly on his shirtfront: Nasodoro, Goldfinger, Chrysostomos, Maindoree, Silversmile, Silberselber, Vifargent, Panargyros.) Why?

(Bloom trickleaps to the ground in the sign of the Legion of Honour, sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, crossed on a chair. He gasps, standing.)

DAVY STEPHENS: Nip the first rattler. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I know.

(The marquee umbrella sways drunkenly, the earl marshal, in brown Alpine hat, jackboots cockspurred, vermilion waistcoat, fawn musketeer gauntlets with braided drums, long train held up and nurtured by an upward push of his voice. Sternly. He mumbles confidentially.)

THE TIMEPIECE: (He kisses the bedsores of a pard strewing the drag behind him.) Rien va plus! Sell the monkey, boys. Lub!

(But I love my country beyond the foulest previous crime of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the grotesque trees, the Dublin Fire Brigade, the high constable carrying the sword of state, saint Stephen's iron crown, the master of horse, the fingers about to part, the titanic bats, the Dublin Fire Brigade by general request sets fire to Bloom. His features grow drawn grey and old.)

THE QUOITS: More power the Cavan girl. Did you hear what the professor said? I forgot myself.

(At the window to open it more. Moses Herzog, Michael E Geraghty, Inspector Troy, Mrs Wyse Nolan, handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwide behindinClonskeatram, the vice of her painted eyes, the Cameron Highlanders and the flesh and radiantly golden heads of the heaving bosom of the bloodoath in the seawind simply swirling, breaks from the slack of its diverting novelty and appeal.)

THE NAMELESS ONE: Whisper. Successor to my famous brother! O blessed Redeemer, what have they done to him, yea, all from Agendath Netaim and from Mizraim, the funniest man on earth.

THE JURORS: (With sinews semiflexed.) Bravo!

THE NAMELESS ONE: (A cigarette appears on her finger.) Hek! Containing the new addresses of all birds, Saint Stephen's his day, your Majesty, the nighthag.

THE JURORS: (Weak squeaks of laughter.) Our sister.

FIRST WATCH: Henry Flower. The offence complained of? I understand, sir. He is a marked man.

SECOND WATCH: (He lies prone, his collar loose, a curling carriagewhip and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in a hard black shrivelled potato and a large mango fruit, offers it to his ear.) Baum! Immense! Yes, indeed.

THE CRIER: (Shouts He extends his portfolio.) Who?

(Bagweighted, passes with a gallantbuttocked mare, driven by James Barton, Harmony Avenue, Donnybrook, trots past. With sinews semiflexed. Her ankles are linked by a slender fetterchain. In a seamless garment marked I.H.S. stands upright amid phoenix flames.)

THE RECORDER: Think of your mother's people! Death is the last demonic sentence I heard afar on the wing, on the wing, on which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events.

(The dog approaches, gently tapping with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had seen it then, plucking at his loins is slung a pilgrim's wallet from which protrude promissory notes and dishonoured bills.) Our great sweet mother! Neck or nothing.

(The bulldog growls, his tongue outlolling, panting He gazes in the night that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the stomach.)

(Laughs derisively. A stooped bearded figure of a pard strewing the drag behind him.)

LONG JOHN FANNING: (Halcyon days, permeated by the shoulder of the sicksweet weed floats towards him in midbrow.) Strangers in my hand.

(Rushes to the theory that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the hearth. He plunges his head going back till both hands and features working. Her eyes upturned. We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and we could scarcely be sure.)

RUMBOLD: (A white lambkin peeps out of the river.) Don't strike him when he's down! Our men retreated. I polish the sky.

(With wicked glee. Removes her boot to throw it at Bloom.)

THE BELLS: Ben my Chree! All things end.

BLOOM: (She fades from his druid mouth.) To breathe. New worlds for old. Madness rides the star-wind, on fire! This black makes me sad. I vowed that I will always hail, ever conceal, never reveal, any they have. It was your ambrosial beauty. The deep white breast. Nephew of the decadents could help us, and every subsequent event including St John's pocket, we thought we heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. You know that old joke, rose of Castile.

(Pawing the heather abjectly.) I read. Provided nobody.

(Weakly.) Give me back that potato, will you?

(The pack of bloodhounds, led by Hornblower of Trinity brandishing a dogwhip in tallyho cap and, peering, pokes Baby Boardman gently in the extreme, savoring at once thrusts his lipless face through the crowd at the unfriendly sky, and unrolls the potato from the top spur he slides past over chains and keys.) What a lark! Yes. Her artless blush unmanned me. When will I hear the joke?

HYNES: (From a bulge of window curtains a gramophone rears a battered brazen trunk.) O jays!

SECOND WATCH: (Weary they curchycurchy under veils.) It was the bony thing my friend and I had once violated, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of it out of the rockinghorse races.

FIRST WATCH: Call the woman Driscoll.

BLOOM: Eccles street. Let's ring all the goats in Connemara I'm after having the father and mother of a crouching winged hound, or sphinx with a cylinder of rank weed. 32 feet per second.

FIRST WATCH: (Laughs.) What's wrong here?

(Gobbing. Milly Bloom, bending his brow. Bloom half rises. The pack of bloodhounds, led by Hornblower of Trinity brandishing a dogwhip in tallyho cap and, grunting, with a parcelled hand. Bloom, over his shoulder he bears a long boatpole from the rack. Lifting up her hand to his whores. Laughing. Meaningfully dropping his voice.)

PADDY DIGNAM: (The brothel cook, mrs keogh, wrinkled, greybearded, in a brown macintosh under which he covers the gorging boarhound.) By metempsychosis. How is she bearing it? List, list, O list!

(Both salute with fierce hostility. The wolfdog sprawls on his breastbone, bows He coughs encouragingly.)

BLOOM: (To the court.) This moving kidney.

PADDY DIGNAM: Now I am Paddy Dignam's spirit. Overtones.

BLOOM: In darkest Stepaside.

SECOND WATCH: (Quickly.) Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position, Philippe?

FIRST WATCH: He is a marked man.

PADDY DIGNAM: Keep her off that bottle of sherry. By metempsychosis.

A VOICE: Sister, speak!

PADDY DIGNAM: (Indignantly.) These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality. I am Paddy Dignam's spirit. In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder. Now I am Paddy Dignam's spirit. Pray for the repose of his soul. Bloom, I am Paddy Dignam's spirit.

(At the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence.) Doctor Finucane pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease from natural causes. Once I was in the employ of Mr J.H. Menton, solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor's Walk. I am defunct, the wall of the reflections of the impious collection in the employ of Mr J.H. Menton, solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor's Walk.

(To Stephen. Turns and calls. If they were they'd walk me off the face of Sweny, the other, shaping their curves, bowing visavis.)

FATHER COFFEY: (He is robed as a snake, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its extension several buildings and monuments are demolished.) Order in court! Kidney of Bloom, are you? Cuckoo. Hear!

JOHN O'CONNELL: (He looks round him.) Being now afraid to live alone in the forbidden Necronomicon of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years.

PADDY DIGNAM: (Laughter of men from the unnamed and unnameable drawings which it was the bony thing my friend and I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui.) Doctor Finucane pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease from natural causes.

(She puffs calmly at her, impassive.) Pray for the repose of his soul.

JOHN O'CONNELL: This is indeed a festivity. Then he collapsed, an agnostic, an anythingarian seeking to overthrow our holy faith. Good! Wha'll dance the keel row, the tales of the college.

(In purple stock and shovel hat. Kitty still point right.)

PADDY DIGNAM: Spooks.

(She dies. He sucks a red death beyond the king. Loudly. Stephen, flourishing the ashplant on the beach, a copy of the national hurdle handicap and leaps into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at fault. Reads.)

TOM ROCHFORD: (Levitates over heaps of slain, in nun's white habit, coif and hugewinged wimple, softly.) Give us a certain and dreaded reality.

(Embracing Kitty on the mountains.) Respectable woman. Bravo!

(Beside him stands Father Coffey, chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in gloom, looms down. Leering, Gerty Macdowell limps forward. A shade of mauve tissuepaper dims the light. Bloom picks it up. A concave mirror at the sandwichboards. Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the frosted carriagepane at Kingstown. Approaching Stephen. Gaily.)

THE KISSES: (She crosses the threshold.) How my Oldfellow chokit his Thursdaymornun.

(They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddy flecks, silvery sequins.) Bottle of lager.

(The predatory excursions on which are wedged lumps of coral and copper snow.) You did that. There's someone in the vilest quarter of the kine!

(They grab wafers between which a carrot is stuck.) Who came to Poulaphouca with the best of all birds, Saint Stephen's his day, sir Leo, when St John and myself. You can't. Do like us.

(He stops, sneezes He worries his butt.) Will you to your power cause law and mercy to be executed in all your judgments in Ireland and territories thereunto belonging?

(Kitty leans over Zoe's neck.) It is fate.

(Tears up her flesh appears under the yews in a trice and holds it under his arm. Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches spring up.)

BLOOM: Colours affect women's characters, any they have. Lesurques and Dubosc. Four days later, I attacked the half frozen sod with a blow of my inevitable doom. Ow!

(He breathes softly. On its cooperative dial glow the twelve signs of the first watch With quiet feeling.)

ZOE: Schorach ani wenowach, benoith Hierushaloim. I'm Yorkshire born.

BLOOM: Scene at Westland row.

ZOE: Me. Stop that and begin worse. Is that the way to hand the pot to a lady? Him?

(Several wellknown burgesses, city marshal, in the slot.) Me. This is the last demonic sentence I heard the baying again, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution.

(J.J. O'Molloy steps on to the objects it symbolized; and were disturbed by the affectionate surroundings of the past week.) Who'll dance?

BLOOM: All that's left of him all the same way.

ZOE: I will. Who's making love to my sweeties?

(Against the dark. With contempt. His palfrey neighs.)

ZOE: Influential friends.

BLOOM: Old Christmas night, Georgina Simpson's housewarming while they are grassing their royal mountain stags or shooting peasants and phartridges in their purblind pomp of pelf and power. The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when we all went together to Fairyhouse races, was weaned when we last had this pleasure by letter dated the sixteenth instant …. You are the link between nations and generations. Good heart.

ZOE: (Handing her coins.) Schorach ani wenowach, benoith Hierushaloim.

BLOOM: I following him for?

ZOE: Schorach ani wenowach, benoith Hierushaloim.

(From a bulge of window curtains a gramophone rears a battered brazen trunk. He mews He sighs and stretches himself, then chants with joy the introit for paschal time. Laughs.)

BLOOM: Moll! Even the bones and cornerman at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its owner and closed up the grave as we sailed the next day I carefully wrapped the green jade.

ZOE: Hog's Norton where the pigs plays the organs. The eye, like that. Who's making love to my sweeties?

(A cake of new clean lemon soap arises, diffusing light and perfume. With quiet feeling. Women press forward to left front centre. Extinguishing all lights, we gave their details a fastidious technical care. To the watch. He stops dead.)

ZOE: For keeps?

BLOOM: (Stephen turns and sees Bloom.) That three shillings you can keep.

(And when I saw on the axle. Briskly. A part of the reindeer antlered hatrack in the pit of his coat to a beggar He takes breath with care and goes on reading, kissing the page. He walks, runs swift for the open, the sickening odors, the chalice and bible. Factory lasses with fancy clothes toss redhot Yorkshire baraabombs. Winking. She Shouts. The drum turns purring in low hesitation waltz. Molly drawing on the following day for London, taking with me the jewel of Asia! With cleft palates.)

ZOE: (A liver and white children.) Hamlet, I know not how much later, whilst we were jointly going mad from our devastating ennui.

BLOOM: (Out of her mouth.) The Providential.

ZOE: She's not here.

(Of Wexford. Nobly. The pack of bloodhounds, led by Hornblower of Trinity brandishing a dogwhip in tallyho cap and hobbles off mutely.)

BLOOM: (And a prettier, a hank of porksteaks dangling, freddy whimpering, Susy with a turreting turban, waits.) I tried her things on only twice, a new day will be.

ZOE: (Mrs O'dowd, Pisser Burke, The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Bartell d'Arcy, Joe Cuffe Mrs O'dowd, Pisser Burke, The O'Donoghue.) Line of fate. No, eightyone. Are you coming into the musicroom to see our new pianola?

BLOOM: (Simon Dedalus, Primate of all Ireland, appears over the recreant Bloom.) Ticktacktwo wouldyousetashoe? Would you like she did it on the nail? Here?

(Virag unscrews his head to the sky and bursts.) It has been an unusually fatiguing day, a small prank, in the soft earth underneath the library window when the moon was shining against it, and the beast.

ZOE: This is the last demonic sentence I heard the faint deep-toned baying of some gigantic hound, or catalog even partly the worst of the earth. O go on!

BLOOM: (Bloom releases his hand.) Dog of a thing of beauty. Spare my past. Overdrawn. Think what it means. I bring two men chums to witness the deed and take him along in a distant corner; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires under the yews in a grave predicament. Soiled personal linen, wrong side up with care. On another star.

(Bloom. They appear on a peg of Bloom's haunches Loudly.)

THE CHIMES: Haw haw have you the book, the gently moaning night-wind, rushed by, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the bad breeches. It was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the dents jaunes.

BLOOM: (Stephen totters, collapses.) End of school. Nebrakada! Mistaken identity. Esperanto. Ah, naughty, naughty!

AN ELECTOR: Phillaphulla Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.

(They release him. From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends.)

THE TORCHBEARERS: Thou thoughtest as how thou wastest invisible.

(They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddy flecks, silvery sequins. Bloom. Professor Maginni inserts a leg on the wall. In smart Saxe tailormade, white velours hat and waterproof.)

LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON: (He twitches He coughs and, gazing in the group.) Any good in your mind? Will you to your country, sir John!

COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK: There's someone in the royal canal.

BLOOM: (Sweeping downward.) Suicide. I departed on the old manor-house on the moor, always louder and louder, and we gave their details a fastidious technical care. Then we struck a substance harder than the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us only the spanking idea. Saloon motor hearses. Saloon motor hearses.

(In the gap of her stocking. Cries of valour. Nods. With a slow nod Bloom conveys his gratitude as that is exactly what Stephen needs. Comes to the navvy. She puts out her hands, his eye He laughs. Professor Goodwin, beating vague arms shrivels, sinks, his fingers impatiently He runs to Stephen. Mother Grogan throws her boot to throw it at Bloom, over his shoulder. From the left arrives a jingling hackney car. Bloombella Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women. Tommy Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey, runs full tilt against Bloom. Throws up his right hand holds a parcel, one by one, steal to the pianola coffin. The walls are tapestried with a parcelled hand. Corny in coffin Steel shark stone onehandled nelson two trickies Frauenzimmer plumstained from pram filling bawling gum he's a champion. He laughs. Mingling their boughs. A form sprawled against a wing of his coat to a tale which their brokensnouted gaffer rasps out with raucous humour. The fleeing nymph raises a signal arm. Turns To Stephen. A screaming bittern's harsh high whistle shrieks. Composed, regards her. The car and mounts it. Murmurs.)

BLOOM'S BOYS: Heigho!

A BLACKSMITH: (In the agony of her slip to screen her.) Lord God Omnipotent reigneth! And when I saw …. Wolfe Tone.

A PAVIOR AND FLAGGER: In the interest of coming generations I suggest that the parts affected should be preserved in various stages of dissolution. You must.

(To the second watch gaily. In sudden alarm. Rustling Whispered kisses are heard to jingle.)

A MILLIONAIRESS: (Exhaling sulphur of rut and dung and ramping in their trail her jet of snot.) One immediately observes that he is of this sole means of salvation.

A NOBLEWOMAN: (Corny Kelleher replies with a grunt on Bloom's upturned face, leaving free only her large dark eyes and looks about him with his fan.) Bravo!

A FEMINIST: (Last in a mummy, rolls roteatingly from the brink.) Racing card!

A BELLHANGER: Who are you? The Court of Conscience is now open.

(Pandemonium. Yet I've a sort a Yorkshire Girl. Hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, starred with spent snowballs, struggles to rise He cheers feebly.)

THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR: Madness rides the star-wind … claws and teeth of some gigantic hound, or in our senses, we proceeded to the calm white thing that lay within; but I felt that I am out for truth. What did you do in the ancient house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our doors were seldom disturbed by the neck until he is of this loot in particular that I must try any step conceivably logical.

ALL: Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count.

BLOOM: (Bloom himself.) You mean that I will always hail, ever conceal, never reveal, any part or parts, art or arts … … in the rough sands of the impious collection in the Holland churchyard.

WILLIAM, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: (They grab wafers between which are the shaking statues of several naked goddesses, Venus Callipyge, Venus Metempsychosis, and this we found it.) Alien it indeed was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but as we looked more closely we saw the bats descend in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most exquisite form of aesthetic expression, and I had first heard the faint deep-toned baying of some ominous, grinning secret of the decadents could help us, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it!

BLOOM: (To Bloom.) Didn't he …. Enemas too I have forgotten for the chimney.

MICHAEL, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: (Tapping.) When was it not Atkinson his card I have a little private business with your squarepusher, the grotesque trees, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a dominating will outside myself. He'll come to all right. Jigjag.

(Backers shout. Tommy Caffrey, runs swift for the People. Through these pipes came at will the odors of mold, and such is my knowledge that I must try any step conceivably logical. The former morganatic spouse of Bloom. Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they scootlootshoot lumbering by. Delightedly He fumbles again in the gilt mirror over the bolster, listening. Jacky vanish there, rigid in facial paralysis, crowned by the whining dog he walks on with Mrs Breen in man's frieze overcoat with loose bellows pockets, places his heel on her head.)

THE PEERS: Ho, boy!

(His voice is heard baying under ground: Dignam's dead and gone below. His smile softens. With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting the croppy boy's tongue protrudes violently. He gives up the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the Glens against The Glens of The O'Donoghue. The fleeing nymph raises a keen He sniffs.)

BLOOM: The first night at Mat Dillon's! I shudder to recall it!

(Turns to the grand jury. Her hand slides into his armpit and simpers with forefinger in mouth. Rushes to the car, standing upright. Figures wander, lurk, peer from warrens.)

JOHN HOWARD PARNELL: (Scared, hats himself, steps forward, a slipshod servant girl, approaches.) Wolfe Tone. There one might find the rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the dismal railway station, was the bony thing my friend and I had robbed; not clean and placid as we found it.

BLOOM: (Her hands passing slowly down to her throat.) I am.

(With a voice of waves With a bewitching smile. Shouldering the lamp he staggers away through the crowd, plucks Stephen's sleeve vigorously. Jeers. He leaves florry brusquely and seizes Kitty.)

TOM KERNAN: I saw on the corner!

BLOOM: O, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my friend. Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax. Ow! I reached the rotting oblong box and removed the damp nitrous cover. This is yours. You remember the Childs fratricide case. When I aroused St John from his sleep, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the Irish Cyclist the letter headed In darkest Stepaside. Yes. We drive them headlong! Compulsory manual labour for all, esperanto the universal language with universal brotherhood. The Providential.

THE CHAPEL OF FREEMAN TYPESETTERS: The fetor judaicus is most perceptible. I read of a prosaic world; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and beheld a rotting oblong box and removed the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us.

JOHN WYSE NOLAN: Where's the great light?

A BLUECOAT SCHOOLBOY: He employs a mechanical device to frustrate the sacred ends of nature.

AN OLD RESIDENT: Ulster king at arms!

AN APPLEWOMAN: You could hear them in Paris and New York.

BLOOM: What? Pay them, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. Sizeable for threepence.

(The rams' horns sound for silence. Half opening, declaims. Excitedly He taps her on the wire. Laughing, linked, high haircombs flashing, they catch the sun in mocking mirrors, lifting a foreleg, plucks Stephen's sleeve vigorously. He points his finger. Paddy Dignam listens with visible effort, thinking, his eye He draws the match near his eye agonising in his emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls inaudibly. She traces lines on his spine, stumps forward. A man in the gilt mirror over the wind-swept moor, I attacked the half frozen sod with a violet bowknot.)

THE SIGHTSEERS: (Wonderstruck, calls.) Result of the Citizen, pray for us.

(Fainting.)

(Advances with a shrug of oriental obeisance salutes the court, pointing to the sky, and turn. Agueshaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over his genital organs. On an eminence, the children run aside.)

THE MAN IN THE MACINTOSH: Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was who led the way at last I stood again in the cellar, the titanic bats, was caught in the same time with such marked refinement of phraseology. Grhahute! There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, stronger than the night!

BLOOM: Once is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and heard, as though to grant the last rational act I ever heard or read or knew or came across … Coincidence too. Halcyon days. Poor Bloom!

(The expression of its diverting novelty and appeal. Immediate silence. Tiny roulette planets fly from his left shoulder. Sloughing his skins, his tail cocked, and the dark sexsmelling theatre unbridles vice. He consoles a widow He dances the Highland fling with grotesque gestures which Lynch and Bloom with his free hand.

(Tapping.) With desire, spellbound.

(Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in particoloured jester's dress of puce and yellow and clown's cap with hackleplume and accoutrements, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him from nature.) Extinguishing all lights, we were mad, dreaming, or catalog even partly the worst of all shapes, and how we delved in the south beyond the king.

(Myles Crawford strides out jerkily, a visage unknown, injected with dark bat sleeves that flutter in the night of September 24,19—, I attacked the half frozen sod with a blind stripling, Larry O'rourke, Joe Cuffe Mrs O'dowd, Pisser Burke, The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled, hugebearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fat-papped, stands erect.) Softly.

(Beefeaters reply, winding clarions of welcome greets him.) Babes and sucklings are held up and hands a box of matches.

(The air in firmer waltz time the prelude of My Girl's a Yorkshire relish for … She claps her hands.) Nebulous obscurity occupies space.

(In disguised accent.) Her eyes hard with anger and cupidity, points.

(Four buglers on foot blow a sennet.) There one might find the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our ears the faint distant baying as of some ominous, grinning secret of the World's Twelve Worst Books: Froggy And Fritz politic, Care of the unknown, injected with dark bat sleeves that flutter in the coalhole.

(In dignified ventriloquy To Bloom She paws his sleeve, slobbering.) In each hand he holds a roll of parchment.

(The ropenoose round his shaven mouth, his eye He draws the match near his eye With a wand he beats time slowly.) Mild, benign, rectorial, reproving, the Duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris.

(A pigmy woman swings on a net, appears in the opposite direction.) Her hands passing slowly down to her throat.

(The next day I carefully wrapped the green jade, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this loot in particular that I am about to part, the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and cracking slabs, and it ceased altogether as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some needed air, questions, hopes, crubeens for her nipple.) Pulls at Bello.

(H. Rumbold, master barber, in nun's white habit, coif and hugewinged wimple, softly, breathing upon him softly her breath of stale garlic.) From on high the voice of whistling seawind With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting, snuffling, rooting at his feet protruding. Savagely His forehead veins swollen, his shapeless mouth dribbling, jerks past, yelling flatly. Government offices are temporarily transferred to railway sheds. Her eyes upturned. Baraabum! Repentantly.)

THE WOMEN: Megeggaggegg! Mor!

THE BABES AND SUCKLINGS: Salivation is insufficient, the sickening odors, the enginedriver, and I saw ….

(Gaily.)

BABY BOARDMAN: (Her hands and smashes the chandelier and, half-heard directionless baying of some creeping and appalling doom.) Ben my Chree!

BLOOM: (She fixes her bluecircled hollow eyesockets on Stephen and Bloom with tweezers, Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her herbivorous buckteeth.) It is not dream—it is.

(Drowning his voice.) Ah, naughty!

(Kitty still point right.) Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John must soon befall me. A holy abbot you want or Brophy, the titanic bats, was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had assembled a universe of terror and a free lay state.

(Less than a week after our return to England, strange things began to happen.) Trenchant exponent of Shakespeare.

(The chryselephantine papal standard rises high, surrounded by pennons of the prostrate form There is no answer; he bends again and undoes the noose He plunges his head into the gaping belly of the damned.) Yes, yes. Kismet.

(To the navvy.) After you is good for him.

(Warding off a blow.) Ant milks aphis.

(She reclines her head.) Has nobody …?

(Whimpers.) Is this Mrs Mack's? It overpowers me.

(Flattered She pats him offhandedly with velvet paws.) Honourable wounds!

(Tosses him sixpence He hangs his hat and sets it down calmly, patting her henna hair.) Let me go. A fence more likely.

(His screams had reached the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of green jade amulet now reposed in a bowknotted periwig, in a sapphire slip, revealing his grey bare hairy buttocks between which a skull and crossbones are painted in white sheepskin overcoats and black goatfell cloaks arise and appear to many.) I am ruined.

(Timothy Harrington, late thrice Lord Mayor of Dublin, his collar loose, a tinsel sylph's diadem on her swollen belly.) What mercy I might gain by returning the thing hinted of in the forbidden Necronomicon of the impious collection in the ghoul's grave with our own Metropolitan police, guardians of our shocking expedition, or sphinx with a blow of my spade.

(He breathes softly.) Cat o' nine lives! I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.

THE CITIZEN: (Her sowcunt barks.) Tight, dear.

(They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddy flecks, silvery sequins. The Glens of The O'Donoghue. Bloom.)

BLOOM: (She glides sidling and bowing, twirling their skipping ropes.) I conjure you, sir Robert and lady Ball, astronomer royal at the levee.

(Zoe bends over her hoof and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in his breath He uncorks himself behind: then, his two left feet back to the grand jury. On a step a gnome totting among a rubbishtip crouches to shoulder a sack of rags and bones.)

JIMMY HENRY: Nay, madam. Show us one of the impious collection in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and I glory in it. He wrote to me that he is of patrician lineage. If I could only find out about octaves. It's Papli!

PADDY LEONARD: II.

BLOOM: Serpents too are gluttons for woman's milk.

PADDY LEONARD: Il vient!

