ZEUS GRANTS STUPID WISHES
A No-Bullshit Guide to World Mythology
Cory O’Brien
ILLUSTRATIONS BY SARAH E. MELVILLE
A PERIGEE BOOK
A PERIGEE BOOK
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Copyright © 2013 by Cory O’Brien
Illustrations by Sarah E. Melville
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
O’Brien, Cory.
Zeus grants stupid wishes : a no-bullshit guide to world mythology / Cory O’Brien ; illustrations by Sarah E. Melville.— First edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-101-61967-4
1. Mythology—Humor. I. Melville, Sarah E., illustrator. II. Title.
BL311.O25 2013
201'.30207—dc23 2012042666
First edition: March 2013
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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To Tiresias Chang
For giving me the idea for this whole thing in the first place.
And to Christina Sheldon
I met you in a bar when I was thirteen
and promised to dedicate my first book to you.
You probably thought I was joking.
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
INTRODUCTION (Right after this table of contents, dumbass.)
GREEK
Cronus Likes to Eat Babies
Zeus Sticks It to Semele a Little Too Hard
King Midas Is: GOLDFINGER
Tiresias Is TWICE the Man/Woman You’ll Ever Be
Narcissus Probably Should Have Just Learned to Masturbate
Persephone Is the Mother of Invention . . . No, Wait . . .
Hephaestus Gets Dicked Around a Lot
Orpheus Rocks Hard
Friends Don’t Let Friends Bang Cows
NORSE
The Norse Are METAL
Thor Gets Hammered
Odin Gets Construction Discounts with Bestiality
Fenrir Is a DILF
Sex 4 Gold
Thor Gets Jacked
All’s Well That Mimir’s Well
The End of the Norse World as We Know It
EGYPTIAN
Ra Has Sex with Himself
Ra and Sekhmet, or: How Beer Saved the Universe
Isis Has Bad Taste in Jewelry
Thoth Is Just Giving Out Scorpions
Horus Jerks Off in Set’s Salad
MAYAN
The Mayans Have the Most Brutal Calendar
Hunahpú and Xbalanqué: ULTIMATE BALLERS
Zipacna and the Four Hundred Boys
JUDEO-CHRISTIAN
God Makes a Lot of Stuff
Cain and Abel Invent the Sibling Rivalry
Abraham Is Totally Cool About Stabbing His Kid in the Face
Noah Is on a BOAT
King Solomon and the Disposable Baby
HINDU
The Hindus Like to Chop Dudes Up
Shiva Cannot Be Stopped
Anything Kali Can Do, Shiva Can Do Better
Ganesh Is the Very Definition of an Unplanned Pregnancy
JAPANESE
Izanami Gets Real Sore
Susanoo Has No Idea What He’s Doing
Amaterasu and the Crippling Depression
Tanukis Have Big Balls
AFRICAN
Obatala Has a Drinking Problem
Local Father Discovers Immortality with This One Weird Tip!
Eshu Elegba Is Probably the Last Dude You Want Approving Your Friendship
CHINESE
Pan Gu Is a Pretty Big Dude
Chang’e Is a Substance Abuser
Fei Chang-Fang and the Poop Mystic
SUMERIAN
The Ancient Sumerians Knew How to Party
Enki and Nimmah Party Far Too Heartily
Gilgamesh and Enkidu: ULTIMATE BROMANCE
NATIVE AMERICAN
Wisakedjak Is Highly Irresponsible
Killer-of-Enemies and the International House of Vaginas
Rabbit Takes Summer Fun to the Next Level
The Moon Is Made of Meat
UNITED STATES OF AMERICAN
The Creation Myth . . . of AMERICA
John Henry Was a Steel-Drivin’ Man
Paul Bunyan Was a Log-Drivin’ Man
Pecos Bill Was a Cattle-Drivin’ Man
Davy Crockett Talks a Big Game
This Is What Tom Cruise Believes In
CONCLUSION: The Prevailing Creation Myth
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
INTRODUCTION
(Or, the Part of This Book You Can Safely Tear Out If You Need to Make It Slightly Lighter for Some Reason)
’Sup, guys.
Here is a book I wrote, and I hope you enjoy it. A lot of what is in it comes from my website, which is on the Internet, but there is a lot of stuff that is only in this book too, like this introduction. So I figure I better use this opportunity to say some things about myths, and the writing thereof.
