the awesome/terrifying freedom

so i've been having an ongoing discussion with my dad about orion and his 'sword.'

dad's convinced that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. ahem. (but then of course his favorite painting is 'ceci n'est pas un pipe.')

Turns out he is a pretty minor character. Edith Hamilton's Mythology doesn't even list him in the index. He was known entirely for his hunting prowess... OK, we can Freud that into including sex... but the Greeks didn't need a lot of metaphors when describing the sexual activities of the gods... so, while he was a randy dude, he paled next to nearly all the other male gods in that area... so the sword really was a sword. There are about six versions of the mechanics of his death. The most common element is that he died from a scorpion bite... most versions include some jealousy of ARtemis, the hunter goddess, or that Orion raped or tried to rape or insulted either Artemis's maid or the goddess of the dawn... In recognition of his hunting skills he was placed in the sky... opposite Scorpios... so when Orion is the most faint in the sky, Scorpios is the brightest.

i told him i still didn't buy it. i mean, cuh. mon. but then he said:

You are thinking too much from a post-Freud perspective. Remember that the Greeks had no trouble with direct phallic imagery. Athens was filled... filled... with "hermes" (pronounced herms)... huge phalluses in honor of Hermes (Mercury) the messenger of the gods. Jews were not allowed to participate in athletics in Greece because they were circumsiced... and thus not bodily perfect. Athletics and battles were fought nude. There was just no Christian prudery around. If Orion was noted for his conquests in bed, that would have been no big deal at all... so, I don't think that will fly. Try to think of the book title... something like "The Reign of the Phallus in Greece and Rome"

okay, so i guess it's a sword. that's so lame. orion sucks. every culture re drew constellations to suit their own myths (like 'subaru' in japan, which is the logo of the car company, is actually 'three sisters' in the west, minus some stars). so i'm redrawing orion, just for the gays. what shall we call him? maybe we don't have to redraw him, just change the inflection when you say his name, and all becomes clear: 'oh.. ryan!'