Bow Down to the Hippie Queen
Snake Oil of the Modern Age
Now I do not for a second believe any of this is true, and even if could possibly have a shred of legitimacy to it, well it is not within my nature to use any such vanity products as that, but hypothetically speaking, if I were a person so inclined to such things, and if in addition I was desperate and or stupid enough to believe that it would actually work, I certainly would not want to use it if it in fact made you look like the people who were selling it.
The spokesmen and woman for the product were actually frightening looking, in fact I think there is a very good chance that the alleged plastic surgeon who was vouching for the product, may have in fact been an alien. I mean if you are going to be a snake oil salesmen you should at least take the time to invest in a slightly higher quality of model. If you are selling some kind of beauty enhancing product than the people who are selling it should make you want to look just like them, and not shudder in repulsion and question if in fact they are actually human.
Catfish
Momento Mori
Basically she views the rest of society through the same lens as one might watch animals in the wild or study a primitive tribe. She puts herself in the position of being this sort of outside observer, she does not really interact with society but watches it from a distance, as if they are subjects of study.
So though I myself am not given so much to the inclination towards logic. I do not in most cases consider myself to be by nature a rational person and I am not inclined towards the scientific approach of things, I am much more of the mystic, yet, in many ways the more I think about it, the more I realize how much I really am like this character.
My dad was telling me about this story he read in which it is becoming a trend now, when somebody dies, their friends of family members will turn the facebook page of the deceased into a memorial of sorts and my first initial reaction to this was from a purely observational stand point. You know that old quote the more things change the more they stay the same?
Well my first thoughts to hearing of this was reflecting on the way in which it seemed so reminiscent of the memento mori's from the 1800's, and how at that time in photography was a rather new technology, and thus people did not have the albums of photographs, and videos, and what not as a way of preserving memories that we have today, back than when a person died a photograph would be taken of the dead body as a remembrance of that person. They also would use the hair of the deceased and weave it into jewelry, or use it to make little portraits and such things of the like as token's of remembrance for the individual.
And prior to that in some cultures would make death masks, in which a plaster case would be taken of the face of the deceased to capture and preserve their likeness. So this whole thing with the facebook thing really is to me, using new technology for very age old and primitive practices. It really is interesting how at the base roots, people themselves do not truly change, the environment around them changes, and their outlets of expression change, but the subconscious mind still holds these collective memories of our past history, or the baseness of our nature. While we have conveniently been able to put a greater distances between ourselves and death and do not live in such close quarters with its ever looming presence, the way in which we approach it, our relation to the dead, and our perceptions of it, they have not altered much over the 100s of years which have passed. We still unknowingly, and unconsciously fall into these rituals which if we were look to back upon we probably would see as being morbid, macabre, and primitive, yet still we take the mediums available to us today and continue to act these things out unaware of how closely we are following in the foot steps of our predecessors and how little we ourselves have evolved, even if we have evolved the world around us.
Some people may find this idea disheartening, while others may choose to continue to live in denial about it, but I find there is a sort of comfort in this ever presence of our primitiveness, and that nothing we do can ever completely eradicate it.
100 Greatest Books {Update}
I came acros this list of what are considered to be the 100 greatest books of the 20th century, I decided that I would reach each of these books, here is the list of books I have read. The numbers in front of the title is the order they appear on the list. The * are a sort of 5 star rating system for how well I liked the book. I will also list if any the books I am in the progress of reading.
TBA = To Be Announced
2.The Great Gastby * * * *
10. The Grapes of Wrath * * *
41. Lord of the Flies * * * *
45. The Sun Alos Rises * * * *
48. The Rainbow * * * *
64. The Catcher in the Rye * * * * *
78. Kim * * *
8 8.The Call of the Wild * * * * *
93. The Maugs * * * * *
21. Henderson the Rain King * * * *
69. The House of Mirth* * * * *
13. 1984 * * *
20. Native Son * * *
9. Sons and Lovers * * * *
31. Animal Farm * * *
3. A Portrait of the Artist As A Yong Man * *
58. The Age of Innocence * * *
15. To The Lighthouse * * *
25. A Passage To India * * * *
65. A Clockwork Orange * * * *
34. A Handful of Dust * * * *
84. The Death of the Heart * * * *
7. Catch-22 * * * *
27. The Ambassadors * * * *
24. Winseburg, Ohio * * * *
14. I, Claudius * * *
79. A Room With A View * * *
54. Light in August * * *
73. The Day of the Locust * * *
36. All the King's Men * *
5. Brave New World * * *
49. Women in Love * * * *
55. On the Road * * *
38. Howards End * * * *
74. A Farewell to Arms * * * *
80. Brideshead Revisited * * * * *
18. Slaughterhouse-Five * * *
67. Heart of Darkness ****
66. Of Human Bondage ****
Books in Progress:
Invisible Man
Sister Carrie
Green Man
The Holidays from a Pagan Perspective
Halloween/All Hallows Eve/Samhain
This is a favorite holiday among many a Pagan and there are a few different reasons for why Halloween is so preferred among the Pagan community and why it has such a stronghold and is such a particularly sacred and celebrated time for us. For one thing many Pagans do also tend to have an inclination towards the dark side of things, and we generally love being out at night, under the moon, and of course many of us love black. There are a lot of similarities of areas of interest between Pagan's and the Goth culture, we both like to shop at Hot Topic, and we both tend to favor the same sort of accessories.
