OH THE ANGER

>>Do you see the woman in the center, reaching upward? She's a very famous mother, yet, so few of us know of her. Her Greek name is Alkmênê, and guess what? SHE'S A HUMAN. So screw you, Disney, for hiding Zeus's scandalous/promiscuous nature. You see, in the movie Hercules, they have Herc lose his immortality temporarily because he drank a potion that took his powers. In actuality, rather, in the myths, Heraklês is a demigod because he is only half-god, half-human. There are no brotherly brawls for power over Olympus, instead, Zeus was just his typical self and had an affair with precious Alkmênê presented above. Again, Hera was cheated on. I have yet to find out if Hera took any sort of revenge on Alkmênê, but it's likely. Hera's been known to smite or torture Zeus's affairs.

>>So I'm mad at Disney because they degraded the Greek culture by lying about the very nature of the myths and twisting around the facts. Granted, their mythological facts, but however it works they really should have done more research and made a story that fit with what's already well-known.

>>Another thing I'm angry about. Because of that movie, everyone calls him Hercules. ROMANS WERE THIEVES! Why flaunt the Roman name when all they could come up with was "We worship the farmland. Oh farmlandgodman, grant us happy soil that will grow seeds. Oh farmtoolgodman, please keep our tools strong and functioning. Here's some cow fat." REALITY CHECK: Hercules, from the movie, was not a jolly single man that flirted with the damaged Meg that saved the day from Hades taking over Olympus. No, Heraklês was a very depressed man who in a drunken rage accidentally killed his wife (Megana, at least they got that right) and children. Hence the constant depression that Disney pathetically mimicked.

>>Speaking of common misconceptions, I hate it when people refer to Eros as "Cupid", the Roman name. It really grinds my gears.

>>So there you have it. That's what makes me angry today.

Homer's Odyssey has PURPLE Sheep. =D

>>Yup! These sweeties are what the great cyclops, Polyphêmos, herds and keeps for their milk, wool, and probably eventually meat. The proof is in the poetry itself.

>>If you're curious as to what is happening when the hero, Odysseus, falls into the path of purple sheep, rather, rams...he is on his vastly long adventure home, he and his men rowing away trying to find any island from which to find where they are and thus plan how to get back to Ithaca, so they by chance land on an island of giant cyclopses, and unfortunately for them Poseidon's son Polyphêmos resides among them. (How Ocean God + Random Nymph = Giant Cyclops I have no idea.) They go in search of local life and run into Polyphêmos's cave, and from there they are eventually trapped. Polyphêmos gladly eats some of the men, intending to make all of them share the same fate. Odysseus, sly Odysseus, Athena's favorite, comes up with the plan to sharpen and heat a huge log, and when Polyphêmos is drunk enough off of their wine and sleepy enough to lean over, Odysseus and his men jab the point into his sole eye. Blindness makes Polyphêmos squirm, not to mention the burning sensation, and when he opens the cave once again he tells his fellow cyclopses that he was attacked by "Nohbdy". Very sly, that Odysseus.

>>How the men escape, though, is not by running quickly through the opening. There was not time enough to do so by the time Polyphêmos returned from talking to the others. Instead, Odysseus has this epiphany:

"[Odysseus] drew up all [his] wits, and ran through tactics,

reasoning as a man will for dear life,

until a trick came---and it pleased [him] well.

The Kyklops' rams were handsome, fat, with heavy

fleeces, a dark violet."

--Book 9, Lines 460-465

>>There you have it! PURPLE MAMMALS! Greek culture is so fun. Also, how they escaped with violet rams? They tied themselves to the bellies and were chauffeured right out, Polyphêmos never knowing the difference since he was blind. With such wit it's no wonder Athena prized Odysseus and his family so much.

>>By the way, if you're curious, the Ks in "Kyklops'" are due to translations making for funny spellings. It's referring to Polyphêmos. Cyclops. Kyklops. Hahaha. Speaking of translations, I ought to give credit to the man who reads in both Greek and English: Robert Fitzgerald. Never met ya, Robert, but I'm very grateful!

>>Lastly...BAAAA!

Yawn...

>>I don't really know what to think right now.

>>My Sudowoodo's at level 43 and I keep fighting the Elite 4 on Silver Version. Obviously I'm failing because that's my highest level. Damn my skill at being able to get to that point in the game 15 levels too early.

>>I keep wondering whether my time is cluttered or free. It always seems like one or the other, never just one forever. I never have one feeling forever. Isn't that sad? There's no consistency in the world. Then again, that's how we grow and prosper: through many changes.

