You can wrestle a thousand bears
and chew on a billion knives
but in the end, you are only as good
as the dude who stops you from dying of a gunshot while fucking a coyote.
DAVY CROCKETT TALKS A BIG GAME
DAVY
DAAAAVY CROCKETT
HE’S GOT A DONG THAT’S EIGHT MILES LONG
HE KILLED LIKE A MIIIILLION BEARS
AND HE’S SUCH A BIG PIMP THAT HE GOT HIS OWN SONG.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen
you are about to hear about the rootinest, tootinest
alligator-shootinest son of a gun
ever to be a United States Congressman?
Yep, I’m talking about Davy Crockett, apparently.
It’s okay, I didn’t know he was a congressman either
but I guess it’s not particularly surprising
given our history, re: guns.
We’ll get to the politics part later, though.
Right now, let’s talk about this guy’s childhood.
So first of all, it is a well-established, canonical fact
that Davy Crockett killed his first bear when he was THREE YEARS OLD.
Then they tried to put him in school
but he ran away
because he was afraid that he might mistake his fellow students for bears
and then MURDER THEM.
Just kidding
Davy Crockett was never afraid of anything
he just had trouble fitting his massive balls through the schoolhouse door.
Anyway, his dad gets pretty mad at him after that
mainly because he’s jealous of his son’s megaballs
so Davy Crockett runs away and kills more bears
maybe he gets raised by wolves
or maybe he raises some wolves himself and that is why wolves are so hard-core now
but either way he eventually comes back home
just in time to handle his dad’s shit for him because his dad sucks at business.
Then he runs for Congress and WINS
(on his second try).
He remains a congressman for several terms, on and off
during which time he does nothing but make threats and animal noises.
Seriously, here’s a quote:
“Who-Who-Whoop—Bow-Wow-Wow-Yough.”
This is the kind of stunning oratory Davy Crockett’s constituents come to expect.
And eventually people get tired of this, and Davy fails to get reelected
so he tells everyone to go to hell
(including his wife and kids)
and then HE goes to the next best place:
Texas.
Now at this time, Texas was kind of a fiasco.
It was this great big swath of furious gunfire trying real hard to be its own country
and Mexico was making this real hard by supplying a large amount of the gunfire.
Remember I told you about the gunfire before?
Yeah, this is one of the places where the gunfire is happening.
So Davy Crockett shows up with thirty well-armed bad boys ready to take on the world
or at least Mexico, which is really what they need in Texas at that moment
and he makes some speeches to his adoring public
like about how he can “walk like an ox
run like a fox
swim like an eel
yell like an Indian
fight like a devil
spout like a geyser
make love like a mad bull
and swallow a Mexican whole without choking
if you butter his head and pin his ears back.”
Wait, never mind. That’s just another one of his speeches from Congress.
Speeches or no speeches, it’s not too long before Davy Crockett ends up at the ALAMO
and we all know what happens at the Alamo, don’t we?
Wait, you don’t?
Are you telling me YOU DON’T REMEMBER THE ALAMO?
Well basically, there’s this bad, bad dude called General Santa Ana
and he is romping and stomping his way from Mexico into Texas
to make Texas into Mexico
and right smack-dab in the path of Santa Ana’s army is this old church called the Alamo
which has been turned into a fortress and filled with Texan dudes.
The Texan dudes aren’t doing too well, though because there aren’t that many of them
so Davy Crockett sees this as a perfect opportunity
to back up some of that ridiculous game he’s been talking
and he brings his thirty guys to the Alamo
and they put up a good fight but they still all get killed
including Davy Crockett, who dies surrounded by SIXTEEN DEAD MEXICANS
only one of which he appears to have stabbed
so I imagine he just stared all those other dudes down.
Then Santa Ana’s troops keep on marching
but they are so demoralized by having removed such a legit badass from the world
that they are pretty easy to kill after that.
Later, Disney makes a movie out of Davy Crockett’s life!
So the moral of the story
is by all means, talk the talk
but think twice before you walk the walk
because you might get shot.