There is something very occultic about Halloween, after all it is the night in which the veil between this world and the next is thinnest and the spirits may cross over, which is another aspect of the holiday that is most appealing to us Pagans. In relation to the fact that we have a very different aspect on death, and tend to embrace it and celebrate it, we have a great interest in spiritual activity. Halloween night is a great time for spells, rituals, divination.
Plus on Halloween every one dresses up the way we Pagans dress on a day to day basis. On Halloween everyone does themselves become a little bit Pagan, and there is certain Hedonistic aspects to many Halloween Parties.
Another primary reason for why Halloween is so embraced and important to the Pagan culture is because the Christians haven't tried to give it a Christ makeover. In fact there are many groups of Christians who renounce Halloween and that is just as well for me. So we Pagans can feel as if Halloween is still our own. Though perhaps like all holidays in this modern age it has been commercialized, but at least it has not been taken over the by monotheistic monopoly.
Easter
For me this is the most amusing of the holidays because I love irony and Easter is by far the most ironic of the major holidays. It is good to just sit back enjoy the show and laugh. So what makes Easter such a comic holiday for the Pagan?
The fact that though sure the Christians will claim that it is about the celebration of the Resurrection of Christ, but they really did not put much effort into disguising this one, I mean they didn't really try at all. Easter is truly Pagan from its head down to its toe. The very name of Easter is taken directly from the name Ostra or sometimes Estera the name of the fertility goddess in which the traditional Easter is held in celebration of.
When is Easter held? On the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox (otherwise known as Spring) I mean you could not get any more Pagan than that if you tried.
And what about those Easter bunnies and decorated eggs? They are fertility symbols of the goddess.
But the truly best part of it of all is the fact that it is almost inevitable that every year on Easter some community will be hosting an Easter event which will involve someone dressed up as the Easter Bunny and some group of atheists will protest it, and claim it is offensive and exclusive to non-Christians and some group of Christians will defend the right of the Easter Bunny.
So here we have it, a bunch of Christians defending an ancient Pagan fertility symbols, even though they don't know it, and a group of atheists protesting the Easter Bunny while being completely oblivious to the fact that in truth it really has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity whatsoever.
Christmas/Yule Tide/Winter Solstice
Now this is the most frustrating of them because this is the one in which the Christians really went all out on. They through "Christ" right into the name of the thing and completely redecorated removing virtually all traces of Paganism from this holiday and making it virtually impossible for the Pagans to reclaim in any way shape or form.
While things like the tree, light decorations, presents etc... have their roots back into the original Pagan tradition, the Yule has been overrun with Christian decorations, of course the Nativity scene is one of the most recognized Christmas decorations, and not the mention the heavy spattering of angels and the three wise men. A great majority of Christmas cards have some religious theme or iconography, and many of the most popular of Christmas Carols also have a religious message behind them.
The one good thing I can say which I do not know if it owed to the growing Pagan/Wiccan community and the more openness and recognition we are gaining, or if it is owed to the atheists, but more and more tv commercials and business and other institutions do recognize the Winter Solstice in their efforts not to give offence and exclude any particularly group, so among the Merry Christmases, Happy Hanukkahs, Happy Kwanzas, Happy Holidays, you will occasionally hear a Happy Winter Solstice, or Happy Yuletide thrown into the mix.
Thanksgiving
Now this one is sort of the odd man out and yet it is still worthy of note here. The thing which sets Thanksgiving apart from the others is the fact that it is not an international holiday and it is not officially a religious holiday for it is not biblical, and yet it does have its origins in Puritanism and thus as far as I am concerned it is a Puritan holiday.
