Brat-halla

There is a site with a pretty funny take on Norse mythology. It is a web comic called Brat-Halla and takes the approach of the Norse mythology meets Brady Bunch. How does Odin, the All Father, live up to his name? Is it really just one big happy family?

My favorite comic is when Odin and Frigga (his wife and consequently mother of all the brats seeing how Odin is a bit more faithful than his Greek counterpart) run into Zeus and Hera at the local warehouse shopping center for gods (Godsco). Here it is:


You'll have to click it to see it bigger on the original site, since this is as large as I can get the blog site to print it. If nothing else, you'll need to read it to understand when I say the "little Spartan" comment is hilarious!

Here is how the web comic's creators explain the premise of the story lines:

Brat-halla is a mythology webcomic about the Norse gods during their elementary school days. All-Father Odin and his wife Frigg constantly have their hands full with youngsters Thor (the super strong runt of the litter), Loki (the god of mischief who likes to play with dolls), Balder (the invulnerable pretty boy), Hod (the blind god of darkness and winter), Hermod (the hyper super speedster), and all the rest of the Norse pantheon.

If nothing else, it is a fun way to brush up on the Norse gods and goddesses (yes, they do change things with poetic (cartoonic) license, but for the most part, they stay within range of who the gods are.

I give this comic a rating of 3.5 lightning bolts out of five. The drawings are usually pretty well done (I especially like Thor) and the idea is very clever and original. The actual humor is hit or miss. I might read through 4 of them without laughing and then crack up on the fifth. The ones that do hit the funny bone make it worth going through the others. The running jokes are usually pretty funny (like poor little blind Hod cursing his luck when the Valkyries come by).

The home site is: http://brat-halla.com/ This will take you to the most current comic strip.
To start from the beginning, try: http://brat-halla.com/comic/1-balder-dash/

Back to ya!

I'm reading Troy:Fall of Kings and ran across what is possibly the best mythological expression I have even encountered.

The scene: Paris and his brother Dios are wrestling each other when King Priam walks in on them.

The remark: Priam immediately yells out, "By the balls of Ares, are you morons?"


Well, it beats, "By Jove!" any day.

Outatime

We have always been interested in fast travel. Treasure four of the 13 Treasures of Britian is no different.

The Chariot of Morgan the Wealthy (Kar Morgan Mwynfawr) - quite simply, wherever you wanted to go, you just thought about it and *poof* you appeared (or at least would be there quickly)

Even today, we are obsessed with going faster, saving time, getting their quicker. I read teh book Around the World in 80 Days not too long ago and was amused at 80 days being a speed record. The record for a boat to circumnavigate the globe is 60 days. Steve Fossett did it by himself in a plane in just 67 hours. By who cares about them? This is a mythology blog. What about the mythological travel savers?

My favorite for the sheer image of it is the flying carpet of Arabian mythology fame. One Thousand and One Nights was my first encounter with one, but they were in stories long before that. In that book, Prince Housain found an old beat up carpet that was really a flying one. I guess all that wear and tear from flying really can make a carpet look pretty bad.

King Solomon, who has a lot to do with Arabian lore, also had a flying carpet that was sixty miles long and sixty miles wide. Seems to be one heck of a vacuuming ordeal.

The Norse had Slephnir, an eight-legged, super-fast horse that was the unfortunate result of Loki shape changing into a female horse around a horny stallion.

You have Pegasus in Greek mythology that allows Bellerophon to get where he wants to quickly. Unfortunately, Bellerophon began to believe that it was he who was all that and a bag of chips, and when he forced Pegasus to go to Mt. Olympus, Pegasus bumped him off. This earns Pegasus a spot in the stars for being smart and Bellerophon a spot in crippled shame for the rest of his miserable life.

Mandjet is a boat that allows Ra to travel the world each day carrying the sun and looking for dead souls to take to the underworld. Not exactly the best example of fast travel, but it does circle the world in a day.

Magical transportation is not all fun and games, mind you. Just take the time to read this news story (just click the headline):

Man Gets 5 Years for Magical Transportation


I know there are some that I have left out. Leave a comment if you can think of more fast modes of travel.

Unfortunately for me, I have none of these items. I have to rely one my truck to get from point A to point B. Hope you get where you are going fast, on time, and safe this summer.

Nemesis

Finally, the last space post.