THIS IS WHAT TOM CRUISE BELIEVES IN
So there’s this guy Xenu, right? He is this seriously bad dude
who also happens to be the emperor of a MASSIVE GALACTIC EMPIRE.
The empire is made up of like twenty-six stars and seventy-six planets
one of which is Earth
except we can’t call it Earth because that doesn’t sound dumb enough.
No
let’s call it Teegeeack.
So this galactic civilization is pretty much like Earth from the ’50s and ’60s
in fact, it is basically exactly the same.
Everyone wears the same clothes and they have cars and buses and stuff.
Not a very advanced galactic civilization, actually.
BUT WAIT:
Xenu is about to get deposed
for being a seriously bad dude all the time
but then he realizes
that if he just kills all the dudes who want to depose him, he can’t get deposed!
Here is the problem with that plan, though:
EVERYONE WANTS TO DEPOSE XENU.
So he’s like “Well, I guess I’d better kill everyone.
But I’m going to need some help.
HEY, PSYCHIATRISTS?
I need you to trick all these people
or rather, all these THETANS
(because that is what these guys are called)
into showing up to my place for a tax audit or something.”
And the psychiatrists are like “We have no problem with this, because we are evil.”
So all the Thetans show up to get their taxes audited . . .
Actually, hold on.
Why is it
that everyone in the galaxy shows up
for an INCOME TAX AUDIT?
Especially if we are postulating that these guys have the technology of the 1950s
which did not include faster-than-light travel as far as I can tell
so people are traveling HUNDREDS OF YEARS
in their shitty, explosion-prone spacecraft
for an INCOME TAX AUDIT.
Now if it had been a free-puppies-and-cotton-candy audit, maybe I could see this working
but if you want to depose a guy
and then he is suddenl
y like “HEY HOW ’BOUT THOSE INCOME TAXES.”
Your response should not be “RIGHT AWAY, SIR, CAN I CRADLE YOUR BALLS AS WELL?”
Where were we?
Oh yeah.
As might be expected, this whole thing turns out really badly for the Thetans.
I mean, as soon as they show up
Xenu freezes them in alcohol and takes their souls
and then he puts them in some spaceships and takes them to Earth
wait, wait, no . . . sorry . . .
TEEGEEACK
and he stacks them around active volcanoes.
But active volcanoes are not naturally dangerous enough for Xenu.
so he drops HYDROGEN BOMBS in all of the volcanoes
vaporizing all these Thetans but . . . keeping their souls intact?
Then Xenu forces all these Thetan souls into a massive 3-D movie theater
where they watch a thirty-six-hour movie encompassing all future religious symbolism.
And where is this movie theater located exactly?
Hawaii.
OBVIOUSLY.
Only a true evil mastermind would stage a massive campaign of subliminal mind torture
in the future birthplace of PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA.
All right, you with me so far?
Good.
So when the Thetans get let out of the movie theater they are so crazy disoriented
that they just start grab-assing at any body they can find
turning perfectly functional human beings
into worthless sadness engines bent on self-destruction
and THAT’S why we all suck so bad, see?
It is because a supervillain put bombs in volcanoes and then evil spirits laid eggs in our minds.
This is an actual religion, guys
made up by an actual dude.
His name is L. Ron Hubbard and he is actually a science-fiction writer
and he calls this religion SCIENTOLOGY
and this religion makes something like five hundred million dollars a year.
But the worst part is that if you try and learn all this stuff
without first preparing yourself to learn it by paying a lot of money again and again
the shock will be so great that you will get pneumonia.
So the moral is
don’t read this myth unless you want to get pneumonia.
CONCLUSION
The Prevailing Creation Myth
Here’s one more to go out on:
So back in the back in the back in the back in the back in the day
there was this tiiiiny ball of all the matter in the universe, and that’s ALL there was.
But don’t be fooled by its size, my friends.
This matter
was DENSE.
Denser than the beats issuing from the most legitimate of subwoofers.
Denser than the skull of world headbutt champion Maxx “The Russian Concussion” Headbutts
Denser than the cream of a coconut banana cream pie
on the face of a clown who is going for the world record for most pies to the face.
This matter was DENSE.
Where did it come from?