First off, I think anybody who complains that a retelling of a myth is “inaccurate” doesn’t really understand what it means to retell a myth, or probably even what a myth is. (Yes, there are some non-canon additions in this book. I’m sure you’ll spot a few.) I always stay true to the general arc of the story, but my retellings aren’t always canon in the obsessive fanboy sense.
I have spent the last three years frantically accumulating mythological knowledge and distilling it into what some have affectionately called “the death of intellectualism.” I am proud of this, because I think that lately, myths have suffered from a severe intellectualism overdose. Everybody’s always studying them in school, or reading watered-down versions of them to little kids, and what that means is that hardly anybody has the time to actually sit down and look at how fucking funny these thi
ngs are. I mean, for a long, LONG time, the difference between a good story and a bad story was whether a bard could memorize it well enough to not get eviscerated by a mead hall full of drunken barbarians. These things are holy, sure, in a way. But they are definitely designed to cater to the lowest common denominator.
Speaking of common denominators, one of the guys who I read a lot of while I was making this book was a dude named Joseph Campbell. He wrote a book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which is both an incredibly sweet title and an incredibly insightful book. One of the things he spends a lot of time talking about is how similar the mythologies of different cultures are, and how that arises out of our innate neurological similarities as human beings (you’ll see what I mean when you get a ways into this book).
What I think is particularly interesting, though, and what I wanted to talk about here, is one of the things he says in his introduction, which is that a lot of the psychological problems that we experience today may stem from our rejection of mythology. Like, if this stuff came out of our common human brain problems, isn’t it kind of dangerous to pretend that they’re no longer relevant? I mean, sure, they’re a little outdated, but that’s where I come in, my friends.
We can rebuild these myths. We have the technology. We can make them snappier, flashier . . . it would be hard to make them sexier . . . But you get where I’m going with this. It’s been too long since someone snatched these myths out of the past and pitched them screaming into our everyday lives.
In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell says that the role of the ancient priest, the role of guiding people through their spiritual crises with mythology, has been taken over by the modern psychologist. Well, I’m no psychologist, but I once talked to one for almost ten minutes at a grocery store, so come on: Let me massage your brain with my myths.
GREEK
Ahhh, the Greeks
dead longer than America has even existed
and still invading our lives with their myths.
If you drive a car you may have bought auto parts from Midas.
If you listen to Internet radio you might be acquainted with Pandora.
If you got laid today you might have spotted a Trojan on the condom
if you use condoms
which you should
but if you don’t
then you’re probably a lot like Zeus and/or Aphrodite
SO YOU CAN’T ESCAPE THESE MYTHS NO MATTER WHAT.
My friends, the extent to which we idolize these Greek myths is ridiculous.
Poets can’t stop talking about them
we carve crazy Greek-looking columns into all our national monuments
we name our planets after (the Roman versions of) them
and NOW
you are about to get the inside scoop on them.
CRONUS LIKES TO EAT BABIES
So everybody knows Zeus is the king of the gods right?
WRONG.
I mean, he is the king of the gods
but first of all, not everybody knows that
and second of all he wasn’t always the king of the gods.
Because, see, for a while there was this guy Uranus
who was a total asshole
(haha, Uranus)
anyway he was the king of the gods, born out of the sky
or maybe it was the aether?
but either way he was definitely married to Gaia
who some sources say also gave birth to him
so . . . awkward.
BUT LIKE I WAS SAYING
Uranus bones Gaia a bunch
because it is basically just him and Gaia alone in the universe
and what else are they gonna do?
And they have a whole bunch of kids
but then Uranus suddenly decides he hates all of the kids
and instead of like
giving them up for adoption or something
he just decides to try and STUFF THEM ALL BACK INTO HIS WIFE
like “THESE ARE NOT THE BABIES I ORDERED
I AM RETURNING THEM TO THE BABYSTORE.”
Which I think demonstrates a really shocking lack of understanding
of how babies are made.
Now, Gaia is the entire Earth, you understand
so this would be fine if they were like
normal-sized children
you know, like BABIES or something
but they are not babies
they are TITANS.
OW.
