I've always been attracted to the classical world, and no, it's not just because in the classical world guys rubbed olive oil on themselves and played discus naked. :p *L* I'm kidding! Below is just me babbling about stuff from the classical world that has interested and/or affected me.

mythology (Greek, mostly):

When I was eight or nine I picked up Gods, Men, and Monsters from Greek Mythology (I think that's the title, but I haven't seen the book in a while, I'm afraid) in my school's library. Ever since then I've been obsessed with/attracted to the world of Greek mythology, and I avidly read every Greek myth book I could find in the local libraries. The Iliad and the Odyssey, Dulares' mythology book, Edith Hamilton's book, you name it, I read it. :p (I did read Roman mythology as well, but as most of it is really just Greek mythology rehashed or elaborated upon, I'll refer to Greek and Roman mythology as just "Greek mythology" or "classical mythology" at this page. :p) In fact, I went through so many books that I constantly won mythology competitions at conventions cause the stories and names and people had ended up embedding themselves into my head from all the reading.

Just now I wondered why Greek mythology has always really appealed to me, and I came to this conclusion: I'm an avid fan of good sci-fi/fantasy/anime stories, and before I got into that stuff it was just Greek mythology over which I was obsessed cause the stories were like the best fantasy stuff you could think of - gods, magic, powerful forces, witches, epic quests, romance, transformations, celestial palaces - and they were better than everything that even a little kid who lived mainly in his head could ever dream up.

It's not just about that, though; well, maybe it was when I first got into Greek mythology, :p but now that I'm older the stories also appeal to me because they say so much about the culture out of which they were born. The stories are so rich in symbolism and the mindset and mind's eye of the classical culture are so apparent in every word and description that it's a joy to read. Also, though I don't subscribe to or believe in any particular mythology/religion and I don't believe that there's any big difference between the amount of factual history in the Greek creation myths and the amount in the Christian creation myths or what have you, what I've been fascinated with for a long time is the similarities between myths and religions across the world, and how myths and religions have been used by peoples and cultures to explain and cope with death, nature, and other forces/phenomena they couldn't understand, escape, or harness.

Besides that, knowing classical mythology so well has really enriched my life. *rofl* Sorry, I know that's a horribly cheesy thing to say, but it's true: it's influenced my poetry and short stories (so now you know what to blame my bad writing on :p), it's kept my imagination for fantasy-type stuff alive and healthy (a bit too healthy, in fact), it's made me realize the connected/similar/interchangeable natures of mythologies and religions, and it's even kept my eyes open to obscure references to mythology (and not just Greek mythology) that people stick into their writings, whether it be for a novel, a movie, or a sitcom script. In essence it's had a role in shaping the various lenses through which I view the world... which is rather scary, if you think about it. >:p

Therefore it probably won't surprise you when I tell you that I've recently been branching out and reading about other mythologies/religions (I'm currently most interested in the Celtic and Cretan religions/cultures and hope to read up more on them); however, Greek mythology will always be my first love, and I'll always have a soft spot for it.

tampering with mythology:

It also probably won't surprise you that I've written short stories based on Greek mythology (they can be found at my literature site, which has my poetry, short stories, and the like). The three myth-based stories I've finished so far all deal with homosexual love stories in Greek mythology - I started writing about that subject in particular cause most of the well-known and highly praised resources on classical mythology neglected to go into any detail about such myths. True, the myths in question were all rather short and/or obscure, but they still deserved a more detailed exposition than they received in nearly all of the "best" resources out there. The first story I wrote is about Heracles (Roman name: Hercules) and his assistant Hylas, the second is about Zeus (Jupiter) and his cupbearer Ganymede, while the third is about Apollo and Hyacinthus.

To those who know me and know how I feel about mythology being "tampered" with, it might seem hypocritical that I'm elaborating on the myths myself. After all, I hate shows like Hercules and Xena where they change the myths around to suit their stories' needs, so shouldn't a purist like me refrain from elaborating on the Greek myths?

The reason I still do consider myself a Greek mythology purist is because I'm not trying to do a Hercules-and-Xena thing in the myths that I write about. In stories like the kind you see in television series like Hercules and Xena or that ghastly Hercules movie that Disney released, they not only elaborate on the Greek myths, they CHANGE the *original integrity* of the myths themselves. I tried my hardest to merely ADD onto the original Greek myths without changing what was there already and thus keep from sullying the integrity of the story.

This is why at the beginning of each of the myth stories I've written I've started by retelling the original Greek myth that inspired the story, so that the reader can compare MY story to that intro I placed at the beginning and judge for themselves how good or bad of a job I did in my efforts to ADD and not CHANGE. In fact, I recently bought a new, amazingly good resource on classical mythology, and because of the new info I learned from it I actually have to rewrite my Heracles/Hylas myth and revise my Apollo/Hyacinthus myth if I want to keep things accurate to the original stories. And believe you me, I *will* do that! :p

my favorite mythology resources:

Who's Who in Classical Mythology by Michael Grant and John Hazel
Absolutely amazing - this is the book I was talking about when I said I got new info on the Heracles/Hylas myth and the Apollo/Hyacinthus myth. At first it might not seem like much cause it's an "A-Z" dictionary of people and places in classical mythology and that type of resource doesn't usually go much into detail even if they cover a large range, but this one is VERY detailed. The formatting is great too, with good cross-referencing, differentiations between mythological characters with the same name, meanings/significances of names, and glossaries with a listing of the original Greek and Latin sources that were consulted as well as good family trees of the gods and famous houses/families in classical mythology. Probably a confusing resource for a beginning mythology reader, but good if you've already read a lot and want to go more in-depth.

