Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes: A No-Bullshit Guide to World Mythology

by Cory O'Brien

because the gods sure as shit want nothing to do with him at this point

  and guess who else is coming to the party?

  FIRE GIANTS.

  What are fire giants you ask?

  Oh, I don’t know, maybe giants MADE OF FIRE

  the sole purpose of whom is to show up at this EXACT MOMENT

  led by this guy SURT

  and fucking set fire to EVERYTHING.

  So this is when Heimdall is going to blow his horn

  signaling that SHIT is finally about to get REAL

  and Odin and all the other gods

  and all the elves, dwarves, demons and basically just anything ever

  are going to ride onto this one battlefield called Vigrid

  which means BATTLESHAKER

  and they are going to tear each other to pieces in the following order:

  Odin is going to fight Fenrir

  and Fenrir is going to eat Odin

  and then Odin’s son Vidar is gonna be like “NOOOO.”

  and run up and rip Fenrir’s jaw in half

  which is pretty appropriate because Vidar is the god of revenge

  not that he has anything to really be vengeful about because Odin is EVERYONE’S dad.

  Meanwhile, Thor is gonna fight the Midgard serpent

  and he is gonna kill it

  but then its poison is gonna kill HIM.

  And Surt is just gonna pick the weakest-looking god

  Freyr

  who is the god of the sun and elves and shit

  and just kill him straight up

  because Freyr is a tremendous pussy

  who actually FORGOT TO BRING A SWORD TO THE APOCALYPSE.

  Then Tyr is gonna look around like “Shit I need to kill someone to prove I’m a badass.

  How about this terrible wolf, GARM?!”

  and he kills it, despite the fact he only has one hand

  but then Garm also kills him. Boo.

  Also, Heimdall kills Loki, FINALLY

  but Loki also kills Heimdall, so that will suck.

  And on top of ALL OF THAT

  Surt is gonna just start chucking fire in every direction

  burning everything

  so it won’t even really matter if you survive the epic battle

  because everyone is catching fire anyway

  except for these two people

  Lif and Lifthrasir

  a dude and a chick who will just be sleeping in the indestructible forest.

  Wait, there’s an INDESTRUCTIBLE FOREST??

  Why doesn’t everyone just evacuate there?

  That would seriously minimize some casualties.

  Anyway, when it’s all over

  and the earth dives underwater to try and put out all the fire

  and then comes back up again all fresh and new

  Lif and Lifthrasir are gonna repopulate the world

  and everything is going to be great forever.

  So the moral of the story

  is that when the going gets tough

  the tough get going

  but the SMART get inside the invincible forest.

  EGYPTIAN

  You might not guess from their tame 2-D cave paintings

  but the ancient Egyptians liked to tell some seriously messed-up myths

  they’ve got all the essentials:

  booze, blood, and jerkin’ it

  (if you thought that the essentials were food, water, and shelter

  then you, my friend have been reading the wrong myths)

  and if any mortals actually managed to survive the constant barrage of nonsense from above

  Egyptian lore says you had to get your soul weighed against a FUCKING FEATHER

  by a pitiless demon with a dog for a head

  and if your soul is heavier than the feather

  YOU GO TO HELL.

  So I hope you can hear me in hell, every dude who ever lived in ancient Egypt

  because I am about to seriously bastardize your canon up in here.

  RA HAS SEX WITH HIMSELF

  So there is this dude named Ra.

  This dude does not exist

  At least not at the beginning of the story.

  All there is is this totally boring infinite water called Nu

  but then Ra

  who—remember—doesn’t exist

  is like “This sucks.

  How about I CREATE MYSELF USING PURE WILLPOWER!??”

  So now Ra is standing around

  except actually he is not standing.

  He hasn’t invented standing yet and anyway there is no place to stand

  so Ra is like “Okay, time for some terrain features.

  Let’s start with the ones that look the most like tits.”

  So he makes a hill

  and he stands on it

  and later someone builds a temple BUT LET’S NOT GET AHEAD OF OURSELVES.

  So Ra gets pretty bored

  seeing as all there is in the ENTIRE GODDAMN UNIVERSE is a hill and some water.

  So he hangs out on the hill for a bit

  waiting for other awesome dudes to will themselves into being

  but they don’t

  so he’s like “MAN, YOU GUYS ARE SOOOO LAZY

  FINE, I’LL MAKE MY OWN FRIENDS.”

  But there is a problem

  because, although Ra can make hills

  and also HIMSELF

  he apparently can’t make people.

  Sexual reproduction is ruining everything, as usual.

  But Ra does not even give a shit

  he just goes right ahead and FUCKS HIS OWN SHADOW UNTIL HE GETS PREGNANT.

  THEN HE GIVES BIRTH TO KIDS OUT OF HIS MOUTH

  IN THE TWO LEAST CLASSY WAYS POSSIBLE. Yes, guys.

  If Egypt is to be believed

  you are all either descended from spit or puke

  (depending on whether you are a boy or a girl).

  See, Ra has two kids.

