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

by Cory O'Brien

It is very important that Pan Gu maintain proper posture

  because otherwise we’re all pooched.

  But so yeah then his beard turns into forests and whatnot.

  I think his bone marrow turns into rubies also

  and something about his breath and wind and birds.

  Whatever.

  This dude is literally everything

  so you can kind of assume that if there is a thing

  it probably came about as a result of one of Pan Gu’s bodily processes.

  But the best part is where humans come from

  because apparently

  humans are the lice that come off this dude’s corpse when he dies.

  Yep

  we are all lice, ladies and gentlemen.

  So the moral of the story is

  never bathe

  because it is genocide.

  CHANG’E IS A SUBSTANCE ABUSER

  Okay, so you guys know about the sun, right?

  It’s this big ball of fire and explosions that flies around giving people cancer.

  But did you know there used to be TEN SUNS?

  Yeah

  it SUCKED.

  It sucked so bad that Di Jun (aka Chinese Zeus)

  (aka the father of all these rambunctious suns)

  (Get it? Suns? Sons? It’s brilliant.)

  had no idea what to do

  so here’s what went down:

  There’s this really great archer named Hou Yi

  and he’s chilling in his heavenly crib with his wife Chang’e

  and all of a sudden the phone rings and it’s Di Jun.

  Hou Yi is like “Yo, Di Jun, my man, what’s cookin’?”

  And Di Jun is like “My friend the entire Earth is cooking.

  You could fry an egg on a goddamn glacier right about now

  and it ain’t none of this sous-vide bullshit or nothing.

  This is honest-to-goodness summer backyard barbecue

  except instead of a big plate of watermelon on the back porch

  everyone’s skin is melting off.

  Can you solve this problem for me?”

  And Hou Yi is like “You got it, buddy.”

  So Hou Yi grabs his trusty arrows and goes outside

  and just kills nine out of the ten suns

  and then he stares at the tenth sun real hard and he’s like

  “You best behave, sun.”

  And the sun is like “OKAY DUDE, NO PROBLEM.”

  And promptly dives underground and takes the subway home

  and Hou Yi is like “Well, that was easy.

  You’re welcome, Di Jun.”

  And Di Jun is like “WHAT THE HELL, DUDE

  YOU JUST KILLED 90 PERCENT OF MY SUNS.

  I MEAN SONS.

  I MEAN TECHNICALLY BOTH, BUT WHATEVER.”

  And Hou Yi is like “Dude, do you even know who you called to solve your problem?

  You called Hou Yi the immortal archer.

  And you know what they say:

  When the only tool you have is a hammer

  every problem starts to look like you can solve it by shooting your friend’s sons.

  Ummm, I think I may have mixed my metaphors a little bit.”

  And Di Jun is like “DAMN RIGHT YOU DID.

  I AM HEREBY REVOKING YOUR IMMORTALITY.

  ALSO:

  YOUR WIFE’S IMMORTALITY.”

  And Chang’e is like “Wait, what did I do?”

  So now Hou Yi and Chang’e are both mortal

  and Chang’e will NOT stop bitching about it for good reason.

  So finally Hou Yi is like “GRR, FINE.

  I will go get us some immortality.”

  So he goes all the way to the west

  and he finds Xiwangmu, the good witch of the west

  who gives him a couple pills of immortality

  and she’s like “Careful, dude.

  This is some heavy shit.

  Don’t take too much.”

  And Hou Yi is like “Sure, no problem.”

  And then proceeds to go home and leave all the pills with his wife

  while he goes out to shoot more things with arrows.

  Now, different tellers of this story ascribe different motivations to Chang’e here.

  Some say she was a greedy twank who wanted all the immortality for herself.

  Some say that there were some robbers and she took all the pills to spite them.

  Some say she got hungry and confused.

  Whatever the reason, the point is that Hou Yi isn’t gone for fifteen seconds

  before all the pills are in his wife’s mouth

  at which point she proceeds to have THE ULTIMATE OVERDOSE.

  But instead of throwing up and then dying

  which would be SILLY

  Chang’e becomes TOO IMMORTAL

  and apparently immortality = buoyancy

  so she floats to the moon

  and her husband comes home and sees her floating to the moon

  and he’s about to take out his bow and try to shoot her down

  but everyone is all “NO, HOU YI

  SOMETIMES YOU CANNOT SOLVE PROBLEMS BY SHOOTING THEM.”

  And Hou Yi is like “Seriously?

  Why did nobody tell me this before?”

  and then his wife lives on the moon with a rabbit forever

  and later another guy named Wu Gang gets sent there.

  He’s like Sisyphus except with a tree instead of a rock

  and chopping it down instead of pushing it up a hill.

  So the moral of the story

  is don’t do drugs

  unless you wanna wake up on the moon

  with nothing but a rabbit and a deranged lumberjack to keep you company.

  Take it from me, man.

  Take it from me.

  FEI CHANG-FANG AND THE POOP MYSTIC

  Okay, you are about to hear a story about magic and poop

  and I wish I could say that the magic was the most important part.

