Poseidon
Ok people, time for some big news: I have a new book coming out. I won't repeat the shit I mentioned in the link I just posted, but the short version is that it's a follow-up to BADASS featuring 40 of my most favorite badass heroes, gods, villains, monsters and mythological figures ranging from classical mythology to literature to modern-day pop culture. Basically it attempts to cover every seriously fucking awesome epic story ever told into one massive book that is heavy enough to double as an implement of hand-to-hand combat. I'm so super-pumped about it I'm kind of in danger of vomiting at any moment. Unfortunately, however, despite all of my best attempts to pack the ultimate maximum amount of awesome legendary epicness possible into the pages of the new book, I inevitably wound up leaving out key badass mythological figures. I can live with this to some degree (I am only a man, after all), but honestly, if there is one badass ancient god who would not take well to getting dissed and left out of the book, it's the mighty Poseidon – the Greek god of the sea, and a mega-bearded unstoppable badass so over-the-top awesome he can only be physically depicted through the medium of towering marble sculptures carved from the tusks of the long-extinct sea creatures that Poseidon himself summoned for the sole purpose of being murdered and carved into a likeness of the Sea God. Nowadays Poseidon gets kind of hosed, like he's the fucking Aquaman of mythological Greece, but in real life this guy a seriously hardcore, ill-tempered motherfucker who responded to even the most trivial affront by powerbombing a tsunami up your ass and then sending a bunch of vindictive dolphins to dry-hump your lifeless corpse for extra humiliation.
Poseidon was one of three sons of the Titan Cronus. His kid brother Zeus gets a lot of the cred for overthrowing the Titans, slaughtering a bunch of gnarly evil monsters (most of which occurred only with Poseidon's help, I might add), and ruling over the Earth, while Poseidon got stuck living under the sea with talking crabs in mermaid town. Sure, spear-hunting leviathans on the floor of the Marianas Trench might not be as glamorous as having babes hand-feed you ambrosia on the peak of Mount Olympus, but hey, it could have been worse – Poseidon and Zeus' other brother, Hades, got stuck trudging around the Underworld for eternity like a chump. Sure, it sounds cool, but ruling over Hell really isn't as awesome as you'd think it would be. The excitement dies down after a while. Plus, it should be mentioned the oceans are the most wide-ranging expanse on the face of the planet (and something the Greeks depended on for food, transportation, and adventure), so maybe chilling out on the sea floor flossing your teeth with stingrays, fucking with the Argonauts, giving octuple high-fives to Krakens and humping hot mermaid babes isn't so bad after all.
A typical Tuesday in Poseidon Town.
According to the badass mythology of the Greeks, Poseidon lived in a gold castle at the bottom of the ocean and had a gigantic fucking trident (natch), which, while probably kind of useless in gladiatorial combat above ground, was pretty awesome when you needed to bust peoples' shit apart underwater. First off, a trident is a stabbing weapon, and in a practical real-life combat situation it's a hell of a lot easier to shank a Great White underwater than it is to fucking try to cut one of them with an axe or some bullshit. Plus, a trident is better than a spear because there are three points, and three is more than one. So it's better. As if the stabby-stab aspect of a trident isn't awesome enough, when he got really ripshit pissed Poseidon could jam his godly weapon into the sea floor and the scrota-plosion of testosterone generated by the Sea God's concussive force was strong enough to cause tidal waves, storms, and earthquakes so intense they would be felt on land. It's kind of awesome that even if you didn't know the difference between a poop deck and a torpedo tube and had about as much interest in gouging your own eyes out with a rubber spatula as you did of going on a deep-sea fishing expedition, you still didn't fuck with this guy unless you like falling down endless pits like the Mario Brothers or that Nazi bitch at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Poseidon was also the guy who everyone blamed epilepsy on, because apparently he was so fucking awesome that when people thought about him too hard it gave them seizures.