So all these titans are writhing around in Gaia’s womb going nuts
and Gaia gets seriously fed up with this nonsense and tells one of them
whose name is Cronus
“Hey, Cronus
why don’t you and your candy-assed brothers get out of my womb
and do something useful, like murder your father?”
and Cronus says “How ’bout I do you one better
and saw off his balls?”
and Gaia says “That sounds like a fantastic plan!
Here, have my ball-sawing scythe!”
So one night Uranus is about to get busy with Gaia again
I guess so he can father another baby and then stuff it back into her
but instead of getting sex he gets a SURPRISE PENISECTOMY
Cronus all jumping out from behind a rock like “HAHA, GOT YOUR DICK, DAD.”
Which is something no son should ever have to say to his father.
Then Uranus’s dick falls into the ocean
and makes a whole ton of foam
and that is where Aphrodite comes from eventually
from dick foam.
You know that painting with her standing on the shell with all the angels and stuff?
Dick foam.
All of it.
So then Cronus is king of the gods suddenly
the gods being actually the other titans
including some dudes called the Cyclopes
who you probably know about already
(they are the ones with the congentially poor depth perception)
and also some other dudes called the Hecatoncheires
who are significantly less talked about
because they have A HUNDRED HANDS EACH AND THAT IS TERRIFYING.
So naturally Uranus especially hated these freaks when he was king.
And part of Cronus’s whole campaign platform for killing Uranus
was that he was totally gonna free those dudes
but no sooner is he king than he goes PSYCH
and stuffs them right back into Gaia’s cooch AGAIN.
So obviously Gaia is pretty sore about this whole thing
and then to make matters worse
an oracle tells Cronus that his kid is gonna kill him.
and he’s like “OH SHIT
WHICH KID?
I’VE GOT LIKE A GAZILLION KIDS
I NEED TO CUT DOWN
MAYBE I SHOULD STUFF THEM INTO MY—waaaait a second
I’m becoming my father.”
So instead Cronus comes up with a more sensible alternative
which is to stuff all his kids into his STOMACH
but the fact that he is eating his kids
does nothing to stop him from banging his wife Rhea
because when you are king of the gods banging is what you do.
So she keeps having kids
and he keeps demanding to eat them
but after a while she catches on to his crafty prank
and when she gives birth to Poseidon
she’s like “That’s weird, I gave birth to a horse instead of a kid. Whoops.”
And Cronus has no reason to disbelieve her because hey
&n
bsp; if Aphrodite can come from dick foam why can’t Rhea pop out a horse?
So he eats the horse instead of Poseidon
and then he gets Rhea preggers AGAIN
and this time she is pregnant with ZEUS
and when Cronus is like “HEY, WIFE
SERVE ME UP A DOUBLE-CHILDREN CHEESEBURGER
WITH WAFFLE FRIES AND EXTRA PLACENTA”
she is super crafty and just takes a big rock
dresses it up like a baby
and then feeds it to Cronus
all like “Man, my womb is sure serving up some crazy stuff lately, huh?”
But Cronus catches on to that prank pretty fast
and starts running around putting random parts of the world in his mouth
hoping to find the one that has his son in it
so Rhea is like “Hey, Zeus you know what you should do?
You should go free those freaky mutant titans your dad imprisoned
and use them to murder your dad.”
And Zeus says, “I’ll do you one better:
how ’bout instead of killing him
I make him vomit up all my siblings
and then I just kinda . . .
imprison him somewhere?”
and Rhea is like “Well, it isn’t very brutal
but it is kinda gross. So okay.”
So Zeus and those ugly one-eyed dudes and the really ugly hundred-handed dudes
all siege the crap out of Cronus
and then they stick their fingers down his throat
and he barfs up all the gods and goddesses or at least a lot of them
(the rest of them get born later)
and then Zeus is the king of the gods
and those titan dudes are still ugly
so Zeus ends up imprisoning them all again.
So the moral of the story
is that if you are not ready to be a father
consider all of your options
before skipping directly to cannibalism.
ZEUS STICKS IT TO SEMELE A LITTLE TOO HARD
So Zeus is just cruisin’ around, right
pickin’ mortal women to bone
and he sees this priestess named Semele in one of his temples
sacrificing this bull
and then swimming naked in a river (to wash off all that blood)
Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes: A No-Bullshit Guide to World Mythology Page 1
