2188 Mythstakes

I've mentioned before how our bad understanding of classic legends causes us to make some pretty dramatic mistakes sometimes. Or should I say mythstakes? Like calling a car an Odyssey. If you read the book, the Odyssey was the original bad trip.

Likewise a childcare center that closed recently. It was a great place. I was sorry to see it go. But it did have a problematic name. Piper's Playground. I hope they were talking piper as in a bird or plane or something. Because if they were hoping to reference the Pied Piper of Hamlin it probably wasn't a good idea.

The legend of the Pied Piper has him leading away all the village's children after the not-so-smart villagers refused to pay him for his musical rat eradication program. Leading away as in forever kidnapping them. 

Maybe they hooked up in Never Never Land with the Lost Boys.

I saw another corporate misnomer recently when I read about how Albertson's was taking over, or gobbling up, Safeway. Actually it was Albertson's parent company Cerberus Capital Management. 

Wait a minute, I thought, isn't Cerberus the hound of hell? I did some wikipedianation and yep, my classic mythology knowledge was right on. Cerberus, was a three-headed vicious dog guarding the gates of hell from good living people coming in and saving their mistakenly deceased relatives. Not the sort of image you'd think a first-rate branding and marketing person would assign to an up and coming company. 

"Let's see, Capital Management... Acquisitions and mergers? Any leveraged buy-outs or unfriendly takeovers? Okay, which would you prefer, Medusa, the snake-haired Gorgon who turns people to dead stone or Cerberus, the rabid hound of hell? 

"Hop in my Odyssey and let's go to that fishy-legged mermaid coffee place and talk about it."

America, ya gotta love it.