>>There's days like today where I feel like I should be doing something yet there's nothing to do or no motivation. For instance...I could be doing the past two days' worth of peer-facilitating journals. I could be reading "Master Harold and the boys..." and taking notes on it, as a part of a 50-page project. I could do that History of Spyware assignment that was given to us a week ago that I haven't started and most likely won't touch. Hell, I could be looking up words for my Spanish oral next week. I could clean the house, clean out the car I basically just scored due to my brother's ignorance. I could play with my little brother. I could fly to China and demand that woman give me my prom dress.

>>I could do all of these things, yet I have no motivation to do them. I don't know if it's senioritis (especially since I've already been accepted to a college), lack of sleep, lack of sunshine, or lack of whatever my other Ss are. Maybe it's a lack of energy because now when I have time to do things I just wish it were quiet. That's something that's been bothering me lately: this strange need for quiet. It's not like I have headaches all the time or anything like that. I just want something to be quiet and peaceful and tranquil and lovely and warm all at the same time.

>>"It's all of us, or none of me." -Max Goof on the Extremely Goofy Movie. Sounds like a Oedipal slip, does it not?

>>However it works, I might as well do something productive. Where did I put those journals?

Valentine's Day!

>>So I promised a Valentine's blog depicting the events of how I spent it. Because it's a day late, I'll be posting two blogs today. This is the first of the two.

>>Step back a bit. Think about Valentine's Day in the first place. Where did it come from? Did men really want to express how they felt to their lady friend aside from any anniversaries they would share? Did women force such a holiday into place because they didn't feel loved enough? Does it have nothing to do with either genders' wants, and simply couples everywhere wanted a day to celebrate what they were? Or, perhaps, it's a bigger thing, a bit like Christmas, where maybe at one point the holiday had great meaning, but now is completely comercialized?

>>I did some research. Now, I'd love to think that it has to do with the Greek god Eros, or as his more popular name that the Romans gave him, Cupid. However, he is only a symbol of it. Sadly, it is a Christian holiday, created by Pope Gelasius in 496. Believe it or not, the flowers, the cards, the chocolate, and the heart-shaped everything has been in the tradition from the start. So when people comercialize the holiday, it's still in the spirit of Valentine's Day...just bigger. However, it's rumored that the holiday was put where it was to distract pagans away from their holiday (Lupercalia, google it) and focus more on the ideas of Christianity.

>>Sneaky, strategic buttholes.

>>Why Eros in naked over there, I don't know. Why he's a baby, I equally don't know. But if you think about it, Eros would only be a proper image of love if he were mature enough to experience it. In the stories he's older. So I don't like this baby-Eros common symbol of this holiday. Especially since this is a CHRISTIAN holiday, if the Christians were going to borrow symbols they could have at least borrowed the RIGHT one.

>>Anyhow, that's enough background on the holiday itself. My Valentine's Day was great! Will set up some surprises for me, and despite that some weren't really romantic in the first place it was more the fact that we were doing things together than focusing on trying to do romantic activities. Besides, people can't do mushy-gushy junk all the time. It'd drive you mad!

>>So the first surprise: Eating at a japanese steakhouse where they cook the food in front of you. Ah, precious. This could count as romantic. All sorts of foods are aphrodisiacs, after all. The food was delicious, the other party at our table weren't rude or drunk, so that was a positive experience.

>>Second surprise: Seeing a movie. It's the Percy Jackson, blah blah blah, My Title's So Ridiculously Long That No One Remembers It, and despite that overall it was funny and cute and mostly mythologically correct, I had some issues with it...the part with the lotus flowers is on an island near Greece, not in a casino in L.A. Plus, Percy Jackson ≠ Hercules!! The Hydra and Medusa were long defeated by HERCULES before Percy was ever a thought between Poseidon and what's-her-face-mortal-lady. Not really romantic but still fun, and we got to spend time and laugh together.

>>Third surprise: Going to a park. We just chilled and walked and laughed and spent time together. Despite that we did absolutely nothing, it's still a point for the romantic side.

>>Miscellaneous presents which I've forgotten to mention til this point: roses, a chocolate rose, chocolate in that heart-shaped box, Popey Gelasius up there (there's so many "there"s that that could be! Guess which in comments) would be oh-so proud, a sketchpad with a gushy cutesy lovely note, a thing of red ink for my calligraphy, and lots and lots of smiles.

