The International Monetary Fund has taken control of Greece’s finances. What a lot of people don’t know is that this all happened before….
************************************************************************************************************************
The Gods on Mount Olympus suffered a severe culture shock when the IMF took over the Greek economy back in ancient times. In fairness, the IMF had little choice. Years of mad expenditure on things like wars, giant urns and paternity settlements with outraged and often startled mortal women had left the coffers pretty bare. The final straw, though, was the building of the Seven Wonders of the World (a Lighthouse at Alexandria, for feck’s sake, they didn’t even have electricity).
The rest of the world only realised how bad things had got when the Olympics had to take place in the nude, since the Greeks couldn’t afford to pay the sponsor (Nike, of course). The following day the doors of Olympus were flung open and the little men with quills and abacuses moved in.
Since they were economists (and therefore clueless, why is it just accepted that they’ll do a better job than the Greek government) their rescue plan was not a success. It involved Pegasus, the wingéd horse, being let out for stud fees. Unfortunately there were no wingéd mares for him to service, and attempts to mate him with other animals met with mixed results (the penguin, for example, is the result of his dalliance with an otter).
As the plan brought in little extra cash, the IMF decided to cut costs instead. At the time the Gods were building a summer house for Poseidon who, as someone who lived most of his life underwater, needed a sun holiday for two weeks every year. The IMF made them stop construction, although the building had no roof, many of its pillars were still lying in the front garden, and the statues that were to adorn it were unfinished, with faces still blank and uncarved, or with limbs missing. It was called the Acropolis, and looks the same to this very day.
The economists realised they could save even more money by barring the gods from drinking nectar, on which they were spending an absolute fortune. Horrified, the Gods built themselves a still, and invented a drink using the snake-hair of Medusa. They called the result “ouzo“, which means “tasting like wolf’s-pee mixed with lighter-fuel”. While this dulled their pain to some extent, it did nothing to help their finances. There was only one thing left. Reluctantly, one by one, the Gods got jobs.
Not all were successful. Oedipus’s Marriage Guidance Service did not fare well. Cyclops did equally badly as an optician, since even the most short-sighted of his patients had twice the eyesight that he had, and he eventually handed the business over to the four-eyed God, Specsavus.
Pan started brilliantly. Playing on his pan-pipes he staged a concert where he played stuff like Wind Beneath My Wings and that load of crap from The Bodyguard, and quickly discovered that he had an adoring audience among the kind of listeners who think Celine Dion is too hard-edged. As his fame grew, though, so did his ego, and he decided that he could do a show of rock-epics. A rock song played on the pan-pipes would infuriate even the gentlest soul, and Zeus was far from that. When he heard the pan-pipe version of Smells Like Teen Spirit he went and paid Pan a visit, and, well, that’s why Pan walks with his legs on backwards.
But some of the Gods were very successful. Geras, God of Old Age, invented Grecian 2000. Athena, Goddess of Handicrafts, came up with a prototype of the Circus Big Top, which she called the “demisroussos”. And one of the Goddesses surprised them all by joining an escort agency, and by doing remarkably well.
It was amazing how much money men would pay to see Pandora’s Box.
Worth Doing Badly 