  So Fei Chang-Fang is a dude who is interested in the Tao from a very early age

  and then at a slightly less early age he becomes a police officer

  but then he quits because fuck the police.

  So then one day he is hanging out at a restaurant

  and he sees this old man come walking into the town square

  and the old man sits down and pulls some medicinal herbs

  (cough cough)

  out of a large gourd

  and proceeds to sell them all day.

  Now Chang-Fang, having just quit his job

  has nothing better to do than sit in the restaurant and watch this dude sell drugs all day

  and at the end of the day

  the old dude puts all his herbs back into the gourd

  and then SHOOP

  jumps into the gourd himself

  and Chang-Fang just sits there like

  “what.”

  So he sits at the restaurant every day for a week, watching this guy do this

  and finally he’s like “Screw it I’m just gonna go talk to this dude.”

  So he gets up and walks across the courtyard

  but right when he is about to get up in the old guy’s business

  the old guy goes SHOOP SHOOP BA-DOOP

  and jumps into his gourd.

  so Chang-Fang goes and looks in the gourd

  and I will be DAMNED if there isn’t an entire HOUSE chilling out inside that gourd.

  And the old dude is all up in there

  and he walks right up to the mouth of the gourd

  and looks Chang-Fang right in the eye

  and is like “HOW DID YOU SEE ME GO INTO THE GOURD?

  ONLY PEOPLE WHO CAN LEARN MAGIC CAN SEE ME GO INTO THE GOURD.

  HERE. COME HAVE LUNCH IN MY GOURD.”

  So Chang-Fang jumps into the gourd with the old dude and they have a tasty lunch

  and they have many tasty lunches for days afterward

&nbs
p; and discuss the mysteries of the Tao.

  But one day the old man in the gourd is like “Hey Chang-Fang

  I like how your name rhymes

  and also I have a confession to make:

  I am actually a Taoist immortal

  imprisoned on earth for breaking the laws of heaven

  they make me sell drugs down here

  to atone for selling drugs up there.

  Anyway, I get out tomorrow and I’m totally going back to the immortal kingdom.

  Wanna come with?”

  And Chang-Fang is like “DO I?

  Oh wait, do I?”

  ’Cause, see, Chang-Fang has a family

  and he doesn’t want them to worry about him.

  But the old dude is like “Boy do I have a solution for THAT.

  Here, take this bamboo stick and hang it from a tree in front of your house.”

  So Chang-Fang does

  and then his parents come outside

  and they see the stick

  only instead of a stick they see THEIR SON.

  HE KILLED HIMSELF.

  THEY ARE SO SAD.

  And meanwhile Chang-Fang is standing next to them like “Totally not dead, guys.”

  But they don’t see or hear him

  so the old man from the gourd is like “Welp

  looks like I just destroyed your only reason for not coming with me.”

  And Chang-Fang is like “Checkmate, sir.”

  And they journey to the immortal mountains.

  So the old man leads Chang-Fang into a cave

  and makes him sit down on a slab of rock

  and then he’s like WAM BAM WIZZOW

  and conjures a huge rock over Chang-Fang’s head

  suspended by a puny-ass rope

  and then he’s like FIZZANG PACHOW BLORB

  and summons a bunch of snakes to bite the crap out of the rope

  and the rope starts to fray

  and Chang-Fang is just like “Yawn.

  I see you have some snakerope.

  Well done, I guess.”

  So the old man is like “NICE!

  You are totally worthy to learn magic and divination.”

  And then he leads him up a mountain pass

  and then he waves his hands and ABRA-KA-GODDAMN-DABRA

  IT’S POOPTIME

  Seriously, there is just so much poop all of a sudden.

  Just a massive pile of poops.

  And do you know what it is covered in?

  not marshmallows

  or peanut brittle.

  Nope

  MAGGOTS

  JUST A WHOOOOLE BUNCH OF MAGGOTS

  and the old man grabs three maggots and is like “Here, Chang-Fang.

  Here are some maggots for you to eat.”

  And Chang-Fang is like “What? No.”

  And the old man is like “Aww, man.

  I thought you were cool.

  Looks like you don’t get to be an immortal now.”

  And Chang-Fang is like “I guess I’m okay with that

  if being an immortal means I have to eat poop maggots.

  Anyway, do you have any magic consolation prizes for me?”

  And the old man is like “VANNA TELL THE MAN WHAT HE’S WON.”

  And Vanna White doesn’t say anything because she’s not there and the old man is crazy

  so then he’s just like “Well you can have my gourd full of drugs

  and you can have this magic teleporting walking stick.

  GOOD-BYE I WILL NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN.”

  So then Chang-Fang kind of starts to wonder how his parents are doing

  so he teleports home and knocks on his door

  And his dad opens up the door like “OH NO A GHOST.”

  But then Chang-Fang is like “Calm down, Dad.

  I’m not a ghost.

  I just pranked you into burying a bamboo stick using magic.

  Here, I’ll prove it.”

  So they go dig up the stick

  and then everyone is happy again and they have a banquet.

  But Chang-Fang is confused

  because his relatives are all mega old for some reason

  and he is like “Mom, why are you guys so old?