As you can imagine, people who knew shit about shit knew to give props to the P-man. Like when Alexander the Great was getting ready to lay the smackdown on the Persians at Issus, he had the good sense to stop by the ocean, say a prayer to Poseidon, and then send a four-horse chariot running out into the waves to drown (Poseidon loved that kind of shit. He had a whole army of brass-hooved horses in stables in his aquatic castle, was allegedly the god responsible for teaching men to ride horses, and was the patron deity of horse racing. How the fuck he kept his undersea horses alive without SCUBA gear is one of the great metaphysical mysteries of mythology). The Spartans used to sing his praises before combat, the people of Corinth adopted him as their patron God, and even T-Pain has the good sense to throw props out to Poseidon whenever he goes sailing on a boat.
I FUCKING LOVE HORSES
Unfortunately for the dumbshits of Ancient Greece, a lot of idiots didn't recognize Poseidon's awesomeness, so he had to regulate on them in the sort of way that ultra-powerful, mega-petty motherfuckers righteously laid their vengeance upon those who pissed them off in ancient times. And, honestly, a lot of times this guy was just sitting around waiting for some moron to step to him so he could ram a triple-dose of trident points up into their colo-rectal tissue. The main example of this is the shit that went down with our boy Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey. Odysseus thought he was the baddest motherfucker ever (which, to his credit, he kind of was), and was so cool that he didn't have time to do homage to gods like Poseidon. The Sea God responded to this affront, wrecked Odysseus' ships, sent monsters to eat a bunch of his men, and made damn sure that the Greek hero spent ten years wandering aimlessly around the Greek Islands before ever setting foot on his homeland. So you can take that to the bank and suck on it, motherfucker. While we're on the subject, Poseidon the Earth-Shaker had beef with Troy as well. It all started when the idiot King of Troy told Poseidon that if the Sea God built some awesome walls around the city, he'd dish out a bunch of sweet rewards (like bacon cheeseburgers). Ok, so Poseidon built the walls of Troy – no small feat, considering that the entire military of Greece couldn't break the walls in a 10-year siege – but then this jerkass King totally tried to stiff Poseidon on the check, so the God of the Ocean sent a huge sea monster to eat a bunch of the guy's kids and trash all of his ships. Then when the Trojan War broke out, Poseidon lent his strength to any Greek hero brave enough to stand against Troy in combat. He also fucked with Aeneas occasionally just to be a dickhead.
This is the sort of shit Poseidon can make happen ANY TIME HE WANTS.
Another time the mighty King Minos of Crete asked Poseidon for an awesome bull to sacrifice, but when Poseidon sent a completely mega-huge white bull out of the water to be sacrificed, King Minos backed out and kept it as a pet instead. As revenge, Poseidon went for the low blow – he fucked with Minos' wife's head, made her fall in love with the bull, and she got busy with it and gave birth to the Minotaur. On yet another occasion, the city of Athens couldn't decide who should be the patron god of the city. Poseidon gave them a sweet fountain with life-giving drinking water. Athena gave them a stupid fucking olive tree. The Athenians chose Athena, so Poseidon sent a flood that killed a few thousand people.
Much like his brother Zeus, Poseidon was also something of a mega pimp-master. In addition to being married to sea nymphs and hooking up with any amphibious humanoid females he could find, he also nailed plenty of mortal women, mermaids, goddesses, and pretty much anyone else he wanted (assuming they weren't fast enough to outrun him). He hooked up with Demeter (the Goddess of the Harvest, who fled by turning into a horse – he responded by turning himself into a stallion, and there's not much I can add to that) and fathered the man-eating Cyclops, the mighty hero Theseus, and the significantly-more-Aquaman-like god Triton, and all of the kings of the mythical island empire of Atlantis were said to be sons of his. One time Poseidon humped Medusa so hard that her hair turned into snakes and she was impregnated with a fucking Pegasus. Poseidon was so pumped he sent a sea monster to eat some chick, but unfortunately for the sea monster Perseus swooped in and killed it. Ah well, it would have been cool.