>>Mom got me chocolate too. A shit ton of it, since it went on sale on Valentine's Day. But that's after the fact of all this. Basically, yesterday was amazing, asombroso, and it doesn't look like it's changing. So huzzah! Victory!

The Creation Myths

>>Now, we're all familiar with the Christian creation myth, story, whatever you want to call it. "Let there be light," and all that nonsense. Sounds like a Morgan Freeman movie. (Gotta love 'im!)

>>But something struck me in my reading the other day, this is quoted directly from the book, MYTHOLOGY Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, by Edith Hamilton:

"The fifth race is that which is now upon the earth: the iron race. They live in evil times and their nature too has much of evil, so that they never have rest from toil and sorrow. As the generations pass, they grow worse; sons are always inferior to their fathers. A time will come when they have grown so wicked that they will worship power; might will be right to them, and reverence for the good will cease to be. At last when no man is angry any more at wrongdoing or feels shame in the presence of the miserable, Zeus will destroy them too. And yet even then something might be done, if only the common people would arise and put down rulers that oppress them."

>>Thank you Edith! Thank you for such wonderful insight to the Greek mindset! Now, when it says the "fifth race", it's not talking about these races like "Well, white's over black, and black's over asian, and asian's over..." No. These are the original races which the Greek believed the Gods created, and we are the fifth race because we were the fifth attempt. Chronological. x] (First there were Gold, they rocked, then Silver, they were stupid and hurt each other they were so dumb, Brass, idgit war-lovers, then there were "godlike heroes", which were war-fighters for righteous causes and were a bit like a step up from the brass yet at the same time their physical components were weaker.)

>>Anyhow, what struck me so much about this piece of the myth which Edith so graciously passed onto printing presses for all to better understand, is that it says that this is the race that "is that which is now upon the earth". What does the book center around? Humans, Gods, Titans, Gaea, and Erebus, and what's the common factor to today, at least that's inferior and scattered all over the damn place? Humans. Plus, think about it. We have to be the iron race; we have iron in our blood. Thus, this is talking about current generations, and the generations from the past, oh, 21 centuries or so. That's only that we KNOW of.

>>Anyway, my point is what it talks about with all the "wicked" and power and how reverence never comes to the good anymore. Think about your own life. Think about the state of America today, where banks control the way things run instead of democracy. Think of the people in your life: don't the idgits get away with anything, while the good sit by and are annoyed? Don't the greedy get what they want because the kind have become pushovers, perhaps intimidated by the idea of going against their will? It's really sad, if you think about it.

>>On a lighter note, Edith gave us another creation myth to go by if that one seems too realistic and sorrowful.

>>Well you see, once there were these two brothers. Go figure, they were titans (wickeddd). Their names? Prometheus and Epimetheus. They were in charge of distributing what life forms get what, basically. Now Epimetheus was really scatter-brained, it wasn't that he wasn't meaning to do well, but he just couldn't help himself. So he gave animals all the cool shit like fur, fangs, hooves, claws, whiskers, shells, cunning, that sort of thing. So he realized he left nothing totally wicked for the humans, and thought, "Well shit. Better get Prometheus to fix it for me, what a responsible brother I have."

>>Prometheus looks upon the situations and ponders. He ponders and ponders, going back and forth between thinking "Wow, my brother is a complete idgit," and the solution for the problem. Epiphany strikes him: he mends their shape to that of like a God, and gives us the gift of fire, thus a great power of destruction. "There brother," he said. "All fixed."

>>Now obviously my quotes are all made up, Edith probably would either laugh at my summary or want to smack me, I never met her personally so I wouldn't know. However. You get my gist. Now, Prometheus was sort of an idgit for just giving us fire, for two reasons. One, we're morons and now have pyros, arsonists, and all sorts of technology that have so separate us from the animal life that we're always thinking we're superior just because. Hell, we call them animals! They are our fellow life forms! Survival of the fittest, they're here too! Give 'em props. Two, I'm sure you heard that poor Prometheus was put on that rock to have a giant eagle hawk whichever come and rip out and eat his guts everyday, just for them to painfully regrow overnight.

>>On that note, I have given description of the myths. I like them very much and it makes me feel like our current generation is foolish, because so long ago they were predicting our nature, and all we're concerned about it satisfying desires. It's sad. It's really sad. Just like how each son is inferior to his father, now, education, wisdom, and inference is now inferior to what it used to be. Oh Keats, your everlasting two words to my heart, ah, "woe betide!", it seems the world is such.

>>P.S.: Tomorrow's Valentine's Day!! Expect a review tomorrow. x]]

So This Is The New Year...

