The Spoony Bard's Epic Retelling of the Curse of Tantalus (based on a real live IM conversation)
Okay, bear with me here... I guess they didn't strike Tantalus down quite like that. They brought Pelops back to life to be Poseidon's "special friend". and then Tantalus pisses off the gods again by stealing god food and Poseidon and Pelops break up
Apprentice: mmm, god food. You'd think the greeks would learn that pissing off gods == no good
SB: So then, Pelops wins a chariot race because Poseidon had taught him how to ride the chariot (and how). And Pelops marries Hippodamia, but in the process of winning the chariot race, he murdered this guy Myrtilus by telling him if he fixed the race, he could have Hippodamia's cherry, and then totally murdered him because all guys care about is deflowering virgins. So Myrtilus curses Pelops, and considering Tantalus already screwed over the family, it's going to get much worse. Pelops and Hippodamia have three sons, two of which are twins named Atreus and Thyestes. The twins kill their brother Chyrsippus, who was the favorite son and was supposed to inherit the kingdom. So the twins and their mom got banished, and Hippodaima hangs herself, which is good considering I keep wanting to write Hippopotamus. And this is where shit gets freaky. Atreus is supposed to sacrifice a lamb to Artemis
Apprentice: oh oh i remember this bit i think. Isn't there like this special lamb?
SB: Yes. And Atreus tells his wife to hide his golden lamb, and then the wife gives it to his brother
Apprentice: cause she's totally doing him, right?
SB: Yes. And so Thyestes goes "whoever has the golden lamb takes the kingdom". So Thyestes seizes the kingdom, and then Atreus gets back at him by slaughtering Thyestes' sons and making them into soup, which Thyestes unknowingly eats
Apprentice: mmmm, son soup
SB: Yes. So... Thyestes is really pissed, obviously, so he goes to this oracle, and she tells him that if he has a son with his daughter, the son will kill Atreus. Pelopia, the daughter, abandons the son by her dad because that's just fucked up. He grows up to be Aegisthus. Guess who finds him? Atreus! So Thyestes, who's still around, reveals to Aegisthus that he's actually his father and grandfather, which would make me go all crazy and shit, but not Aegisthus, oh no, Aegisthus just kills Atreus. He and his dad/grandad exile Atreus' sons, Menelaus and Agamemnon, to Sparta. The king there likes him and is like "here, take my daughters." And then the Spartan king leaves the kingdom to Menelaus, and with the help of his new kingdom, Menelaus and Agamemnon defeat Thyestes and Aegisthus. Are you following so far?
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SB: Well, anyway, Agamemnon and his nutty wife Clytemnestra, for whom the disease Chlamydia is probably not named for, had three children.
Apprentice: this is all pretty effed up
SB: It gets batter. The three children were Iphigeneia, Orestes, and Electra. Apparently there was a fourth one, but she did nothing interesting. So Agamemnon pissed off Artemis, and Artemis wouldn't give them a good wind to sail to Troy to get back Helen [Menelaus's wife], because Helen "of Troy", as we all know, couldn't keep her legs closed and ran off with Paris, whose descendant, Tom Paris, went on to marry a half-Klingon. Anyway, the gods decide that if Agamemnon sacrificed Iphigeneia, they'd give him some decent wind, so he tells Iphigeneia she's going to get married to Achilles (Brad Pitt), and then he sacrifices her. This drives Clytemnestra over the edge, and when Agamemnon gets home, sporting Cassandra [Trojan princess/prophetess of doom] as his new fucktoy, she and Aegisthus kill them. Why Aegisthus is still alive I don't quite understand, but anyway... Clytemnestra sends Orestes away, and then the Delphic Oracle tells him that he has to avenge his dad. So... he and Electra met up at Agamemnon's tomb, and plotted the murder, and carried it out. Now, as we all know, who really wants to kill their mother, so Orestes wants to be nuts, and some other shit apparently happens. Then the gods are just like fuck this shit, you people can stop killing and/or eating each other and the curse is over. The end. Oh, I almost forgot. Orestes has a special friend named Pylades, who ends up marrying Electra
Apprentice: ah, the greeks and their special friends
SB: So they really know how to keep it in the family I guess.
Apprentice: lol
SB: well shit, I read in a third place that Pylades and Orestes tried to kill Helen because she wouldn't help them murder Clytemnestra or some shit, so they kidnap Hermione, who is Helen's daughter, not the annoying ginger-lover from Harry Potter
Apprentice: lol i was just gonna say, did a fucking ginger show up and save her?
SB: No, shit. Actually what supposedly happens is that she and Orestes get married.
[cut the rest of the story for rant on inbreeding and Jeffrey Eugenides' work of staggering genius, Middlesex]
