This is the Temple of Poseidon at Sounion.  It's located on an outcrop of land, surrounded on three sides by the Aegean Sea. 

This is the Athenian Treasury at Delphi, though it has been restored by archeologists.  It was originally built in celebration of the Athenian victory over the Persians with the spoils from the war.

This is the Erechtheion.  It is one of 3 temples on top of the acropolis in Athens.  This temple is unusual because in place of ordinary pillars the side portico has 6 statues of women holding up the roof.  It's my personal favorite of the Greek temples that I visited.

This is the Monastery of the Holy Trinity at Meteora.  There used to be 24 different monasteries up there but now there are only 6 still operational.  They used to get people and everything they needed up there by pulling them up in a rope basket.  This Monastery appeared in a James Bond movie.  Tourists may go through them but women must wear floor length skirts, men pants, and both cover their shoulders. 

This is a photo of the Great Theater in Ephesus in Turkey.  It once held an audience of 24,000 people.  The city of Ephesus was amazing.  It once had a population of a quarter million and there are acres of ruins that we can still walk through.  The Turks were much more relaxed about letting tourists go through them than the Greeks.  That was good for me, though I do appreciate the Greek's desire to preserve their ruins for the ages by keeping traffic well back from the sites.

    Here's the first installment of my Xenaverse fan fiction.  I hope you like it!  It's called An Unlikely Hero pt 1.

  "I'm sooooo bored!" Ares groaned.  "Discord, why hasn't the war I scheduled between Thebes and Phocis started yet?  I thought you told me it was as good as done."

     "Blame your stupid warrior bimbo Xena, not me!" Discord snarled resentfully.  " You told me I wasn't allowed to get her out of my hair permanently and anything else just doesn't work with her.  Somehow she got them all to stop fighting long enough for her girlfriend Gabrielle to get them to hold hands and make some lame peace treaty.  Besides, you also told me King Eteocles wanted to fight that war, but you were dead wrong.  That windbag is all talk, a real coward.  I doubt he would have had the guts to fight a serious war even if the warrior babe had kept her nose out of it.  The odds against his army and his own precious hide were pretty hopeless.  Even I can't turn pig's ears into bloodthirsty warlords!"

     "Forget Xena," Ares said with a disappointed sigh.  "Discord, haven't you learned yet that with the right approach you can make anyone fight regardless of the odds?"

     "Oh really?" she retorted sceptically.  It wasn't fair that Ares blamed her for other peoples' failures.  She was just given lousy material, that's all.  She certainly hadn't seen Ares doing the dirty work, a sure sign that he knew it wasn't worth the effort.  "I'll bet I could find someone even you couldn't make fight if he was facing impossible odds."

     "You doubt the God of War?" Ares thundered ominously.  Discord was cruisin' for a bruisin' if she wasn't careful.  But she was too mad to back down before his incipient rage.

     "I not only doubt you, I dare you to try!  But not just one; make it three of them," she hedged.  She was mad, but she wasn't stupid.  "Surely the master manipulator can handle that, no sweat."

     "I don't have to prove anything to you," the Olympian huffed haughtily to the lesser Goddess.

     "Scared, Ares?" she taunted.  She may not know how to make berserkers out of cowards but the Goddess of conflict knew exactly where to twist the dagger.  Unfortunately she hadn't always known when, a fact that had kept the ambitious immortal from rising easily within the pantheon's hierarchy.  But this time her gamble paid off the way she wanted.

     "Fine, you need proof that the God of War still calls all the shots, you've got it.  But I need a little more incentive than the pleasure of teaching you a lesson."

     "What about the war you wanted me to start?" she suggested hopefully.

     "What about it?  You gave up.  I suppose I could get Deimos to start it for me..."

     "That twerp!  No Ares, I'll get Eteocles to declare war if I have to kill every last Phocian myself.  Consider it a done deal," Discord insisted jealously.  Ares always seemed to award the best jobs to the male Gods.  Discord worked ten times harder at slaughtering mortals in Ares' name and got half the credit.  The good old boy network was going to come crashing down around their ears by the time Discord was done.  Then Ares would have to give Discord her props.  But first she was going to win this bet.

     "Okay, how about this?  If you get my three losers to fight unaided against hopeless odds I'll get Hades to release your favorite general Hannibal from the Asphodel Meadows.  Hades owes me big time so he'll do it," she told Ares confidently.  "And then I'll use your boy Hannibal to kickstart your crumby little war for you.  With a guy like Hannibal leading his troops instead of himself Eteocles will jump at the chance.  The wimp can stay safe at home while his army kicks those Phocians back to Thrace."