Revenge! Always a good plot line and story motif. It is the source of many a wise saying, such as:

"Revenge is a dish best served cold."

"Women do most delight in revenge." -Sir Thomas Browne

"Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat." -Winston Churchill

"[Revenge] is sweeter far than flowing honey." -Homer

We love revenge and revel in it, which is why the Greeks invented Nemesis, the goddess of revenge.

We should not get her confused with Nemesis, the character from the Heroes series.


No, Nemesis is an awesome being, and beautiful too. I would have pictured her more fearful in appearance, much like the furies. Even Zeus found her to be worthy of pursuing (although I'm not so sure that Zeus should be the standard since he seemed to find all women worthy of pursuing).

Her job was to punish those with excessive pride, those who performed evil deeds, gluttons, and those who did not deserve the happiness they had in life. Tyche (Luck) frequently was irresponsible, much like Eros, in handing out luck. Those who got too much luck found themselves faced with the great equalizer, Nemesis.

When you see Nemesis in paintings or sculptures, you will probably see her holding things - either an apple branch, rein, lash, sword, or balance. Some of those make sense to me. The rein because she controls your future, if she wishes to, the lash and sword because of her punishing nature, and the balance to show that she balances out blind luck. But what about the apple branch? I'm not sure about that. I'll have to rely on A. Venefica at Symbolic Meanings to help me out there. You'll also see her with wings, but only if it is a later painting. Original depictions of her do not have her flying around. Other common things with her are ship rudders and ship wheels to show how she can guide people.

Virgin births are very popular and it is possible that Nemesis is a result of a virgin birth. Her mama is Nyx. It is possible that she was born without a father. If she has a daddy it would be Oceanus.

The Romans beefed her up a bit by giving her a chariot drawn by griffins. That's what i like about the Romans. They have cool chariots, unlike the Norse who have chariots drawn by goats, cats, and swans. Losers.

But what about space. I said earlier that this is my last space post and I have yet to mention it. Well, Nemesis may or may not exist in space. Let me explain.

Beyond the Kuiper belt lies the Oort cloud, a supposed resting place for tired comets. Some scientists have suggested that there is a dark star, a companion to ours that hits this cloud every 30 million years (give or take a decade), sending some of these comets our way. These errant comets will then pound Earth (all the other planets) causing enough global disaster to make Al Gore go crazy. This, according to these scientist is what has caused other massive extinctions in the past.

This view is not widely held, but is growing support. Be wary, we only have a few million years left before it comes back again!

The Bourne Mythology

Well, not a new Bourne movie.  I went to the library to pick up a book to read and didn't see one I wanted.  So I decided to give the Bourne books a try, but they were out of the first two, so I picked up another book by the same author.  I picked it over the others purely by the title: The Prometheus Deception.  Since then I've found another book I want to read, so I am going to probably return it, but before I do that, I thought I'd share with you the opening page (I thought it pretty intriguing)

Prometheus swept down from the heavens bringing the gift of fire.

Wrong move.

Colby Defines Mythology

Meet Colby, my youngest son.  Fortunately for him he got my wife's looks and total lack of nerdiness.  He is not into mythology at all, very much unlike his older brother who had already drawn a picture of Scylla and Charybdis by the time he turned four.

The other day Colby just popped up out of nowhere and said, "I know why the sun is in the day and the moon is in the night."

"Why?"

"Because they fight all the time and just stay away from each other."  At this, he went on playing with his baseball and glove.

When I heard this I thought that this is probably much like how mythology got started way back when.  Somebody made up an answer that seemed logical to them and it just snowballed from there.  When you think about it, it makes much more sense to believe the sun and moon fight and so they have to stay away from each other than to say that the sun is this big ball of gas that is constantly exploding and the moon is this rock that hangs in the sky.

It's Not easy Being Green

The following is taken from The Sun newspaper of England:

A FROG that constantly changes colour is being worshipped as a GOD in India.

Hundreds of curious followers flock to Reji Kumar’s home every day to pray and ask for miracles.

Now one of the country’s top zoologists plans to study the rainbow frog. But Reji, 35, who keeps the creature in a glass bottle after finding it while out watering plants, is afraid it might CROAK first.

He said: “My one problem is that this frog does not appear to eat. I keep trying to feed it but it doesn’t eat anything. I don’t know what else to give it.”