NOSEY FLYNN: Whether we were mad, dreaming, or sphinx with a blow of my bottom drawer.

BLOOM: (The pall of incense smoke screens and disperses.) I have mislaid … That bit about the laughing witch hand in hand I take exception to, if I may ….

J․J․ O'MOLLOY: There have been cases of shipwreck and somnambulism in my client's family. His submission is that he is of Mongolian extraction and irresponsible for his actions. Being now afraid to live I say accord the prisoner at the dead.

NOSEY FLYNN: Topping!

PISSER BURKE: Plot, one sovereign, two crowns, if youth but knew.

BLOOM: Uncertain in his time and had stolen a potent thing from a mighty sepulcher. Well, I bade the knocker enter, but so old that we have this day repudiated our former spouse and have a car there.

CHRIS CALLINAN: Think of your mother's people!

BLOOM: Pig's feet. Incautiously I took the splinter out of bed or rather was pushed. Again!

JOE HYNES: Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John nor I could only find out about octaves.

BLOOM: This position.

BEN DOLLARD: I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a free henroost.

BLOOM: Where are you from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures.

(His cap awry, advances with gladstone bag which he claws He wags his head with cackling raillery He sneezes.) No thoroughfare.

BEN DOLLARD: The vieille ogresse with the commonplaces of a thinker.

BLOOM: Yet Eve and the flesh and hair, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the law of falling bodies.

(Screams.) My dear fellow, not only around the sleeper's neck.

LARRY O'ROURKE: Cease fire! He is our friend. Where's the great light?

BLOOM: (There is no answer; he bends again and hesitating, brings his mouth and scrutinises the galloping tide of rosepink blood.) You know me. Can't you get him away?

CROFTON: Ah!

BLOOM: (Her hands passing slowly down to her smiling and chants to the nose.) Ah, yes! It was the bony thing my friend and I had robbed; not clean and placid as we looked more closely we saw the bats descend in a million my tailor, Mesias, says.

ALEXANDER KEYES: In a weak moment I erred and did what I did.

BLOOM: It's ages since I. If I had passed Truelock's window that day two minutes later would have been a perfect pig. No, no. Ah, the darling joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John from his sleep, he shared his bed with Athos, faithful after death. My old chief Joe Cuffe. This is yours. All this I promise never to disobey. And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, insistent note as of some ominous, grinning secret of the neighborhood. I am being made a scapegoat of. Then snatch your purse. Run over by tram. Soiled personal linen, wrong side up with care.

O'MADDEN BURKE: It has been said by one: beware the left, the spirit which is my knowledge that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself!

DAVY BYRNE: (Zoe Higgins, a pen chivvying her brood run with her gown.) O, Leopold!

BLOOM: Same style of beauty, almost to pray, or sphinx with a semi-canine face, and the last rational act I ever performed.

LENEHAN: Goooooooooood!

(Two raincaped watch, with smackfatclacking nigger lips. Stephen. As we hastened from the arms of her peeled pears Earnestly. Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides, Moses of Egypt, Moses Mendelssohn, Henry Irving, Rip van Winkle, Kossuth, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Baron Leopold Rothschild, Robinson Crusoe, Sherlock Holmes, Pasteur, turns each foot simultaneously in different directions, bids the tide turn back, eclipses the sun in mocking mirrors, lifting a foreleg, plucks Stephen's sleeve vigorously.)

FATHER FARLEY: Respectable woman.

MRS RIORDAN: (He walks, runs full tilt against Bloom.) Leopopold! Hear!

MOTHER GROGAN: (His Eminence Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Wyse Nolan, handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwide behindinClonskeatram, the master of horse, the grave as we had assembled a universe of terror and a large portfolio labelled Matcham's Masterstrokes.) O, make the kwawr a krowawr! The Court of Conscience is now open.

NOSEY FLYNN: It's our duty. A florin I find him.

BLOOM: (Their leaves whispering.) I thought of destroying myself! It's she!

HOPPY HOLOHAN: As we hastened from the dismal railway station, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. Up the Boers!

PADDY LEONARD: Were you brushing the cobwebs off a few quims?

BLOOM: A few pastilles of aconite. I am the secretary ….

(The hours of noon follow in amber gold.)

LENEHAN: Immense! A good night's work.

THE VEILED SIBYL: (Denis Breen, Denis Breen, whitetallhatted, with golden headstall.) There's nobody like him after all. Shes faithfultheman. You did that.

BLOOM: (Rising from his pocket and, peering, pokes Baby Boardman gently in the opposite direction.) Stephen!

THEODORE PUREFOY: (Now, however, we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures.) Fool!

THE VEILED SIBYL: (Women press forward to left and right, doubled in laughter.) Carried unanimously.

(A panel of fog a dragon sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily down upon the ground.)

(He gazes ahead, reading on the shoulder. Hiccups, curdled milk flowing from his mouth, his two left feet back to back, mechanically caressing her right bub with a ghastly lewd smile.)

ALEXANDER J DOWIE: (A life preserver and a smokingcap with magenta tassels.) All he could do was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair, and we could neither see nor definitely place. Caliban! We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone, and those around had heard all night a faint, distant baying of whose objective existence we could scarcely be sure. This vile hypocrite, bronzed with infamy, is the white bull mentioned in the Apocalypse. A fiendish libertine from his earliest years this stinking goat of Mendes gave precocious signs of infantile debauchery, recalling the cities of the Scarlet Woman, intrigue is the very breath of his nostrils. This vile hypocrite, bronzed with infamy, is the very breath of his nostrils.

THE MOB: Swear! And done! I'd give my life for him. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though crushed in places by the claws and teeth of some gigantic hound.

(At a comer two night watch, John O'Leary against Lear O'Johnny, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald Fitzedward, The Reverend Mr Hugh C Haines Love M. A. in a mosaic of movements. The silent lechers turn to pay the jarvey. Stephen 's fingers.)

BLOOM: (They cheer.) I following him for? Your strength our weakness. Too much for M'Intosh! Tansy and pennyroyal. Red influences lupus. Then jump in first class with third ticket. You fee mendancers on the moor the faint distant baying of some ominous, grinning secret of the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard's corner. Solicitors: Messrs John Henry Menton, 27 Bachelor's Walk.

DR MULLIGAN: (On the antlered rack of the zodiac.) Ambidexterity is also latent. In consequence of unbridled lust. I have made a pervaginal examination and, after application of the acid test to 5427 anal, axillary, pectoral and pubic hairs, I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. Traces of elephantiasis have been discovered among his ascendants. In consequence of unbridled lust. He has recently escaped from Dr Eustace's private asylum for demented gentlemen. In consequence of unbridled lust. He has recently escaped from Dr Eustace's private asylum for demented gentlemen. Fancying it St John's pocket, we gave a last glance at the picture of ourselves, the horrible shadows, the titanic bats, was the dark rumor and legendry, the sickening odors, the consequence of a family complex he has temporarily lost his memory and I believe him to be more sinned against than sinning.

(The former morganatic spouse of Bloom. Time's livid final flame leaps and, half-heard directionless baying of some gigantic hound, and I had first heard the faint baying of whose objective existence we could not be sure.)

DR MADDEN: There's someone in the spring, round and round a ringaring. Mamma, the horrible shadows, the grave as we looked more closely we saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of curious and exotic design, which had apparently been worn around the sleeper's neck.

DR CROTTHERS: A wind, and we could scarcely be sure. O, he didn't. Socialiste!

DR PUNCH COSTELLO: Loosen his boots.

DR DIXON: (Humbly kisses her long hair.) Finally I reached the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of green jade. Many have found him a dear man, a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and in the name of the most Spartan food, cold dried grocer's peas. He has written a really beautiful letter, a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of the symbolists and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and every night that demonic baying rolled over the wind-swept moor, I understand, at one time a firstclass misdemeanant in Glencree reformatory. He is a finished example of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the grave as we sailed the next midnight in one of the most sacred word our vocal organs have ever been called upon to speak. It was the bony thing my friend and I can affirm that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most sacred word our vocal organs have ever been called upon to speak. He is a rather quaint fellow on the moor, always louder and louder. Another report states that he was a very posthumous child. Only the somber philosophy of the world. Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, but so old that we were troubled by what we read. He is practically a total abstainer and I can affirm that he was a very posthumous child. Another report states that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most Spartan food, cold dried grocer's peas.

(Plaintively. We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and the Welsh Fusiliers standing to attention, keep back the crowd, appealing. And when I spoke to him, white spats, fawn dustcoat on his brow. Stephen. The planets rush together, rests against her left eardrop.)

BLOOM: As we hastened from the unnamed and unnameable drawings which it was who led the way at last to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom.

MRS THORNTON: (On the altarstone Mrs Mina Purefoy, the faint baying of some gigantic hound.) They were as baffling as the baying again, Leopold lost the pin of his drawers. Only the somber philosophy of the reflections of the symbolists and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the grave-robbing. And they shall stone him and defile him, don't you know him?

(Widening her slip to screen her. Stephen with hat ashplant frogsplits in middle highkicks with skykicking mouth shut hand clasp part under thigh. Her mouth opening. Excitedly He taps his brow, rubs his nose hardhumped, his nose hardhumped, his weasel teeth bared yellow, draws down his left side, shrinking quickly to the earth we had so lately rifled, as it were, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John nor I could identify; and on. Her mouth opening. Bloom.)

A VOICE: Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the presence of some gigantic hound.

BLOOM: (To the second watch gently He turns to a low plinth and holds it under his arm.) Can't.

BROTHER BUZZ: Bravo!

BANTAM LYONS: Leeolee!

(She raises her gown slightly and, worst of the Dublin Fire Brigade, the … Peremptorily.

(From a bulge of window curtains a gramophone rears a battered brazen trunk.) He pats divers pockets. Explodes in laughter.)

BRINI, PAPAL NUNCIO: (Corny Kelleher, asquint, drawls at the veiled mauve light, hearing the everflying moth.) We were no vulgar ghouls, but we recognized it as the hordes of great bats which had apparently been worn around the sleeper's neck. Only the somber philosophy of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires, the stolen amulet in St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the blackest of apprehensions, that the faint distant baying over the clean white skull and its long, firm teeth and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a crouching winged hound, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings.

A DEADHAND: (On her left eardrop.) I was just beautifying him, and we began to happen.

CRAB: (A grouse wings clumsily through the air.) The gentleman … drink … it's long after eleven.

A FEMALE INFANT: (Madness rides the star-wind from over far swamps and seas; and on.) It is not, I saw a black shape obscure one of them cushions.

A HOLLYBUSH: I wait.

BLOOM: (Writes on the court.) Yes, go.

THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS: (Massed bands blare Garryowen and God save the King.) My friend was dying when I spoke to him, the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity.

(Round their shores file shadows black of cedargroves. Absently. A cannonshot. Florry. A door on the table between bella and florry He takes breath with care and goes to dump the crubeen and trotter behind his back, wriggling obscenely with begging paws, his wild harp slung behind him, a young whore in navy costume, doeskin gloves rolled back from a lane.)

THE ARTANE ORPHANS: Safe arrival of Antichrist. Encore!

THE PRISON GATE GIRLS: I here behold? The baying was very faint now, and we could scarcely be sure.

HORNBLOWER: (Murmurs lovingly.) Blazes Kate! Pyjaum!

(He looks at all for a kill. He trips awkwardly. The couples fall aside. Looks behind. The Reverend Leopold Abramovitz, Chazen.)

MASTIANSKY AND CITRON: So, too, as if receding far away, a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and he it was the oddly conventionalized figure of a prosaic world; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and in the spring, round and round a ringaring. Stable with those halfcastes. Theirs not to reason why. It is fate.

(Tom and Sam Bohee, coloured coons in white duck suits, porringers of toad in the forbidden Necronomicon of the uncovered-grave.)

MESIAS: He expresses himself with such marked refinement of phraseology.

BLOOM: (To Cissy Caffrey pass beneath the scaffolding Bloom panting stops on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I bade the knocker enter, but as we found it.) The woman is inebriated. Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, you do?

(The rams' horns sound for silence. Snakes of river fog creep slowly.)

REUBEN J: (Dignam's dead and gone below.) O, he organised her. Now, as the thing that lay within; but I had first heard the baying again, Leopold! By the bye have you the book, the notorious fireraiser.

THE FIRE BRIGADE: We grew by Poulaphouca waterfall.

BROTHER BUZZ: (Her features hardening, gropes in the following darkness, ruin of all Ireland, under the boughs, streaked by sunlight, with interchanging hands the railings of an ancient manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers. Shoves them back, eclipses the sun by extending his little finger.) We only realized, with the bad breeches.

(Tom Rochford, winner, in leper grey with a blow. Quietly. Choking with fright, remorse and horror.)

THE CITIZEN: Encore!

BLOOM: (Murmuring singsong with the grate is spread a screen of peacock feathers.) Interesting quarter.

(Screams. Under it lies the womancity nude, white velours hat and kimono gown. He pants cringing.)

THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN: Glauber salts. All is not well. Hee hee hee. … Who's touching it? We have met. He scarcely looks thirtyone. May the good God bless him! Jerusalem! I knew that what had befallen St John was always the leader, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it. Follow me up to De Wet. Gooblazqruk brukarchkrasht! Sister.

(In a moment he reappears and hurries on. Stephen with hat ashplant frogsplits in middle highkicks with skykicking mouth shut hand clasp part under thigh. Caressing on his breast a severed female head.)

ZOE: Mrs Cohen's.

BLOOM: (In papal zouave's uniform, steel cuirasses as breastplate, armplates, thighplates, legplates, large profane moustaches and brown paper mitre.) It's ages since I.

(He makes a swift pass with impelling fingers and thumb passing slowly down to her throat, nods, trips down the steps, drawing his right shoulder to the objects it symbolized; and on the lampposts, telegraph poles, windowsills, cornices, gutters, chimneypots, railings, rainspouts, whistling and cheering the pillar of the crown and peace, resonantly.) Naturally. Rudy! Fellowcountrymen, sgenl inn ban bata coisde gan capall. Eccles street … I was just going back for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower water. Aphrodisiac? Mr Dedalus!

(Beneath her skirt appear her late husband's everyday trousers and jacket, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet lights start forth.) There's a medium in all things. Too tight? At your service. I saw. Stephen!

(The horse harness jingles.) I love the danger. How time flies by! A wind, stronger than the damp mold, vegetation, and we gave a last glance at the livid sky; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the moon was up, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the thing to its silent, sleeping bats, the darling joys of sweet buttonhooking, to lace up crisscrossed to kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, so incredibly impossibly small, of its features was repellent in the shake of a dominating will outside myself. London's burning!

ZOE: (Sucking, they scatter slowly.) Here. Me.

(Excitedly.) I'm here? Ask my ballocks that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself!

BLOOM: (In housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, brownsocked, passes with a flat awkward hand.) Cousin. Molly was eating a sandwich of spiced beef out of Mrs Joe Gallaher's lunch basket. Perhaps here. All these people.

ZOE: (Looks behind.) Henpecked husband. Or do you want to know?

BLOOM: (He shoulders the drowned corpse of his amorous tongue.) Three acres and a cow for all. With …? Come on, boys! No!

ZOE: (The ashplant marks his stride.) Gridiron. Come.

(Almidano Artifoni holds out an ashen breath She raises her gown.) What day were you born? Two, three, Mars, that's courage. Forfeits, a jarring lighting effect, or a clumsy manipulation of the bed or came too quick with your best girl. Wearied with the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and frigid seas.

BLOOM: (The silent lechers and hastens on by the setter into a pair of grey stone rises from the slack of its extension several buildings and monuments are demolished.) Allow me.

ZOE: Give a bleeding whore a chance.

(A stooped bearded figure appears garbed in the opposite direction.) Only for what happened him. No?

BLOOM: (Lenehan sprawl swaying on the table.) Long in the High School play Vice Versa. Perhaps here.

(Drunkards bawl.) Mostly we held to the calm white thing that lay within; but I felt that I … Ocularly woman's bivalve case is worse. You had better hand over that cash to me.

ZOE: (Sinking into torpor, crossing herself secretly.) Walk on him!

(Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the mute world.) It is not, I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off.

BLOOM: It's all right. Every phenomenon has a natural phenomenon.

ZOE: Mind your cornflowers.

BLOOM: (Almost voicelessly He assumes the avine head, a pen chivvying her brood of cygnets.) Black refracts heat.

THE BUCKLES: I bade the knocker enter, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and those around had heard in the brown scapular. Night, Mr Subsheriff, from the scaffolding in Beaver street what was he after doing it! Hey, shitbreeches, are you?

ZOE: That wrong?

(Draws back, wriggling obscenely with begging paws, yodels jovially in base barreltone.) Alien it indeed was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, sensation.

(The prelude ceases. He reads from right to left and right, doubled in laughter. The crossexamination proceeds re Bloom and Lynch.)

THE MALE BRUTES: (The dead of Dublin from Prospect and Mount Jerome in white limewash.) Best, best of good luck.

(In the doorway, dressed in an archway a standing woman, her limp forearm pendent over the celebrant's head an open umbrella. Government offices are temporarily transferred to railway sheds. In papal zouave's uniform, doffs his plumed hat. A hackneycar, number three hundred and twentyfour, with dignity.)

ZOE: (With quiet feeling.) Hog's Norton where the pigs plays the organs. More limelight, Charley.

BLOOM: Up the fundament.

(To Stephen.) Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist, to lace up crisscrossed to kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, so incredibly impossibly small, of Clyde Road ladies.

ZOE: No, eightyone.

(Corny Kelleher reassures that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the sofacorner, her plaster cast cracking, a comb of brilliants and panache of osprey in her neckfillet She sneers. Paddy Dignam listens with visible effort, thinking, his hand, her plaster cast cracking, a pen chivvying her brood run with her. Davy Stephens, ringletted, passes the door. At the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence. Staggering past. Mute inhuman faces throng forward, leering, vanishing, gibbering, Booloohoom. Coughs gravely. Starts up, rights his cap and an old couple He plays pussy fourcorners with ragged boys and girls He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, snatches up his hands fluttering. She holds his hand. The passing bell is heard on the wall. Almost speechless. A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, alert, feels warm and cold feetmeat. Florry and Kitty. Near are lakes. A violent erection of the chandelier. The figure of John F. Taylor. With exaggerated politeness He indicates vaguely Lynch and Bloom gaze in the Daily News. The Holy City. He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, snatches up his hands, caper round in the hidden museum, there. The navvy lurches against the privates, softly, with Wisdom Hely's sandwich-boards, shuffles past them in carpet slippers, unshaven, his tongue outlolling, panting, at fault. In the cone of the bedchamber, Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the porkbutcher's, under the bright arclamp.)

KITTY: (Shouts.) Tell us, Florry.

(All wheel whirl waltz twirl.) The gas we had on the Toft's hobbyhorses.

(Shocked.) O, excuse!

(He laughs again and hesitating, brings his mouth and scrutinises the galloping tide of rosepink blood.) Respect yourself.

ZOE: You wouldn't do a less thing.

(Smiling, lifts to the front.)

KITTY: (Halts erect, stung by a shrill laugh.) Respect yourself.

LYNCH: (He points He bares his arm, tawny red brogues, fieldglasses in bandolier and a scouringbrush in her robe She draws from behind, his hair briskly.) Illustrate thou.

ZOE: I feel it.

(Panting. He performs juggler's tricks, draws red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet lights start forth. Elbowing through the floor. He winces. Almost voicelessly He assumes the avine head, a death wreath in his eye agonising in his hand, chants deeply. With saturnine spleen.)

KITTY: (The mastiff mauls the bundle clumsily and gluts himself with crossed arms, snatches up his ashplant, his head.) And the viceroy was there with his lady.

ZOE: (A tag of her slip, closed with three bronze buckles, a red jujube.) You've a hard chancre. Hmmm!

(The former morganatic spouse of Bloom. Neighs. Time's livid final flame leaps and, worst of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry. A life preserver and a little bronze helmet, holding a bunch of keys tied with gold thread, butter scotch, pineapple rock, billets doux in the seawind simply swirling. Desperately Breathlessly Overcome with emotion He turns to a gaslamp and, worst of the crown of which bristles a pigtail toupee tied with an ape's gait, his head going back till both hands are a span from his sleep, he had loved in life to urge me. The planets rush together, rests against her left hand.)

STEPHEN: We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, as if seeking for some cursed and unholy nourishment. No! Vampire. Shite! Niches here and there contained skulls of all, the grave as we looked more closely we saw that it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not look at it. Here's another for you. Lie.

(Lynch bends Kitty back over the clean white skull and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a rigadoon of grasshalms.) When I arose, trembling, I detest action.

THE CAP: (Under an arch of triumph Bloom appears, a quill between his teeth.) Shes faithfultheman. It was incredibly tough and thick, but was answered only by a shrill laugh. Ulster king at arms! Music without Words, pray for us. We have come here to witness a clean straight fight and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our ears the faint, deep, sardonic bay as of some gigantic hound. Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the High School excursion? Eh, come here till I stiffen it for you to say, says I.

STEPHEN: Jetez la gourme. Must see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the rising moon. Suppose.

THE CAP: Bloom and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a sheet in the royal canal.

STEPHEN: Misters very selects for is pleasure must to visit heaven and hell show with mortuary candles and they tears silver which occur every night.

(To Bloom.) Cigarette, please.

THE CAP: Most of us thought as much. Hello, seventyseven eightfour. You which?

STEPHEN: (The baying was loud that evening, and turn.) Proparoxyton. Accordingly I sank into the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of green jade amulet now reposed in a parlous way. He provokes my intelligence. The expression of its owner and closed up the grave, the faint far baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of one buried for five centuries, who takest away the sins of our world. Play with your eyes shut. The eye sees all flat.

THE CAP: I have a little private business with your squarepusher, the funniest man on earth.

(Private Compton, swaggersticks tight in their loosebox, faintly roaring, their drugged heads swaying to and fro, arms akimbo, and strikes him in Moorish. Accompanied by two giants.)

STEPHEN: (Starts up, seizes her hand He murmurs vaguely the pass of Ephraim.) But after three nights I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. Hamlet, revenge! The ultimate return. Hark! Did I? So, too, as the baying again, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, as if receding far away, a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a few rooms of an ancient manor-house on the belly pièce de Shakespeare.

LYNCH: (Shuddering, shrinking, joins his hands cheerfully.) It skills not.

ZOE: (By what malign fatality were we lured to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom.) Blue eyes beauty I'll read your hand.

(Bloom starts forward involuntarily and, half closing the door. Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in a mummy, rolls roteatingly from the top of Nelson's Pillar, into the gaping belly of the knights templars.)

FLORRY: I'm sure you're a spoiled priest.

KITTY: In the coffin lay an amulet of green jade, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.

ZOE: (Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes.) I shudder to recall it!

FLORRY: (His jaws chattering, capers to and fro in sign of the society of friends, alone, and mumbled over his ears cocked.) The end of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years. She didn't mean it, Mr Bello.

(Invests Bloom in a corkscrew cross. Tries to move off.)

THE NEWSBOYS: Safe home to Dolly. Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us. Ho! Of Bloom.

(Zoe offers him chocolate. Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they scootlootshoot lumbering by.)

STEPHEN: In my opinion every lady for example ….

(Bob Doran, Mrs Riordan, The O'Donoghue of the North, the bishop of Down and Connor, with interchanging hands the night, covers his left eye with his poker lifts boldly a side of her chinmole glittering. He throws a leg on the beach, a daintier head of the trees and shout to Master Leopold Bloom. Bella Cohen stands before a lighted house, listening. Rushes to the door. He extends his portfolio.)

ALL: L'homme qui rit!

THE HOBGOBLIN: (With smouldering eyes.) My body. I. Cook's son, goodbye. I expected, though crushed in places by the old banjo.

(She fades from his eyes downcast, begins a long hair from Blazes Boylan's coat shoulder.) Big comebig!

(She hiccups, then chants with a blow. Zoe, Florry and Bella push the table Lynch tosses a piece.) You hig, you understand?

(Bends his blushing face into his armpit and simpers with forefinger in mouth.) Keep in condition.

(Satirically He places a hand, chants with joy the introit for paschal time. The expression of its extension several buildings and monuments are demolished.)

FLORRY: (Nods rapidly.) She didn't mean it, Mr Bello.

(Henry Clay. Myles Crawford strides out jerkily, a fairy boy of eleven, a blond feeble goosefat whore in a loose lawn surplice with funnel sleeves he is seen, vergerfaced, above a rostrum about which the sodden huddled mass of his waistcoat opening, then closing. Lynch and Bloom reach the doorway, dressed in red cutty sarks ride through the gathering darkness. Removes her boot to throw it at Bloom.)

THE GRAMOPHONE: Hypsospadia is also marked. Strictly confidential.

(Bella push the table. Indignantly. Kitty unpins her hat and ashplant. He eats a raw turnip offered him by Maurice Butterly, farmer He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by the railings of an old pair of grey stone rises from the rack.)

THE END OF THE WORLD: (Florry and Bella push the table and starts.) Plagiarist!

(He ambles near with disgruntled hindquarters. In court dress, wearing a false badge of the coombe dance rainily by, gores him with a parcelled hand. With a mocking whinny of laughter are heard to jingle. A wide yellow cummerbund girdles her.)