So what relevance does this have upon Pagans?
Though Thanksgiving as it is known today is seen as a purely American holiday a unique holiday, the truth is before the discover of America, before the first colonists to land upon America, before Christianity, harvest festivals of the exact same nature as Thanksgiving have been taking place throughout a great many different cultures.
Now on a matter of principle in theory I do not celebrate Thanksgiving, for one because I do consider it a Puritan holiday and thus it is of no meaning or significance to me and for two because as far as I am concerned Thanksgiving is synonymous with the genocide of the Native American people and culture. But living in America I cannot all together avoid Thanksgiving, as well my family celebrates all of the holidays in a secular fashion.
But for me Thanksgiving is a time to celebrate and do homage to Demeter the goddess of the harvest, so I do not celebrate the American holiday of Thanksgiving, but I celebrate the rather ancient festival of the harvest in honor of the bounty the Earth Mother gives us.
So You Think Aliens Built the Pyramids?
I have always held an objection to what seems to be the relatively common theory among many people today that aliens must have been involved in the building of the Great Pyramids, now as to whether or not I believe in extra terrestrial life and what my vies on such are I do not wish to get into here, for that should be a subject for another day, so I am not here to argue for or against alien life forms, as my objection the idea that aliens built the Pyramids is not based upon a belief or lack of belief in their existence but rather it draws from the fact that I think the view point is insulting to the Ancient Egyptians and it is a purely egotistical standpoint to have.
In the same way there there is racial prejudice, sexism, classicism, there is also a tendency to have certain prejudicial views about people of the past, that is there is a mind set that people whom we view as being "primaitive' because they lacked the technological advancements that we have, thus they must have by nature been inferior to us and this is a view point i myself do not hold if anything I would say we are inferior to our ancestors, but that too is for another day.
The belief in the alien theory I think stems from our own narrow-mindedness and insecurities about ourselves, and our egoism, being that because we, with all our technological advancements cannot deduce just how the Egyptians managed to build the pyramids with their great lack of technology, and because we cannot replicate their exact methods we presume that it is inconceivable that these "primitive" people could possible on their own have achieved something which is beyond or own capabilities and comprehension, and so it must be presumed that being inferior as they are, clearly some other life form of greater intelligence and technological advancement must have assisted them in some way.
With that in mind I would like to propose this alternative view. Consider sometime in the far future when we ourselves would be looked upon as an ancient civilization and when technology has made even greater leaps and bounds, for some reason or other somehow the technology, or the materials on how to make airplanes as we know them today were completely lost. So was have this future age looking down upon us and scoffing us as being primitive and they have all this new technology which we ourselves could not conceive of, yet they cannot figure out how to construct an airplane, maybe they have come up with other flying type devices but how to construct an airplane is beyond them.
They have replicas of airplanes, they can see airplanes, and study them but they have been incapable using the materials and methods which were available to us to replicate the airplane and thus with all their superior knowledge and advancements they decide that it was completely impossible and a ludicrous idea to presume that we could possibly be capable of having making such machines, sense they fail to comprehend to do so, than this lesser society surely could never have achieved such a thing. So they decide that only plausible explanation is that clearly some other more intelligent life form must have visited upon earth and made airplane for us, or been the ones to give us the technology on how airplanes are made.
This would be an insult to our own prowess of innovation and it would be a disgrace to the memory of the Wright Brothers. It would be taking something away from us and our achievements to pass on the credit for what we have accomplished unto so other theoretical source. To sooner believe that so unknown beings of which there is no absolute proof as to their existence had come down upon earth for the sake of construing these monuments, rather than to believe in the possibilities, capabilities and innovations of the people themselves.
This is the reason why I do take a personal offence to the theories of aliens building the pyramids, because of my deep respect for these ancient cultures and because I do believe that they were capable of remarkable things, and because if it was not for them we would not have the society which we have (though it is true I am not altogether sure that it is a good thing as I am not all that impressed with the society we have).
Law and Order Blues
I am no fan of the TV show Law and Order and do not make a habit of watching it, in fact I cannot stand the shows, but my grandma likes to watch them and when I sometimes have dinner at her house she will have it on and so in consequence I will end up watching it. I do not know exactly which of the 500 different Law and Orders she actually watches but I do know that the show really makes you want to root for the bad guy because the cops and lawyers on those shows are just so completely unsympathetic that they make you want to see the loose and bring wrong.
