Sarwat's Guide to the Gods Part One- KALI

The Black One. Goddess of death and destruction. She haunts the graveyards and dances in the ashes of the funereal pyres.
Appearance
Black-skinned and almost skeletal gaunt. She has blazing eyes, a long red tongue (all the better to lap up blood with) fangs and claws. Kali has six arms and carries weapons, a noose and the severed head of a demon. She wears a necklace of skulls and her skirt is made of severed limbs. You do not want to bump into her in an alley on a dark night.
What You Need to Know
Kali is mad, bad and oh so very dangerous to know. She is the demon killer and there are plenty of stories of all the other gods fleeing the battle-field and leaving Kali to kill absolutely everyone. Then she usually eats them. He victory dance once threatened to destroy the universe.
Her hideous appearance is all part of her charm. She is the one thing that terrifies demons so she is also the last hope for humanity. When all else has failed, you turn to Kali. But be careful, she’s as likely to destroy the world as save it.
STRENGTHS all the arts of death
WEAKNESSES completely lacking in social skills
WEAPONS all of them
ATTITUDE totally bad
RELATIONSHIPS Married to Shiva. Often depicted dancing on his corpse. Nice.
If you like Kali you’ll also like: Wearing black, jewellery made from bones, goth music.
Other Goddesses like Kali : Baba Yaga (Russian), Hecate (Greek), Morrigan (Celtic), Hel (Norse)

Badass of the Year

There were many cinematic delights in 2011. Following up from my last blog on Alpha Males heading your way in 2012 I feel the need, nay, the duty, to expand on this list, and diversify. It's not exclusively male, as any follower of my blog will know, BADASS embraces all creeds, sexes and nationalities.
So, my review of what was BADASS in 2011.
1. Hanna. Young girl skilled in all the arts of death by a psycho father. I'm not so sure that Tom Holland with a bad dye job was exactly the sort of elite assassin I'd send against Eric Bana since, lets be honest, he looked like he'd struggle up a flight of stairs while Eric Bana apparently swam the Atlantic ocean but if Billi had a sister by another mister, it would be Hanna. And we LOVE the soundtrack. Those Chemical Brothers do get around (and seem to follow Tom Holland, being in the latest Tron too. Not good.).
2. Ryan Gosling in the Driver. Ryan seems to have become a fan-girl fav of late and with those abs, why not? Have we already wearied of Taylor Lautner's wash-board stomach already? How fickle is the teen girl devotions! But deep down you know Ryan would kick Jacob's arse, don't you? Then he'd drive over him. Road-kill.
3. Conan the Barbarian. Okay, I admit it, the new movie sucked BUT it was Conan and it's a brave man who follows in the sandalled footsteps of Arnie. So, kudos to Jason Momoa for giving us brooding muscle-bound barbarian when it mattered.
4. Peter Mensah as Oenemaus out of the Spartacus series. The elegance, the wounded honour, the physique on the man who's so nearing fifty! I'm going to the gym first thing next week! Spartacus Blood and Sand and the prequel Gods of the Arena have been my guilty pleasure this year. Oh how it rocked. If my Latin lessons had been half as good as this I'd be teaching it at Oxford by now. Certainly not suitable for kids. Or nuns. Well, maybe nuns.
5. Michael Fassbender. As Magneto in X-Men First Class and in Centurion. This guy is BADASS. C'mon, that scene in the Argentinian bar? Yes, I completely agree it was a screen test for Bond. The mind salivates at the idea. Then him running bare-chested through the Hibernian snows in Centurion. It looked bloody freezing and it was (see the extras on the dvd). The man's dedicated and ripped like nothing on earth. Another reason to take up Latin, methinks.