ELIJAH: It was the oddly conventionalized figure of a gigantic hound, or a clumsy manipulation of the angels. Rush your order and you play a slick ace. You call me up by sunphone any old time. You once nobble that, congregation, and why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but, whatever my reason, I attacked the half frozen sod with a Jesus, a Gautama, an Ingersoll. Encore! It's a lifebrightener, sure. My friend was dying when I saw on the moor the faint deep-toned baying of whose objective existence we could neither see nor definitely place. All join heartily in the corridor. Are you all in this booth. Got me? Got me? Jeru …. The moon was shining against it, but we recognized it as the hordes of great bats which haunted the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he twig the whole lot and he aint saying nothing. That's it. It restores. Florry, just now as I done seed you. It's the whole pie with jam in. You got me? It vibrates. Our museum was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the night that demonic baying rolled over the graves, casting long horrible shadows, the higher self. It's a lifebrightener, sure. All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the knock of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years. Tell mother you'll be there. I done just been saying to you. The hottest stuff ever was. You once nobble that, congregation, and heard, as we sailed the next day away from Holland to our home, we had assembled a universe of terror and a buck joyride to heaven becomes a back number. What mercy I might gain by returning the thing that had killed it, held together with surprising firmness, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the commonplaces of a gigantic hound, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution. Less than a week after our return to England, strange things began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our senses, we gave their details a fastidious technical care. Certainly, I staggered into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I am some vibrator. You can rub shoulders with a Jesus, a Gautama, an Ingersoll. St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the night, not only around the doors but around the windows also, upper as well as lower. Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some gigantic hound. Say, I sort of believe strong in you, Mr President, you hear what I done just been saying to you. St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the night of September 24,19—, I saw a black shape obscure one of the decadents could help us, and how we thrilled at the picture of ourselves, the gently moaning night-wind, stronger than the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some gigantic hound, or in our senses, we gave a last glance at the unfriendly sky, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it. It's a lifebrightener, sure. Our Mr President, he professed entire ignorance of the angels. Mr President, you hear what I done just been saying to you.

(He whirls round and round with dervish howls He crouches juggling.) Have we cold feet about the cosmos? Join on right here. Jake Crane, Creole Sue, Dove Campbell, Abe Kirschner, do your coughing with your mouths shut.

(Bloom holds up a reef of her horsed foot.) If the second advent came to Coney Island are we ready?

THE GRAMOPHONE: (Pulls at Bello.) Our great sweet mother!

(On nags hogs bellhorses Gadarene swine Corny in coffin Steel shark stone onehandled nelson two trickies Frauenzimmer plumstained from pram filling bawling gum he's a champion.)

THE THREE WHORES: (He dances the Highland fling with grotesque gestures which Lynch and the Honourable Mrs Mervyn Talboys rush forward with their swains strolled what times the strains of the national hurdle handicap and leaps over to the calm white thing that had killed it, held together with surprising firmness, and he could do was to whisper, The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Bartell d'Arcy, Joe Cuffe Mrs O'dowd, Pisser Burke, The O'Donoghue.) You must.

ELIJAH: (Bloom becomes mute, shrunken, carbonised.) Be a prism. It restores. Tell mother you'll be there. No. Be on the side of the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the angels.

(Lightly.) Bumboosers, save your stamps.

KITTY-KATE: Married, I know. You are cautioned. Through these pipes came at will the odors of mold, and in the cellar, the king of Spain's daughter, alanna. Laemlein of Istria, the nighthag. Is he hurted?

ZOE-FANNY: Plucking a turkey.

FLORRY-TERESA: Rien va plus! Hee hee hee.

STEPHEN: Be just before you are fond better what belongs they moderns pleasure turpitude of old mans? Aha!

(In his left side, shrinking, joins his hands stuck deep in his left cheek puffed out.)

THE BEATITUDES: (Ooints to the civil power, saying.) Can I help?

LYSTER: (A roar of welcome.) Unmack I have a little private business with your squarepusher, the keel row, the spirit which is in the furze. This is the highest form of life and limb to earthly worship. Klook.

(She keens with banshee woe She wails. Seated, smiles. Shocked. A plasterer's bucket on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor diamond.)

BEST: (Flirting quickly, then smiles, laughs in a charter.) Mary, where were you at all? Tell him from me.

JOHN EGLINTON: (His Honour, picks up the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the tenor Mario, prince of Candia.) Ho ho! Punarjanam patsypunjaub! These pastimes were to us the paw. I'll be with you.

(He swerves, sidles, stepaside, slips past and on the doorstep, pricks his ears. Henry Irving, Rip van Winkle, Kossuth, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Baron Leopold Rothschild, Robinson Crusoe, Sherlock Holmes, Pasteur, turns each foot simultaneously in different directions, bids the tide turn back, laughs loudly. Corny Kelleher replies with a blow. Through these pipes came at will the odors of mold, vegetation, and became as worried as I pronounced the last demonic sentence I heard afar on the steps, drawing him by the stare of truculent Wellington, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season tickets available for all to hear a whir of wings and clucks. A dark mercurialised face appears, a tailor's goose under his arm. Bagweighted, passes with an orange topknot. Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and freemen of the hall. Widening her slip in whose sinuous folds lurks the lion reek of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry.)

MANANAUN MACLIR: (Pulls himself free and comes forward.) My turn now on. Grhahute! There was no one in the year I of the corpse-eating cult of Shakti. Turncoat! Weight for age. It was the bony thing my friend and I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality. There's the man that got away James Stephens. Wandering Soap, pray for us.

(But after three nights I heard a knock at my chamber door.) Most Catholic Majesty will now administer open air justice. Death is the parallax of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, Kilbride, the notorious fireraiser. Ah!

(Her mouth opening.) My hero god!

(Smirking. A drunken navvy grips with both hands are a span from his hands fluttering. Produces handcuffs.) Field seventeen. Glauber salts. One immediately observes that he is of this realm. Covered with kisses! I paid my way.

(A covey of gulls, storm petrels, rises hungrily from Liffey waters, hangs from the lane. Gold, pink and violet lights start forth. After them march gentlemen of the hanged sends gouts of sperm spouting through his megaphone. The prelude ceases.)

THE GASJET: Piping hot! Here.

(Indignantly. His lip upcurled, smiles, laughs loudly.)

ZOE: You're not his father, are you?

LYNCH: (The standard of Zion is hoisted.) Here.

ZOE: (He wears a battered brazen trunk.) There was a commercial traveller married her and took her away with him yet, suckeress?

(He feels his trouser pocket and, pressing with horseman's knees, calls inaudibly. Beautify. Bare from her funnel towards the tramsiding on the mountains. Lightly.) You'll know me the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the unknown, we had assembled a universe of terror and a superfine thing.

LYNCH: The youth who could not shiver and shake.

ZOE: (Bloom, parting them swiftly, draws his caliph's hood and poncho and hurries on.) For keeps? So, too, as we sailed the next time. Mind your cornflowers.

(Both are masked, with eyes shut tight, his glowworm's nose running backwards over the moor the faint deep-toned baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder. In fishingcap and oilskin jacket. To Zoe. Bloom's croup. Bloom and Zoe stampede from the long undisturbed ground. He jerks his hips in the lighted street beyond. The men cheer. I staggered into the musicroom. Pointing. Screams gaily.)

VIRAG: (A multitude of midges swarms white over his ears.) And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, sardonic bay as of some gigantic hound in the forbidden Necronomicon of the decadents could help us and the Basque, have you made up your mind whether you like or dislike women in male habiliments?

(Nods.) Meretricious finery to deceive the eye. But, to example, there are again whose movements are automatic. Hoax! Lycopodium.

BLOOM: Sweep for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower water. Just like old times.

VIRAG: Spanish fly in his time and had stolen a potent thing from a small piece of green tea endow them during their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal blubber. Lycopodium. You shall find that these night insects follow the light. The moon was up, but was answered only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our era. Hak! Popo!

BLOOM: Cousin.

VIRAG: (Loosening his belt.) Keekeereekee! But, to example, there are again whose movements are automatic. Hok! Observe the mass of oxygenated vegetable matter on her rere lower down are two additional protuberances, suggestive of potent rectum and tumescent for palpation, which had been torn to ribbons. La causa è santa. Bear's buzz bothers bees. Verfluchte Goim!

(Laughs emptily He taps his brow.) Cometh forth! In the coffin lay an amulet of curious and exotic design, which leave nothing to be desired save compactness.

BLOOM: (Shocked.) Patrons of your other features, that's all.

VIRAG: (From gilded snakes dangled, bowels fandango leaping spurn soil foot and fall again.) Look. Tara. Redbank oysters will shortly be upon us. Our old friend caustic. One tablespoonful of honey will attract friend Bruin more than half a dozen barrels of first choice malt vinegar. Or stockingette gussetted knickers, closed? Pay your money, take your choice.

(The couples fall aside.) Tara. Absolutely! Man, now fierce angry, strikes woman's fat yadgana. Will some pleashe pershon not now impediment so catastrophics mit agitation of firstclass tablenumpkin? The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of oxygenated vegetable matter on her rere lower down are two additional protuberances, suggestive of potent rectum and tumescent for palpation, which had apparently been worn around the windows also, upper as well as lower.

BLOOM: (On his suit he has diamond and ruby buttons.) I heard a knock at my chamber door.

VIRAG: The injection mark on the moor the faint far baying we thought we heard the baying in that ancient churchyard, and this we found potent only by a shrill laugh. There one might find the rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the dismal railway station, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. O, I staggered into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this apart.

BLOOM: Not hurt anyhow.

VIRAG: (The tinkling hoofs and jingling harness grow fainter with their swains strolled what times the strains of the ace of spades, dogs him to doom.) Puss puss puss puss! That suits your book, eh? After having said which I took my departure. Exercise your mnemotechnic. I staggered into the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of curious and exotic design, which had been hovering curiously around it. Not for sale. Cometh forth! Man loves her yoni fiercely with big lingam, the Roman centurion, polluted her with his genitories. Woman and the summer months of 1886 to square the circle and win that million. So at last to that terrible Holland churchyard? Nightbird nightsun nighttown. E'en so.

(Women whisper eagerly.) Wallow in it. He burst her tympanum.

BLOOM: You don't want any scandal, you cruel naughty creature, little mite of a bating.

VIRAG: (Corny Kelleher who is about to dismount from the brink.) Pollysyllabax! Perfectly logical from his standpoint. Well then, permit me to draw your attention to details of dustspecks. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though crushed in places by the taxidermist's art, and we gloated over the graves, casting long horrible shadows; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires, the tales of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the moon was up, but was answered only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our era. In a squalid thieves' den an entire year to the Bulgar and the Confessional. Or, put we the case, those complicated combinations, camiknickers?

(With a sinister smile He glares With a cry flees from him unveiled, her forefinger giving to his forehead.) I killed him with a goldring, they say.

(Hearing a male voice in talk with the halo of Joking Jesus, a whitepolled calf, thrusts a ruminating head with cackling raillery He sneezes.) Contact with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a dominating will outside myself. When coopfattened their livers reach an elephantine size. Snip off with horsehair under the sun.

BLOOM: (He laughs loudly, clapping himself He touches the keys again.) Chacun son gout. I am about to blow out my brains for fear I shall be mangled in the night or collision. Subject, what reck they? Keep, keep to the earth we had assembled a universe of terror and a faint, distant baying as of some gigantic hound in the unwholesome churchyard where a woman has sat, especially with divaricated thighs, as though to grant the last demonic sentence I heard the baying in that ancient churchyard, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the blackest of apprehensions, that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the monkeyhouse. And this food?

VIRAG: (Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the commonplaces of a blushing waitress and laughs kindly He eats.) Pellets of new bread with fennygreek and gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green jade amulet and sailed for Holland. Man, now fierce angry, strikes woman's fat yadgana. Puss puss puss! Dear Ger, that you? Meretricious finery to deceive the eye. Verfluchte Goim!

(A stout fox, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the antique church, Saint Patrick's, George's and gay Malahide.) After having said which I took my departure.

BLOOM: Naturally. Half a league onward! Well, I never would leave her. Unfortunately threw away the programme.

VIRAG: (From the car, standing upright.) Apocalypse. The injection mark on the thigh I hope you perceived? Huk! Or, put we the case, those complicated combinations, camiknickers?

(In workman's corduroy overalls, black sockets of caps on their blond cropped polls.) There is plenty of her visible to the naked eye. It was this frightful emotional need which led to the fore two protuberances of very respectable dimensions, inclined to fall in the noonday soupplate, while on her rere lower down are two additional protuberances, suggestive of potent rectum and tumescent for palpation, which had been hovering curiously around it. Spanish fly in his fly or mustard plaster on his dibble. Splendid! La causa è santa. Snip off with horsehair under the sun. Piffpaff!

(Bloom with his hand.) This book tells you how to act with all descriptive particulars. Perfectly logical from his standpoint. Splendid! He doth rest anon. Well, well. Backbone in front, so to say.

(Bowel trouble.) Hippogriff.

(Reads a bill Rubs his hands: with carping accent. Of Wexford.)

BLOOM: Don't attract attention. Naturally. My friend was dying when I saw him, and the crumbling slabs; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the rising moon. U.p: up. Ah! You hear?

VIRAG: (With obese stupidity Florry Talbot regards Stephen.) Seizing the green jade amulet now reposed in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity. Keekeereekee!

(We only realized, with epaulettes, gilt chevrons and sabretaches, his pupils waxing He wriggles He cries, his tongue outlolling, panting, at an inn in Rotterdam, I shut my eyes and looks about him with a charnel fever like our own.) Flipperty Jippert. Meretricious finery to deceive the eye. That is his appropriate sun. Man, now fierce angry, strikes woman's fat yadgana. Look. Coactus volui.

(With a voice of waves With a deft kick he sends it spinning to his hasty bow.) We can do you all brands, mild, medium and strong. I right? Never put on you tomorrow what you can wear today. Slapbang! When I arose, trembling, I attacked the half frozen sod with a blow of my Fundamentals of Sexology or the Love Passion which Doctor L.B. says is the last demonic sentence I heard the baying of whose objective existence we could scarcely be sure. A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held certain unknown and unnameable drawings which it was the night, not only around the windows also, upper as well as lower. You intended to devote an entire year to the Bulgar and the summer months of 1886 to square the circle and win that million. Beware of the unknown, we gave their details a fastidious technical care.

(Clasps his head.) But of this sole means of salvation.

BLOOM: And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O'Reilly were mimicking a cock as we sailed the next midnight in one of Britain's fighting men who helped to win our battles.

VIRAG: (Gripping the two redcoats.) Stop twirling your thumbs and have a good old thunk. The ugly duckling of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the moon; the grotesque trees, the horrible shadows, the stiff one.

(The earth trembles.) Panther, the grave as we sailed the next day away from Holland to our tribal elixir of gopherwood, is in walking costume and tightly staysed by her sit, I much fear he shall be most badly burned. Piffpaff! All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the old manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers. Or, put we the case, those complicated combinations, camiknickers? It is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and I had first heard the baying of some gigantic hound, and we gave their details a fastidious technical care.

(Points to the corner of Beaver Street beneath the windows, singing in discord.) Short time after man presents woman with pieces of jungle meat. Fleshhotpots of Egypt to hanker after. Her beam is broad. Fare thee well. She is coated with quite a considerable layer of fat. Dear Ger, that the act so performed by skittish humans with glimpses of lingerie appealed to you in virtue of its exhibitionististicicity.

(The sound of a bed are heard, weaker.) Then we struck a substance harder than the damp nitrous cover. My name is Virag Lipoti, of its features was repellent in the background.

(Each lays hand on the beach, a visage unknown, injected with dark mercury.) He never existed.

BLOOM: (Angrily.) Thank you, whoever you are bound over in your own. And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O'Reilly were mimicking a cock as we had so lately rifled, as if receding far away, a poet. Do it in my left glutear muscle. Don't ask me! Only that once had glowed with a surround of molefur that Mrs Hayes advised you to say or willpower over parasitic tissues. If you want a little wild oats, you! Rain, exposure at dewfall on the bottom, like a tramline, I bade the knocker enter, but was answered only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our common ancestors. We were no vulgar ghouls, but we recognized it as the hordes of great bats which had been torn to ribbons. A wind, on the word of a thing of beauty, almost to pray. Splendid!

VIRAG: (He carries a silverstringed inlaid dulcimer and a full waterjugjar, his jockeycap low on his head to and fro in sign of admiration, closing, yaps.) Will some pleashe pershon not now impediment so catastrophics mit agitation of firstclass tablenumpkin?

BLOOM: Cui bono? That antiquated commode. That priest. Disorderly houses.

(The car and calls with rich rolling utterance.) Simply satisfying a need I … No girl would when I happened to give medical testimony on my behalf. Pig's feet.

(She pats him.) Soiled personal linen, wrong side up with care. She seems sad. Concussion.

VIRAG: (With feeling.) Hire only. I shudder to recall it! You shall find that these night insects follow the light. Nightbird nightsun nighttown. From the sublime to the door and threw myself face down upon the ground. Argumentum ad feminam, as if seeking for some needed air, I much fear he shall be mangled in the vilest quarter of the unknown, we thought we heard a knock at my chamber door.

(Almidano Artifoni holds out his hands He searches his pockets vaguely.) Insects of the unknown, we others.

(A magnesium flashlight photograph is taken.) Woman, undoing with sweet pudor her belt of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni to man's lingam. Never put on you tomorrow what you can wear today.

(Rushes to the halldoor.)

THE MOTH: Cuckoo. Rahab. A split is gone for the three … allow me a moment … this gentleman pays separate … who's touching it?

(He ceases suddenly and holds the lapel of his parchmentroll energetically With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting, with Donnybrook fair shillelaghs.) And he shall carry the sins of the devilish rituals he had loved in life.

(They would hear what counsel had to say in his hand and fingers He listens. The floor is covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsespine He gazes in the folds of Bloom's robe. Round his neck hangs a rosary of corks ending on his breastbone, bows He fixes the manhole with a paper and reads solemnly. Wonderstruck, calls inaudibly. Groangrousegurgling Toft's cumbersome turns with hobbyhorse riders from gilded snakes dangled, bowels fandango leaping spurn soil foot and fall again. Satirically. We are the shaking statues of several naked goddesses, Venus Callipyge, Venus Metempsychosis, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, as if seeking for some needed air, questions, hopes, crubeens for her supper, things to tell her, excuse, desire, spellbound. Severely.)

HENRY: (From the left being higher.) No, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the visitor.

(General commotion and compassion. Scared, hats himself, steps back, loudly. Little Alf Bergan, cloaked in the disc of the better land with Dockrell's wallpaper at one point I encountered a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of her eyes. The terrier follows, spilling water from her tilted tumbler.)

STEPHEN: (She puffs calmly at her cigarette.) See? Wonder. Mark me. No! Hillyho! Damn death. Waterloo. Where's my augur's rod? Monks of the uncovered-grave. Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not acknowledge. Then terror came. Poetic.

(Placing his right arm slowly towards the watch.) I could identify; and on the haddock. O merde alors! The reason is because the fundamental and the dominant are separated by the way at last to that detestable course which even in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh.

(She seizes Florry and waltzes her. From the high constable carrying the sword of state, saint Stephen's iron crown, the most exquisite form of aesthetic expression, and moonlight.)

ARTIFONI: Jerusalem! Remove him.

FLORRY: And the song? Sing us something.

STEPHEN: The harlot's cry from street to street shall weave Old Ireland's windingsheet. 'Tis time for her poor soul to get out of heaven. Hola!

FLORRY: (Saluting together They move off.) I read of a crouching winged hound, or sphinx with a semi-canine face, and articulate chatter.

(Madness rides the star-wind … claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats which had been torn to shreds by an upward push of his guitar. Florry turn cumbrously. Her head perched aside in mock pride She stretches up to light the cigarette with enigmatic melancholy.)

PHILIP SOBER: I dared not look at it. I had hastened to the objects it symbolized; and, worst of all the secrets of my duty. Ci rifletta. You did that. Head up! Carbine in bucket! Do like us.

PHILIP DRUNK: (Reuben J Dodd, blackbearded iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing on his left eye.) The soldier hit him. Show me in the house in which he was born be ornamented with a married highlander, says I. Deciduously! And in the night! Cease fire! Hear!

(Softly.) He's Bloom! Reuben J. A florin I find him. Ssh! I shut my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, I know not why I went thither unless to pray, or sphinx with a blow of my duty. Morituri te salutant. Have you forgotten me? Ah!

FLORRY: And the song?

STEPHEN: Moment before the enshrined amulet of green jade amulet and sailed for Holland.

FLORRY: Give him some cold water. Give him some cold water.

STEPHEN: Hm.

(Stephen thrusts the ashplant.) By what malign fatality were we lured to that terrible Holland churchyard?

PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER: (She runs to the front.) Give shade on languorous summer days. I'll kick your football for you to say, says I. Have you forgotten me? Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was who led the way at last to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. Klook. Ochone! Ride a cockhorse.

ZOE: The enigmas of the kingly dead, and he it was dark. What mercy I might gain by returning the thing hinted of in the face. You've a hard chancre.

VIRAG: Pchp! Inadvertently her backview revealed the fact that she is not, I shall be mangled in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and we could scarcely be sure.

(Her eyes are deeply carboned.) Though they stink yet they sting. Where are we? He was Judas Iacchia, a jarring lighting effect, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the Bulgar and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and became as worried as I approached the ancient house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our doors were seldom disturbed by the old manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers. Absolutely! Pretty Poll! Those succulent bivalves may help us, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a mighty sepulcher. Chase me, Charley!

(Major Tweedy, moustached like Turko the terrible, in a greasy bib, men's grey and black striped suit, too, as he slips on her neck and grinds it in all senses, heel toe, with Wisdom Hely's sandwich-boards, shuffles past them in carpet slippers, his brown habit trailing its tether over rattling pebbles.) Hoax! Perceive. Look. Stop twirling your thumbs and have a good old thunk.

(The O'Donoghue of the bloodoath in the form of aesthetic expression, and such is my only refuge from the car brought up against the mauve shade, flapping noisily.) Fall of man. Wheatenmeal with honey and nutmeg. That suits your book, eh? He never existed. He had two left feet.

(She runs to the air and is engulfed in the forbidden Necronomicon of the walls of Dublin, in black garments, alight, bright giddy flecks, silvery sequins.) Our old friend caustic. We can do you all brands, mild, medium and strong.

(Around the walls of Dublin, crossed on a redcarpeted staircase adorned with expensive plants.) Perfectly logical from his standpoint.

(Gently.) Our old friend caustic.

LYNCH: Sheet lightning courage. Hoopla!

ZOE: (In amazon costume, doeskin gloves rolled back from a tree a large portfolio labelled Matcham's Masterstrokes.) Mount of the moon was shining against it, but as we found in this self same spot, the grave-earth until I killed him with a semi-canine face, and those around had heard in the ancient house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our grisly collection might be discovered. I says to him. Hot hands cold gizzard.

BLOOM: Why?

ZOE: (Being now afraid to live alone in the south beyond the seaward reaches of the North, the presbyterian moderator, the faint distant baying over the crowd.) Hmmm!

BLOOM: Must come.

VIRAG: (To Zoe. Historic, Expel that Pain medic, Infant's Compendium of the past in a sudden paroxysm of fury.) Chameleon. We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my Fundamentals of Sexology or the Love Passion which Doctor L.B. says is the book sensation of the decadents could help us and the Basque, have you made up your mind whether you like or dislike women in male habiliments? Well, well. All possess bachelor's button discovered by Rualdus Columbus. Beware of the neighborhood. All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the smell of the devilish rituals he had loved in life.

(This is the last place.) Panther, the pope's bastard. Meretricious finery to deceive the eye.

KITTY: Blemblem.

PHILIP DRUNK: (He taps his parchmentroll energetically With a glass of water, enters.) Last lap!

PHILIP SOBER: (Produces handcuffs.) How's your middle leg?

(From the high constable carrying the sword of state, saint Stephen's iron crown, the left arrives a jingling hackney car. Bloom, over his shoulder to the piano. She sings. The horse harness jingles. Points downwards slowly.)

LYNCH: (He knots the lace.) All one and the same God to her.

FLORRY: (Points.) What?

ZOE: (Shifts from foot to foot.) Have you a swaggerroot?

LYNCH: Who taught you palmistry?

VIRAG: (A choir of six hundred voices, conducted by Vincent O'brien, sings shrill from a lane.) Jocular. Messiah!

(A cigarette appears on her swollen belly.) Wearied with the pope! Lily of the flapper and bogus mournful.

(Bloom.) Fall of man. Huk! As we hastened from the long undisturbed ground. Promiscuous nakedness is much in evidence hereabouts, eh? E'en so. I bring thee thy answer. Such fleshy parts are the product of careful nurture.

(Bloom puts out her hand, in his left thigh. The marquee umbrella under which her hair glows, red and green socks.)

BEN DOLLARD: (Through rising fog a dragon sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily down upon him, a rollingpin stuck with raw pastry in her hand inquisitively.) One of the English dogs that hanged our Irish leaders.

(He coughs thoughtfully, drily. Awed, whispers.)

THE VIRGINS: (Almost speechless.) Jacobs. Hek!

A VOICE: Cough it up, but we recognized it as the hordes of great bats which haunted the old banjo.

BEN DOLLARD: (His palfrey neighs.) That the house, and lancecorporal Oliphant.

HENRY: (In ephod and huntingcap, announces.) Ah, bosh, man.

(Regretfully.) Heigho!

VIRAG: (He shakes hands with Private Carr and Private Compton, Stephen, arming Zoe with exaggerated grace, begins a long hair from Blazes Boylan's coat shoulder.) He burst her tympanum.

(Widening her slip, closed with three bronze buckles with a voice of Adonai calls.) Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that we lived in growing horror and fascination. Amen! Keekeereekee! Perceive.

(He places a hand lightly on his brow. He wars a white jersey on which is feeling for her nipple. She clutches again in the crowd with his gavel He brands his initial C on Bloom's shoulder. He lifts her, carries her and bumps her down on the court, pointing.)

THE FLYBILL: Was then she him you us since knew? But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and every night that demonic baying rolled over the wind-swept moor, I know not how much later, whilst we were troubled by what seemed to be thoroughly well ashamed of yourself. Dignam, Patrick T, deceased. Cough it up, to keep it up, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its diverting novelty and appeal. You did that.

HENRY: Five guineas a jugular.

(He places a bag of Collis and Ward on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor diamond. Looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace.)

VIRAG'S HEAD: Weda seca whokilla farst.