For one thing apparently they have never acutally heard of "innocent until proven guilty" becasue they make snap judgements about people in which they will automatically presume someone is guilty purely based upon thier personal opinion of that person and instead of fowllowing the evidence to the criminal they will decide whom they want the criminal to be and try and dig up evidence to support that idea.
Than they act like total school yard bullies and particularly violate peoples rights and use very thug like techniques upon people, they get right up in a persons face yelling at them and trying to threaten them and there may have been a couple of times where they have actually physically assaulted an unarmed person, pushing them up against a wall or some such thing.
In addition to the fact that they are always so arrogant and think they are right no matter what, and even when they find out that they are wrong and had falsely accused someone they show no signs of remorse and still act as if they were completely justified and as if innocent or not the person deserved it.
They are just so completely smug that when the trail comes at the end of the show, no matter what heinous crime the criminal committed there is the part of me that really just wants them to get a non guilty verdict, even if I don't approve of what they did and believe they do deserve to be punished, the cops on that show are just that infuriating I cannot stand to see them "win" in the end.
Late Night TV
There is never anything one TV Friday's or over the weekend, but sometimes one of the entertainments of the boredom of flipping through late night TV (thought it is not in fact that late presently) is the strange "gems" you may come across.
I was flipping through the channels looking for something acceptable to watch on the TV primarily just to use as background noise when I came across this strange show which looked as if it was filmed on someones personal camcorder and I could not tell what it was suppose to be, and thought maybe it was some armature short film or something. It was on this obscure channel of which I don't even know what the channel was but it reminded me of those public access local channels.
First this woman who apparently was Russian, and it appeared to be in the United States wanted to order phone service for her apartment so she was using a neighbors phone to call the phone company and at first for a moment it looked as if it was about to tun into some sort of armature soft porn, but than she went back hoe and her husband was there and it looked as if it was about to turn into some sort of domestic violence thing. Than after that there was this creepy guy who looked like some sort of pervert or serial killer or something.
So I could not figure out what was going on, when if it was not bad enough all of the sudden there was this genie guy with a crystal ball, and well it turns out that it apparently was some sort of instructional video for immigrants.
Reading List {Updated}
Reading on the Side: Any extra, miscellaneous books I happen to be reading in addition to my other reading.
Short Stories: Self-Explantory, for any collections of short-stories I may be reading
Reading list will be periodically updated.
General Reading
Lord of Chaos
Sarum
River God
Gather if Clouds
Koko
Stone of Tears
The Agony and the Ecstasy
The Quincunx
People of the River
The Running of the Tide
Invisible Man
Monthly Reading
Sister Carrie
Night of the Wolf
The Idiot
A Town Like Alice
The Adventures of Augie March
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
Reading on the Side
The Treasure of Franchard
The Neighbors are Watching
Non-Fiction
Tales for a Midnight Hour
The Most Beautifully Told Story in which Nothing Happens Ever Written
I once heard someone remark "Can a book be both brilliant and boring at the same time?" They were speaking of Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse" but the statement perfectly sums up how I feel about "Love in the Time of Cholera"
I have just finished reading this book, and I have to say I cannot quite state just how I feel about the book or what I make of it. On the one hand I could not in earnest say I did not like it, and honestly I cannot say that I did not enjoy it, and I certainly did not think it was a bad book, but it was a book that I found extremely difficult to get myself to read and it was not a book I looked eagerly forward to picking up again.
It is not the book I would normally read, and if I had just come across it on a shelf in a store and picked it up and read what it was about on the back cover, I likely would have put it right back down again. To say the least as we know sentimental stories of undying, unrequited love are not my cup of tea, but I loved 100 Years of Solitude so much I was intrigued to read more by the author and Love in Cholera (as I dub the book for short) was the only other book of his I had even heard anything about so I decided to give it a chance.
The book I thought was beautifully written, and I absolutely loved the first sentence, the prose had a poetic lyricism to them, and some of the passages were truly remarkable. There were certain aspects of the books which I did quite appreciate. There were touches of surrealism, and I do quite enjoy books which blend tragedy and humor together, and there points in the book in which I almost laughed out loud. I also really enjoyed the layers of symbolism within the book.
But on the other hand, the story was soooo slow, and reading the book was not the most engaging, and captivating of experiences. It is not what I would call a page turner. In fact it was a struggle to get through it without slipping into a comatose state at times. There were moments when I could only read a couple paragraphs at a time before I needed to seek distracting with more entertaining forms of entertainment. Virtually nothing happens throughout the entirety of the book. Pretty much the whole thing is just this guy moping about his everlasting unrequited love.
