Friday, December 3, 2010

What are the Ancient Gods Doing These Days?

Since nobody's worshiping them, and considering they are immortal and probably bored to death by now, I guess the ancient gods have to come up with new methods to keep themselves entertained. The winged Nike is deep into the production of sports shoes, the vengeful Eris got herself a droid, and Nero is burning CDs (well, Nero didn't make it as a god, but is related to so many, I guess he managed to sneak in using the backdoor after all).

So I was wondering what the twelve major gods of Greece and Rome are doing, besides the obvious (taking care of their respective planets, days of the week, months of the year, guest-starring in television series and Marvel comics and so on).

Apollo is by far the most successful with his space exploration program. Though it's a bit weird to have a Moon-landing initiative named after the sun-god. Why didn't they call it Artemis, after the Moon goddess? Misogynists.

Ares/Mars has a chocolate bar. And a company that produces the chocolate bar. Good enough, until the next world war comes along.

Athena/Minerva has the CERN antimatter research project. Quite adequate, for the goddess of wisdom and craft, but only if it proves really, really successful and makes a huge impact. Otherwise, Athena is massively under-rated these days. Misogynists.

Artemis/Diana... not doing much, to be honest, especially since hunting was banned in one of her main territories. There is a famous brothel in Berlin named Artemis. Weird for the virgin goddess, but times are hard, even gods take on whatever jobs are available.

Hephaestus/Vulcan made it big in showbiz, with the Vulcans of Star Trek. They're everywhere! Guess that was his comeback, after bearing the insult of having a hypothetical planet named after him (in the 19th century, the planet Vulcan was supposed to be hiding between the Sun and Mercury). A hypothetical plant for a major deity! Awful.

Hermes/Mercury has a chemical element. Who would've pictured the mischievous god of thieves in a laboratory?

Hades/Pluto has lost his planet, but can still show off his famous Disney character. Yeah, it's a dog, side kick to a mouse, but way more famous than any other cartoon character named after a god. And cheerful, too, for someone who lives in hell.

Hestia/Vesta had some fun when her Greek name was used as the informal name of Himalia, one of the moons of Jupiter. Wait. Moons have informal names? Are we supposed to call them Mrs. Moon?

Poseidon/Neptune is really enthusiastic about the evolution of music and launched is own record label to promote new talents. I suspect it has something to do with his wife having dreamed of a singing career since she was just a young Nereid.

Demeter/Ceres is experimenting with some breweries and juice-production companies, but none of them had any success yet.

Zeus/Jupiter and Hera/Juno took a sabbatical millennium to explore other galaxies and reconnect with each other, before it's too late to save their relationship.