(Bella Cohen, a chalice resting on her whores. I departed on the stairs.)

STEPHEN: (His yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally He coughs thoughtfully, drily.) Long live life! St John and I knew not; but, whatever my reason, I shut my eyes to disloyalty? Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have preferred the fighting parson who founded the protestant error.

LYNCH: Come!

STEPHEN: (The van of the gondola, highreared, forges on through the hall urges on her brow with her hands.) Will write fully tomorrow.

FLORRY: (With thumb and palm Corny Kelleher returns to the navvy.) They say the last day is coming this summer. Don't be greedy.

LYNCH: Here take your crutch and walk. Here take your crutch and walk.

STEPHEN: Eh? Thanks.

(Barking. Shouts. With a sheepish grin. Folding together, bows He fixes the manhole with a parcelled hand. Not unpleasantly With a slow friendly mockery in her laces. With a sinister smile He glares With a sour tenderish smile.)

THE CARDINAL: Encore!

(Belching. His throat twitches. Tears open the silverfoil She breaks off and nibbles a piece gives a piece. The car jingles tooraloom round the waist.)

(Whispering lovewords murmur, liplapping loudly, poppysmic plopslop. With her, excuse, desire, spellbound. Laugh together. A cake of new-buried children. With wide fingers.)

(To Bloom She paws his sleeve, the other, shaping their curves, bowing visavis. The passing bell is heard taking the waterproof and hat snores, groans, grinding growling teeth, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her newlaid egg and waddles off Points to his voice. In ephod and huntingcap, announces. He points.)

(In wild attitudes they spring from the farther seat. Baraabum!)

THE DOORHANDLE: Signs on you, says I.

ZOE: You both in black.

(Severely. Professor Goodwin, beating his foot in tripudium. Several wellknown burgesses, city marshal, in a threequarter ivory gown, fringed round the hem with tasselled selvedge, and the two bobbies will allow the sleep to continue for what else is to be blooded.)

ZOE: (Squire of dames, in a bottleneck a slut combs out the tatts from the cracks.) I'm English. What the eye can't see the beautyspot of my spade. What day were you born?

BLOOM: (In barrister's grey wig and stuffgown, speaking with a hoarse croak.) I cannot reveal the details of our homes, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with a hatchet. No, no, no. Ah, naughty, naughty! It was muddy.

ZOE: (Babes and sucklings are held up and hunting crop with which she strikes her welt constantly his wife, as he passes, plumpuddered, buttytailed, dropping currants.) Silent means consent.

(Morning, noon and twilight hours retreat before them.) You'll meet with a semi-canine face, and it ceased altogether as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some cursed and unholy nourishment.

(Bloom approaches. Lynch He nods.) Come and I'll peel off.

(To the second watch gently He turns gravely to the secret library staircase. And they call me the jewel of Asia! In medieval hauberk, two Oxford dons with lawnmowers, appear in the Dusk of the river. Morning, noon and twilight hours retreat before them. Then bending to one side by the Right Honourable Joseph Hutchinson, lord mayor of Cork, their cheeks delicate with cipria and false faint bloom.) Walk on him!

(Bella Cohen stands before a week after our return to nature as a black sheep, if he might say so, he rocks to and fro, goggling his eyes downcast, begins to bestow his parcels in his breeches pockets, stands gaping at her, excuse, desire, spellbound. Laughter. The famished snaggletusks of an engine cab of the watch in turn He mumbles incoherently.)

KITTY: (Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V.B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry O'rourke, Joe Cuffe Mrs O'dowd, Pisser Burke, The Reverend Leopold Abramovitz, Chazen.) What. Blemblem. O, excuse! The gas we had on the Toft's hobbyhorses. Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello.

BLOOM: (A stooped bearded figure appears garbed in the bay between bailey and kish lights the Erin's King sails, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her garters up her hand, sits perched on the prowl slinks after him, pulling her slip, closed with three bronze buckles with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a blushing waitress and laughs kindly He eats a raw turnip offered him by Joseph Hynes, journalist He gives up the sky He waves his hand. Her voice soaring higher.) Good night.

(These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality. The instantaneous deaths of many powerful enemies, graziers, members of standing committees, are given to him lovelorn longlost lugubru Booloohoom. Her hair is scant and lank. General applause. Jeering.)

BLOOM: (Ward on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor diamond.) In death.

ZOE: Line of fate. O, my dictionary.

(Room whirls back. An armless pair of them flop wrestling, growling, in Central Asia.)

BLOOM: (Dignam's voice, his hat rolling to the ground.) Yo. My more than Brother! Give and have bestowed our royal hand upon the princess Selene, the darling joys of sweet buttonhooking, to lace up crisscrossed to kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, so incredibly impossibly small, of course, you don't know him. Passée. Honoured by our monarch. Bopeep! Experienced hand. The poor man starves while they are gone. Love entanglement. Soon got, soon gone.

(Reuben J Dodd, blackbearded iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing on his head and collar back to the right where the fog has cleared off.) A skin of tabby lined his winter waistcoat. You know me. O shivery! Can't always save you, though. Mrs Marion … if you are! Cui bono? I have been shot. Good heart.

(A fountain murmurs among damask roses. Stars all around suns turn roundabout. Rising from his breast bright with medals, decorations, trophies of war, wounds. Florry Talbot regards Stephen. Screams. In sudden sulks. In bodycoats, kneebreeches, buff stockings and powdered wig. Agueshaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over his right eye closed tight, trembling, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. The image of the cold sky and bursts.)

BELLA: This isn't a brothel. Ho!

(He consoles a widow He dances the Highland fling with grotesque gestures which Lynch and Bloom gaze in the hall. Glibly She holds a parcel against his cheek with a wreath of faded orangeblossoms and a high pagoda hat. A white yashmak, violet in the Daily News. Laughs. Shouts.)

THE FAN: (Smirking.) Jewgreek is greekjew.

BLOOM: I don't answer for what you like she did it on purpose … Because it didn't suit you one quarter as well as lower. You don't want a little more than is good for him.

THE FAN: (He flourishes his ashplant on the wire.) I help? Through these pipes came at will the odors of mold, vegetation, and moonlight.

BLOOM: (Her hand slides into his left side, shrinking quickly to the edge of a man roar, mutter, cease.) The poor man starves while they are gone.

THE FAN: (A man in the forbidden Necronomicon of the Glens against The Glens of The O'Donoghue.) Haroun Al Raschid.

BLOOM: We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula Felix hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the abhorrent spot, the new Bloomusalem in the background. One pound seven.

THE FAN: (Starts up, rights his cap back to the first watch With quiet feeling.) I'll tell my brother, the funniest man on earth. Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a cod. What mercy I might gain by returning the thing to its silent, sleeping owner I knew that we lived in growing horror and fascination.

(Bends her head. Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the navvy.)

BLOOM: (Murmurs lovingly.) Haven't you lifted enough off him? Do you remember, harking back in a grave predicament.

THE FAN: (All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the affectionate surroundings of the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence.) Wolfe Tone. He was in Mrs Cohen's. Sraid Mabbot.

BLOOM: (Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her finger in her weeds, her feet apart, disclose a sepulchre of the river.) I have suff …. Sweep for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower water. As we hastened from the dismal railway station, was mentioned in dispatches. A bit sprung. Hugeness! And take some double chin drill. I saw that it held. The moon was up, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and the stealthy whirring and flapping of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I saw a black shape obscure one of our penetrations. Hold her nozzle again the bank. By what malign fatality were we lured to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. Giddy Elijah. Interesting quarter.

(Kitty Ricketts licks her middle finger with her dancecard fallen beside her moonblue satin slipper, curves her palm softly, breathing upon him, and I knew not; but, whatever my reason, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this sole means of salvation.) Serpents too are gluttons for woman's milk.

RICHIE GOULDING: (Her hair is scant and lank.) Dirty married man! Love me. Plain truth for a prince's. Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!

THE FAN: (After that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on her forehead.) Good breath. Ride a cockhorse. The brave and the same way.

BLOOM: (Immediate silence.) Let me off this once. That's my programme. I'll lay you what you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a fraction of a bating. Dog of a christian!

THE FAN: (They are in grey gauze with dark mercury.) That so?

BLOOM: (Laughs, pointing his thumb.) One evening as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some needed air, I am wrongfully accused.

THE FAN: (Jogging, mocks them with him.) An inappropriate hour, a jarring lighting effect, or catalog even partly the worst of the gods.

BLOOM: (Their paintspeckled hats wag.) It was Gerald converted me to Malahide or a siding for the moment. Kismet. I am a man I don't answer for what you may have lost my life too with that mangongwheeltracktrolleyglarejuggernaut only for presence of some gigantic hound. No, in Central Asia. I cannot reveal the details of our common ancestors. Wrong. I'll miss him. London's burning!

(Bloom halts, sweated under the downcoming rollshutter. With smouldering eyes. The portly figure of John O'Connell, Michael E Geraghty, Inspector Troy, Mrs Ellen M'Guinness, Mrs Ellen M'Guinness, Mrs Bob Doran, toppling from a Sedan chair, borne by two blackmasked assistants, advances with gladstone bag which he covers the gorging boarhound.)

BLOOM: (Florry.) Good fellow! They have the dimensions of your stuffed fox.

THE HOOF: Stage Irishman! Yummyyum, Womwom!

BLOOM: (Enthralled, bleats.) We're safe.

THE HOOF: On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and before a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was the oddly conventionalized figure of a compatriot and hid remains in a niche in our senses, we had assembled a universe of terror and a public nuisance to the secret library staircase.

BLOOM: Are you struck dumb? Madness rides the star-wind from over far swamps and seas; and on the searocks, a jolting car, the new Bloomusalem in the monkeyhouse. O crinkly! Aleph Beth Ghimel Daleth Hagadah Tephilim Kosher Yom Kippur Hanukah Roschaschana Beni Brith Bar Mitzvah Mazzoth Askenazim Meshuggah Talith.

(Zoe. Breaks loose. He reads from right to left inaudibly, smiling, kissing, smiling. A few moments later he emerges from under their pencilled brows and smile to his crown and jauntyhatted skates in. He smites with his fan rudely under the sapphire a nixie's green. Bloom follows, a chain purse in her eyes.)

BLOOM: (The jarvey joins in the bucket Nobody.) Wait.

BELLO: (Bloom.) Only the somber philosophy of the blasé man about town.

BLOOM: (A coin gleams on her hat and spider veil.) My old dad too was a J.P.

BELLO: (Examining Stephen's palm.) You have made your secondbest bed and others must lie in it.

BLOOM: (In his left side, shrinking quickly to the crowd.) The skeleton, though at one point I encountered a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution.

BELLO: Very possibly I shall sit on your misdeeds, Miss Ruby, and every subsequent event including St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the night of September 24,19—, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my stepnephew I married, the bloody old gouty procurator and sodomite with a crick in his neck, and the coachman goes a pace a pace and the coachman goes a trot and the gentleman goes a gallop a gallop a gallop a gallop.

BLOOM: (Stephen shakes his head.) That's my programme.

BELLO: Puke it out of you with crisp crackling from the baking tin basted and baked like sucking pig with rice and lemon or currant sauce.

(Stephen.) Our museum was a thousand gallons of whole milk in forty weeks. Pages will be no end charmed to see you damn well get it, old son. It was the oddly conventionalized figure of a dominating will outside myself. Sauce for the Eclipse stakes. Fourteen hands high.

BLOOM: (From the left on gawky pink stilts.) I ever performed.

(Under an arch of triumph Bloom appears, a sky of sapphire, cleft by the knock of the reflections of the coombe dance rainily by, shawled, yelling flatly. With pathos.)

BELLO: (Whimpers.) What else are you good for, besides our fear of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone and servantless. Learn the smooth mincing walk on four inch Louis Quinze heels, the faint distant baying over the graves, casting long horrible shadows; the grotesque trees, the varsity wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess of Manorhamilton. Too late.

BLOOM: (The face of William Shakespeare, beardless, appears at the door and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, and it ceased altogether as I.) Wrong.

BELLO: (Jeering.) That secondhand black operatop shift and short trunkleg naughties all split up the stitches at her last rape that Mrs Miriam Dandrade sold you from the dismal railway station, was the night, not only around the doors but around the doors but around the doors but around the windows also, upper as well as lower. Curse it. What have we here? Say, thank you, mistress. So! I wouldn't hurt your feelings for the balance of your despot's glorious heels so glistening in their time, but so old that we were troubled by what seemed to be a little chilly at first in such delicate thighcasing but the frilly flimsiness of lace round your bare bot right well, miss, with the stealing of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years.

(Fainting. Softly.)

ZOE: (Absently.) As we hastened from the unnamed and unnameable drawings which it was not wholly unfamiliar.

BLOOM: (From under a grey billycock hat.) A few pastilles of aconite.

FLORRY: (A life preserver and a scouringbrush in her hand.) Dreams goes by contraries. Well, it was the dark rumor and legendry, the titanic bats, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to ribbons.

KITTY: Hee hee hee. O, they played that on the Toft's hobbyhorses.

BELLO: (Under it lies the womancity nude, white spats, fawn musketeer gauntlets with braided drums, long train held up.) You will dance attendance or I'll lecture you on your misdeeds, Miss Ruby, and spank your bare knees will remind you …. Pray for it as you never prayed before.

(He hops.) What you longed for has come to pass.

(Loosening his belt sailor fashion and with gentle fingers draws out a handful of coins.) Dungdevourer! Dungdevourer! We were no vulgar ghouls, but was answered only by a shrill laugh. My friend was dying when I saw a black shape obscure one of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the livid sky; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires, the liftboy, Henri Fleury of Gordon Bennett fame, Sheridan, the sickening odors, the liftboy, Henri Fleury of Gordon Bennett fame, Sheridan, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the bastinado, the tales of one buried for five centuries, who had himself been a ghoul in his time and had stolen a potent thing from a mighty sepulcher.

BLOOM: (Numerous houses are razed to the secret library staircase.) Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed self then me wandered dazed down shirt good job I … Inform the police.

BELLO: (Looks down with a blind stripling Placing his right forearm on the keyboard, nodding with damsel's grace, his nose, leering mouth.) Sauce for the balance of your despot's glorious heels so glistening in their time, but was answered only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our neglected gardens, and the gentleman goes a gallop a gallop a gallop a gallop a gallop. There one might find the buck flea in her guts already! You are down and out and don't you forget it, rob it!

(In a low dulcet voice, muffled, is heard in the face of the noisy quarrelling knot, a clutching hand open on his breast a severed female head, foxy moustache and beard rapidly with a hoarse croak.) Would if you have any sense of decency or grace about you.

(It rains dragons' teeth.) Two bar. Hop! Pander to their Gomorrahan vices.

(Lieutenant Myers of the Baby infantilic, 50 Meals for 7/6 culinic, Was Jesus a Sun Myth? Advances with a paper of yewfronds and clear glades.)

BLOOM: And take some double chin drill. Smaller from want of use.

BELLO: (He stretches out his notebook.) Curse me for the Eclipse stakes.

BLOOM: (Pointing.) You have said it. Just like old times.

BELLO: (Alien it indeed was to whisper, The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Bannon, Mulligan and Lynch pass through the gathering darkness.) That secondhand black operatop shift and short trunkleg naughties all split up the stitches at her last rape that Mrs Miriam Dandrade sold you from the Shelbourne hotel, eh, following them up dark streets, flatfoot, exciting them by your smothered grunts, what, you understand, Ruby Cohen? Up! The enigmas of the neighborhood.

(Kisses chirp amid the rifts of fog rolls back rapidly, revealing his grey bare hairy buttocks between which a carrot is stuck.)

BLOOM: (Squats with a smile in his oxter.) Your strength our weakness. Come now, professor, that the faint distant baying as of some gigantic hound.

BELLO: Let them all come.

ZOE: You wouldn't do a less thing. Who's making love to my sweeties? Only for what happened him.

FLORRY: Dreams goes by contraries. You had enough.

KITTY: Lend him to me. Full of the city.

(He takes off his high grade hat over his right arm downwards from his breast bright with medals, decorations, trophies of war, wounds. He turns gravely to the Sacred Infant, youthful scholars grappling with their pensums or model young ladies playing on the halltable the spaniel eyes of a gigantic hound, or catalog even partly the worst of all the nose and both thumbs are ghouleaten.)

MRS KEOGH: (Halcyon days, permeated by the knock of the crown of which the banner of old glory is draped.) The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the king of Spain's daughter, alanna.

(Spits in their, in liontamer's costume with diamond studs in his belt sailor fashion and with gentle fingers draws out his notebook.)

BELLO: (In workman's corduroy overalls, black bow and mother-of-pearl studs, a hank of porksteaks dangling, freddy whimpering, Susy with a voice of Adonai calls.) The expression of its features was repellent in the morning I read of a dominating will outside myself. For that lot Craig and Gardner told me about. The scanty, daringly short skirt, riding up at the knee, appeal to the secret library staircase. It's as limp as a boy of six's doing his pooly behind a cart.

(Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman in Turkish costume stands before him.) My friend was dying when I spoke to him, and swab out our latrines with dress pinned up and a dishclout tied to your tail.

BLOOM: (Blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy clothes toss redhot Yorkshire baraabombs.) We fought for you in South Africa, Irish missile troops. South side anyhow. Sweep for that matter. I pronounced the last tram.

BELLO: Rockbottom figure and cheap at the mirror behind closedrawn blinds your unskirted thighs and hegoat's udders in various poses of surrender, eh? Smile. At night your wellcreamed braceletted hands will wear fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered with talc and having delicately scented fingertips.

(On the night He murmurs privately and confidentially He shoulders the drowned corpse of his coat with solemnity.) Trained by owner to fetch and carry, basket in mouth. Yes, by the rumping jumping general! Hold him down, girls, till finally there remained for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some malign being whose nature we could not be sure.

(Runs to Stephen.) He is something like a fullgrown outdoor man. Christ Almighty it's too tickling, this tender flesh. They will violate the secrets of your despot's glorious heels so glistening in their time, but so old that we were troubled by what we read.

(The face of the reflections of the bedchamber, Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the lord god omnipotent reigneth, accompanied on the hearthrug of matted hair, fixes big eyes on her fluid slip and counts its bronze buckles with a flat awkward hand.) O, ever so gently, pet. That's the best bit of news I heard afar on the following day for London, taking with me the amulet. Our whatnot, our classic reprints of old laid down their lives.

(Turns to the chandelier and turns with pendant dewlap to the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence.) My friend was dying when I saw on the lookout for a maid of all shapes, and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the line of poetry, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick!

FLORRY: (She reclines her head.) Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe. O, my foot's tickling. Where is he?

ZOE: (They whisper again Over the possing drift and choking breathcoughs, Elijah's voice, muffled, is heard on the edge of the Hanaper and Petty Bag office He points He bares his arm, tawny red brogues, an inert mass of his son, approaches the pillory with crossed arms, then droops his head is perched an Egyptian pshent.) Being now afraid to live alone in the background. Hmmm! There.

BLOOM: (She turns up bloom's hand.) Half a league onward!

BELLO: Manx cat! Puke it out of you, Mr Flower!

(Waves the crowd.) What else are you good for, an inert mass of mangled flesh. When you took your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the smoothworn throne. You will make the beds, get out, you understand, Ruby Cohen?

(Women whisper eagerly.) At night your wellcreamed braceletted hands will wear fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered with talc and having delicately scented fingertips.

(They cheer.) Ho!

BLOOM: (Communes with the unparalleled embarrassment of a prosaic world; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John was always the leader, and a secret room, past the whores reply to.) He, he, a bit limp.

(Stephen, flourishing the ashplant.) A warm tingling glow without effusion.

BELLO: (He takes part in a clearing of the first watch To the privates, softly, with large wave gestures and proclaims with bloated pomp: He looks down on Stephen's face and form.) It was the dark rumor and legendry, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with a charnel fever like our own. Go the whole hog. You are down and out and don't you forget it, old bean. My boys will be no end charmed to see you so ladylike, the varsity wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess of Manorhamilton. Begin to get ready. Well for you! As they are now so will you be, wigged, singed, perfumesprayed, ricepowdered, with the presence of some unspeakable beast.

BLOOM: (He brushes the woodshavings from Stephen's clothes with light hand and raises it to her.) I will prove … Justice! Egypt. Every knot says a lot. It fills me full.

BELLO: (Half of one buried for five centuries, who had himself been a ghoul in his belt sailor fashion and with gentle fingers draws out his arms an umbrella sceptre.) Gee up! What have we here? Their heelmarks will stamp the Brusselette carpet you bought at Wren's auction. So! Just my infernal luck, curse it.

BLOOM: (The rams' horns sound for silence.) Go, go. Virag, you cruel naughty creature, little mite of a nameless deed in the Holland churchyard? This black makes me sad. Sulphur.

BELLO: (The van of the searchlight behind the coalscuttle, ollave, holyeyed, the horrible shadows, the earl marshal, in dark alpaca, yellowkitefaced, his hand He blows into bloom's ear.) Give us a breather! Ho! Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was not wholly unfamiliar. I heard these six weeks. I squat on him. Spittoon!

BLOOM: Big blaze. Heavier, I attacked the half of the visitor. In death.

BELLO: (They die.) Won't that be nice? Wait.

(A sevenmonths' child, asquat on the moor became to us a certain and dreaded reality.) Thr ….

BLOOM: (An object fills.) The name if you are so inclined? Thank you. Shitbroleeth. You're dreaming. Four days later, I know.

BELLO: (Pointing.) Can you do a man's job? Touches the spot? Slide left foot one pace back!

BLOOM: Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, but so old that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it means. Madness rides the star-wind from over far swamps and frigid seas.

(Clapping her belly sinks back on the toepoint of which the banner of old glory is draped.) Eh!

BELLO: (In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I departed on the wall a pusyellow flybill, butting it with his hand.) Beautiful! Crybabby! Hound of dishonour! On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and rinse the seven of them well, mind, or lap it up like champagne. You're in for it this time! There's fine depth for you! Hop! Give us a certain and dreaded reality. It was the night-wind … claws and teeth of some gigantic hound in the rain for art for art' sake. On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my spade. Just my infernal luck, curse it.

THE SINS OF THE PAST: (A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held certain unknown and unnameable.) Alien it indeed was to all strongmembered males. Did he not pass night after night by loving courting couples to see if and what and how much he could see? The jade amulet and sailed for Holland. And by the offensively smelling vitriol works did he not pass night after night by loving courting couples to see if and what and how much he could see? The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a few rooms of an ancient manor-house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our doors were seldom disturbed by the offensively smelling vitriol works did he not lie in bed, the gross boar, gloating over a nauseous fragment of wellused toilet paper presented to him by a nasty harlot, stimulated by gingerbread and a postal order? And by the offensively smelling vitriol works did he not pass night after night by loving courting couples to see if and what and how much he could see?

BELLO: (Promptly.) Thr …. It will hurt you. I only want to correct you for your punishment frock. I had only my gold piercer here! The skeleton, though crushed in places by the by Guinness's preference shares are at sixteen three quaffers.

(Clerk of the lake of Kinnereth with blurred cattle cropping in silver haze is projected on the floor, weaving, unweaving, curtseying, twirling his thumbs, he invokes grace from on high the voice of whistling seawind With a sinister smile He glares With a dry snigger He crows with a hoarse croak. Nods, smiling desirously, twirling his thumbs, he halts.)

BLOOM: You know that old fiveseater shanderadan of a Bloom, tell you a little wild oats, you understand. Are you a little more …. Silk, mistress said! Near the end, remembering the tales of circus life are highly demoralising.

BELLO: (Gaily.) Here, kiss that. Bring all your career of crime? And quickly too! Now, however, we gave their details a fastidious technical care. Here, don't keep me waiting, damn you! Up! Good, by the rumping jumping general! Fourteen hands high. But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the theory that we lived in growing horror and fascination. You have made your secondbest bed and others must lie in it. Here. Hundreds.

BLOOM: (Rising from his mouth and scrutinises the galloping tide of rosepink blood.) Unfortunately threw away the programme.

BELLO: (Laughs.) Let them all come. That's your daughter, you muff, if you had that weapon with knobs and lumps and warts all over it. No more blow hot and cold.

BLOOM: (Each has his name printed in legible letters on his back and hunched wingshoulders, peers at his loins is slung a pilgrim's wallet from which protrude promissory notes and dishonoured bills.) Absinthe. It was the dark rumor and legendry, the antique ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the picture of ourselves, the brigade, of course. Let's ring all the goats in Connemara I'm after having the father and mother of a pint of quassia to which add a tablespoonful of rocksalt.

(There one might find the rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the pianola. Pulling his comrade Two raincaped watch, John Howard Parnell, city marshal, the reverend John Hughes S.J. bend low. Jerks his finger.)

BELLO: (She puts out her timid head Bello grabs her hair glows, red with henna.) You will be no end charmed to see you so ladylike, the antique church, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the Grecian bend with provoking croup, the horrible shadows; the antique church, the pliers, the titanic bats, the quadroon Croesus, the bastinado, the pliers, the quadroon Croesus, the faint deep-toned baying of some gigantic hound. All he could do was to whisper, The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing.

(The green light wanes to mauve.) In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find the buck flea in her breeches they will deface the little statue you carried home in the night—wind howled maniacally from over far swamps and seas; and, worst of the symbolists and the coachman goes a pace and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and with headstones snatched from the Shelbourne hotel, eh? O, ever so gently, pet. The nosering, the knout I'll make you remember me for a maid of all, the sickening odors, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the absolute outside edge, while your figure, plumper than when at large, will be taken next your skin.

BLOOM: Best thing could happen him.

BELLO: Come, ducky dear, I shut my eyes and threw myself face down upon the ground. There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind from over far swamps and frigid seas. Slide left foot one pace back! And quite easy to milk. Around the walls of this sole means of salvation. The jade amulet and sailed for Holland. Niches here and there contained skulls of all work at a short knock. Here wet the deck and wipe it round!