  The phlegm kid is this dude called Shu

  the god of air and stuff

  meanwhile the vomit kid is a chick named Tefnut

  goddess of moisture

  not water mind you, but moisture

  which makes sense with the whole vomit thing, I guess.

  Anyway, Shu and Tefnut get together

  and by their powers combined

  manage to be exponentially more bored than even their omnipotent father could have imagined.

  So they are sitting around and they are like “Hey

  wanna hit each other with bricks?

  Oh wait, bricks don’t exist. Just like absolutely everything else other than hills.

  Fuck it, let’s make up some codes of laws and then get lost.”

  So they make up some laws and then they get lost in the middle of an endless ocean fiasco

  which is kind of like SeaWorld

  if SeaWorld was everything everywhere

  and there was no Shamu

  and there was no amusement park

  or hot dogs or whatever.

  It is actually just the water part of SeaWorld.

  And there are only three people there

  and two of them are lost

  and they are made of spit and vomit.

  Actually, that last part sounds a lot like SeaWorld.

  So Ra is like “GUYYSSSS

  I fucked my own SHADOW so I wouldn’t be lonely.

  Come baaaack.”

  And then he takes out his one eye

  (by the way, he only has one eye)

  and he is like “Hey, eye

  go find my kids.”

  So it does, and it brings them back to Ra

  and he starts crying

  either because he is so happy to have his kids back or because now he has to raise kids

  but the myth is not clear on whether he puts his eye back in before he does this

  or whether it is just this weird floating sadness orb

  but that is not important at all.

&nb
sp; What is important is that those tears hit the hill Ra made

  and they turn into people

  and then Shu and Tefnut start boning

  like siblings do.

  They pop out this kid Geb, the earth

  and Nut, the sky

  (those are extremely large babies, no lie).

  Then later, Geb and Nut give birth to all the trendy gods

  like Isis and Osiris and whatever

  and things proceed pretty much as would be expected

  with a lot of murder and sex and stuff.

  So basically what it all comes down to

  is that we are made of tears

  from the disembodied eyeball

  of a guy who fucks his own shadow and surrounds himself with spit and puke.

  I’m gonna go cry now.

  I hope it doesn’t turn it into babies.

  RA AND SEKHMET, OR: HOW BEER SAVED THE UNIVERSE

  So Ra creates the world.

  Sure, great

  but just because you create the world

  doesn’t mean you get to just be king of it forever.

  I mean you get to be king of it for a while

  (like for example what Ra does

  is as soon as he’s done creating everything

  he turns into a dude and becomes king of Egypt)

  but the problem with dudes is that they get old

  and the problem with old dudes is that they are constantly getting guff

  from ALL DIRECTIONS

  and the problem with being a god

  is that you are constitutionally incapable of taking ANY GUFF WHATSOEVER

  so naturally

  when everybody starts laughing at Ra’s old hair and senility

  he gets real pissed

  and when you are a god

  and you are real pissed

  there is only one solution, my friends:

  GENOCIDE.

  So basically what Ra does

  is he turns around and gives Egypt the world’s DEADLIEST STINKEYE

  this eye is so stinky

  it produces an entire brand new goddess

  the goddess is named Sekhmet

  and she is basically like a lioness

  with chainsaws for legs

  SEKHMET:

  THE ORIGINAL THUNDERCAT.

  Sekhmet’s job is simple:

  KILL.

  EVERYONE.

  So that is what she does.

  She just tears all around everywhere

  mauling the ever-loving crap out of people until the ground is like

  permanent red

  which is disconcertingly tacky.

  Eventually Ra wakes up from his old-man sleep

  and he’s like “WHOA

  WHERE DID ALL THE PEOPLE GO?

  Damn, I feel kinda bad now.”

  Gods are always doing things like this if you haven’t noticed.

  But the problem is that by now Sekhmet is an unstoppable murder engine.

  But the good news

  is that there is ONE THING

  with the power to stop an unstoppable murder engine

  and that thing

  is BOOZE.

  So what Ra does

  is he gathers up all this really good beer

  and all this really good red food coloring

  and he mixes it all together

  and he dumps it all over the fields that Sekhmet has scheduled for murdering the next day

  so that when she shows up

  she just sees a big lake of what she can only assume is blood

  blood that smells like booze

  so, like

  the blood of really drunk people?

  and she’s like “ALL RIGHT

  LOOKS LIKE MURDERING IS DONE EARLY TODAY

  TIME FOR MY SECOND FAVORITE PASTIME:

  DEVOURING THE BLOOD OF THE INNOCENT.”

  So Sekhmet just dives right in and starts slurping the boozeblood

  which is such good shit that everybody calls it “THE SLEEPMAKER”

  and because of that she ends up passing out pretty quick

  and she wakes up all hung over

  and Ra is like “HaHAAAA

  from now on you will be known as Hathor

  and the only thing you will kill people with

  is KINDNESS.”

  And basically whatever Ra says just immediately happens

  so that’s who Sekhmet becomes from then on.