     "Not bad," Ares admitted.  He had deeply mourned the loss of the mayhem Hannibal had unleashed on the world back when he was alive and leading the Carthaginian army.  Xena was still his all time favorite, but Hannibal was a very respectable second.  Ares had even favored him so much that he'd once asked Hades to let him borrow him long enough to get a good war against Rome going but his brother had refused.  Hades had had the nerve to whine to him about how overworked the ruthless general had made him while he was alive.  Now that he was out of circulation Hades finally had time for that second honeymoon he had promised to Persephone ages ago.  If Discord could spring the general from the Death God's clutches Ares was more than willing to take her bet.  It wasn't as if he was going to lose, after all.

     "Agreed," he said.  "But now I suppose you'll want me to ante up an equal prize if I can't pull it off."

     "It's only fair," she said with a nod, though "fair" wasn't exactly a regular part of either of their vocabularies.

     "Okay, name it," he challenged, although he had a sneaking suspicion he already knew what she'd ask to receive.  She'd been bugging him for one thing in particular every chance she got for weeks now.  As unlikely as her victory would be it was still her best shot to get what she wanted.  The best thing about this bet was that when she lost she'd have to quit nagging him about it since he could point out that she'd had her chance and blown it. 

     She didn't disappoint his expectations.  "Now that Strife is dead you need a new second-in-command," she stated yet again.  "I want the job."

     "I already gave my word to Deimos that the job was his," he objected, though the denial was perfunctory.  What was the point of being the God of War if you couldn't sow discord amongst your followers?  Besides, in the end he could afford to promise her anything in the world since he knew he wasn't going to have to pay up.

     "So tell him you changed your mind," she said impatiently.  Her contempt for Deimos knew no bounds and she didn't care who knew it.  "Deimos doesn't deserve it anyway.  Besides, you know that laugh of his will drive you crazy if he's hanging around you all the time.  You wouldn't even be considering him if he wasn't Strife's twin brother."

     There was more truth to Discord's accusation than Ares wanted to admit.  Strife had been an obsequious, annoying little toad, but Ares couldn't help missing his favorite whipping boy now that he was dead.  Replacing him with the even more obnoxious Deimos was a way to hang on to him, as Discord seemed to realize.  He hoped no one else on Olympus had figured it out.  His reputation would be ruined if the other Gods thought that he was that sentimental.  Most of them already looked askance at the macho God because of his helpless (and unrequited, damn it!) soft spot for the warrior princess- even the ones who chalked it up to hormones.  So to carry out the charade of being an unfeeling bastard Ares had to at least appear to be willing to ruthlessly sacrifice his word and Deimos to get what he wanted.

     "Fine, the job is yours if I fail," he promised.  "Now choose your first guinea pig so that I can turn the schmuck into the ultimate fighting machine."

     Discord smiled with evil glee.  She had the perfect guy in mind.  But first she had to make sure they both understood the rules.  "Now remember, your so-called hero has to face impossible odds all by himself.  That means no messing with his mind or giving him special powers.  You have to talk him into fighting alone."

     "Don't worry, I won't need to cheat," he loftily affirmed.  "Just tell me who to deliver the pep talk to."

     "Okay, you asked for it..."

                                  to be continued   

      

Ever wonder why Goliath was so easy to kill?  Anyone who has watched the Xena Warrior Princess episode "The Giant Killer" knows it was because of the giant's soft spot in the middle of every giant's forehead.  But how did it get there?  Why would evolution (or the Gods) build that into a giant?  Is it like the appendix in a human?  Is it there to help keep the number of giants at a reasonable level for their environment?

I have a neater solution, as I hope you will agree.  I hypothesize that the giants are the hybrid offspring of a Titan and a cyclops.  They have two eyes like their father, a Titan, yet retain the empty eye socket in the middle of their forehead from their mother, the cyclops.  Therefore the soft spot it a vestigial space that evolution hasn't yet irradicated.  Considering the number of giants around these days, they probably never got the chance to lose it the natural way.  And before somebody points out that the Xenaverse isn't real, remember that in the Bible Goliath was supposedly one of a race of giants, not just a freak of nature.  Of course we only have the ancient Greeks' word about the existence of the Titans, but why should modern man accept one primitive belief system and totally discount all others?   

I'm not saying I believe in the Greeks Gods and the other mythical beings of their pantheon.  I'm just saying we should keep an open mind, since by any belief system man is fundamentally lacking the true understanding necessary to claim to have all the knowledge of the wonders of the universe.

Well, that's enough for this blog.  I hope you like it and will return to my site again.  The next one I'll be publishing one of my pieces of fan fiction from the Xenaverse.  Ciao!:D

This first posting is to give people an idea of what they will find if they read my blogs.  I've decided to do a mixture of fan fiction (the Xenaverse, so far), opinion pieces on the shows I love, and going over the stories from the sci-fi/adventure shows I love from a  philosophical/historical perspective.  For example, I'm intrigued by the opinions currently in the Battlestar Galactica forum on the nature of cylons- are they robots, or something more?  I've already posted several responses to the question that anyone can see, so I won't bother to repeat myself on that score here and now, but that is precisely the kind of question I'd like to ask myself and the universe at large in my blogs, so hopefully I'll find new inspiraton out there!  :D