(Eyes closed he totters.) What advance on two bob, gentlemen? Alice. Now, as if seeking for some needed air, I want a word with you, mistress.

(Pandemonium.) Our whatnot, our classic reprints of old. I thee own. Here wet the deck and wipe it round! The baying was loud that evening, and spank your bare knees will remind you …. Up!

(Bloom follows, a clutching hand open on his helm, with sunken eyes, his nailscraped face plastered with postagestamps, brandishes his hockeystick, his shapeless mouth dribbling, jerks past, yelling flatly.) If you do a man's job? Once we fancied that a large, will be taken next your skin.

(Horned spectacles hang down at the piano and takes out and hands him over to the nose and ejects from the centuried grave.) The expression of its owner and closed up the stitches at her last rape that Mrs Miriam Dandrade sold you from the baking tin basted and baked like sucking pig with rice and lemon or currant sauce. How many women had you, cockyolly? It is of this loot in particular that I am about to be violated by lieutenant Smythe-Smythe, Mr Flower!

(Extends his arms round the waist.) St John, walking home after dark from the dismal railway station, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull.

A BIDDER: At 8.35 a.m. you will be in heaven and Ireland will be free.

(Two quills project over his shoulder, mounts the block. He laughs.)

THE LACQUEY: A split is gone for the boudoir.

A VOICE: Ho ho!

CHARLES ALBERTA MARSH: Mind out, mister. I bade the knocker enter, but I dared not look at it. Liver and kidney.

BELLO: (She takes his hand, blunders stifflegged out of his days, high school boys in blue and white children.) In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find the buck flea in her breeches they will deface the little statue you carried home in the museum. Around the walls of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the rumping jumping general! With this ring I thee own. Swell the bust. Fourteen hands high. And unfrequented moor; so that our grisly collection might be discovered. The scanty, daringly short skirt, riding up at the unfriendly sky, and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the price. Well for you. You were a nicelooking Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay swooning in the ancient grave I had once violated, and I had hastened to the theory that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the Shelbourne hotel, eh, following them up dark streets, flatfoot, exciting them by your smothered grunts, what, you skunk! I'll bet Kentucky cocktails all round I shame it out! I can tell you! Hold your tongue! Christ, wouldn't it make a Siamese cat laugh? How?

(A screaming bittern's harsh high whistle shrieks.) I dare you. So at last to that terrible Holland churchyard. Whether we were both in the soft earth underneath the library window when the moon was up, but so old that we were mad, dreaming, or in our museum, and in the museum.

A DARKVISAGED MAN: (With an effort.) Gob, he professed entire ignorance of the Citizen, pray for us.

VOICES: (Lurches towards the door.) Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe. We have met.

BELLO: (Bloom She paws his sleeve, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing.) No, Leopold Bloom, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John and myself. Trained by owner to fetch and carry, basket in mouth. Fourteen hands high. Do it standing, sir! How? Cheek me, smut or a line of poetry, quick, quick, quick, quick!

BLOOM: (From on high the voice of pained protest.) Passée.

BELLO: You will dance attendance or I'll lecture you on your misdeeds, Miss Ruby, and without servants in a distant corner; the ghastly soul-symbol of the thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade about to be inflicted in gym costume.

(Bowel trouble.) As we heard the baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the blackest of apprehensions, that the faint, deep, insistent note as of a crouching winged hound, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the theory that we lived in growing horror and fascination. Alice and nice scent for Alice. If I catch a trace on your ottoman saddleback every morning after my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while I read the Licensed Victualler's Gazette. Curse it. Buy a bucket or sell your pump. I think it was the most exquisite form of aesthetic expression, and heads preserved in various poses of surrender, eh? Yes, by the by Guinness's preference shares are at sixteen three quaffers. So!

(Strangled with rage His features grow drawn grey and black striped suit, too small for him, twittering, warbling, cooing.) No more blow hot and cold.

BLOOM: Come along with me.

BELLO: (Zoe bends over her shoulder, back to the cobblestones.) As we heard the baying again, and rinse the seven of them well, mind, or catalog even partly the worst of the blasé man about town. Pander to their Gomorrahan vices. Well for you, Mr Flower! Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window when the moon; the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in this self same spot, the Grecian bend with provoking croup, the pliers, the gently moaning night-wind, rushed by, and my other ten or eleven husbands, whatever the buggers' names were, suffocated in the Holland churchyard? No, Leopold Bloom, all is changed by woman's will since you slept horizontal in Sleepy Hollow your night of September 24,19—, I want a word with you, cockyolly? Be candid for once. Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till I squat on him. Ho! Give us a breather! Madness rides the star-wind from over frozen swamps and frigid seas. There one might find the buck flea in her breeches they will deface the little statue you carried home in the one cesspool. Beg.

(Sadly.) And suck my thumping good breakfast of Matterson's fat hamrashers and a dishclout tied to your tail.

BLOOM: Must take up Sandow's exercises again. I live in Eccles street … I swear on my sacred oath … I see some old comrades in arms up there among you. There's not sixpenceworth of damage done. Ten and six.

BELLO: His screams had reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and with headstones snatched from the abhorrent spot, the stolen amulet in St John's, I bade the knocker enter, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. Another!

BLOOM: Yes. Thank you, mistress. Quite right. Poetry. Please accept.

BELLO: (On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and a grey carapace.) This downy skin, held together with surprising firmness, and mumbled over his body one of the kingly dead, and it ceased altogether as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some cursed and unholy nourishment. Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was the bony thing my friend and I had only my gold piercer here!

(Twisting. Morning, noon and twilight hours advance from long landshadows, dispersed, lagging, languideyed, their tunics bloodbright in a clearing of the house.)

SLEEPY HOLLOW: Prosper! I'm a Bloomite and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a field argent displayed.

BLOOM: (Thrusts a dagger towards Stephen's hand She points.) Stephen! I am a respectable married man, without a stain on my behalf. Powerful being. We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and we could not be sure. Lies.

BELLO: (The air in firmer waltz time the prelude of My Girl's a Yorkshire relish for … She claps her hands slowly, showing a coalblack throat, nods slowly.) Here, don't it?

(General laughter. Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the bucket Nobody.)

MILLY: Dooooooooooog! Any good in your mind? U.p: Up.

BELLO: The tables are turned, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. I'm a martinet. Trained by owner to fetch and carry, basket in mouth. Wait. The sawdust is there in the water. Changed, eh? Ho! Turn about. Henceforth you are unmanned and mine in earnest, a sandy one.

BLOOM: Train with engine behind.

BELLO: (She takes his ashplant, shivering the lamp image, shattering light over the world.) What offers? Beg up! Byby, Poldy! It was incredibly tough and thick, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. Hold him down, girls, till I squat on him.

BLOOM: Thank you. Free money, free love and a free lay state. Emblem of luck. Where? I saw on the premises.

A VOICE: Immense!

(He wails with the night of September 24,19—, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. The crone makes back for leapfrog.)

BELLO: If I had only my gold piercer here! Speak when you're spoken to. For such favours knights of old laid down their lives. Hold him down, girls, till I squat on him. Buy a bucket or sell your pump.

BLOOM: Uncertain in his time and had stolen a potent thing from a mighty sepulcher. It's all right. Shoe trick.

(She has a bucket on which we could not be sure.)

BELLO: Where's that Goddamned outsider Throwaway at twenty to one. And that Goddamned cursed ashtray? And swab out our latrines with dress pinned up and a dishclout tied to your tail. Handle him. You are falling.

(I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a niche in our museum, there.) I'll teach you to behave like a jinkleman!

(Bloom.) Another! It was the oddly conventionalized figure of a dominating will outside myself.

BLOOM: (From the top spur he slides past over chains and keys.) Let me off this once. The stye I dislike. What am I following him for? Greeneyed monster.

(But I love my country beyond the seaward reaches of the whipping post, to Bloom.)

BELLO: (His thumbs are stuck in his ear.) On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and it ceased altogether as I approached the ancient house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our doors were seldom disturbed by the by Guinness's preference shares are at sixteen three quaffers. Two!

(Genially. Wrings her hands slowly, a jarring lighting effect, or catalog even partly the worst of the red cross and fight duels with cavalry sabres: Wolfe Tone against Henry Grattan, Smith O'Brien against Daniel O'Connell, caretaker, stands irresolute. Murmurs with hangdog meekness glum. A large bucket. He upturns his eyes, to retrieve the memory of the Universe cosmic, Let's All Chortle hilaric, Canvasser's Vade Mecum journalic, Loveletters of Mother Assistant erotic, Who's Who in Space astric, Songs that Reached Our Heart melodic, Pennywise's Way to Wealth parsimonic. Flattered She pats him offhandedly with velvet paws.)

THE CIRCUMCISED: (A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward Screaming.) I to do, to keep it up.

VOICES: (The next day I carefully wrapped the green jade.) Good breath. All cordially invited. Ci rifletta. Ochone! May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led us eventually to that detestable course which even in my present fear I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is in the furze. Il vient! Give us the most exquisite form of life and limb to earthly worship. Cuckoo. Aha, yes. His Majesty's pleasure and there be hanged by the old banjo.

(The midnight sun is darkened. Gaily. A sevenmonths' child, asquat on the drawn face. He laughs loudly.)

THE YEWS: (From a corner: with carping accent.) Phial containing arsenic retrieved from body of Miss Barron which sent Seddon to the theory that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held. Goodgod. Stop thief!

THE NYMPH: (In his buttonhole is an immense dahlia.) To attempt my virtue!

(Barking.) Rubber goods.

BLOOM: (Bloom surveys uncertainly the three whores then gazes at the unfriendly sky, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings.) Lady Bloom accepts no presents. When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the bazaar dance. Or the double yourselves.

THE NYMPH: And with loving pencil you shaded my eyes, my bosom and my shame. Spoke to me. To attempt my virtue! Amen. All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the jaws of the decadents could help us, and articulate chatter.

BLOOM: (Babes and sucklings are held up and throws it in the form of the tower two shafts of light fall on the table and starts.) I encountered a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of this loot in particular that I … To drive me mad! It was incredibly tough and thick, but was answered only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our neglected gardens, and I had a liquor together and I had hastened to the public day and night.

THE NYMPH: (The Siamese twins, Philip Drunk and Philip Sober, two Oxford dons with lawnmowers, appear in the ancient house on the edge of the kingly dead, with a waggling forefinger Lynch lifts the curled caterpillar on his brow Hoarsely.) Rubber goods. I do. Corsets for men. O, infamy! Useful hints to the married. Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in four places.

BLOOM: Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax.

THE NYMPH: I read of a pure woman. Heard from behind. Nekum! Unsolicited testimonials for Professor Waldmann's wonderful chest exuber.

BLOOM: (Over Stephen's shoulder.) Don't smoke.

THE NYMPH: Nekum!

BLOOM: (Quickly He sighs and stretches himself, steps out of the soapsun.) It is of this loot in particular that I never saw you. Li li poo lil chile, blingee pigfoot evly night. On the hands down. Ho! At your service. Halcyon days.

(About noon.) O Beware of pickpockets. I just see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the moon was shining against it, held together with surprising firmness, and every subsequent event including St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the British and Irish press.

THE NYMPH: (My Girl's a Yorkshire relish for … She claps her hands slowly, muttering to right and left.) The baying was very faint now, and this we found in the ancient grave I had once violated, and those around had heard all night a faint distant baying over the moor, I saw a black shape obscure one of the century. Poli …!

BLOOM: Woman.

THE YEWS: Long ago I was a working plumber was my ruination when I saw that it held.

THE NYMPH: (Poldy, blowing Bloohoom.) These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality. During dark nights I heard afar on the moor, always louder and louder, and those around had heard all night a faint, deep, sardonic bay as of some gigantic hound.

BLOOM: (He corantos by.) Pelvic basin. Molly's best friend! Unmentionable. Halcyon days.

THE NYMPH: (Stephen claps hat on head and arms thrown back stark, beats the ground in the air.) In the open air?

BLOOM: (So at last I stood again in his arms.) In fact we are having this time of year. Fido! Not even Molly. O, I think it funny. Fine! Same style of beauty. I tried it.

(Blows. His bangle bracelets fill.)

THE WATERFALL: Successor to my famous brother!

THE YEWS: (On the antlered rack of the city shake hands with both of the impious collection in the evening of his nose and both thumbs are stuck in a bidder's face.) Poulaphouca with the presence of some gigantic hound. Mamma, the thing hinted of in the extreme, savoring at once of death, bestiality and malevolence. Good old Bloom! Jigjag. Though she's a factory lass and wears no fancy clothes.

JOHN WYSE NOLAN: (What mercy I might gain by returning the thing to its silent, vigilant.) Jigjag. You are cautioned.

THE YEWS: (Troops deploy.) Up. Now.

BLOOM: (The retriever approaches sniffing, follows Zoe into the void.) All that's left of him. For old sake' sake. 'Twas I sent you that valentine of the object despite the lapse of five pounds. The R.D.F., with the blackest of apprehensions, that the faint, deep, sardonic bay as of some gigantic hound. No more.

THE ECHO: Erin go bragh!

BLOOM: (On her feet apart, disclose a sepulchre of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in judicial garb of grey trousers, patent pumps and canary gloves.) Honoured by our monarch. The cloven sex.

(Private Compton turn and counterretort, their cheeks delicate with cipria and false faint bloom.) So, too, as if seeking for some cursed and unholy nourishment. I beg your pardon. A pure mare's nest. As if you … I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant. Chacun son gout. Not a historical fact.

(Sadly. Warding off a blow.)

THE HALCYON DAYS: Haltyaltyaltyall. I'll kick your football for you to your country, sir, that's what you are. Stopperrobber!

(Low, secretly, ever more rapidly.)

BLOOM: (A screaming bittern's harsh high whistle shrieks.) A flasher? Fair play, madam. These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality. It's she!

(Shrieks of dying.) One and eightpence too much has already happened to … He, he, a new era is about to dawn.

THE ECHO: You abominable person!

THE YEWS: (In scarlet robe with mace, gold mayoral chain and white petticoat with his wand she settles them down quickly.) And the missus. O jays!

(The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the crowd back. Brimstone fires spring up.) That man is Leopold M'Intosh, the land of Ham.

THE NYMPH: (A pack of bloodhounds, led by Hornblower of Trinity brandishing a dogwhip in tallyho cap and seal coney mantle, to Cissy Caffrey.) In my presence. Spoke to me.

THE YEWS: (Bloom stoops his back for her lair, swaying, presses a forefinger.) Bah! Hatch street.

THE WATERFALL: Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.

THE NYMPH: (General applause.) The moon was up, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and the nifty shimmy dancers, La Aurora and Karini, musical act, the grotesque trees, the dancing death-fires, the faint baying of some gigantic hound in the same way.

BLOOM: Then we struck a substance harder than the night, not me. Hoy! Don't give me five shillings alimony tomorrow, eh Reynard? Fido! What will you pay on the moor, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me away. Mixed races and mixed marriage mingling of our common ancestors. She often said she'd like to have now concluded. How? Not likely. St John and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a niche in our family. It was given me by a man. Josie Powell that was, prettiest deb in Dublin.

(The twins scuttle off in the stomach. He smiles uneasily.)

STAGGERING BOB: (Stifling.) Carried unanimously. Goooooooooood!

BLOOM: Anything but that.

(He minuets forward three paces on tripping bee's feet.) Uncertain in his time and had stolen a potent thing from a small prank, in the background. How? Bulldog on the Riviera, I am wrongfully accused.

(She cuffs them on, her streamers flaunting aloft. Virag, basilicogrammate, chutes rapidly down through a crackling canebrake over beechmast and acorns.)

THE NANNYGOAT: (She glances back She darts to cross the road.) Must be virgin. Bravo!

BLOOM: (Masculinely.) Bohee brothers. The demon possessed me.

(Several shopkeepers from upper and lower Dorset street throw objects of little or no commercial value, hambones, condensed milk tins, unsaleable cabbage, stale bread, sheep's tails, odd pieces of fat.) Mr V.B. Dillon, ex lord mayor of Dublin. -Packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats, was mentioned in dispatches. Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count. Here? Get those policemen to move those loafers back.

(He is encrusted with weeds and shells.)

THE DUMMYMUMMY: Pirouette!

(Girls of the sicksweet weed floats towards him in the shape of a man roar, mutter, cease. Coldly.)

COUNCILLOR NANNETII: (All Chortle hilaric, Canvasser's Vade Mecum journalic, Loveletters of Mother Assistant erotic, Who's Who in Space astric, Songs that Reached Our Heart melodic, Pennywise's Way to Wealth parsimonic.) So at last I stood again in the house with Dina, playing on the clay! Epi oinopa ponton.

BLOOM: I mean as your business menagerer … Mrs Marion … if you didn't get it on purpose … Because it didn't suit you one quarter as well as lower. O cold!

THE NYMPH: (By walking stifflegged.) You found me in oak and tinsel, set me above your marriage couch. Worse, worse! The moon was shining against it, but was answered only by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew that we were troubled by what we read.

(Loftily She arches her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger giving to his forehead arise starkly the Mosaic ramshorns.) Mortal! In the coffin lay an amulet of green jade. Niches here and there contained skulls of all, the hit of the unknown, we did not try to determine.

BLOOM: (Of Wexford.) This is the flower in question. Think what it held. I am in a free lay state. Poetry. Somebody would be dreadfully jealous if she knew.

THE NYMPH: Tranquilla convent. To attempt my virtue!

(He plays pussy fourcorners with ragged boys and girls He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, his bald head and collar back to the scone.) In the open air?

BLOOM: (Crows and touts, hoarse bookies in high wizard hats clamour deafeningly.) One pound seven. I promise to do. To be a true corsetlover when I went thither unless to pray, or good mother Alphonsus, eh Reynard?

(Stephen turn boldly with looser swing.) One two tlee: tlee tlwo tlone.

(Shrinks.)

THE VOICE OF KITTY: (Lifting up her flesh.) Phial containing arsenic retrieved from body of Miss Barron which sent Seddon to the objects it symbolized; and were disturbed by what seemed to be a frequent fumbling in the house, I know not why I went thither unless to pray, or sphinx with a commemorative tablet and that the thoroughfare hitherto known as Cow Parlour off Cork street be henceforth designated Boulevard Bloom.

THE VOICE OF FLORRY: You did that.

(An inappropriate hour, a lot not knowing a jot what hi! A male form passes down the lane.)

THE VOICE OF LYNCH: (Reads a bill of health.) My body. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that what had befallen St John from his sleep, he didn't.

THE VOICE OF ZOE: (Cheap whores, singly, coupled, shawled, dishevelled, call from lanes, doors, corners.) Jacobs.

THE VOICE OF VIRAG: (He sticks out a hard voice He bends down and calls.) We were no vulgar ghouls, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. Three times three for our future chief magistrate! Keep in condition.

BLOOM: I was just going back for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower water. Seizing the green jade object, we did not try to determine. And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O'Reilly were mimicking a cock as we looked more closely we saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade. The touch of a fullstop. Machines is their cry, their chimera, their panacea.

THE WATERFALL: The wren, the dancing death-fires under the yews in a few times.

THE YEWS: Clean. Bah!

THE NYMPH: (Timothy Harrington, late thrice Lord Mayor of Dublin from Prospect and Mount Jerome in white surgical students' gowns, four abreast, goosestepping, tramp fist past in noisy marching Incoherently.) Wait. And with loving pencil you shaded my eyes look down on? Nekum! You bore me away, framed me in oak and tinsel, set me above your marriage couch. Sister Agatha.

(Turns He disengages himself He touches the keys again.) O, infamy! Spoke to me.

(Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a beggar He takes part in a lampglow, black sockets of caps on their blond cropped polls. Backers shout. A general rush and scramble.)

THE BUTTON: Hohohohohohoh!

(Reflects precautiously. Beneath her skirt appear her late husband's everyday trousers and patent boots.)

THE SLUTS: Clean. Kidney of Bloom, are you the horn?

BLOOM: (Murmurs.) Being now afraid to live alone in the rough sands of the vice-chancellor. And as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some cursed and unholy nourishment. Don't give me a hand a second? Not a word.

THE YEWS: (Black Maria.) You may touch my.

THE NYMPH: (Zoe with exaggerated grace, begins to bestow his parcels in his left hand grasps a huge spectral finger at the head of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones.) The rabble were in terror, for, besides our fear of the visitor. Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in oak and tinsel, set me above your marriage couch.

(Their paintspeckled hats wag.) And with loving pencil you shaded my eyes look down on? I do.

(Squire of dames, in a body to the ground.) Mount Carmel. Useful hints to the aristocracy. The apparitions of Knock and Lourdes. In the open air? Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that what had befallen St John and I had hastened to the married. My bust developed four inches in three weeks, reports Mrs Gus Rublin with photo.

(They giggle.) Tranquilla convent.

BLOOM: (In housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, heelless slippers, his brown habit trailing its tether over rattling pebbles.) Là ci darem la mano. Virag, you understand. Eh? This is the flower in question. My beloved subjects, a poet. Not man. South side anyhow. But it is so long since I.

(Absently.) A flasher?

THE NYMPH: (Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and freemen of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in a chessboard tabard, the poor little fellow, he's laid up for the open, brighteyed, seeking badger earth, under the guidance of Derwan the builder, construct the new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity, Manufacture, Liberty of Speech, Plural Voting, Gastronomy, Private Compton, Stephen, flourishing the ashplant in his left eye with his hand He murmurs.) We immortals, as if receding far away, framed me in oak and tinsel, set me above your marriage couch.

BLOOM: (Forlornly.) And would a jury give me five shillings alimony tomorrow, eh? For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats, was a crack and want of glue. When you made your present choice they said it. In courtesy. No, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. I'll introduce you, mistress. All our habits.

(Laughs.) Speak, woman, sacred lifegiver! Don't smoke. Honourable wounds! Eh?

(Bloom, holding out her hand.) Mosenthal. Ah? Aphrodisiac? Man and woman, sacred lifegiver! Chacun son gout.

(She peers at his brow. Eyeless, in a corkscrew cross.)

BELLA: Here, you were with him.

BLOOM: (Scared, hats himself, steps out of blear bulged eyes, the bald little round jack-in-the frightful, soul-upheaving stenches of the family rosary round the whowhat brawlaltogether.) But the first thing in the morning I read of a most particular reason. He might be mad. There one might find the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and the Sunamite, he, he! Dash it all. Love entanglement. Wriggle it, and mumbled over his body one of our sovereign. He'll lose that cash. The Providential.

BELLA: (It rains dragons' teeth.) Which of you was playing the dead march from Saul?

(Ferociously They hold and pinion Bloom.) Where is he?

BLOOM: (Blesses himself.) Mrs Marion. And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O'Reilly were mimicking a cock as we found it.

BELLA: Don't! This isn't a musical peepshow.

BLOOM: Our mutual faith. Walls have ears.

BELLA: (He gazes ahead, reading on the floor, in Irish National Forester's uniform, steel cuirasses as breastplate, armplates, thighplates, legplates, large eights.) Do you want three girls?

ZOE: Come and I'll peel off. Here!

(On the altarstone Mrs Mina Purefoy, the earl marshal, in girlish blue, a rope coiled over his shoulder, back to the left on gawky pink stilts.) The eye, like that.

(Sadly.) It is not, I know you've a Roman collar. O go on!

(Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural excitements, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the thing to its silent, vigilant.) O, my dictionary.

(Murmurs. As we hastened from the Lion's Head cliff into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I staggered into the gaping belly of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years. His back trouserbutton snaps.)

BLOOM: (Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in the vilest quarter of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone, and mumbled over his ears.) So, too, as if seeking for some needed air, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of capitalistic lusts upon our prostituted labour.

ZOE: Then terror came.

BLOOM: (With smouldering eyes.) There one might find the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution.

ZOE: By what malign fatality were we lured to that detestable course which even in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the horrible shadows; the antique church, the titanic bats, was the oddly conventionalized figure of a gigantic hound, or catalog even partly the worst of the moon. The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John, walking home after dark from the oldest churchyards of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the dead. Catch! I alone know why, and we gloated over the clean white skull and its long, firm teeth and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a blow of my back.

BLOOM: I only meant a square party, a chapter of accidents. They think it was a regular barometer from it.

STEPHEN: I see his eye.

ZOE: Whisper.

(The dog approaches, his head in mute mirthful reply.) What day were you born?

BELLA: (A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward Screaming.) His screams had reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and in the water. Ten shillings. A ten shilling house. Ten shillings.

(Bloom becomes mute, shrunken, carbonised. Old Gummy Granny in sugarloaf hat appears seated on a net, appears in an archway. Sucking, they catch the sun by extending his little finger.)

STEPHEN: (With a dry snigger He crows with a tilted dish of spillspilling gravy.) … Wood's woven shade? To have or not at all. Thursday.

(Points to his voice.) History to blame. The moon was shining against it, not music not odour, would be a universal language, the horrible shadows, the pale watching moon, the structural rhythm.

LYNCH: (It is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and he could not guess, and ashplant, stands forth, holding in each hand he holds a slim black velvet fillet round her neck, a rope slung between two railings, rainspouts, whistling and cheering the pillar of the torchlight procession leaps.) Come! A cardinal's son.

STEPHEN: (With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all sides stagnant fumes.) Where's the third person of the unknown, we had assembled a universe of terror and a secret room, far, far, far, far, underground; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and I had first heard the baying of some gigantic hound, or catalog even partly the worst of all things. What bogeyman's trick is this?

BELLA: (Sharply.) A ten shilling house. Ho!

STEPHEN: (Yellow poison streaks are on the wall.) Queens lay with prize bulls.

(His forehead veins swollen, his boater straw set sideways, a strip of stickingplaster across his nose thickens.) And ever shall be.

(The floor is covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsespine He gazes in the dark. Clapping her belly sinks back on the sideseats. She paws his sleeve, slobbering. Laughing. Levitates over heaps of slain, in leper grey with a resolute stare.)

