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

by O'Brien, Cory

  “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

  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

  whic
h 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)

  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.

  ENKI AND NIMMAH PARTY FAR TOO HEARTILY

  So when last we left our Sumerian gods

  they were all busy stealing each other and crashing boats and prank-sexing each other in costumes.

  But in the interim things seem to have slowed down a bit.

  Now all the gods are working in the fields for minimum wage

  just so that they can get something to EAT.

  Wait, what?

  These are the gods we are talking about

  the asshole children with superpowers who run the universe

  and here they are, SHARECROPPING?

  What gives?

  Well, that’s exactly what all the gods are saying to themselves

  when suddenly, it hits them:

  This kind of boring shit is what PEOPLE are for

  And they TOTALLY FORGOT TO INVENT THOSE.

  So they get some clay

  and they mold it into some dude shapes

  and then they stick it in a mother goddess for a while

  and BOOM

  PEOPLE!

  So now the gods have someone to do all the farmwork for them

  and they can get back to the preferred Sumerian pastime:

  PARTYING.

  Everybody gets pretty wasted

  especially Enki and this womb goddess named Nimmah.

  So they’re hitting on each other in the way only drunk people can:

  Nimmah is like “DUDE YOU ARE SO WORTHLESS.

  WITHOUT MY SICK WOMB SKILLS ALL THE DUDES WOULD BE DEFORMED.”

  And Enki is like “PISH POSH, MY FRIEND.

  YOU CAN MAKE DUDES AS DEFORMED AS YOU PLEASE

  AND I CAN STILL FIND JOBS FOR THEM.”

  So obviously this turns into a contest.

  Nimmah goes about trying to invent the most messed-up dudes she can

  and Enki is passing out jobs like a prostitute on a hot streak.

  It’s like

  Parkinson’s?

  GRAND VIZIER.

  No dick?

  ROYAL GUARD.

  No eyes?

  WOMAN, HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF A DUDE BY THE NAME OF HOMER?

  So this goes on for a while

  and finally Nimmah is like “Ugh, fine.

  I guess god CAN’T make a dude so messed up that even he can’t employ him.”

  And Enki is like “Not so fast, sugarpants. Let me try.”

  And he picks up the clay

  and he just makes the most utterly hideous sack of meat and pain

  ever to grace the flesh circus.

  This thing’s spine is all crooked and its hands are shaking

  and its butthole is all caved in and it can’t walk without its feet busting open.

  Nimmah tries to feed it some bread but it can’t even EAT.

  And Nimmah is like “Whoa, dude, what’s your secret?”

  And Enki is like “Oh, I just didn’t put it in a womb ’cause I don’t have one.

  This baby is PREMATURE.”

  And Nimmah’s like “Oh . . .

  Oh god.

  It is just now dawning on me how completely gross this all is.

  Let’s try to never do this again, okay?”

  But joke’s on them, because that stuff still happens.

  Except that as is usually the case when the joke is on the gods

  the joke is actually on us.

  So the moral of the story

  is that you should never get drunk when you have superpowers.

  GIL
GAMESH AND ENKIDU: ULTIMATE BROMANCE

  Oh my gods and goddesses.

  Have you heard about this Gilgamesh guy?

  Seriously, the ancient Sumerians actually describe him

  as a dude who is “perfect in awesomeness.”

  Also, his dad is some random dude but his mom is a goddess who bangs his dad SO HARD

  that Gilgamesh is TWO-THIRDS GOD AND ONE-THIRD HUMAN

  THAT’S RIGHT

  they bone with SUCH FURIOUS DEDICATION that they DESTROY MATH.

  But here is the problem, guys:

  Gilgamesh is such a badass

  he cannot comprehend how people can be ANY LESS BADASS THAN HE

  so he makes all the dudes in the city he is king of constantly do feats of strength with him

  and also there is a law that Gilgamesh gets to bone everyone’s wives.

  So everyone’s bitching to the goddess Eiru like “Hey, Eiru

  can you make a dude who is a bad enough dude to cockwrestle Gilgamesh?

  Because we are worried that if you do not Gilgamesh will sex us all to death.”

  And Eiru is like “WELL I was wondering what to do with this rock I have.

  BOOM. NOW IT IS A PERSON.”

  This guy that Eiru creates is called Enkidu

  and he is basically just Cousin Itt from The Addams Family

  if Cousin Itt had the ability to TEAR YOU IN HALF AND THEN FEED YOU TO YOURSELF.

  He pretty much just runs screaming through the forest punching bears, every day

  until one day some namby-pamby hunter sees him drinking water with all his sweet animal pals

  and the hunter is like “THAT DUDE IS SO MANLY HE MADE MY GUN GO LIMP”

  And he goes and asks someone else to help him get rid of this hairy dude

  but the dude he is whining to is like “Dude, chill OUT.

  Just go hit up Gilgamesh for one of his many, many whores

  and then get Enkidu to bang that whore

  and then all his animal magnetism will get sucked into the whore.

  BOOM. SCIENCE.”

  So the hunter goes to Gilgamesh, who hooks him up with an exceedingly legitimate ho

  and he brings her back to the ol’ watering hole

  and she flashes her tits at Enkidu

  and then they proceed to bang for SEVEN DAYS STRAIGHT

  and afterward the ho makes Enkidu take a shower

  which scares away all his animal pals because animals do not like hygiene.

  So Enkidu is like “Damn, I gots to find me the source of all these comely hos.”