LUDIC LOG

Troy: I don't really remember much about Troy, man. It's all pretty much a blur. Some bad shit went on over there, that's all I can tell you. We 'won'. That's what they tell me, anyway. All I remember is stabbing a lot of people in the jaw, and a whole bunch of shit that smelled bad. There wasn't a lot of bathing involved in the war, which is really what you call ironic seeing as it all got started to impress a chick. Isn't that always the way? Anyway, the whole thing stunk, in both a literal and figurative sense. I was looking forward to the end of it as a man, as a husband, and as a man who enjoys not smelling like fifteen years of dead bodies. Do you know what we had to eat most of...look, never mind. Just take my word for it.

Lotus Eaters: Oh, yeah. That one gets changed a lot in the telling, I'll tell you that much. I mean, I appreciated it, the guys sticking up for me like that. Saying it was them who wanted to stay with those Chinee bastards and eat the "lotos", and I had to drag them away. Well, let me tell you something, someone had to be dragged away from that island, but his name started with a U and ended with a lysses. I'm not a young man anymore, you know? No party hearty for me and the old lady. But Christ! That shit was amazing. I wish I had some of it right now. I bet you Telemachus can get hold of it off at college. I shouldn't even ask.

Cyclops. All right, look. I know there's a lot of what you call, revisionism. People today, kids, they don't have anything to do but hang around in coffee shops and yak yak yak. We made it easy for them. They don't got to go out and fight wars. They don't have any idea how bad it smells, them with their perfumed bath bombs and whatnot which we pay for. So they get to yakking and since they don't have any responsibilities, they blame how tough they have it -- oh, and how tough it is, they might have to pay for their own fruity espressos or whatever they call them -- on our generation. So now I hear a bunch of them have decided that Cyclops wasn't really a monster, but was in fact just a crazy old man who was blind in one eye and was trying to get us to quit stealing his fish. Well, you know what I say to that? I say the operative word in that description isn't "old man", but "crazy". And he saw well enough with that one good eye to throw some pretty heavy rocks at us for a so-called old man. Bloody kids should be thankful there's not a hundred like him. We did you a favor.

Circe: I tell you this much, it didn't take any goddamn magic to turn my men into pigs. Fucking savages after a couple months at sea, man. I'm embarrassed for them. Or I would be, if any of them had survived. They made good eating though. Hey, look, it was war. Or it had been, hardly any time ago at all. I'm a big advocate of women's equality, mate. Rights. Like the right to turn my goddamn shithead crew who can't even take care of one feeble old git with one good eye correctly so I have to do it myself into delicious pigs. We can all get behind that, I reckon.

The Sirens: First of all, none of this gets to the wife, right? Okay. You know how sometimes you'll put up with a long lecture for your old man at the holidays because you know after he's done rambling about how one of his neighbors accidentally ran over his foot forty-five fucking years ago, you'll get a good meal out of it at least? Well, so was it with the Sirens. Understand we'd been at sea a long time, and the few bastards who were left had all filled up on pork with me a while before and all that salty food really gets your blood heated up, if you follow me. And to be perfectly honest with you, any man who will eat his companions with some dill and a butter glaze isn't going to hesitate to throw it to his commanding officer if he gets a little too much salt in him. So we run into these birds, you see, and real treats they were. Artistic types. And we get to flirting, giving them all these kind words and looks and telling them about the war and talking about how pretty they looked so they wouldn't notice the smell. But you know how chicks like that are. They can't just for once in their lives be kind and give you a shag. They want to feel appreciated. So we promise to listen to some of these folk songs they wrote before we get them in the kip. Let me tell you something: not worth it. No way.

Ithaca: "Suitors", hell. I still don't have my lawnmower back.