and pain

and BABIES…

and worst of all…they couldn’t handle their liquor.

Centaurs are mean drunks…

I’m not one to believe these stories since horses keel over from eating anything their poor guts can’t handle.

It’s doubtful that centaurs galloped around eating bacon cheese burgers and meat-lovers pizza.

Eating anything but grass would have been the end of these guys.

I’m just trying to spread the word about centaur ignorance…

Minotaur’s story begins in Crete, where two spoiled princes were fighting over who would make the better King. One of these sons, named Minos,wanted the gods to make a bull walk out of the ocean as proof that even the higher powers were on his side. Poseidon, famed god of the sea, decided that the idea wasn’t so terrible and told Minos that he would create this marine bovine, but that it would have to be sacrificed back to him. OK, thought Minos, no problem.

As promised, a beautiful, white bull was spit out by the waves and it stood on the beach, muscles tense,  in all of its glory. This studly beast was apparently too glorious to kill, and Minos decided to keep it instead. Minos would feed it and snuggle it and clean up after it and love it forever and ever.  Poseidon was obviously pissed at Minos for not giving the precious bull back, and so Poseidon decided to take something from Minos in exchange.

Since Minos loved the bull so damn much, he wouldn’t miss his wife right? Poseidon worked his magic on the poor woman (aka Pasiphae) and she became infatuated with the bull, forgetting all about her husband. Poseidon knew how to play dirty too.

Unfortunately for Pasiphae, the strong feelings she had for the bull weren’t mutual, so she had to figure out a way to trick the animal into finding her attractive.  Pasiphae quickly hired a famous architect to construct a hollow cow out of wood to entice the bull.  Her plan was to sit inside the decoy in a romantic meadow with her ass hanging out so that the bull could have his way with her. Apparently it worked…because nine months later, the little baby minotaur was born!

Pasiphae raised the baby as her own for a few months. After all, it would be a shame to have had  to squeeze out a  massive baby with a bull’s head (those things have horns!), just to give him up in the end. Minos was obviously embarrassed by his wife’s escapades and ended up trapping the Minotaur in a massive labyrinth, where no one would see the abomination…I’m sure everyone was relieved though, because the Minotaur became really aggressive in his teens.

The story gets more complicated after that- with all kinds of  family drama and godly interventions- but in the end, a young man named Theseus kills the Minotaur. Unfortunately, this is impossible, because I can say for a fact that my new roommate IS the Minotaur.

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His huge hoofs clack along the horrible linoleum floor of our rental at 4am almost every morning. Shoes do nothing to dull the noise, since his sharp little feet wear them down to nothing within hours.

Any man that big needs to be constantly fed too, which means that the slamming of kitchen cupboards never stops. I never knew what the diet of a Minotaur consisted of, but after his most recent trip to Costco I saw a massive crate of eggs, a tub of  mayo, and a at least 50 cans of tuna line his shelf. The protein powder he adds to everything doesn’t help either.

Like most big, hairy men,  he has a pretty bad temper, and when I confronted him about please keeping the unsuspecting virgins he brought over at night quiet…he just dismissed me with a snort and sauntered back up the stairs into his stinking den.

Times have changed for our poor Minotaur. Instead of hunting down unsuspecting children in a labyrinth to take out his aggression, he has to resort to playing online shooting games like Call of Duty, while resting his massive hind-quarters on this month’s dirty laundry.

I doubt that this lifestyle is satisfying for the animal. I can tell that he is stressed,  since the trails of hair he leaves behind are a sure sign that things arn’t going well for the guy.

None of my friends come over, because the Minotaur’s sexual appetite is ravenous and his awkward questions scare all of the girls away. He speaks like a man, but occasionally the bovine part of the creature will break through, and he just stares right at your face for what seems like hours… unblinking, rolling a mess of tuna and mayo around in his mouth.

I really need my own place.

Medusa wasn’t always a spiteful lady with a hissing hairdo. Taking a closer look at what she had to deal with growing up explains why she turned ino the enraged monster most people have come to associate with the name.

Medusa was the daughter of Phorcys and Cetus. Cetus, Medusa’s mother, was a hideously ugly sea-monster and bore more resemblance to a fish full of raggedy teeth, than a woman. Medusa’s father, Phorcys was the infamous ‘Old-Man of the Sea’ with an apparent taste for ugly ladies. I doubt Medusa would ever want to be seen with either parent in public.

Medusa’s grandparents were a different story altogether. Her beautiful and voluptuous Grandmother, Gaia, gave birth to all of the Greek gods. She is as high up there as it gets, and the Greeks wouldn’t even swear in her name, unless they were really serious. You never, EVER cross Gaia.

This is also the where it gets weird: Before Gaia, there was nothing, but every lady wants a man in her life. So, this fruitful god of the gods had to give birth to a man to marry. This is how Medusa’s grandfather/Uncle, better known as Pontus- came into being. Pontus-wasn’t as ambitious as his wife/mom (and who would be with a family-history like that?). He was just happy being the sea-god that he was, busy contemplating how wrong it was to get it on with his mother to make more inbred children.

Medusa had all this to deal with, but you would think that she at least had some sort of special gift, since she was directly related to some of the most powerful gods out there, right? No! It sucked. And that would piss me off too.  Out of her three sisters, she was the only mortal one with no real skills to speak of. 

The one thing Medusa did have going for her, though, were her looks. She didn’t always have a head full of snakes. In fact, some stories claimed her to be drop-dead gorgeous. Every man who caught a glimpse of her, would start drooling and obsessively lust after her. This did get to Medusa’s head though, and she eventually became a snob, repeatedly insulting higher gods by proclaiming that nothing was really as impressive as her beauty.

Illustration by Daniela Muhawi

Unfortunately, being as unlucky as she was, it was no surprise that Medusa’s beauty became her curse as well: Disgusted with Medusa’s vanity, the goddess Athena turned her into the creature that men came to fear instead of lust after. Not only was Medusa’s long shiny hair turned into a pile of writhing snakes, but any man who approached her would turn into stone (and not in a good way, like they did before).

The more complicated version of the story involves Poseidon, who just couldn’t help himself after seeing the gorgeous Medusa, and proceeded to rape her in Athena’s temple (this was a major insult to the virgin Athena and her reaction can be described as nothing more than extreme). In a way, Athena took away the one thing Medusa had going for her. Now a monster, it was all downhill for Medusa from there.

Perseus eventually beheaded Medusa and was proclaimed a hero. His statue, with Medusa’s head held high by his muscular hand, stands tall in many cities. But I always feel sorry for the headless body lying underneath him who hadn’t seen a good hair day in centuries.

In my opinion, the most horrifying thing in the whole story happened after Medusa’s beheading: After getting her head lopped off and it rolled onto the ground, Medusa gave birth to two HUGE babies (they supposidly sprang out of her bloody neck.) One of her kids was Pegasus-a winged horse-and the other a handsome man-Chrysaor. Chrysaor established himself as a hero and eventually had a cute three headed baby of his own.

Poor Medusa. You would be grumpy too if you had to carry around a pair of twins that weigh more than a volkwagon and anyone who came around to help turned into a useless statue.

Medusa really did have a hard life and kudos to her for handling herself so well in a fight, pregnant with a horse and a giant. Hopefully, during times like family game night, Chrysaor told his own three headed offspring what a courageous grandmother he had.