>>and I don't feel any different...

>>That was my backyard today. I live in GEORGIA. Not the European country, but the STATE, in the South, where it's supposed to be warm. Gaea, Demeter, Hecate, whoever it may be, do you have the flu? Was Persephone stolen again to the depths of the Underworld, Hades's greed overbrimming? Hopefully not.

>>Okay, so there's all sorts of reasons why I haven't kept up with my blogging.

>>1. I'm lethargic.

>>2. Life hates me.

>>3. Time's not my friend.

>>4. Topics escape me.

>>5. Will has distracted me immensely. xD But that's a different topic. Stay tuned, fair nonreaders! Eventually there will be a Valentine's post, because for once I'll have one.

>>Blah blah blah, enough about bo's. Time for some of my geniune ranting blahing nonsense that really isn't any good but perhaps may be just snarky enough to cause a snicker or a smile here or there.

>>Playing silver version. That's right, I graduated to second generation Pokémon! Speaking of which, I have a story to tell. A'ight. I've got my first play-through going, and I'm to the fourth or fifth or sixth city, I don't know, I'm at the point where I'm about to beat the Johto region you start at and then you can go to the other region. Then, out of nowhere, my game disappears. (John Keats's comment? "ah, woe betide!") I couldn't tell my older brother because it was his game and he'd be mad if I lost it, and I couldn't tell my younger brother (the one that's not an infant) that I lost it, because that meant admitting I lost his prized Lime Green Gameboy Color.

>>Cruel world! So I look on my own for a few weeks, to no avail. Now let's switch up the scene to inside my brother's car, it's packed with idgits dancing madly to a popular rap song, you've probably heard it on the radio: Replay by IYAZ. (Shorty's like a melody in my head that I can't keep out got me singin' like na-na-na-naa everyday it's like my ipod's stuck on replay...etc.) So these teenage/youthful adults, they're dancing so much in the car that the vehicles practically hopping up and down, it could have been dancing on its own. Perhaps the song is just that rad.

>>My brother, who was driving at the time, doubted that possibility. He was trying to find anything at all which could possibly distract them for even a moment so the car would cease shaking so much. (Shorty got me singin'; shorty got me singin') What's his solution? MY GAMEBOY!

>>He hits the breaks, or at least that's how I like to imagine it, and my Gameboy flies from underneath the back window and hits Evan in the back of the head, and he asks Steven (my brother) who owns it. Steven eagerly tells him, seeing that the car's stopped moving so much. And what's Evan's bright idea? He erases my game, starts a new game, and renames me "LAWL".

>>What. A douche.

>>I just got back to that point in the game, so it's okay.

>>Another funnyish story? Well, I'm a kind person [Skeptics and True Believers/The Academy Is...] and I like to get people things from time to time, when I feel the jiving impulse of kindness. I felt it the other day. So I made peanut butter fudge for my two best friends and beau. Well, I end up having some left over from what I gave them, and I carry the (cut-up) leftovers in a ziplock bag with me throughout the day to give pieces to others that I think deserve it.

>>So the end of the day comes and I've given out as much fudge as I can manage, and I'm sitting on the bus as we're headed home from the too-long school day. Those silly kids---they always make me lawl. They started a paper ball fight, the things were flying everywhere, and it was certainly a joy to watch. After it's over, I think, "hey, they're calm now, maybe one of them will listen if I offer fudge." So I ask a few and this one kid, Matt, he's a [Lost Heaven/one of many FMA themes] hoot. One of the ones that's always energetic, always honest, always in the mood for some fun, a very lively personality. Anyhow, I offer him the fudge, and he takes the whole bag. "Ah man!" he exclaims. "If only I knew about this before! I coulda thrown this during the fight!"

>>I pled, "No! No! Please eat it. It'd be wasteful to throw it at someone." (Really I just don't want to be the reason someone because someone gets creamed in the back of the head with melting fudge.)

>>But what comes up ahead? A turn in the road, and in this turn a stop sign, so Matt says, "AAAAAAAAAAwwwwwwwwwwww sheeeeee-it, looky here," and gets a glob of the fudge on his hand. We're all confused as we watch him stick his arm out the window, we see him slap the fudge onto the stop sign, and it stuck! It actually stuck!

>>Then he actually tried it and gave compliments, not really toward me but just exclaiming the delight acquired from taking a bite. [She's Got The Rhythm/The Summer Set] I've still been wanting to drive by that stop sign and see if the fudge is still clinging.