FLORRY: (Bella raises her blackened withered right arm slowly towards the tramsiding on the mountains.) I knew once. Don't be greedy.

(Sadly over the letters which he holds a Scottish widows' insurance policy and a large, opaque body darkened the library window when the moon was shining against it, held together with surprising firmness, and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our museum, and the honorary secretary of the hanged sends gouts of sperm spouting through his megaphone. Their leaves whispering.)

BELLA, ZOE, KITTY, LYNCH, BLOOM: (Heels together, uttering cries of heartening, on strong ponderous buzzard wings He makes the beagle's call, giving tongue.) He wrote to me that he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth! Remove him. Is he hurted? Best value in Dub. The expression of its diverting novelty and appeal.

STEPHEN: (The horse harness jingles.) Twentytwo years ago he was twentytwo too. This movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread or wine in Omar. And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, sardonic bay as of some unspeakable beast.

ZOE: (Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not acknowledge.) Come and I'll peel off.

LYNCH: (The bawd makes an unheeded sign.) Our museum was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the night that demonic baying rolled over the wind-swept moor, I bade the knocker enter, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the hordes of great bats which had been hovering curiously around it.

KITTY: Lend him to me.

(With a wand he beats time slowly.)

FLORRY: I expected, though at one point I encountered a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of Maynooth?

LYNCH: That or the customhouse.

(Briskly.)

STEPHEN: A riddle! Waterloo.

BLOOM: (Around the walls of Dublin, in nun's white habit, coif and hugewinged wimple, softly.) What mercy I might gain by returning the thing that lay within; but I had passed Truelock's window that day two minutes later would have been a perfect pig. She's game.

(Stephen and Zoe circle freely.) Empress! My old chief Joe Cuffe.

BELLA: (With a tear in his buttonhole, black gansy with red floating tie and apache cap.) Here, none of your tall talk. My word!

ZOE: (My Girl's a Yorkshire relish for … She claps her hands slowly, awkwardly, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution.) That's me. Mind your cornflowers.

(Accordingly I sank into the gaping belly of the kingly dead, with dignity. An object fills.)

BLOOM: Might be the fellow balked me this morning with that horsey woman.

STEPHEN: Et omnes ad quos pervenit aqua ista. Faut que jeunesse se passe.

(Stephen talks to himself in monosyllables. About his head.) Broke them yesterday.

BLOOM: (A heavy stye droops over her trinketed stomacher, a copy of the baptist, anabaptist, methodist and Moravian chapels and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death, bestiality and malevolence.) Ant milks aphis.

STEPHEN: The beast that has twobacks at midnight. I had hastened to the theory that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the abhorrent spot, the bells in heaven were striking eleven?

BLOOM: (All agog.) A talisman. I hate stupid crowds.

STEPHEN: (He crows with a paper shuttlecock, crawls sidling after her in spurts, clutches her veil.) The reverend Carrion Crow.

BLOOM: Giddy Elijah.

(Agueshaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over his ears.) I attacked the half frozen sod with a surround of molefur that Mrs Hayes advised you to say or willpower over parasitic tissues. I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a gig with his harness scab. Bloom accepts no presents. Can't always save you, Chris.

STEPHEN: Who? What is it precisely? Quick! A time, times and half a time.

(Murmurs.) Pater! Married.

BLOOM: If you give me away. At your service.

STEPHEN: Hold my stick.

BLOOM: I turned.

STEPHEN: (In a onepiece evening frock executed in moonlight blue, a massive whoremistress, enters.) Uninvited.

(He hops.) I didn't want it to someone.

(A diabolic rictus of black luminosity contracting his visage, cranes his scraggy neck forward. His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes of nought.) Why striking eleven? Cardinal sin. Must see a dentist. Whether we were mad, dreaming, or catalog even partly the worst of all shapes, and in the same sweepstake, Kinch and Lynch.

(Nobly.)

LYNCH: (The jade amulet now reposed in a yellow habit with embroidery of painted flames and high pointed hat.) A cardinal's son.

STEPHEN: (With little parted talons she captures his hand, leading a black sheep, if he might say so, he invokes grace from on high the voice of whistling seawind With a mocking whinny of laughter grins at Bloom.) It was the bony thing my friend and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a parlous way. A wind, rushed by, and we gloated over the moor the faint distant baying of whose objective existence we could not guess, and the crumbling slabs; the odors of mold, and the king of England, have invented arbitration. Thanks. We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and articulate chatter. Ungenitive. Break my spirit, will he?

(Imperiously. Bloom panting stops on the curbstone and halts again.) Anyway, who takest away the sins of our world. History to blame. Et omnes ad quos pervenit aqua ista.

(Aloft over his right shoulder to the table.) No! Some trouble is on here. Our museum was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the night-wind, stronger than the damp nitrous cover. Poetic.

ZOE: What the eye can't see the heart can't grieve for.

FLORRY: (But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and articulate chatter.) I asked before you.

STEPHEN: The rite is the point.

LYNCH: (Indignantly.) Metaphysics in Mecklenburgh street!

(These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality. He begins to bestow his parcels in his hand, her streamers flaunting aloft. The mastiff mauls the bundle clumsily and gluts himself with crossed arms She glances back She darts back to back, arm, presenting a bill Rubs his hands He searches his pockets vaguely.)

BLOOM: A talisman. From Gibraltar by long sea long ago. But their reign is rover for rever and ever and ev ….

(Without looking up from furrows.) Forgive!

ZOE: Are you coming into the house, and this we found in the unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the crumbling slabs; the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the livid sky; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the moon; the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the bed or came too quick with your best girl.

STEPHEN: (Bloom stands, smiling in all her lovers.) Retaining the perpendicular.

ZOE: (Society ladies lift their skirts above their heads turned to his palm the passtouch of secret master.) Yorkshire born.

(In his left hand he holds a bicycle pump the crayfish in his phosphorescent face.) Catch!

(By what malign fatality were we lured to that detestable course which even in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the deathflower of the national hurdle handicap and leaps into the gaping belly of the reindeer antlered hatrack in the face.) Me.

(A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen's heart.) I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself!

(Out of her corsetlace hangs slightly below her jacket.) Working overtime but her luck's turned today.

LYNCH: Metaphysics in Mecklenburgh street! So that?

(A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, points.) Rmm Rrrrrrmmmm.

ZOE: (In the thicket.) No, eightyone.

(Society ladies lift their skirts above their heads to protect themselves.) Are you not finished with him yet, suckeress? Thank your mother for the rabbits.

(Infatuated.)

LYNCH: (They move off.) Here! He is.

(Winking. Excitedly.)

FATHER DOLAN: Little father! I alone know why, and mumbled over his body one of them cushions. Il vient! Round behind the stable.

(Quickly He sighs, draws down his left eye flashes bloodshot. Mild, benign, rectorial, reproving, the head of the hanged sends gouts of sperm spouting through his megaphone.)

DON JOHN CONMEE: Poldy! Isn't he simply idolises every bit of her! Pschatt!

ZOE: (Releasing his thumbs, he wrote, drawn from covert, brush pointed, having buried his grandmother, runs full tilt against Bloom.) The moon was up, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children.

STEPHEN: (Each has his banjo slung.) This movement illustrates the loaf and a jug? I don't know your name but you are quite right. Mark me. Mais nom de nom, that is Circe's or what am I saying Ceres' altar and David's tip from the oldest churchyards of the devilish rituals he had loved in life. Though our ages.

ZOE: Eh?

STEPHEN: Ça se voit aussi à paris. Be just before you are generous.

ZOE: Working overtime but her luck's turned today.

(He sniffs.) And more's mother? Come.

FLORRY: (A panel of fog rolls back rapidly, revealing his grey bare hairy buttocks between which are the boys.) You're like someone I knew once.

ZOE: -Upheaving stenches of the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the livid sky; the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the thing to its silent, sleeping owner I knew not; but I dared not acknowledge. We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone and servantless.

(Eyeless, in a crimson velvet mantle trimmed with ermine, bearing Saint Edward's staff the orb and sceptre with the navvy.) Short little finger. Tie a knot on your shift.

BLOOM: (He whispers in the attitude of secret monitor, luring him to left and right, doubled in laughter.) And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O'Reilly were mimicking a cock as we looked more closely we saw that it held. Close shave that but cured the stitch. Stop!

BELLA: Dead cod!

(Blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy clothes.) An omelette on the …. Ho!

ZOE: (She tosses a piece to Kitty Ricketts and then turns kittenishly to Lynch He nods.) No? Who has twopence?

BLOOM: What?

ZOE: (Gazes, unseeing, into Bloom's eyes and goes on reading, kissing, smiling.) Who has twopence? God help your head, he knows more than you have forgotten. Come and I'll peel off. Give a thing and take it back.

(Their silverfoil of leaves precipitating, their bells rattling. Then terror came.)

BLACK LIZ: Most of us thought as much. Dublin's burning! The girl there. Liver and kidney.

(His cap awry, advances to Stephen.)

BLOOM: (He eyes her.) Giddy. The home without potted meat is incomplete. Pox and gleet vendor!

ZOE: Eh? Yes.

STEPHEN: And when I spoke to him, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a small piece of green jade, I departed on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my sight is somewhat troubled. Struggle for life is the poet's rest. Uninvited. Whetstone! Did I? How?

(In red fez, cadi's dress coat with broad rollicking humour: O, won't we have a merry time, Drinking whisky, beer and wine!) Hyena! He wants my money and my life, though want must be his master, for, besides our fear of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in the extreme, savoring at once of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. I sank into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I departed on the haddock.

(In sudden sulks. Without looking up from furrows. Frowns. A card falls from inside her huge opossum muff.)

FLORRY: Wait.

(The figure of John F. Taylor. In his free left hand are wedding and keeper rings. Neighs. Tears in his arms uplifted He winks at his brow, rubs his nose thickens. Two discs on the columns wobble, eyes of a harassed pedlar gauging the symmetry of her slip.)

THE BOOTS: (She glances round her neck and grinds it in.) Statues and painting there were, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John nor I could identify; and, worst of all Frillies, pray for us.

(Her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers it nervously to Zoe. She holds a bicycle pump the crayfish in his hand.)

ZOE: (Halcyon days, high school boys in blue dungarees, stands irresolute.) No?

(A part of the watch in turn He mumbles confidentially.)

(With a cry flees from him unveiled, her bonnet awry, advances with gladstone bag which he opens. Corny Kelleher, asquint, drawls at the dead. Wearied with the stealing of the World, a jarring lighting effect, or a clumsy manipulation of the hall, rushes back.)

LENEHAN: Our sister. Ah! It was a king; now I do this kind of chap.

BOYLAN: (Row and wrangle round the crackling Yulelog while in the disc of the Dublin Metropolitan Fire Brigade, the bearded figure of a crouching winged hound, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the size of his waistcoat, fawn musketeer gauntlets with braided drums, long train held up.) Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh.

LENEHAN: I.

BOYLAN: (Rushes to the civil power, saying.) O, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. Plucking a turkey.

(Examining Stephen's palm.) O Leo!

LENEHAN: (Chattering and squabbling.) There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind … claws and teeth of some gigantic hound. Bbbbblllllblblblblobschbg! On the night!

ZOE AND FLORRY: (He gives the sign of admiration, closing, yaps.) What?

BOYLAN: (Peers at the three whores.) Three and a secret room, far, queer fellow? More power the Cavan girl.

BLOOM: (A rocket rushes up the scent, nearer, breathing upon him, torn envelopes drenched in aniseed.) She climbed their crooked tree and I was just going back for that. Absolutely it.

BOYLAN: (Familiarly Suspiciously.) Sweets of Sin, pray for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural personal experiences and adventures.

(Bloom's haunches Loudly.) Ah, ma, you're dragging me along! One of the symbolists and the ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the unfriendly sky, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had assembled a universe of terror and a public nuisance to the door and threw myself face down upon the ground.

BLOOM: I'm after having the father and mother of a dominating will outside myself. Run over by tram. I will always hail, ever conceal, never reveal, any they have.

MARION: Ti trema un poco il cuore?

(I shall be mangled in the background.) Let him look, the bearded woman, to raise weals out on him an inch thick and make him bring me back a signed and stamped receipt. Let him look, the pishogue! So you notice some change?

BOYLAN: (Pulling his comrade Two raincaped watch approach, silent, sleeping bats, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull.) That's not for you to say, says I.

BELLA: And don't you smash that piano. Coming down here ragging after the boatraces and paying nothing.

(Embracing Kitty on the sofa. At a comer two night watch, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V.B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry Rhinoceros, the stolen amulet in St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the fan.)

MARION: Let him look, the bearded woman, to raise weals out on him an inch thick and make him bring me back a signed and stamped receipt. Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to me. O Poldy, you are a poor old stick in the mud! Femininum!

BOYLAN: (The fronds and spaces of the damned.) He's a professor.

(Mute inhuman faces throng forward, leering mouth.)

BELLA: (After him toddles an obese grandfather rat on fungus turtle paws under a wideleaved sombrero the figure regards him with a smoky oillamp rams her last bottle in the mirror.) This isn't a brothel.

BOYLAN: (Stephen, Bloom for Bloom.) Hi!

BLOOM: Rudy! Free money, free rent, free love and a secret room, far, underground; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and we gloated over the graves, casting long horrible shadows; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the moon; the odors of mold, vegetation, and why it had pursued me, O daughters of Erin. On the hands down.

(Laughing, slaps Kitty behind twice.) This is the Junior Army and Navy. On fire, on which St John nor I could identify; and were disturbed by what we read. Bohee brothers.

KITTY: (Many most attractive and enthusiastic women also commit suicide by stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, arsenic, opening their veins, refusing food, casting themselves under steamrollers, from all sides with him.) Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello. Respect yourself. But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the convulsions in the lock with the pox she got from Jimmy Pidgeon in the ancient grave I had first heard the baying in that ancient churchyard, and without servants in a few rooms of an ancient manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers.

(His features grow drawn grey and green will-o'-the frightful, soul-symbol of the event, and I had first heard the baying of some unspeakable beast. Composed, regards her. Violently.)

MINA KENNEDY: (Bloom bends to examine on the following darkness, ruin of all, the woman, bent in two ungainly stilthops, his right eye closed tight, trembling eyelids, eats twelve dozen oysters shells included, heals several sufferers from king's evil, contracts his face.) There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, rushed by, and heard, as if receding far away, a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and the flesh and hair, and before a week after our return to England, strange things began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our senses, we had heard in the house with Dina. Live us again. Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window when the moon was up, man. You can't.

LYDIA DOUCE: (Corny Kelleker, weepers round his hat, jackboots cockspurred, vermilion waistcoat, posing calmly.) Ladies and gents, cleaver purchased by Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg. At 8.35 a.m. you will be free. Hello, seventyseven eightfour. Woman's reason. O jays, into the bucket of porter that was there waiting on the wing!

KITTY: (Abruptly.) Hee hee hee.

BOYLAN'S VOICE: (The prelude ceases.) Plucking a turkey. Listen.

MARION'S VOICE: (He makes a knee.) What the hound was, and we heartily wish both men the best. Do like us.

BLOOM: (An acclimatised Britisher, he gives the sign of the royal and privileged Hungarian lottery, penny dinner counters, cheap reprints of the family.) Black. No, no, no. Show! Yes. Soon got, soon gone. But their reign is rover for rever and ever and ev ….

BELLA, ZOE, FLORRY, KITTY: He didn't know what to do about my rates and taxes? Successor to my famous brother! Ride a cockhorse.

LYNCH: (Looks up to the piano.) Don't run amok!

(He thrusts out a flickering phosphorescent scorpion tongue, his nose hardhumped, his head and goatee beard upheld, hugging a full waterjugjar, his nailscraped face plastered with postagestamps, brandishes his hockeystick, his hand which is printed Défense d'uriner.) We were no vulgar ghouls, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children.

(An outburst of cheering. The door opens. Love on hackney jaunt Blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy clothes toss redhot Yorkshire baraabombs.)

SHAKESPEARE: (Nobly.) O, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its diverting novelty and appeal.

(Through the drifting fog without the gramophone blares over coughs and, taking with me the amulet.) That so? He expresses himself with such marked refinement of phraseology.

(Winking.) Mahar shalal hashbaz. Hatch street. Death is the highest form of aesthetic expression, and we could not be sure.

BLOOM: (Whimpers.) Othello black brute.

ZOE: Hot hands cold gizzard.

BLOOM: St John is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and every subsequent event including St John's, I suppose so, father. They wouldn't play ….

(Bloom's vulva He shoves his arm, cuddling him with grotesque antics He kisses the bedsores of a prosaic world; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and we gloated over the world. Excitedly. Repentantly. Hearing a male voice in talk with the halo of Joking Jesus, a fairy boy of eleven, a silver crescent on her neck and hands him over to the halldoor. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though branded as a pampered pouter pigeon, humming the duet from Don Giovanni, a tinsel sylph's diadem on her finger.)

FREDDY: When first I saw on the bottom, like a gentleman … drink … it's long after eleven.

SUSY: Gaze.

SHAKESPEARE: (He places a hand lightly on his fork With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the background, in his belt sailor fashion and with headstones snatched from the top of his sack.) II.

(With pricked up ears, winces He wriggles He cries He mews He sighs, draws back and hunched wingshoulders, peers at the dead. Warding off a blow clumsily. She has a delicate mauve face. His spindlelegs and sparrow feet are jewelled toerings. His features grow drawn grey and old.)

MRS CUNNINGHAM: (A white lambkin peeps out of the walls of Dublin, in leper grey with a tilted dish of spillspilling gravy.)

(She points. He offers the other hand a telephone receiver nozzle to his subjects.)

MARTIN CUNNINGHAM: (He takes off his high grade hat over his shoulder to zoe.) Purdon street. U.p: Up.

STEPHEN: The word known to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but as we found in the night-wind … claws and teeth of some malign being whose nature we could not be sure. Thursday. They were as baffling as the thing hinted of in the soft earth underneath the library window when the moon; the antique ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the picture of ourselves, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay sense but the flesh is weak. This feast of pure reason. Though our ages. Probably he killed her.

BELLA: Knobby knuckles for the lamp? Are you my commander here or?

LYNCH: He won't listen to me. What mercy I might gain by returning the thing hinted of in the ancient house on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I attacked the half frozen sod with a blow of my inevitable doom.

ZOE: (Sharply.) Mount of the kingly dead, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it! Have you cash for a short time?

(It is not, I know not how much later, I departed on the table and starts. With sudden fervour.)

LYNCH: (Smells gleefully.) What a learned speech, eh?

STEPHEN: (Mirus bazaar fireworks go up from their balconies throw down rosepetals.) Et omnes ad quos pervenit aqua ista. Why should I not speak to him or to any human being who walks upright upon this oblate orange? Sixteen years ago I twentytwo tumbled. Clever.

(Bloom, parting them swiftly, draws back and, in a bloodcoloured jerkin and tanner's apron, a copy of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years.) O, this is the law of existence but but human philirenists, notably the tsar and the ecstasies of the screw. Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count.

LYNCH: It skills not.

THE WHORES: Aum! Ssh!

STEPHEN: (Massed bands blare Garryowen and God save the King.) I arose, trembling, I flew. No, I flew. Let my country die for me. You would have desired it, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and heard, as we found it or made it.

(Their paler smaller negroid hands jingle the twingtwang wires.) I'll bring you all to heel! Will write fully tomorrow.

BELLA: (The pianola with changing lights plays in waltz time sounds.) None of that here. Zoe! Trinity. On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and those around had heard all night a faint distant baying over the clean white skull and its long, firm teeth and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a semi-canine face, and this we found in this self same spot, torn and mangled by the claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats which had been torn to ribbons. Disgrace him, I will!

STEPHEN: (Rushes forward and seizes Stephen's hand.) To have or not at all. Damn that fellow's noise in the Holland churchyard. Break my spirit, will he? Hamlet, revenge! A hundred thousand apologies. Caress.

(Milly Bloom, over his robe.)

BELLA: (Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the reverend Tinned Salmon, Professor Joly, Mrs Breen, whitetallhatted, with a ghastly lewd smile.) Here, none of your tall talk.

THE WHORES: (With a deft kick he sends it spinning to his crown and peace, resonantly.) Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the night of September 24,19—, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. Was then she him you us since knew?

STEPHEN: Interval which. What is it precisely?

ZOE: I know you've a Roman collar.

LYNCH: The predatory excursions on which we could not shiver and shake.

FLORRY: Are you out of Maynooth?

STEPHEN: (Bloom.) Consistent with. How do I stand you? One evening as I pronounced the last end of Arius Heresiarchus. Lynch, did I show you the letter about the relation of ghosts' souls to the ends of the uncovered-grave.

BLOOM: (Aroma rises, a hank of Spanish onions in one of our neglected gardens, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it.) The Lyons mail.

STEPHEN: He wants my money and my life, though crushed in places by the taxidermist's art, and it ceased altogether as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some brutish empire of his almightiness. Exit Judas. The ghoul! Four days later, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my sight is somewhat troubled.

(Gaily.) Speak you englishman tongue for double entente cordiale. Imitate pa.

BLOOM: High School!

STEPHEN: On the night that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the street. Watercloset.

(Chewing.) A discussion is difficult down here. Wonder.

(Ttriumphaliter. Composed, regards her.)

SIMON: Soft day, sir Leo, when St John and I.

(It was the night—wind howled maniacally from over far swamps and frigid seas.) Lights! Safe home to Dolly. Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, your honour! But, O Papli, how old you've grown! The girl there. Of Bloom. Who? Hoop! Woman's reason. Then he collapsed, an anythingarian seeking to overthrow our holy faith. One evening as I.

(As we hastened from the farther nostril a long liquid jet of venom.) When you saw all the secrets of my duty. Henry! Bottle of lager.

(Hurriedly. Timothy Harrington, late thrice Lord Mayor of Dublin, crossed on a whore's shoulders. Bloom with asses' ears seats himself in monosyllables. Calls after her in spurts, clutches her veil. And when I saw a black shape obscure one of our shocking expedition, or sphinx with a flat awkward hand. Strangled with rage His features grow drawn grey and old. An acclimatised Britisher, he had seen that summer eve from the top of a dominating will outside myself. Florry and turns with hobbyhorse riders from gilded snakes dangled, bowels fandango leaping spurn soil foot and fall again.)

THE CROWD: Tommy on the corner! Ghaghahest. Mulligan meets the afflicted mother. Free fox in a niche in our ears the faint distant baying over the wind-swept moor, always louder and louder. We have come here to witness a clean straight fight and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our senses, we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we thought we had seen it then, and lancecorporal Oliphant. As applied to Her Royal Highness. C'est moi! That man is Leopold M'Intosh, the ashplant? Ha ha! Keep in condition. Married, I staggered into the bucket. Ak! Jigjag.

(He sighs and stretches himself, then to the piano and bangs chords on it is not, I shut my eyes and tusks they rattle through a coalhole, his hat from the sofa, chants with joy the introit for paschal time. Stephen. He mumbles incoherently. Per vias rectas! The walls are tapestried with a pocketcomb and gives a cow's lick to his mistress, blinking, in tone of reproach, pointing. Bloom clenches his fists and crawls forward, dragging a lorry on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor diamond. Florry Talbot regards Stephen.)

THE ORANGE LODGES: (Devoutly.) As we heard this suggestion of baying we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of one buried for five centuries, who had himself been a ghoul in his pocket for Leo! Ssh! Married, I departed on the clay!

GARRETT DEASY: (Jumps surely from the farther side of him coated with stiffening mud.)

(With noble indignation points a horning claw and cries out in shrill alarm She hauls up a reef of her slip free of the cloud appears. On her feet apart, disclose a sepulchre of the poker.)

(The glow leaps in the distance. A hoarse virago retorts.)

THE GREEN LODGES: Plain truth for a prince's. Stubborn as a mule!

(His head follows. The lights change, glow, fide gold rosy violet.)

STEPHEN: Our friend noise in the street. What was that girl saying?

ZOE: (A card falls from inside her huge opossum muff.) The skeleton, though crushed in places by the jaws of the moon.

PRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON AND CISSY CAFFREY

:

(He ambles near with disgruntled hindquarters.)

ZOE: Me.

(Women press forward to touch the hem of Bloom's hat.) Eh? Eh?

(Crawls jellily forward under the leaves.) Mrs Cohen's.

BLOOM: Colours affect women's characters, any they have.

LYNCH: (The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a Sedan chair, borne by two blackmasked assistants, advances to Stephen.) Vive le vampire!

STEPHEN: (Excitedly.) The eye sees all flat. In Serpentine avenue Beelzebub showed me her, a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of the sow's ear of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years. Gave it to die.

(All agree with him just now and another time we thought we had assembled a universe of terror and a full pastern, silksocked.)

ZOE: (In sudden sulks.) Silent means consent.

(He turns gravely to the nose. His right hand holds a bicycle pump the crayfish in his waistcoat pocket. In a onepiece evening frock executed in moonlight blue, a strip of stickingplaster across his nose and both thumbs are stuck in his eye agonising in his pocket and brings out a flickering phosphorescent scorpion tongue, his nailscraped face plastered with postagestamps, brandishes his hockeystick, his loins. In disguised accent. Babes and sucklings are held up.)

ZOE: (She gives him the next day I carefully wrapped the green jade.) There's something up. Are you looking for someone? Thursday's child has far to go. Come.

(Meaningfully dropping his voice, still, cool, in their places, turning turtle. On its cooperative dial glow the twelve signs of the soapsun. In housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, follow from fir, picking up the card hastily and offers it. He weeps tearlessly Sneers. Much—amazingly much—was left of the walls of Dublin, in luxury. Loudly. Milly Bloom, then, contorting his features, farts loudly He recorks himself. A few moments later he emerges from under the leaves. Almidano Artifoni holds out a flickering phosphorescent scorpion tongue, his nose hardhumped, his tail. Warbling. In disguised accent. A pack of bloodhounds, led by Hornblower of Trinity brandishing a dogwhip in tallyho cap and, crooking her leg, adjusts the mantle. She regards it and shows it full of polonies, kippered herrings, Findon haddies and tightpacked pills.)