Myths and Mysteries of Same-Sex Love by Christine Downing
This is a fantastic book detailing gay and lesbian stories in classical mythology, as well as related myths. That's not all, though: the author goes into the psychological aspect of things (there're even sections on Freud and Jung) and discusses what these same-sex myths show/say about the cultures and people that produced them. Amazing if you know mythology well; if you're just starting out, go with some other resource first.

Gods, Demigods, and Heroes of Greek Myths by Evslin and Evslin
I'm a bit unsure on the title since I lost this book years ago and can't seem to find it in stores anywhere (I ordered it through a "Weekly Reader" catalog or something of that sort that we used to get in grade school), but I do know that the two authors' last names are Evslin. If you EVER find this book, please let me know! :p But anyway, this book is another A-Z resource. It's not as detailed or comprehensive as the Who's Who book and it doesn't have the same handy features, but it's still a decent resource for those who know their myths.

Gods, Men, and Monsters from Greek Mythology by ???
This is the first book I read on mythology, and it's an absolutely excellent beginning resource without being insulting to the brain. Like I said at the top of the page, it's been a while since I've seen this book (I did catch a glimpse of it at the local bookstore recently, but I didn't have the money to buy it when it was there), so I'm not one hundred percent sure that that's the exact title and I don't remember who the author is. However, I do know the book is illustrated by Michael Gibson (I remember the illustrator's name but not the author's :p) and that it's large, with a reddish-orange cover that has a drawing of Perseus preparing to kill Medusa on it.

Iliad ::: Odyssey ::: Aeneid
These three stories are must-reads, and they're a good way for a beginner to start off, provided you read them in the order I've listed them. If you weren't required to read these in junior high or high school, go and get yourself some copies! xp Watch out for bad versions, though: stay away from "abridged" or "revised" versions and don't get one that's meant for a younger audience and is highly edited and/or written in childish language.

Besides the books I mention above, do go out and read Edith Hamilton's mythology book and Dulares' mythology book; anyone and everyone who's into classical mythology ends up reading those books (and some others which aren't coming to my mind at the moment) sooner or later. :p

favorite classical writers:

Euripides for his ahead-of-its-time portrayal of women, Martial for the biting little epigrams, and Catullus for the realness and heart (especially in the Lesbia poems)

Latin and ancient Greek:

At the end of eighth grade, just before high school, I wasn't sure which foreign language to take once I decided on a high school - the schools only offered Spanish and French anyway, and I didn't want to learn either. Reluctantly I supposed that I'd take French; however, my eighth grade math teacher recommended that I go to a private high school, and not only that, but she said that I should take Latin if I went there. She said that taking Latin would be good for me since I was interested in science and scientific names always used Latin, that learning Latin was a great way to improve one's writing, et cetera.

Well, I did end up going to that school, and to be frank, the only reason I took Latin at all at first was because it would be good for science and English and it was a better alternative in my eyes than French or Spanish. I soon fell in love with the language though, especially since a majority of the stuff we were translating dealt directly with the myths I had been reading for years. Not only that, but I was good at the language, :p and as I advanced in Latin we'd read more and more works by Roman authors in the original: Catullus, Martial, Virgil, Ovid, and Cicero, to name a few (I personally detested reading Cicero, though :p). For someone who'd been interested in classical mythology and culture, this was heaven, and Latin class was almost never work or a chore for me - it was damn fun! :p

In the end, I ended up taking five years of Latin by the time I graduated high school by taking the first year of Latin in ninth grade, doing the second year of it by myself over the summer, and going into third-year Latin in tenth grade, fourth-year (AP Latin - Catullus and Ovid) in eleventh grade, and finally fifth-year (AP Latin - Vergil) in twelfth grade. (And I hope you're not impressed by that, cause I know three guys who ended up taking six years worth of Latin by the time they graduated because they had started off in middle school. :p *L*) I even took a year's worth of ancient Greek in college, and I absolutely loved it, almost more than I did the Latin. Sadly, the college I've attended since then offers neither Latin or Greek, so my classical language knowledge is probably leaving me fast, if it hasn't already.

Oh yeah, in high school, I joined the school's relatively new Latin club, the Junior Classical League, in tenth grade, and I'll talk about that below.

