James Murphy was once chatting with Holy Ghost! frontman Alex Frankel, who in trying to remember the words for “crown” and “castle” instead blurted out, brain-fart style: “king hat” and “king house.” It stuck.

As the beautiful fireworks burst across the night sky, Bloom’s masturbatory efforts climax in perfect unison. “O!”

BONUS: There’s little chance that Jack Kerouac’s oft-quoted line from On the Road was not in some way inspired by this paragraph. To wit –

“…the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

Sexed, explosive people are indeed quite compelling characters.

Bold indeed! At the time, the proper way to address a married woman was by her husband’s full name, i.e. Mrs. Leopold Bloom. By addressing Molly with her own first name, the letter-writer is casting Leopold’s claim on her aside.

Bloom notes that the handwriting is that of Boylan (Molly’s lover).

We can now safely assume Bloom is down with tref foods, in spite of his being characterized by the citizens of Dublin almost entirely by his Judaism. (P.S. Foreshadowing!)

A mild laxative made from the bark of the buckthorn tree.

Literally a line from a well-known English nursery rhyme, “Sing a Song of Sixpence”. However, it is likely also a reference to Bloom himself. Is he the “king of the outhouse”, where he is now sitting and taking a long, constipated dump?

This would be in line with the general emasculation of Bloom evinced by Episode Four, particularly with regards to his relationship with Molly. This reading would then have us see Bloom as not only cuckolded and subservient to his wife, but the master of nothing more than the toilet.