Halls of the Dark Muse

My sister is a film editor, but because she had kids, she hasn't really been actively working much, just a couple of small independent projects and so some friends of hers wanted to make their own horror film and asked if she would help out, and she agreed to do it, and my brother-in-law had to go to Florida for business so my parents have been babysitting the kids.

The other night we were going out to dinner together and my nieces both had these little toy mice they got and so to entertain them in the car I was pretending to be a snake trying to each the mice and they would hide the mice and "trick" the snake by offering other toys instead saying it was a mouse and so it was this whole game we got started which somehow transformed itself into an elaborate story about Fred Snake who lives in Snakelandea in a cave where there is the King of the Snakes who is a very large snake that eats dog sized rats.

Today we went into the city (San Francisco) and on the way there they wanted to play the snake game again, and so we did for a while but than when I wanted a break from the game I told them that Fred Snake had to go because he was summoned by the King of Snakes for a special snake quest to find the golden egg which is of course guarded by an Ogre. So than I kept having to tell them these stories about the adventures of Fred Snake on his quest.

But after a while it gets difficult trying to make up stories off the top of my head, so to give myself a break and give me time to think up some more crazy stories about Fred Snake, I started telling them other stories about snakes. First I told them about the Naga, which comes from Hindu and Eastern mythology about a creature that his half snake and half man.

Than I was telling them about Medusa, and how she had snakes for hair and if you look into her eyes it will turn you to stone. Well my older niece than kept wanting to ask what made her so mad. I am sure many of you know the back story of Medusa, but to recap she was formerly a priestess of Athena who was raped by Poseidon, and because Poseidon was her uncle and one of the other gods she was not going to act against him and thus instead she punished Medusa for it, transferring her into a monster and banishing her. Needless to say I could not think of a kid friendly way to explain that half of the story. I ended up telling my niece that she was just going to have to wait until she was older to hear that part of the story, but of course she kept trying to ask about it until we found something else to distract her with.