frightful Hebe, Artemis, cupbearer, culture vulture, call-up

“It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.” 
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

 World champions Japan turn to tall "supergirl"
Reuters
TOKYO (Reuters) - World champions Japan have called up a towering goalkeeper to help them in their bid to win the women's soccer title at this year's London Olympics. Erina Yamane, who at 187 centimeters (6 feet, two inches) looks down on Japan's ...



This isn’t a question about technology, where the present will always trump the past. It’s about lifestyle and ideas, people and manners, things that ebb and flow. Armed with a passport to the good life in a time and place of our choice, not many will pass on the journey. Culture-vultures will book their seats in Shakespeare’s Globe in 1599 or the Cotton Club, Harlem, in the 1920s. Hero-worshippers will queue up to watch Michelangelo chisel stone in 1501 or Genghis Khan ride into battle in 1206. Epicures, the most prudent time-travellers, will follow Gibbon to Rome, or time their birth to dodge a call-up for the world wars and surf the Pax Americana.

Overheard: Vultures Flock to MF Global Clients

Hours after MF Global filed for bankruptcy, London-based SVS CFD, a unit of IG Group, sent emails targeting clients of the defunct broker. The subject line: "MF GLOBAL filed for bankruptcy on Monday morning in New York." The email goes on to pitch its services. Wall Street's vulture culture, it seems, is alive and well.

call-up
(kôl'ŭp')
n.
The act or an instance of summoning reserve military personnel to active service.

vulture[vul・ture]

• レベル：社会人必須
• 発音記号[vʌ'ltʃər]

[名]

1 《鳥》ハゲワシ；コンドル. 禿鷹

2 貪欲(どんよく)な人［動物］；（詐欺師など）他人を食い物にする人.


culture vulture

An individual with a consuming or excessive interest in the arts. For example, A relentless culture vulture, she dragged her children to every museum in town. This slangy term may have been originated by Ogden Nash, who wrote: "There is a vulture Who circles above The carcass of culture" (Free Wheeling, 1931). [1940s]

sisters of Artemis rather than of Hebe.

(European mythology)
When the moon shone, Artemis was present, and beasts and plants would dance. In honour of the goddess male and female dancers performed, and the villagers of Arcadia, in the Peloponnese, attired their girls with phalluses. The Athenians sensed the pre-Greek origins of the virgin huntress Artemis, the goddess of wild places and wild things, and her cult was restricted to the surrounding countryside where arktoi, ‘bear virgins’, attended her. The vestiges of human sacrifice could be found in her worship: blood was drawn from a slight cut on the throat of a male victim by the female devotees of the sometime bear goddess.

Greek legend tells how Actaeon had the misfortune to come, while hunting, upon Artemis as she was bathing. She changed him into a stag and he was pursued and torn to pieces by his own dogs. In an older version the naked goddess was approached by the hunter covered with a stag's pelt. Like Athena, Artemis sometimes wore the frightful mask of the Gorgon on her neck, for with Athena and Hestia, the mild guardian of the home, she was one of the goddesses over whom Aphrodite had no power. In Asia Minor, however, Aphrodite was often identified with Artemis in the aspect of a virgin huntress.

Korythalia, ‘laurel maiden’, Artemis was the daughter of Zeus and Leto, a Titaness, and the twin sister of Apollo. When the giant Tityos attacked Leto on her way to Delphi, he was slain by one of Artemis' shafts or by a blow from Apollo. Odysseus saw the offender in Hades: the giant was chained and two vultures tore ceaselessly at his liver.

(click to enlarge)
Hebe carrying nectar and ambrosia, detail of a vase painting; in the Jatta Museum, Ruvo di Puglia, … (credit: Alinari — Giraudon/Art Resource, New York)

Greek goddess of youth, daughter of Zeus and Hera. She served as cupbearer to the gods, and when Heracles ascended into heaven after his painful death, she became his bride. She was generally worshiped along with her mother.

frightful

ˈfrʌɪtfʊl,-f(ə)l/

adjective

BRITISH

1. very unpleasant, serious, or shocking.

   "there's been a most frightful accident"

   synonyms:

   horrible, gruesome, grisly, ghastly, hideous, grim, revolting, repulsive,disgusting, horrendous, grievous, dreadful, terrible, nasty, dire,unspeakable; More

   • informal

     used for emphasis, especially of something bad.

     "her hair was a frightful mess"