  I was only gone for like a day.”

  And his mom is like “WRONG, SON.

  YOU WERE GONE FOR FIFTEEN YEARS BECAUSE OF CELESTIAL TIME DILATION.”

  And Chang-Fang is like “Oh dang.

  Well . . . I gotta go help people now with my magic drugs.

  I’ll try to visit sometimes.”

  So then he travels all over the place

  healing the sick and capturing demons and stuff

  and eventually dies

  because he refused to eat poop that one time

  although I’m not really sure whether Chang-Fang really had a chance

  or if that whole poop mountain thing was just that asshole immortal’s idea of a really great prank

  which just goes to show

  that you should never eat poop

  or the maggots that live in poop

  no matter who tells you to

  or what they are offering.

  SUMERIAN

  A long time ago, there was this place called Sumeria

  it was a pretty cool place

  or at least, I like to think it was a pretty cool place.

  There’s not really that much to go on, honestly.

  See, people don’t actually know that much about Sumeria, because of how old it is

  and also because apparently these dudes used to party so hard

  that they seriously damaged a lot of the big clay blocks they used to keep their writing on

  so the best we can do

  is to kind of stare really hard at the blank spaces on their clay tablets

  and make shit up.

  For a prime example check out Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.

  For a SUPER-PRIME example check out this bucket of nonsense.

  THE ANCIENT SUMERIANS KNEW HOW TO PARTY

  So to start out there is this husband-and-wife god-team.

  The dude is named An, and the lady is named Ki.

  They make the world, blah blah blah.

  When I say “blah blah blah,” what I mean is that most of the words about that part got destroyed

  probably while some lush of a priest was attempting a prehistoric kegstand.

  What I CAN tell you

  is that the water is supposed to have given birth to all the stuff that’s in the world

  which makes sense, because water is pretty important

  and also because in Sumerian

  “water” and “semen” are the SAME WORD

  which must have made for some WACKY MISUNDERSTANDINGS.

  Anyway, once the world has already gotten made and stuff

  Ki’s son Enlil totally steals her from her husband/his dad

  which is GROSS, but definitely not unprecedented

  and then I guess all the other gods get the memo that it is people-stealin’ time

  because after another chunk of party-foul-induced relic damage

  we cut back in to see this chick named Ereshkegal getting carried down to the underworld.

  So this other dude, Enki

  the god of water and being a huge nerd all the time

  is like “I’ll save you, Ereshkegallll!”

  So he gets on a boat

  which seems like an unnecessary step for a god of water

  but then his boat sinks

  which is DEFINITELY something that should never happen to the god of water

  but then later Ereshkegal becomes queen of the underworld

  so it all works out pretty well for her.

  But that’s not all

  because we have yet to address the most well-preserved part of this tale of fail:

  HOW THE MOON GOT MADE.

  See, there’s this chick Ninlil

  (who is the goddess of wind)
r />   and her mom, Ninshebargunu, is like “Daughter

  I want you to promise me that you will not go swimming in the canal.

  If you do, Enlil will see you, and he will totally sex you up.

  You know how gods are.”

  So obviously Ninlil nearly breaks her neck trying to get down to the canal

  and then five minutes later, Enlil shows up

  all like “HEY, PRETTY GIRL I JUST INVENTED THIS NEW GAME

  IT IS CALLED JUST THE TIP.

  WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY?”

  And Ninlil is like “Ew, dude. I’m like twelve.”

  And Enlil is like “Wait, I thought your mom told you how this was gonna go down.

  Oh well.”

  Then he rapes her in a boat.

  So Ninlil gets pregnant

  and everyone gets understandably pissed off at Enlil

  and they actually manage to get him banned from town as a registered sex offender

  so he leaves

  and Ninlil follows him

  presumably because Enlil conveniently forgot to make any arrangements regarding child support.

  But it turns out that following Enlil is a really bad idea

  because he is so bummed out by this turn of events

  that he has decided to walk STRAIGHT TO HELL

  and there is some weird rule that says that if your baby gets born in hell it has to stay there.

  Now, Enlil knows about this rule and he feels pretty bad about it

  so he concocts this genius plan:

  When Ninlil arrives at the gates of the underworld

  there is a dude in a guard costume with a nametag that says “DEFINITELY NOT ENLIL”

  and the guard is like “Hey, girl I see you want to get into hell.

  Unfortunately, there is a cover charge

  and the cover charge is having sex with me.”

  So Ninlil is just like “Uh . . . Okay!”

  And then they bang and she gets DOUBLE-PREGNANT.

  Then she goes to the next gate into hell and Enlil pulls the same prank AGAIN.

  Then he does it A THIRD TIME.

  Now, it may seem like Enlil is just trying to get his bone on with the same chick in several costumes

  but while that is definitely PART of his motivation

  this whole zany sexcapade has the effect of filling Ninlil’s womb with expendable children

  who will stay in hell instead of the first baby

  who is named Nanna

  and is destined to be the MOON.

  So that’s where the moon comes from.

  So the moral of the story

  is that any problem caused by sex

  can be easily solved by MORE SEX.