Junior Classical League (JCL):

JCL is a national classics club for middle school and high school students taking Latin (and in a few cases, some students taking Greek as well). There aren't any fees to join this club or whatever, :p but every year there are national conventions (the NJCL convention :p), state conventions, and regional conventions in large states such as here in California, where we have a Northern California convention (called Ludi Octobres - "The October Games") and a Southern California convention (called SCRAM - "Southern California Regional Activities Meet") along with the regular California state convention (which is just called the CJCL convention xp). New national officers are elected at every national conventions, state officers are elected at state conventions, and individual schools run their own school chapters of the club however they want to. :p At conventions, there are contests in academic areas such as mythology, grammar, vocabulary, culture, and history; sports contests; art contests; talent shows; a quiz-show type contest called Certamen where you and your school team are pitted against other schools and have to buzz in with answers to questions that can be about any area of classics; and an end-of-convention dinner-dance. :p

(There's also an SCL, the Senior Classical League, :p which is a club for college students, but they're nowhere near as active as the JCL and they only convene at the NJCL convention.)

Anyway, I joined JCL in tenth grade when I entered into third-year Latin and got to know my new teacher, Ms. Nicholls, who supervised the club. My ninth grade Latin teacher was a woman named Ms. Straus and she wasn't into the whole JCL thing, especially since the club started the year before she taught me and was therefore quite new. However, Ms. Nicholls was another story as she had started up the club at my school when she arrived (she ran the JCL at the school she used to teach at before coming to mine and she wanted to see it alive again) and was actively looking for members, so I became one. :p

As soon as I joined, I got sucked into the world of JCL. It was overwhelming, because we did more than other clubs at our school, and a lot more than other schools' JCL clubs. In the three years that I was a part of JCL from tenth to twelfth grade, we hosted one of the annual CJCL conventions (for over a thousand people, mind you, on our school's campus which could only hold five hundred people :p), we hosted one of the Ludi Octobres, we put on Saturnalia holiday festivals at our school, we went on countless field trips to any play, musical, movie, or concert that had a classical theme to it, and we even put on a play (the Aulularia, based on the writings of Plautus) and a musical (Olympus on My Mind, based on the myth of Zeus' seduction of Alcmene, Heracles' mother). The play and the musical were unique in that we were the only club at our school that put on such shows besides the drama people, and unlike the drama people who brought in professionals for sets and music, the JCL shows were completely student-run. All this in three years!

As can be imagined, Ms. Nicholls got a reputation among quite a few students and teachers for pushing her students and for making them do so much JCL stuff that their homework and free time suffered. I always got annoyed by such criticism: sure, she did ask a lot from people who were in JCL, and I certainly got gypped a few times for putting JCL before other things, but Ms. Nicholls put in double the amount of time and effort herself, and no one was ever FORCED to participate. Ms. Nicholls always ASKED if you were free to do something; I could have always said no, and I did, though I did it rarely.

Due to all the stuff I did in/with JCL, I have to say that JCL ended up being a big part of my life in high school, and that's why I'm talking about it here. That sounds cheesy, and it goes against the half-joking, half-snide remarks my JCL friends and I would make at times about the club and "club spirit," :p but heck, when you're spending all that time with one club and doing amazing/fun/tiring/frustrating/cool things together, it becomes a part of you whether you like it or not.

Moreover, since I graduated high school at an early age (I turned sixteen in the middle of my last year in high school), I didn't even have a learner's driving permit yet, so many times in evenings after a rehearsal or an outing to the theater or a planning session for a convention Ms. Nicholls would be the one who would drive me home. As can be expected, we had lots of time to talk to each other one on one, and although she's probably not the first person I think of when I need to confide in someone, I feel very close to her and feel like I can tell her anything I'd tell my best friends; in that respect she's very much like a second mother to me. Because of my love of classics, I got involved in great activities, experienced awesome things (I was just flipping through my file cabinet and looking in the huge folder where I put all my JCL memorabilia, and I nearly started crying at all the stuff in there), got to know a wonderful teacher as a friend, and I even had experiences coming out of the closet that were connected to JCL events, as you'll see if you read the "Pupate" article at my rants site. And yes, as corny as it is to say this, JCL made it all possible. :p *rofl* Gawd, I sound like a recruitment poster, don't I? ;>

Here is a list of stuff I did with the JCL in the three years I was in it; please note that this list does not in ANY way cover all the activities our school's JCL did, since I'm only listing the stuff I was actively involved in, and stuff I can easily remember off the top of my head:

Now that that's over with, :p below is a bunch of random sounds, pictures, and text... you could consider them samples of my JCL experiences (I guess this section can be called JCL multimedia! :p):

Lastly, here's a list of awards I won at various state, regional, and national JCL conventions:

If you're wondering why I'm going to the trouble of listing all these awards and JCL events and sounds and pictures and junk, it's so I can have a reference later on when I want to reminisce. :p This is part of my personal profile, after all. *g* Besides, I'm pretty proud of my awards, especially the ones for mythology since I pride myself on my mythology knowledge. It always amused me that I got first place in mythology in every contest except one with only minimal studying (if I studied at all), while students who came from schools where they lived and breathed JCL and practiced for JCL conventions year-round didn't even place. *L* I realize that's really snobby of me, but please, I need my little petty insignificant awards to gloat over! *g* ;>

Okay, I'm done now. *L*