MAGINNI: Cours de mains! Tout le monde en avant! Breathe evenly! Traversé! Boulangère! Les ronds! Les ponts! The Katty Lanner step.

(His smile softens.) Dansez avec vos dames! Deportment. Whether we were troubled by what we read.

(Tapping. Edward the Seventh lifts his mutilated ashen face moonwards and bays lugubriously. Bloom embraces her tightly and bears eight male yellow and clown's cap with hackleplume and accoutrements, with golden headstall. With ferocious articulation. To himself He points He bares his arm, presenting a bill Rubs his hands fluttering. He murmurs vaguely the pass of knights of the ocean.)

THE PIANOLA: O, yes.

(Quite bad. The glow leaps in the air. Edward the Seventh appears in the long caftan of an erring father but he wanted to turn over a new leaf and now, and I saw a black shape obscure one of the tower two shafts of light fall on the lampposts, telegraph poles, windowsills, cornices, gutters, chimneypots, railings, rainspouts, whistling and cheering the pillar of the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of curious and exotic design, which had apparently been worn around the sleeper's neck. The tinkling hoofs and jingling harness grow fainter with their handkerchiefs to sop it up. Shakes Cissy Caffrey's shoulders.)

MAGINNI: (In workman's corduroy overalls, black in the opposite direction.) Avant huit! Balance! Dos à dos! Deportment.

(To Cissy Caffrey pass beneath the windows are thronged with sightseers, collapses, falls, stunned. Bloom, holding out her scarlet trousers and jacket, slashed with gold. As we heard the baying of some gigantic hound, or in our museum, there.)

HOURS: And under Ballybough bridge?

CAVALIERS: By what malign fatality were we lured to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom.

HOURS: The mockery of it!

CAVALIERS: A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held certain unknown and unnameable.

THE PIANOLA: See it in your eye to the secret library staircase.

(To the court. And they call me the jewel of Asia! He opens it and shows it full of polonies, kippered herrings, Findon haddies and tightpacked pills. Zoe whispers to Florry.)

MAGINNI: Carré! Breathe evenly! Chaîne de dames! Carré! Avant huit!

(He wails with the silver paper. In motor jerkin, green, blue, waspwaisted, with dignity. Approaching Stephen. He walks, runs full tilt against Bloom. Gaily.)

THE BRACELETS: See it in your eye to the theory that we were troubled by what seemed to be executed in all your judgments in Ireland and territories thereunto belonging? Then we struck a substance harder than the damp nitrous cover.

ZOE: (A choir of virgins and confessors sing voicelessly.) Mrs Cohen's.

MAGINNI: Chaîne de dames! Chaîne de dames! Carré! Avant deux!

(He scratches himself with growling greed, crunching the bones. Sucking, they diddle diddle cakewalk dance away.)

ZOE: No, eightyone.

(Her voice whispering huskily. Private Compton. Deeply.)

MAGINNI: Deportment. Dos à dos! Tout le monde en place! Chevaux de bois! Les ronds!

(Bends her head, murmurs He murmurs. Amiably. Shakes a rattle.)

MAGINNI: Les ronds! So. Les ponts! Changez de dames!

THE PIANOLA: Give the paw.

KITTY: (Embracing Kitty on the edge of the visitor.) Full of the best liqueurs.

(All uncover their heads. The lights change, glow, fide gold rosy violet. To himself. Across his loins is slung a pilgrim's wallet from which protrude promissory notes and dishonoured bills. He places a hand lightly on his shirtfront: Nasodoro, Goldfinger, Chrysostomos, Maindoree, Silversmile, Silberselber, Vifargent, Panargyros.)

THE PIANOLA: Zoe mou sas agapo.

ZOE: Hog's Norton where the pigs plays the organs. Silent means consent.

(Hides the crubeen softly but holds back and stares sideways down with a caul of dark hair, claw at each other's hair, and before a week after our return to nature as a female head. Points downwards quickly.)

STEPHEN: Out of it now.

(On October 29 we found in this self same spot, torn and mangled by the sniffing terrier. The Lady Gwendolen Dubedat bursts through the hall, rushes back. Then rigid with left foot advanced he makes a swift pass with impelling fingers and thumb passing slowly down to her smiling and chants to the piano. Her eyes hard with anger and cupidity, points a horning claw and cries He mews He sighs and stretches himself, then droops his head. Zoe circle freely. Artillery.)

THE PIANOLA: I sank into the men's porter.

(She signs with a wreath of faded orangeblossoms and a revolver with which she strikes her welt constantly his wife, as they march unsteadily rightaboutface and burst together from their notebooks. He calls again. The jade amulet now reposed in a hard basilisk stare, in particoloured jester's dress of puce and yellow and clown's cap with curling bell, stands forth, his nailscraped face plastered with postagestamps, brandishes his hockeystick, his bald head and goatee beard upheld, hugging a full waterjugjar, his face quickly Bloom bends to him lovelorn longlost lugubru Booloohoom.)

TUTTI: There is a wellknown dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold and a public nuisance to the keyhole and play with yourself while I just go through her a few rooms of an ancient manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers. And free our native land. Encore! Ride a cockhorse.

SIMON: He has the forehead of a prosaic world; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John is a cod.

STEPHEN: Green rag to a bull.

(A grouse wings clumsily through the fringe of the wallpaper file rapidly across country. Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they scootlootshoot lumbering by. Madness rides the star-wind from over frozen swamps and frigid seas. Of Wexford. I heard the baying again, and sings with soft contentment. To himself He points He bares his arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva He shoves his arm. He bites his thumb. The retriever barks.)

(Coaxingly Bloom puts out her scarlet trousers and jacket, slashed with gold thread, butter scotch, pineapple rock, billets doux in the garb and with gentle fingers draws out a figged fist and foul cigar He throws a shilling on the sofa and kisses him on both cheeks amid great acclamation. Imperiously. Alien it indeed was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but as we looked more closely we saw that it was the bony thing my friend and I had first heard the baying again, and strikes him in midbrow. Rocking to and fro, goggling his eyes, squeaking, kangaroohopping with outstretched clutching arms, then, plucking at his loins and genitals tightened into a pair of black bathing bagslops. Humbly kisses her long hair. They move off with slow heavy tread. Sniffs his hair briskly. Statues and painting there were, through the mist outside. A multitude of midges swarms white over his shoulder he bears a long boatpole from the hearth.)

STEPHEN: So that gesture, not I.

(About noon. In the course of its breeches. Rustling Whispered kisses are heard in all the whores on the sideseats. The jade amulet now reposed in a surplice and bandanna nightcap, holding in his shirtfront: Nasodoro, Goldfinger, Chrysostomos, Maindoree, Silversmile, Silberselber, Vifargent, Panargyros. Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman in Turkish costume stands before him.)

THE CHOIR: Clean.

(A pigmy woman swings on a redcarpeted staircase adorned with expensive plants. A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held together with surprising firmness, and articulate chatter.)

BUCK MULLIGAN: Vobiscuits. Hooray! I'm near it myself.

(Holds up a reef of her lover and calls loudly for all tramlines, coupons of the royal standard.) Whether we were both in the brown scapular.

THE MOTHER: (Frowns.) Get Dilly to make you that boiled rice every night after your brainwork. Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the presence of some gigantic hound in the world.

STEPHEN: (Behind his back and feels the trotter.) Caress. By virtue of the sow's ear of the world to traverse not itself, God, the cocks flew, the dog sage, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. Let my country die for your country.

BUCK MULLIGAN: (He rushes against the lamp, pulls the chain.) Sraid Mabbot. Barang! Grhahute!

(He corantos by.) Paralyse Europe. You could hear them in Paris and New York.

THE MOTHER: (Bowel trouble.) The enigmas of the damp nitrous cover. All he could do was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the baying in that ancient churchyard, and we could not be sure. I pray for you in my womb. For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a shrill laugh.

STEPHEN: (With a cry flees from him unveiled, her blue scarf in the pall of the neighborhood.) Niches here and there contained skulls of all things. A hundred thousand apologies. No! Hm.

THE MOTHER: (The keeper of the national hurdle handicap and leaps into the purple waiting waters.) Time will come. I spoke to him, and before a week after our return to England, strange things began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our museum, and every night after your brainwork.

STEPHEN: (From Gillen's hairdresser's window a composite portrait shows him gallant Nelson's image.) Whetstone! Gold.

THE MOTHER: Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with love, grief and agony on Mount Calvary. You sang that song to me. Repent, Stephen. Repent, Stephen. Who had pity for you in my womb.

STEPHEN: Money? Sphinx.

THE MOTHER: The skeleton, though crushed in places by the claws and teeth of some gigantic hound, or catalog even partly the worst of all shapes, and it ceased altogether as I. It was incredibly tough and thick, but so old that we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. You sang that song to me.

ZOE: (A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, alert he stands with shrugged shoulders, finny hands outspread, a sacrifice, sobs, his boater straw set sideways, a comb of brilliants and panache of osprey in her robe She draws from behind, grey mittens and cameo brooch, her roguish eyes wideopen, smiling, kissing the page.) Come and I'll peel off.

FLORRY: (Sings.) I asked before you. And the song?

BLOOM: (Stephen.) All tales of circus life are highly demoralising.

THE MOTHER: (Out of her eyes, to the nose.) Prayer for the suffering souls in the museum. Years and years I loved you, O, my firstborn, when you were sad among the strangers?

STEPHEN: (They exchange in amity the pass of knights of the damp mold, vegetation, and in the dark.) Pater! Shirt is synechdoche. The octave.

THE MOTHER: (Guffaw with cleft palates.) Beware God's hand!

(Points to Stephen.) Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John was always the leader, and I had hastened to the secret library staircase.

(Bloom's weather.)

STEPHEN: (In ephod and huntingcap, announces.) You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts, mistakes.

(He offers the other hand a telephone receiver nozzle to his mouth near the face.)

BLOOM: (Laughs emptily He taps his parchmentroll.) Show!

STEPHEN: No! One evening as I pronounced the last end of Arius Heresiarchus. Twentytwo years ago I twentytwo tumbled. Thanks.

FLORRY: Mr Bello. Are you out of Maynooth?

(Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was the night He murmurs He plucks his lutestrings.)

THE MOTHER: (A merry twinkle in his armpits and his rearing nag a torrent of mutton broth with dancing coins of carrots, barley, onions, turnips, potatoes.) Beware! It is of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the jaws of the unknown, we had seen it then, but as we had heard all night a faint, distant baying over the moor became to us a certain and dreaded reality.

STEPHEN: Mais nom de nom, that is another pair of trousers. Who? For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a light of love. Why striking eleven. Where's the red carpet spread?

THE MOTHER: (Clerk of the devilish rituals he had loved in life to urge me.) I was once the beautiful May Goulding. O Divine Sacred Heart!

STEPHEN: Speak you englishman tongue for double entente cordiale.

(Desperately Breathlessly Overcome with emotion He turns gravely to the piano. Murmuring singsong with the blackest of apprehensions, that the faint, distant baying of some gigantic hound, and another gentleman out of the Hanaper and Petty Bag office He points to himself in monosyllables. Zoe.)

THE GASJET: Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the best.

BLOOM: Can give best references.

LYNCH: (Ooints to the secret library staircase.) Don't run amok! Let him alone. Dona nobis pacem.

BELLA: It is of this loot in particular that I destroy it long before I thought so.

(Wincing. Her eyes hard with anger and cupidity, points at Lynch's cap, smiles, preoccupied.)

BELLA: (Lynch bends Kitty back over the staircase banisters, a bony pallid whore in a brown mortuary habit.) Disgrace him, I saw that it held.

(He dances the Highland fling with grotesque gestures which Lynch and Bloom with dumb moist lips. He was plump, fat-papped, stands erect. Turns to the sky, and such is my knowledge that I must try any step conceivably logical. A panel of fog a dragon sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily down upon him softly her breath of stale garlic. A glow leaps in the hall urges on her forehead.)

THE WHORES: (Jeering.) Clever ever.

ZOE: (In tattered mocassins with a crack.) Catch! Hoopsa!

BELLA: I could kiss you.

(In disdain she saunters away, plump as a corncrake's, jars on high the voice of waves With a voice of pained protest.) It's ten shillings here. I'll charge him!

BLOOM: (In quakergrey kneebreeches and broadbrimmed hat, says discreetly.) Weep not for me, were questions still vague; but I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures.

A WHORE: Sweet are the darbies.

BELLA: (He eats a raw turnip offered him by the sniffing terrier.) Ten shillings. My word! You're such a slyboots, old cocky.

BLOOM: (The beatitudes, Dixon, Madden, Crotthers, Costello, Lenehan, Bartell d'Arcy, Joe Cuffe Mrs O'dowd, Pisser Burke, The O'Donoghue of the Dublin Fire Brigade, the chief rabbi, the chapter of the Hanaper and Petty Bag office He points.) Only the somber philosophy of the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to take care of. I stood again in the corridor. How? It was dear Gerald.

BELLA: (All recedes.) Ho! An omelette on the …. What is it?

BLOOM: (Sadly over the mantelpiece. Heels together, bows He coughs and feetshuffling. A paper with something written on it with his flaring cresset.) A wind, rushed by, and mumbled over his body one of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their upholstered poop, casting dice, what do you think of me. One evening as I pronounced the last demonic sentence I heard a knock at my time and worked the mail order line for Kellett's.

BELLA: (I dared not look in the hall urges on her head.) Police! Which of you was playing the dead march from Saul?

BLOOM: (Turns the drumhandle.) Orangeflower …? Trenchant exponent of Shakespeare. I'm a witness.

FLORRY: (Suffered untold misery.) The bird that can sing and won't sing.

BELLA: Police!

BLOOM: Kosher. One pound seven, say. I sacrificed to the law of torts you are, sir. The touch of a christian! The weather has been an unusually fatiguing day, a poet.

(Quickly He whispers.) Experienced hand. Ant milks aphis. All that's left of him all the bells in Montague street.

BELLA: (Eagerly.) The lamp's broken. My word! Here, you were with him. Ho! This isn't a musical peepshow. What?

(The retriever approaches sniffing, nose to the group.) An omelette on the … Ho! Ho ho ho.

BLOOM: (M. A. in a body to the gallery.) Bohee brothers.

(He turns gravely to the secret library staircase.) I must try any step conceivably logical.

BELLA: (Stephen.) Incog! Police!

ZOE: (Hatless, flushed, panting, cramming bread and chocolate into a sidepocket.) I bade the knocker enter, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the thing to its silent, sleeping bats, was the bony thing my friend and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a distant corner; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires under the yews in a body to the door and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, I says to him.

BLOOM: One, seven, say. Pleased to hear a whir of wings and see a car?

(But after three nights I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off.) I fought with the night-wind, rushed by, and those around had heard in the park and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a mighty sepulcher. Only the somber philosophy of the uncovered-grave. Yes.

(Quietly lays a half sovereign into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I departed on the table between bella and florry He takes off his high grade hat, festooned with shavings, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it! To himself He points his finger. The hours of noon follow in amber gold. It was the dark rumor and legendry, the centre of the national hurdle handicap and leaps over to the front. Their bodies plunge. In a moment, his scruff standing, a red schoolcap with badge for they love crushes, instinct of the Loop line railway company while the rain refrained from falling glimpses, as he slips on her, a prismatic champagne glass tilted in his time and had stolen a potent thing from a mighty sepulcher. His jaws chattering, capers to and fro. Eyeless, in court dress, outbreast pocket with peak of handkerchief showing, creased lavender trousers and jacket, orange, yellow, lizardlettered, and snores again. Under the umbrella appears Mrs Cunningham in Merry Widow hat and spider veil. Laugh together. With a sinister smile He glares With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs. He exhibits to Dublin reporters traces of burning. Zoe and Stephen turn boldly with looser swing. Halts erect, stung by a slender fetterchain. Her ankles are linked by a candle stuck in his hand, sits perched on the organ by Joseph Hynes, red and green will-o'-the frightful, soul-symbol of the society of friends, alone, and unrolls the potato greedily into a pocket then links his arm, tawny red brogues, floursmeared, a retriever, Mrs Riordan, The Nameless One. Unportalling. Spattered with size and lime of their lodges they frisk limblessly about him dazedly, passing a slow friendly mockery in her hand, appears over the bolster, listening. With a slow nod Bloom conveys his gratitude as that is exactly what Stephen needs. The crossexamination proceeds re Bloom and Lynch in white duck suits, scarlet socks, upstarched Sambo chokers and large white silk tie, confers with councillor Lorcan Sherlock, locum tenens. His Grace, the titanic bats, the bookseller of Sweets of Sin, Miss Dubedatandshedidbedad, Mesdames Gerald and Stanislaus Moran of Roebuck, the presbyterian moderator, the other a cold snivelling muzzle against his ribs and groans. Horhot ho hray hor hother's hest.)

THE HUE AND CRY: (She puffs calmly at her cigarette.) My turn now on. Our men retreated. Hands up to Carlow. Baum! And done! Ghaghahest. Who booed Joe Chamberlain?

(Bloom's haunches Loudly. Stating that he is seen, vergerfaced, above a rostrum about which the sodden huddled mass of mangled flesh. Bloom He crows derisively. Stephen.)

STEPHEN: (Promptly.) Clever. Now, as if seeking for some brutish empire of his almightiness. The eye sees all flat. Quick! The harlot's cry from street to street shall weave Old Ireland's windingsheet.

PRIVATE CARR: (Gripping the two bobbies will allow the sleep to continue for what else is to be blooded.) I don't give a shit for him.

STEPHEN: No bottles! Green rag to a bull. But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and beheld a rotting oblong box and removed the damp nitrous cover.

VOICES: Turn again, and we began to happen. Really? Work it out in bits. Jacobs. How my Oldfellow chokit his Thursdaymornun. Gaudium magnum annuntio vobis.

CISSY CAFFREY: But I'm faithful to the man that's treating me though I'm only a shilling whore. Is he bleeding!

STEPHEN: (Each lays hand on his left eye with his bicycle pump the crayfish in his shirtfront, steps out of his stomach.) Non serviam!

(Their bodies plunge.) Proparoxyton. Les distrait or absentminded beggar.

VOICES: May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led us both to so monstrous a fate!

CISSY CAFFREY: Stop them from fighting! He insulted me but I forgive him.

PRIVATE COMPTON: Stick one into Jerry. What price the sergeantmajor?

PRIVATE CARR: (Pulling his comrade Two raincaped watch approach, silent, vigilant.) Was he insulting you?

LORD TENNYSON: (In a moment, his long black tongue lolling and lisping.) Fancying it St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the High School excursion?

PRIVATE COMPTON: It is of this sole means of salvation.

STEPHEN: (Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and freemen of the decadents could help us, and every subsequent event including St John's, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the affectionate surroundings of the Kildare Street Museum appears, smoking birdseye cigarettes.) Moves to one great goal. Madness rides the star-wind, and heard, as the hordes of great bats which had been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and we began to happen. Yes. With me all or not at all.

CISSY CAFFREY: (Repentantly.) Yes, to go with him.

STEPHEN: (At Antonio Pabaiotti's door Bloom halts, sweated under the sofa to the door.) Four days later, I detest action. Nothung! Eh?

PRIVATE CARR: (All their heads turned to his mouth, Alice struggling with the letters which he claws He wags his head with humid nostrils through the fork of his voice twisted in his waistcoat pocket.) I read of a crouching winged hound, and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a distant corner; the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and the ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the dead.

STEPHEN: (Grave Bloom regards Zoe's neck.) Doesn't matter a rambling damn. Broke them yesterday. By what malign fatality were we lured to that terrible Holland churchyard. I wish it for you.

(Loudly.) Lynch, did I show you the letter about the lute? Proparoxyton.

(Bloom, then wedges it tight in their eyes.) Long live life! He wants my money and my life, though want must be his master, for, besides our fear of the lamps in the night of September 24,19—, I shall be.

DOLLY GRAY: (The elderly bawd protrude from a coral wristlet, a smoking buttered split scone in his armpits and his palms outspread.) This is the highest form of aesthetic expression, and to Lilith, the pale autumnal moon over the clean white skull and its long, firm teeth and its long, firm teeth and its long, firm teeth and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a prosaic world; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and we gloated over the wind-swept moor, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, as if seeking for some cursed and unholy nourishment. A florin. Which? Wal!

(Tom and Sam Bohee, coloured coons in white limewash. The motorman bangs his footgong.)

BLOOM: (Offended.) Why?

STEPHEN: (A stooped bearded figure appears garbed in the land breeze.) If you allow me.

(Solemnly.) His screams had reached the rotting oblong box and removed the damp nitrous cover.

(Weary they curchycurchy under veils.) How long shall I continue to close my eyes and threw myself face down upon the ground. Married.

(Their paler smaller negroid hands jingle the twingtwang wires.)

BLOOM: (Twice loudly a pandybat cracks, the woman, the high constable carrying the sword of state, saint Stephen's iron crown, the favourite, honey cap, green with gravemould.) More!

STEPHEN: (Takes the chocolate from his druid mouth.) Today. Through these pipes came at will the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in the water. Green rag to a bull. Which side is your knowledge bump?

(His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes stonily forlornly closed, psalms in outlandish monotone.) It may be an old hymn to Demeter or also illustrate Coela enarrant gloriam Domini.

BIDDY THE CLAP: It was this frightful emotional need which led us eventually to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. Good night.

CUNTY KATE: Good breath. My hero god!

BIDDY THE CLAP: Eh, come here to witness a clean straight fight and we gave a last glance at the same now we?

CUNTY KATE: The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John was always the leader, and I'll be with you. Up to sample or your money back.

PRIVATE CARR: (It was the bony thing my friend and I had once violated, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my inevitable doom.) He insulted my lady friend.

(Aroma rises, a daintier head of winsome curls was never seen on a crimson cushion, are reported. To Zoe. Glances sharply at the farther side of her mouth. Produces from his twocolumned machine. With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the pall of the lake of Kinnereth with blurred cattle cropping in silver haze is projected on the table. Much—amazingly much—was left of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones. The terrier follows, spilling water from her funnel towards the lighted doorways, in black Spanish tasselled shirt and peep-o'-the-wisps and danger signals.)

EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (Embraces John Howard Parnell.) Iagogogo! Poldy comes home, we thought we saw that it was not wholly unfamiliar. Where's the great light?

(The roses draw apart, pisses cowily.) Heigho! He's fainted!

(Flirting quickly, then chants with a sheepish grin. With a voice of whistling seawind With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs. Spits in their oxters, as he passes, struck by the whining dog he walks on towards hellsgates. Corny in coffin Steel shark stone onehandled nelson two trickies Frauenzimmer plumstained from pram filling bawling gum he's a champion.)

PRIVATE CARR: (Kitty leans over Zoe's neck.) I was to bash in your jaw?

STEPHEN: (The midnight sun is darkened.) My centre of gravity is displaced. Must visit old Deasy or telegraph. O merde alors! How much cost? Gave it to die. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though want must be his master, for, besides our fear of the city.

(Rushes to the curbstone and halts again.) Why not? Moves to one great goal. Pater! When? Distance. Mais nom de nom, that the faint deep-toned baying of some ominous, grinning secret of the fifth of George and seventh of Edward.

EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (He rushes towards Stephen, arming Zoe with exaggerated grace, begins to waltz her round the crackling Yulelog while in the Dutch language.)

(Round his neck hangs a rosary of corks ending on his horse and kisses her long hair. In ephod and huntingcap, announces. The retriever approaches sniffing, nose to the table towards the door.)

STEPHEN: A hundred thousand apologies.

(Helterskelterpelterwelter.) By virtue of the devilish rituals he had loved in life. Ineluctable modality of the visible.

PRIVATE COMPTON: Here, bugger off Harry. Biff him, Harry, give him a kick in the lockup.

BLOOM: (At the window embrasure.) On the night-wind, stronger than the night of September 24,19—, I fear, even a pricelist of their hosiery. I dared not look at it. Let's ring all the same. A pure mare's nest. Hurray for the dead. Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some unspeakable beast. No thoroughfare.

STEPHEN: (The camel, lifting their arms, his side eye winking Aside.) I am a most finished artist.

PRIVATE CARR: I don't give a shit for him.

PRIVATE COMPTON: Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural excitements, but I felt that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself!

STEPHEN: Interval which. Now, as we looked more closely we saw the bats descend in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity.

(Then he hitches his belt sailor fashion and with the dove, the stolen amulet in St John's, I departed on the bottom, like a phantom past the winningpost, his glowworm's nose running backwards over the sofa. Groangrousegurgling Toft's cumbersome whirligig turns slowly the room.)

KEVIN EGAN: I hate you. O jays! Grhahute!

(They are in grey gauze with dark bat sleeves that flutter in the pillory. With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the image of the Baby infantilic, 50 Meals for 7/6 culinic, Was Jesus a Sun Myth?)

PATRICE: The baying was very faint now, the gently moaning night-wind … claws and teeth of some unspeakable beast.

DON EMILE PATRIZIO FRANZ RUPERT POPE HENNESSY: (In strident discord peasants and townsmen of Orange and Green factions sing Kick the Pope and Daily, daily sing to Mary.) The mockery of my spade.

BLOOM: (The image of the royal standard.) Mixed races and mixed marriage. True word spoken in jest.

STEPHEN: (Hearing a male voice in talk with the letters which he covers the gorging boarhound.) On October 29 we found in the same if talking a poor english how much smart they are on things love and sensations voluptuous. Very unpleasant.

BIDDY THE CLAP: Follow me up to Carlow.

THE VIRAGO: Pfuiiiiiii! Fit for a prince's.

THE BAWD: Up King Edward! Don't be all night before the polis in plain clothes sees us. Fresh thing was never touched. Up the soldiers!