And though the book is intended to be this romantic story about this great undying love, and the power of love, and how it is eternal and blah blah blah, there were times when a part of me could not help but think that really in a way he was kind of a stalker and it would be at least a little bit disturbing to have this adolescent crush show up on your doorstep when he is like 70 years old trying to woo you like you are still teenagers again.
Though in spite of the fact that if this had happened in a real life situation I think the woman might be more likely to get a restraining order, I do think that Marquez did a wonderful job of making the end of the story make sense and fit in quite well and the very last page I thought was quite beautiful and it was one of those things where the ending of the story sort of forgave everything else, though I do still think that the last several pages leading up to that moment drug on a bit longer than was truly needed and I had begun to reach that point of feeling like I just wanted to be finished with the damned thing, and for those who watched Seinfield I was having my Elaine's English Patient, "Just Die Already!" moment where I was like ok, would you just get the point now because I have had as much as I can take and was ready to stop like 20 pages ago.
The Cape
I was quite excited when I saw the previews for the new series "The Cape" though I will confess that while it is true I never really got much into the reading of comic books nonetheless there was always something about them which held for me a certain degree of interest. I love comic book movies and I am intrigued by comic book characters, and the vigilante fantasy of which they offer as well as the alternative reality involved in many of them.
So upon watching the the perimeter for "The Cape" I was left with some mixed feelings about it. I was not completely blown away by it as I would have liked to be, and yet there were still some things which I very much enjoyed and other things which give me some difficulty.
One of the things I really enjoyed about "The Cape" is that it really touches back to that old school comic style in a way which is reminiscent of the original Batman movie while the new Batman movies bring a darker, edgier gritty realism, there will always be a special place in my heart for the original.
But with this high point for "The Cape" also comes one of its downfalls, which is the fact that at moments I feel as if it indeed is too much of a rip off of Batman, while there are some acute differences between the two, there are also for me some inescapable similarities. In some ways "The Cape" feels like when you buy a generic brand of something, for example stores which try to sell their own version of Barbie, and because they are not the official Barbi brand they are not exactly like Barbi thus they are not quite as well made, there heads are a little too big, or the hair is not as good of quality, the features are not as realistic, you get the gist. So in some ways "The Cape" is like a generic Batman, it is a slightly cheaper and more generic version.
On the other hand though I know that sounds harsh, there are some rather clever things about the show which I quite enjoy. I love the Carnival of Criminal's and I highly enjoyed that illusionist, touch of magic, escapism idea which is brought into the character, the idea of Magician as super hero highly appeals to me and the cape itself is a rather nifty device. Another thing of which I quite enjoy is the clever use of Orwell within the show, Orwell being a blog run by an anonymous source which seems to know everything that is going on in the city and exposuses corruption. I also like the fact that the show does not actually make a big deal about the whole hidden identity thing, because that is a bit of originality.
Another concept which I find highly intriguing that was introduced into the show is the existence of an underground organization of Assassins known as the Arcana (or something close to that) which are in fact based of the 24 cards of the Major Arcana of the Tarot.
The Horror!
I had a most terrifying encounter!
I just finished playing the Wii and turned it off and the TV came on, and I don't know what was one, or what channel it was on, all I know is this horrifying image appeared on the TV screen, at first I was not quite sure what it was. I thought it may have an evil clown and yet I was paralyzed and could not bring myself to look away from this grotesque image, as I watched in a stupefied wonder trying to figure just what the heck was being transfixed over the air waves.
And then I realized what it was, and I am not exaggerating here, it was an old woman who literally looked exactly like a ventriloquist dummy. Her lips were painting in this bright red color which looked like the color used to paint the lips of ventriloquist dummies, and her skin was really pale, she had these freaky eyes, and there were these folds in her skin along her jaw which looked exactly like the joint of the dummies moth that allow it to open and close.
Making fun of the elderly might sound mean, but trust me, if you had seen it, you would know exactly what I mean, it was like something out of a horror movie, and it just may give me nightmares.
Police Gun Down Deer
As you well know I do not typically talk about anything polical, or current event, or new related, becasue that is just not my thing and usually I do not find such things interesting, and there are many other soruces which dedicate themselves to such subjects, but I do make exceptions at times when I get really pissed off about something as is the case now.