The frog was a dazzling WHITE colour when Reji, from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, first spotted it.

Then it changed to YELLOW and had gone GREY by the time he got it home.

Lift worker Reji added: “By night the frog was dark yellow, and then it became transparent so you could see its internal organs.

"It seemed like a miracle to me that this frog had so many different coats. So now people come to see him and pray to him.”

Professor Oommen V. Oommen from India’s Kerala University, said it was not uncommon for animals to change colour.

He explained: “Frogs do change colour to scare away predators.

“But from what I have heard, the frog at Kumar’s place changes colour so frequently it is a bit unusual. I will collect it for study.”

Forget Pedro, Vote for Hercules

The below was found on The Onion (Which is an absolutely hilarious site):

LOCAL

Hercules Still Struggling To
Complete 13th Labor

Demigod Must Be Fairly Elected To City Council Seat

JUNE 1, 2009 | ISSUE 45•23

GREENSBORO, NC—Stating that he had not yet fulfilled the labors set forth by Eurystheus to the satisfaction of the Mycenaean king, mythic hero Hercules announced Monday that for the 35th time in 3,000 years he will run for Greensboro City Council.

ENLARGE IMAGE

Hercules, son of Zeus, outlines his plan for funding the new pedestrian overpass on Maple Street.

While many are familiar with the 12 labors of Hercules, it is not as widely known that the Greek demigod failed to successfully complete his sixth task, killing the man-eating, bronze-winged birds of Stymphalus. Though his arrows slew many of the feathered beasts, several escaped, and as a result, Hercules was given a 13th labor to complete before he could know peace.

"I must pay penance for the murder of my wife and children," Hercules said. "So spoke the Oracle at Delphi. And to do so, King Eurystheus, servant of Hera and my most loathed cousin, has decreed that I must be justly elected to the City Council of Greensboro, District 2, currently held by Goldie Wells."

To complete his new task, Hercules first had to wait several millennia for the New World to be discovered and colonized, for democratic ideals to flourish during the Age of Enlightenment, and for the United States be founded and win its independence. He then had to move to North Carolina, become a naturalized citizen, and wait until the town of Greensboro was incorporated in 1829. When this was done, he established residency in the fledgling town and waited an additional 100 years for the second district to take form, at which point he began his numerous campaigns.

ENLARGE IMAGE

The powerful demigod must attract the crucial Teachers Union vote before he may finally rest.

Past elections have met with little success for the son of Zeus and Alcmena. His Pantheon Party does not have the support to qualify for matching funds, and several past opponents have run negative ads against him, citing Hercules' insolence in believing he is an equal to the gods, his proclivity to run off for a year at a time to chase bulls, and his dalliances with male companion Iolaus.

"I remember well the election of 1988," Hercules said. "It was the closest one to date. But the night before the polls opened, my opponent disclosed that I had killed Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, and I completely lost the middle-aged female vote. Alas, I am not cut out for politics. Why can I not just clean out the Augean stables again?"

As a native speaker of an extinct ancient Theban dialect, Hercules has always fared poorly during debates. His frustration with the language barrier reached a breaking point in 2003, when he angrily ripped off the head of his translator and threw it into the sky mid-debate, creating the "Bloody Head" constellation.

ENLARGE IMAGE

Due to the exacting guidelines Eurystheus has laid down for the 13th labor, Hercules must run every part of the campaign himself. Consequently, he mans the phone banks and stuffs envelopes all day, breaking only for public appearances at supermarket grand openings and fun runs.

"By Zeus, I would rather shoulder the burden of Atlas again than go door-to-door collecting the signatures required to get my name on the ballot," Hercules said. "People are always sitting down to sup, and they do not wish to speak to one endowed with the strength of 10 men, clad in the skin of a mighty lion. Do they not know I choked the life from a Nemean beast to obtain this majestic pelt?"

With the election months away, anything is possible, but early polls show Hercules trailing the incumbent Wells by a substantial margin. According to local sources, despite his many previous campaigns, the ancient candidate is still met with suspicion by the electorate.

"I like where this guy stands on tightening business zoning ordinances and making Fourth Avenue a two-way street to reduce speeding in the residential areas," Greensboro voter Doug Marlon said. "But I take issue with his stance on sacking nearby cities and looting their valuables to bridge our budget shortfall.

"Besides, Hercules?" he added. "That name doesn't even sound American."