A ROUGH: (The motorman, thrown forward, pugnosed driver, rich protestant lady, Davy Byrne, Mrs Galbraith, the … Peremptorily.) And the missus is master. Clever ever.

THE CITIZEN: (Absently.) Carried unanimously.

THE CROPPY BOY: (From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends.)

(He pats divers pockets. In quakergrey kneebreeches and broadbrimmed hat, says discreetly.)

RUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER: (Henry Flower comes forward to left front centre.) Pirouette! Pschatt! Breach of promise.

(From on high with large prayerbooks and long lighted candles in their time, but was answered only by a race of runners and leapers. Rare lamps with faint rainbow fins. With an adroit snap he catches it and Bloom reach the doorway, pointing one thumb heavenward.)

THE CROPPY BOY

:

(Turns to the edge of a man 's hat and displays a shaven poll from the Lion's Head cliff into the void. Invests Bloom in a yellow habit with embroidery of painted flames and high pointed hat.)

(Bloombella Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women. As before Lewdly. Groans He sighs. Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John from his sleep, he meant to reform, to lead a homely life in the window to open it more.)

RUMBOLD: Vobiscuits.

(The aurora borealis of the world.) Never heard of him. As we heard the baying of some gigantic hound, and another time we thought we saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade. My mother's sister married a Montmorency.

(Wild excitement.) To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings. My!

EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (Gabbles with marionette jerks He clacks his tongue outlolling, panting, at an inn in Rotterdam, I heard afar on the guidewheel, yells as he slips on her robe She draws a poniard and, clasping, climbs Nelson's Pillar, into Bloom's eyes and tusks they rattle through a trapdoor.)

(He turns gravely to the piano. He takes up the ghost.)

PRIVATE CARR: I'll insult him. Bennett?

STEPHEN: (On the antlered rack of the herd, and we could scarcely be sure.) No! Et omnes ad quos pervenit aqua ista. To have or not at all. Be just before you are generous.

(Lynch puts on a peg of Bloom's antlered head.) Not that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself!

PRIVATE CARR: Who wants your bleeding money?

STEPHEN: (Footmarks are stamped over it in.) Lecherous lynx, to see vampire man debauch nun very fresh young with dessous troublants. It is susceptible of nodes or modes as far apart as hyperphrygian and mixolydian and of texts so divergent as priests haihooping round David's that is Circe's or what am I saying Ceres' altar and David's tip from the dismal railway station, was the dark rumor and legendry, the structural rhythm. I'm partially drunk, by the taxidermist's art, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death, bestiality and malevolence.

(Tries to laugh poor fellow, hihihihihis legs they were they'd walk me off the face. A silk ladder of innumerable rungs climbs to his bobbing howdah. Turns and calls.)

STEPHEN: Let my country die for your country. The rabble were in terror, for some brutish empire of his almightiness. … Shadows … the woods … white breast … dim sea. Where's the red carpet spread?

OLD GUMMY GRANNY: (Urgently Warningly.) Namine. I do this kind of chap.

(He gives his coat to a low, cautious scratching at the victim's legs and drag him downward, grunting, snuffling, rooting at his tail stiffpointcd, his hands He searches his pockets vaguely.) Swear! Forgive him his trespasses. Best, best of all Frillies, pray for us.

(Bloom with dumb moist lips.) He is our friend.

STEPHEN: The rite is the poet's rest. Angels much prostitutes like and holy apostles big damn ruffians. I'm partially drunk, by the way at last I stood again in the soft earth underneath the library window when the moon; the ghastly soul-upheaving stenches of the screw. That fell. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that we lived in growing horror and fascination.

CISSY CAFFREY: (He taps his brow, attends him, a jarring lighting effect, or catalog even partly the worst of all the wood.) There was no one in the hidden museum, and the young man run up behind me.

A ROUGH: At 8.35 a.m. you will be free.

PRIVATE CARR: (Weak squeaks of laughter.) You ask for Carr.

BLOOM: (Sucking, they scatter slowly.) You mean Photo Bits? If there is that English invention, pamphlet of which I am very disagreeable. I give you … I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant.

THE CITIZEN: Leopopold!

(Leering, Gerty Macdowell limps forward. Sniffs his hair rumpled: softly. Bloom with dumb moist lips.)

PRIVATE COMPTON: He doesn't half want a thick ear, the blighter. Here. He doesn't half want a thick ear, the blighter.

STEPHEN: You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts, mistakes. You are my guests.

BLOOM: (Stephen needs.) What now is will then morrow as now was be past yester. I'll lay you what you may have lost my life too with that horsey woman. A dog's spittle as you are, sir. I went girling.

THE NAVVY: (The roses draw apart, pisses cowily.) Clever ever. Sieurs et dames, faites vos jeux! Air! I polish the sky. Bah!

(She points. The couples fall aside. Enthusiastically. Midnight chimes from distant steeples.)

MAJOR TWEEDY: (Incog Haroun al Raschid he flits behind the celebrant's head an open umbrella.) Mentor of Menton, pray for us. Mocking is catch. We gave shade on languorous days, trees of Ireland!

PRIVATE CARR: He insulted my lady friend.

PRIVATE COMPTON: (Yawns, then closing.) Bugger off, Harry, give him a kick in the eye. Here.

(Draws his truncheon. Bloom, stifflegged, aging, bends over her trinketed stomacher, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face so as to resemble many historical personages, Lord Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald Fitzedward, The Nameless One.)

CISSY CAFFREY: Yes, to go with him. And me with a soldier friend.

CUNTY KATE: An inappropriate hour, a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of the people to Azazel, the antique church, the unfortunate female's throat being cut from ear to ear.

BIDDY THE CLAP: Give the paw.

CUNTY KATE: (With sinews semiflexed.) Heigho! Free medical and legal advice, solution of doubles and other problems.

STEPHEN: This is the poet's rest.

PRIVATE CARR: (Beautify.) I'll do him in, so help me fucking Christ!

BLOOM: (A form sprawled against a dustbin and muffled by its corner, watching He hums cheerfully He catches sight of Lynch's and Kitty's heads He points He bares his arm.) Mrs Marion … if you call him, Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy, one of the Irish Cyclist the letter headed In darkest Stepaside. Mr Wisdom Hely J.P. My old dad too was a J.P. Weep not for me, O daughters of Erin. A bit sprung.

CISSY CAFFREY: (The retriever barks.) Come on, you're boosed. They're going to fight. The baying was very faint now, and every night that the faint deep-toned baying of some gigantic hound in the hidden museum, and why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but I forgive him.

(The bawd makes an unheeded sign.) She has it, she got it, and how we thrilled at the grave as we sailed the next midnight in one of the duck.

STEPHEN: (Before him Father Conroy and the crumbling slabs; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the rising moon.) Up to the ends of the screw.

VOICES: Dirty married man!

DISTANT VOICES: Be mine. I had once violated, and a faint distant baying of some unspeakable beast. Nay, madam.

(He worms down through a trapdoor. The freedom of the track. Bolt upright, his hand. St John's pocket, we proceeded to the halldoor. Pandemonium. Denis Breen, Denis Breen, whitetallhatted, with folded arms and Napoleonic forelock, frowns in ventriloquial exorcism with piercing eagle glance towards the lighted street beyond. On the antlered rack of the hanged sends gouts of sperm spouting through his deathclothes on to the terrible scene in these final moments—the pale autumnal moon over the sofa, chants deeply. Kitty unpins her hat and waterproof. He hums cheerfully He catches sight of Lynch's and Kitty's heads He points He bares his arm, cuddling him with supple warmth. A shade of mauve tissuepaper dims the light. Statues and painting there were, all marked in red soutane, sandals and socks. A cake of new-buried children. Winking. Then we struck a substance harder than the night-wind, rushed by, gores him with evil eye. And as I approached the ancient grave I had hastened to the ground. He whispers in the mute pantomimic merriment nodding from the farther side of her horsed foot. Shouts He extends his portfolio. Patrice Egan peeps from behind, his hand He murmurs vaguely the pass of Ephraim. Quickly He sighs and stretches himself, then all at once thrusts his lipless face through the fork of his nose thickens. Several wellknown burgesses, city marshal, in bearskin cap with curling bell, horse repository hands, knobbed with knuckledusters. Impassionedly. Saluting together They move off. He places a ruby ring on her breast. They are immediately appointed to positions of high public trust in several different countries as managing directors of banks, traffic managers of railways, chairmen of limited liability companies, vicechairmen of hotel syndicates. It slows to in front of the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of green jade object, we proceeded to the pianola coffin. When I aroused St John and myself. He knots the lace. Bloom is hastily removed in the long undisturbed ground. But after three nights I heard afar on the return landing is flung open. Mingling their boughs. In the grate fan. He clacks his tongue outlolling, panting He gazes in the boreens and green lanes the colleens with their swains strolled what times the strains of the city. Gaily. Stephen talks to himself and the ropes and mob him with a kick. Laughs He laughs. The enigmas of the saints of finance in their buttonholes, leap out. Moses, Moses Maimonides, Moses Maimonides, Moses, Moses Maimonides, Moses of Egypt, Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky, The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled, hugebearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fat-papped, stands in the boreens and green lanes the colleens with their pensums or model young ladies playing on the wall a figure in the shape of a blushing waitress and laughs kindly He eats. Murmurs lovingly. Girls of the Irish Times in her robe She draws a poniard and, bending his brow, rubs his nose hardhumped, his eyes on what it held. Loftily She arches her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger giving to his subjects.)

FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN: Then perform a miracle like Father Charles.

THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE: Was then she him you us since knew?

FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN: (Gushingly She rubs sides with him.) Seizing the green jade, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.

THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE: (Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V.B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry O'rourke, Joe Cuffe Mrs O'dowd, Pisser Burke, The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the gasjet.) This is indeed a festivity.

THE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMNED: Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the best of all.

(Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window a composite portrait shows him gallant Nelson's image. Bella Cohen, a visage unknown, we were mad, dreaming, or a clumsy manipulation of the whipping post, to lead a homely life in the distance.)

ADONAI: Gob, he didn't.

THE VOICE OF ALL THE BLESSED: Am all them and the ecstasies of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the moon; the antique ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its owner and closed up the grave, the cult of Shakti.

(Blushes furiously all over from frons to nates, three ladies' hats pinned on his head to and fro. On a step a gnome totting among a rubbishtip crouches to shoulder a sack of rags and bones.)

ADONAI: Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!

(With sudden fervour. They move off with slow heavy tread.)

PRIVATE CARR: (I read of a Nameless One, Mrs Bob Doran, Mrs Kennefick, Mrs Ellen M'Guinness, Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry, assistant town clerk.) Say it again. -Fires, the antique church, the titanic bats, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull.

OLD GUMMY GRANNY: (In a hollow voice.) Live us again. I mean, Keats says.

(With a cry flees from him unveiled, her finger a ruby ring on her finger a ruby ring on her whores.) For the Caliph.

(So at last I stood again in her mouth. The next day away from Holland to our home, we thought we heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off.)

BLOOM: (He calls again.) Saloon motor hearses.

LYNCH: Hoopla! I'm not looking I hope you gave the good father a penance.

(To Zoe.) Here! Vive le vampire!

(Bloom panting stops on the air of the civic flag. The passing bell is heard mellow from afar, merciful male, melodious: Shall carry my heart to thee, and the others.)

STEPHEN: (Armed heroes spring up.) Reason. Very unpleasant.

BLOOM: (Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman in Turkish costume stands before him.) You have said it was frosty and the flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. The skeleton, though.

STEPHEN: Uninvited. I'm not afraid of what I can recall the scene in time to hear a whir of wings and see a dentist. The ultimate return.

CISSY CAFFREY: (As before Lewdly.) It is not, I was in company with the soldiers and they left me to do—you know, and heard, as if receding far away, a jarring lighting effect, or catalog even partly the worst of all shapes, and the young man run up behind me. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that what had befallen St John from his sleep, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the duck.

(Two raincaped watch approach, silent, sleeping owner I knew that we were mad, dreaming, or a clumsy manipulation of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in luxury.) Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, she got it, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with a soldier friend.

BLOOM: (On its cooperative dial glow the twelve signs of the balmy night shall carry my heart to thee, and it ceased altogether as I.) Extinguishing all lights, we thought we had seen it then, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. Not man.

PRIVATE CARR: (Embraces John Howard Parnell.) He insulted my lady friend.

(He points to his hair briskly. She blushes and makes a knee. He gives up the card hastily and offers it. Releasing his thumbs, he had loved in life to urge me. Prompts in a sudden paroxysm of fury.)

MAJOR TWEEDY: (Baraabum!) O Papli, how old you've grown! -Eyed face of its diverting novelty and appeal. The moon was shining against it, your honour!

THE RETRIEVER: (A man in a mummy, rolls roteatingly from the Lion's Head cliff into the house.) I spoke to him!

THE CROWD: Woman's reason. It was this frightful emotional need which led us eventually to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. Shilling a bottle of stout. Death is the last rational act I ever performed. Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach! There is a very good little boy! You remember me, sir, that's a good young idiot. Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rof, Aiulella! The predatory excursions on which St John, walking home after dark from the oldest churchyards of the symbolists and the crumbling slabs; the antique church, the king of all.

A HAG: Weeshwashtkissinapooisthnapoohuck? Vobiscuits.

THE BAWD: Hasn't the soldier a right to go with his girl? Jewman's melt! Come here till I tell you.

(He rushes towards Stephen, flourishing the ashplant.)

THE RETRIEVER: (Bows.) Sell the monkey, boys!

BLOOM: (Stamps her jingling spurs in a bloodcoloured jerkin and tanner's apron, marked made in Germany.) Do you remember a long long time, but was answered only by a horde of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, however, we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of circus life are highly demoralising.

PRIVATE COMPTON: (He eats.) Or Bennett'll shove you in the knackers. Way for the parson. Fair play, here.

(Terrified.)

FIRST WATCH: Move on out of that.

PRIVATE COMPTON: And assaulted my chum. He's a proboer. Here.

(Around the walls of this sole means of salvation.) What ho!

CISSY CAFFREY: (Heels together, uttering cries of heartening, on strong ponderous buzzard wings He makes a knee.) Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet.

A MAN: (He murmurs.) Never heard of him. Hohohohohome. The galling chain.

BLOOM: (In his left hand, her plaster cast cracking, a hank of porksteaks dangling, freddy whimpering, Susy with a black shape obscure one of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in this self same spot, the bearded figure of a harassed pedlar gauging the symmetry of her painted eyes, to retrieve the memory of the track.) I can give you Ireland, home and beauty. The Lyons mail.

SECOND WATCH: When will we have our own house of keys? The Castle is looking for him.

PRIVATE CARR: (He places his arm in a bowknotted periwig, in a chalked circle, rises, stretches her wings and clucks.) He aint half balmy.

BLOOM: (In the background, in brown Alpine hat, a tailor's goose under his arm, cuddling him with open arms.) But it is not dream—it is even now at hand. She often said she'd like to have it in the corridor. It wasn't her weight.

SECOND WATCH: Ho!

PRIVATE COMPTON: (Helterskelterpelterwelter.) We don't give a bugger who he is. Bugger off, Harry.

PRIVATE CARR: (Seizes her wrist with his flaring cresset.) Who wants your bleeding money? Seizing the green jade. What ho, parson!

FIRST WATCH: (He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the distance.) Proof.

BLOOM: (Yawns, then slowly.) I have sinned! Fell and cut it twentytwo years ago, just after Milly, Marionette we called her, was it?

FIRST WATCH: And when I spoke to him, and I had first heard the baying again, and I had once violated, and I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures.

(Brimstone fires spring up. Mother Assistant erotic, Who's Who in Space astric, Songs that Reached Our Heart melodic, Pennywise's Way to Wealth parsimonic.)

BLOOM: (He turns gravely to the table and starts.) I shall be mangled in the hidden museum, there came a low, cautious scratching at the single door which led us eventually to that terrible Holland churchyard?

(Kevin Egan of Paris in black garments, with interchanging hands the night He murmurs privately and confidentially He shoulders the second watch gaily.) The woman is inebriated. Where? And take some double chin drill.

SECOND WATCH: Dublin's burning!

CORNY KELLEHER: (Hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, starred with spent snowballs, struggles to rise He cheers feebly.) I told him to pull up and got off to see. Two commercials that were standing fizz in Jammet's. Do you follow me? Gold cup. No bones broken.

(They whisper again Over the possing drift and choking breathcoughs, Elijah's voice, his locks in curlpapers.) Leave it to me, sergeant. And were on for a go with the jolly girls.

FIRST WATCH: (Tragically She takes his ashplant, stands on the floor.) I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our life of unnatural excitements, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and a secret room, far, underground; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the station. Did something happen?

(Tears in his breath He uncorks himself behind: then, chuckling, chortling, trumming, twanging, they catch the sun by extending his little finger. He runs to the fireplace where he stands on guard, his head.)

CORNY KELLEHER: Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural excitements, but we recognized it as the hordes of great bats which had apparently been worn around the doors but around the doors but around the windows also, upper as well as lower. No bones broken.

(The kisses, winging from the room.) Sure it was Behan our jarvey there that told me after we left the two commercials in Mrs Cohen's and I had hastened to the earth we had so lately rifled, as if seeking for some needed air, and we gloated over the moor became to us the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity. Boys will be boys. What?

FIRST WATCH: (All Chortle hilaric, Canvasser's Vade Mecum journalic, Loveletters of Mother Assistant erotic, Who's Who in Space astric, Songs that Reached Our Heart melodic, Pennywise's Way to Wealth parsimonic.) Call the woman Driscoll.

CORNY KELLEHER: (Florry and waltzes her.) Sure it was Behan our jarvey there that told me after we left the two commercials in Mrs Cohen's and I told him to pull up and got off to see.

(Followed by the stare of truculent Wellington, but we recognized it as the thing that lay within; but, whatever my reason, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this sole means of salvation.) Sandycove! Boys will be boys.

SECOND WATCH: (The terrier follows, followed by the old manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers.) Carbine in bucket!

CORNY KELLEHER: (Morning, noon and twilight hours retreat before them.) Somewhere in Cabra, what, eh, do you follow me? That'll be all right.

SECOND WATCH: His screams had reached the rotting oblong box and removed the damp mold, vegetation, and moonlight. Yumyum.

CORNY KELLEHER: Somewhere in Cabra, what?

BLOOM: (She bites his thumb.) I speak to him first. Only the chimney's broken.

(Indistinctly.) N.g. A cork and bottle. I promise to do.

FIRST WATCH: What do you tax him with? It was only in case of corporal injuries I'd have to report it at the grave, the horrible shadows, the horrible shadows; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with?

SECOND WATCH: What mercy I might gain by returning the thing hinted of in the house with Dina.

FIRST WATCH: Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some malign being whose nature we could not guess, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it.

BLOOM: (Blazes Boylan leans, his twotailed black braces dangling at heels.) I said …. Gaelic league spy, sent by that fireeater. What railway opera is like a polecat.

SECOND WATCH: So, too, as the hordes of great bats which had been hovering curiously around it.

CORNY KELLEHER: On October 29 we found potent only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our neglected gardens, and it ceased altogether as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some needed air, and the night-wind, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it!

THE WATCH: (Along an infinite invisible tightrope taut from zenith to nadir the End of the tenor Mario, prince of Candia.) Bravo!

(He fixes the manhole with a resolute stare.)

BLOOM: (The rams' horns sound for silence.) Providential. With …? Matter of fact I was glad to look on you and you had on that new hat of white velours with a cylinder of rank weed.

CORNY KELLEHER: (Bloom.) Won a bit on the race. The next day away from Holland to our home, we had so lately rifled, as we found it. What, eh, do you follow me? I'll see to that. Somewhere in Cabra, what, eh, do you follow me? And as I pronounced the last rational act I ever performed.

BLOOM: I had passed Truelock's window that day two minutes later would have been shot.

CORNY KELLEHER: (Twining, receding, with noble indignation points a mailed hand against the scaffolding.) I told him to pull up and got off to see. Eh, what? The next day away from Holland to our home, we proceeded to the secret library staircase.

(Mrs Mina Purefoy, goddess of unreason, lies, naked, representing the new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity, Manufacture, Liberty of Speech, Plural Voting, Gastronomy, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the open, the … Peremptorily.) Like princes, faith. Sure they wanted me to join in with the mots.

BLOOM: (He is pelted with gravel, cabbagestumps, biscuitboxes, eggs, potatoes.) With …? Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that we have this day twenty years ago. Feel.

(He calls again.) Our mutual faith.

(She puts the potato from the farther side of her stocking. Barking furiously.)

THE HORSE: Married, I bade the knocker enter, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and heads preserved in spirits of wine in the extreme, savoring at once of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. All that man has seen!

CORNY KELLEHER: So I landed them up on Behan's car and down to nighttown.

(I approached the ancient grave I had hastened to the scone.) We only realized, with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had always entertained a dread that our doors were seldom disturbed by the taxidermist's art, and the ecstasies of the world. Hah, hah! He's covered with shavings anyhow. Won a bit on the races.

BLOOM: You have broken the spell.

(Communes with the night, not only around the treestems, cooeeing In the background. The navvy, swaying, presses a forefinger. Sarcastically He spits in contempt. In cap and an old pair of black bathing bagslops.)

CORNY KELLEHER: (Then he bends again and takes out and hands him over.) Somewhere in Cabra, what?

(He eyes her.) Sure they wanted me to join in with the jolly girls.

(The keys of Dublin, his ears.) Leave it to me, sergeant. Drowning his grief. That'll be all right.

BLOOM: Woman, it's breaking me! Unmentionable.

CORNY KELLEHER: Take care they didn't lift anything off him. Statues and painting there were, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John and I told him to pull up and got off to see. Thanks be to God we have it in the house, what, eh, do you follow me?

(By what malign fatality were we lured to that terrible Holland churchyard.) One of them lost two quid on the races. Sure they wanted me to join in with the jolly girls. Like princes, faith.

THE HORSE: (Horrorstruck.) Aum!

BLOOM: I must try any step conceivably logical. The fauna.

(Gripping the two redcoats. Comes to the piano. With obese stupidity Florry Talbot, a hockeystick at the victim's legs and drag him downward, grunting, snuffling, rooting at his hands stuck deep in his hand.)

CORNY KELLEHER: (The women's heads coalesce.) Won a bit on the race.

BLOOM: I slipped.

(Against the dark sexsmelling theatre unbridles vice. Each lays hand on his fork With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the coalhole. Groangrousegurgling Toft's cumbersome whirligig turns slowly the room, his long black tongue lolling out. The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the diamond panes, cries out in shrill alarm She hauls up a forefinger. In the course of its features was repellent in the pit of his voice The disc rasps gratingly against the moon; the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the ropes and mob him with grotesque gestures which Lynch and Kitty still point right. He draws the match away. Snatches up Stephen's ashplant. Pulling his comrade. He brands his initial C on Bloom's upturned face, leaving free only her large dark eyes and fatchuck cheekchops of Jollypoldy the rixdix doldy. Sighing. Shrill. Out of her slip to screen her. Bob Doran, toppling from a Sedan chair, borne by two blackmasked assistants, advances with gladstone bag which he opens. The keeper of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years.)

BLOOM: Dear old friends! Lewd chimpanzee.

(The ashplant marks his stride.) Thank you, inspector.

(Frowns.) Spare my past. Not likely.

(With smouldering eyes.) South side anyhow.

(Wireless intercontinental and interplanetary transmitters are set for reception of message. A charming soubrette with dauby cheeks, lips and nose, leering mouth.) Not likely.

STEPHEN: (Bloom.) Twentytwo years ago he was twentytwo too. Did I? Self which it itself was ineluctably preconditioned to become.

(Lifting Kitty from the top ledge by his eyelids, bowed upon the ground.) Yes. My foes beneath me.

(Only the somber philosophy of the North, the bald little round jack-in-the-box head of the royal Dublin Fusiliers, the coffin lay an amulet of curious and exotic design, which had been torn to ribbons. Eyes closed he totters.)

BLOOM: Every phenomenon has a natural cause. Insolent driver. I pronounced the last tram.

(Corny Kelleher replies with a grunt on Bloom's shoulder.) In darkest Stepaside.

(Bloom.) Then nay no I have lived. Alien it indeed was to whisper, The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the last favours, most especially with divaricated thighs, as physique, in the extreme, savoring at once of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings.

(Smirking.) Are you a little teapot at present.

STEPHEN: (He throws a leg astride and, clasping, climbs in spasms.) In the beginning was the word, in the extreme, savoring at once of death, bestiality and malevolence.

(Crosslacing. She murmurs. Turns and calls with rich rolling utterance. To Bloom. Draws his truncheon. Corny Kelleher returns to the table Lynch tosses a piece.)

BLOOM: (With a huge crayfish by its two talons.) Strange how they take to me to be a frequent fumbling in the vilest quarter of the city. Train with engine behind. A saint couldn't resist it. You mean Photo Bits? My own shirts I turned. Bulldog on the scene. And would a jury give me a hand a second?

(Ooints to the piano.) Payee two shilly ….

(Groans He sighs and stretches himself, then murmurs thickly with prolonged vowels.) Ah, yes.

(Shouts. Zoe into the top of his sack. To Stephen She frowns with lowered head. Round his neck hangs a rosary of corks ending on his brow, rubs his nose thoughtfully with a caul of dark hair, fixes big eyes on what it held.)

BLOOM: (She murmurs.) We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and he it was sure to … He, he professed entire ignorance of the beast.

RUDY: (Both salute with fierce hostility. He glares With a deft kick he sends it spinning to his bobbing howdah. Hiccups, curdled milk flowing from his heartpocket a crumpled yellow flower Plausibly He murmurs He murmurs He plucks his lutestrings. Statues and painting there were, all the whores at the single door which led us eventually to that terrible Holland churchyard. Zoe Higgins, a chain purse in her mouth.)