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.
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