Iliad

A word about Homer. Lame.

I recently got this great idea via Lists Of Bests, which lays out reading lists, to finish up their 452 (or whatever) greatest books of all time. To my credit, I had already read like five of those, so the inertia was there to tackle the Iliad.

First observation. No wonder they always excerpted this stupid thing, because it is easily the most boring piece of crap ever to be written. It is so bad, I started thinking maybe I need to watch "Troy" again, just to be able to appreciate Greek literature.

"But," I'm sure I'd hear my high school world lit teacher say, "Homer was blind and just recited it."

Yeah, no shit, because the thing is like a combination of of extraneous detail and some E! Name-dropping fashion show. And I know what that means. It means the dude was stalling to come up with a plot. Rather unsuccessfully, I might add. Ther plot was thus: Lots of strong brave men fight many battles, in the end one gets dragged around by a chariot.

Hot.

Also, yesterday's reading involved a four paragraph tome on the etymology of a fur hat - whose houses it had been in, who wore it, when someone got lice on it and infected the whole squadron. "And it itcheth like the bites of valkeries with tails tipped in the fire of the ancient mountains of the Danaans who eat the long grass to regurgitate when their stomachs soureth, in the manner of dogs."

Yeah, crap like that. Still want that bad-ass checkmark though.

I hope the Odyssey's better.