I swear the Oakland police force are just a bunch of trigger happy yahoos, who will use any excuse they can to shoot and kill anything that moves if they think there is even a minute possibility that they have just enough cause to get away with it. I have just recently heard a story in which police officers gunned down a small male deer without any probable cause (they and no one else was in any true danger from the animal, and animal control was called an on the way). The deer was spotted running down along a road and for reasons unknown the cops chased it down in their car, until out of fear it hoped a fence into a residential area, the cops eventuated the area and the deer was simply startled, and disoriented when the police made the choice to simply gun it down and used unnecessary force and violence to slaughter the animal.
The Gems of Late Night TV
I was flipping through the channels trying to find acceptable to put on the TV and by that I mean anything which would not drive me to the point of annoyance to have playing on in the background, which there never is on Friday's but there is abolsutely nothing else to do at this point in time but be painstakingly board.
When I happened to come across some across some local public access channel and it was some sort of documentary thing about this couple that had this kid that had some illness or other, and well normally I would not pause a moment on anything having to do with children, but some time ago when I was in a hotel with limited channels I reemerged coming across a similar looking program which was about psychotic children, like literally actually certifiably psycho pathetic, which needless to say the macabre part of myself found quite interesting, so I thought it had the potential to be something along similar lines as that and well with nothing else to do my curiosity was piqued enough to try and at least find out just what they were talking about.
Well they were interviewing these different pediatricians and there was this one guy, who trust me, I am not at all exaggerating, literally looked like he was a doctor from the 1800's. He was wearing a black suit jacket over a white shirt, but than had his stethoscope draped over his shoulder, and he had that crazy hair, where it is like part beard part sideburns, so it is just these big patches of hair on either side of his face. I was memorized because I could not believe what I was seeing, because everything else in the show looked like it was modern day and they did not have video cameras in the 1800's, so I had no idea as to what was going on with that.
But seriously, who is going to go to see the doctor who looks as if he might still find bleeding an effective method of medical treatment? Who is going to go the guy who looks like he might say, take a shot of this whiskey and than bite down on a stick why I cut you open with a saw.
Though after that like weird bazaar little moment the show became much less interesting and did not hold my attention long to find out what they were actually talking about.
A Walk on the Wildside
Today I found myself sitting around with not much to do and excess free time upon my minds, and when I get bored it is never a good thing, most of my blogs were born out of my fits of boredom. In such a state I am driven to do things I would not normally down when still thinking rationally, so I was stricken within the sudden idea to take some photos of myself in the persona of Persephone the goddess of spring after all now is the season to do her homage and honor. For the aesthetic and artistic purposes of the photo I was partially nude, wearing only a skirt and thus being topless. It was all done in a very tasteful, innocent way to embrace the essence of the goddess being born again into the light of day and released from the darkness of the underworld. Well I got this sudden wild idea to go out on a limb and uploaded the picture of me onto my DA gallery.
It was the first time I have ever done such a thing before but in the nature of the Pagan spirit in embracing nudity as something pure and natural I thought I would be bold and take a walk on the wild side, to say the least I received a lot of really positive feedback and so I was encouraged to go through my archives and upload some older photos of a similar nature I had originally taken for personal private reasons.
It is an interesting experiment for me and stepping outside of myself.
Feminine Evil
Feminine Evil by Albert Penot
Clash of the Titans
Naturally one of the big gist problems was the fact that it should come as no surprise that I was not exactly on the side of the humans, I thought they were acting like sniveling ingrates, who seemed to forget the very important fact that, hello, they would not even be living and breathing at all if the gods hadn't created them, and yet they think they then can become better than the gods? It seems to me that all myths end up coming to the same basic conclusion, creating humans ended up being a very bad idea.
Which leads me into the next problem I had with the movie was the fact that I wanted more of the gods. It was quite a disappointment that for one thing Poseidon did not appear at all within the movie, I do have some partiality to him, and other than Zeus and Hades, neon of the other gods were really given much of a roll at all. Hades though I do have to admit was pretty wickedly awesome.
There is also the fact that I have never really been a fan of Perseus, and well the Greek Heroes in general often tend to come across as being unbearably obnoxious. Perseus was an arrogant, prideful, Hubris filled spoiled little brat. And of course the whole Medusa myth always makes me mad. Medusa looked awesome in the movie, but of course it was inevitable that she could not win, and the slaying of Medusa was a thoroughly unjust act.
One of the coolest part of the movies was the jin, mysterious, no longer human desert dwellers that control giant scorpions, also Charon was pretty awesome.
Irish Soul
Caught Between Worlds
From Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse