> I got my name from a character in Dante's The Divine Comedy (the Inferno part). He's the guy who tells you which circle of Hell you have to go to.
>
> Um...a few things about myself: I loathe cats and believe they should be boat anchors. And that's about all.

Hey, did Xapov (Charon) even need a boat anchor? :-) From Greek mythology, he's the guy who ferried the souls of the dead, over the river Styx into Hades. In the Divine Comedy, he had the same role. But the judge who told people which circle of Hell they were destined to was actually 'Minos'.

I always found that part fascinating. If you don't mind reading an extreme hatchet-job of the original Italian, and my leaning on a whole bunch of translators, the stanzas where Dante describes Minos are as follows:

There in the gatehold, grim Minos sits
Judging and disposing each lost soul, as it arrives;
Delivering his verdict with his coiling tail.

Every ill-fated soul comes before him, and confession
Pours forth from it til there's nothing left to tell;
Minos, that connoisseur of all transgression

Assigns it then to its proper place in Hell,
And wraps his tail round the soul, one coil per degree
Of descent to where that shade will have to dwell.

The soul descends, and others take its place:
Each crowds in turn to judgment, each does confess;
Each hears its doom, and falls away through space.

Inferno 05.003-05.015


Wolf "surely will not be letting you *or* Grishny come near Pixel, lest there be a transgression" spirit