  So obviously the moral of the story

  is that the best way to deal with a rampaging psychopath

  is to get them really, really drunk.

  ISIS HAS BAD TASTE IN JEWELRY

  So time passes, and now Osiris is the king of the gods

  he thinks he’s hot shit, with his godly appendages up whole vast swathes of blouse.

  But meanwhile there’s this dick Set.

  That is his name

  Set.

  I’m not talking about some kind of dick set

  such as you might purchase for an adult tea party.

  I am talking about the Egyptian god of the desert

  and also storms, darkness, and chaos.

  Basically if you are not having a good time

  Set is right there, flipping you off with both hands

  while jacking off

  with his third hand?

  Or maybe with a hand he stole

  FROM A BABY.

  What I mean is, Set’s a dick.

  The reason I mention Set

  is that he gets all butthurt over not being king of the gods

  so he has this great plan

  which is he makes this coffin out of wood

  which is like tailor-made for Osiris basically

  and then he calls up all the gods like “HEY, GUYS YOU SHOULD COME OVER

  I’M HAVING A WEIRD COFFIN PARTY.”

  And all the gods are like “Oh shit, weird coffin party.

  We’ll be right over.”

  So they all get there and Set is like “All right I made this coffin.

  Whoever fits perfectly inside it gets candy.”

  And of course, all the gods think this sounds like an awesome idea

  so they all take turns trying to get into the coffin

  and they all fail

  but then it’s Osiris’s turn

  and Osiris is like “I dunno, guys this seems like a transparent ruse.”

  but then he gets in the coffin anyway

  and it slams shut and locks

  and Set lines it with lead and throws it in the Nile river

  and everyone is like “Whoa, major coffin-party foul.”

  and Set is like “So I get to be king now, right?”

  AND HE DOES.

  So naturally Osiris’s wife Isis decides to go find him

  so she can at least bury him properly now that he has drowned

  and she finds out that the coffin has floated all the way to Byblos

  (which is actually just Lebanon in disguise)

  and gotten absorbed by an oak tree

  which got cut down

  and used to build a support pillar

  in a palace

  for the king of Byblos.

  Shiiiit.

  So Isis shows up in Byblos like “Hey queen

  my husband is embedded in your palace

  may I please extract him?”

  And the queen is like “Sure, go ahead.

  It’s not like he’s a major structural support or anything, right?”

  and Isis is like “Haha, sucker.”

  And she goes and removes the pillar

  WITHOUT DAMAGING THE PALACE AT ALL

  thus inventing Jenga.

  Except instead of delicately placing the coffin on top of the palace

  Isis takes out Osiris’s body and drags it back to Egypt

  and buries it in the desert

  so he can finally rest in peace

  apparently forgetting that Set is the GOD OF THE DESERT.
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  So Set very quickly sniffs out Osiris’s grave

  and is like “Hmm I haven’t fucked with this guy enough.

  How about I tear him into fourteen pieces

  and then EAT HIS DICK.”

  So that is what he does

  and he chucks the other thirteen pieces all the fuck everywhere

  and then Isis is like “What is that noise?

  It better not be my husband getting ripped up and thrown everywhere.”

  BUT IT IS TOO LATE

  IT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED

  and Isis finds out and she is like “Seriously? I just buried this guy.

  Now I gotta go find all these body parts and bury them AGAIN

  even though Set will prolly just find them again and rip them into SMALLER pieces.”

  Anyway, she manages to find all the pieces

  (which have turned into full moons by the way)

  except for his dick

  because like I said

  SET ATE IT

  so Isis is like “Maaaan

  Osiris’s dick was like the most important part of his personality”

  so what she does

  is she makes a GOLD COCK

  and she hangs it around her neck

  and BAM

  Osiris is alive again

  with a golden dong

  thus laying the groundwork for Mike Myers’s cinematic triumph, Goldmember

  and also getting Isis pregnant with Horus

  because I guess that dick necklace was more potent than she bargained for.

  So ladies

  I guess the moral of the story is

  don’t wear a cock around your neck

  because unplanned pregnancy is the WORST accessory.

  THOTH IS JUST GIVING OUT SCORPIONS

  So Osiris is back in action and his dick is more blinged out than ever

  BUT ALL IS NOT WELL

  because as soon as Osiris gets resurrected

  ISIS GIVES BIRTH TO THIS DUDE NAMED HORUS.

  Actually, that is not the bad part

  because Horus is a pretty cool dude, honestly.

  No, see, the bad part

  is that seeing as Set was totally willing to EAT OSIRIS’S DICK

  just to prevent him from getting a proper burial

  all signs point toward he is going to murder the CRAP out of this baby

  especially since Horus is totally fated to murder Set if he ever gets old enough.

  So Isis is pretty careful about keeping her baby away from murder

  but then one day, Set is like “HEY, ISIS COME INTO THIS SPINNING MILL.”

  and Isis is like “SPINNING MILL, HOORAY.”

  And then Set is like “Oh, did I say spinning mill?

  I meant WRETCHED IMPRISONMENT FOREVER