Who knows!
That’s not important right now.
What’s important is that at some point
all this matter gets REALLY sick of hanging out with the same matter all the time
so it does what matter does best
or at least, most awesomely:
IT EXPLOOOODES.
Now, friends
I have seen some explosions in my life.
All of them were sweet.
Some of them I might even call DOUBLE SWEET
but nothing can top an explosion SO INTENSE
that it is still going on ALMOST FOURTEEN BILLION YEARS LATER.
That is why, to this day, if you look through a telescope
you are going to see the rest of the universe hauling ass away from you.
Anyway, lemme backtrack a little.
So after exploding as hard as it can for a real long time
all the matter turns into particles called electrons, protons, and neutrons
and all these particles get a little lonely and start looking for other particles to hook up with.
And when they get together
they pull some Voltron shit and turn into ELEMENTS
like hydrogen and helium and stuff.
Then all the hydrogen gets together and is like “Hey
I know we were all just exploding as hard as possible a minute ago
but you know what would be cool?
If we exploded EVEN HARDER.”
So they turn into STARS
and then their explosions produce a bunch of other elements, which form big clouds around them
and then those clouds get hit by MORE explosions
from when other stars became TOO EXTREME
and they start spinning so fast
that the elements get all frisky with each other and turn into less explode-y balls of stuff
like planets, mainly
and one of those planets is EARTH.
But Earth was not always sweet beach parties and rock-and-roll music, my friends.
No, Earth used to be 100 percent MAGMA
with volcanoes going off ALL THE TIME
AND THEN AN ASTEROID SLAMS INTO IT
AND RIPS A BIG CHUNK OF IT OFF INTO SPACE
AND THAT is where the moon comes from.
But then Earth gets older and chills out a little
and forms an atmosphere out of steam and volcano spit
and it gets a bunch of water by being constantly bombarded by GIANT BALLS OF ICE
and for some reason, all of this adds up to make it a hospitable place for things to live.
So little things start living there
they come from space, or from Earth depending on who you ask.
They mainly start out in the big water parts
(which cover most of everything
just like in the Native American creation myths
and the Egyptian creation myth
and that part in the Bible where God gets real pissed)
And these little things learn this really neat trick
which is how to make more of themselves using CHEMICAL REACTIONS
except . . . chemical reactions aren’t always accurate
so sometimes they make really gross, messed-up versions of themselves
and sometimes they make PROTOZOIC SUPERHEROES.
So the messed-up versions die and the superheroes get to make more superheroes
and eventually someone figures out how to have legs
and then they get curious about this whole land thing and they crawl onto it
and then there are DINOSAURS, but they die
and then later, people!
Now, I know what you’re probably thinking:
You’re probably thinking “Wait a second, this isn’t a myth.
This is science!”
Well, yes and no.
See, this
is a story
and like most stories, the most important thing isn’t whether it’s true or not
the most important thing is whether it gives us a satisfying explanation of what we see in the world
and maybe some rudimentary means of predicting what will happen next.
That’s all any of these myths have been trying to do:
to take a huge, terrifying phenomenon
something you can only stare at and go “whoa”
and turn it into something more our size
some
thing we can fit inside our puny brains.
Something really cool, even:
a story.
Me, I don’t see much of a difference between Science and Religion.
First off, in order to successfully apply science
there are always going to be certain things that you’re taking on faith
like that the universe behaves rationally or that the accumulation of knowledge is a good thing.
Without those assumptions you end up like that Descartes dude
unable to prove anything except that you exist which is just boring.
And I mean, the first natural philosophers
(the Greek dudes who are widely credited with getting the whole science thing rolling)
were offering theories that sounded a lot like myths.
“The world is a bunch of islands floating on water!”
“We live on the back of a space turtle, in space!”
And those explanations were discarded as more satisfying ones came along
just like how no one really worships Zeus anymore
because they’ve found gods more compelling than a big adulterer who shoots lightning.
Some people say that it’s that willingness to reject discredited views
that willingness to change
that makes science different from religion.
I’d say that that willingness to change is just a tenet of the religion of science.
Hell, voodoo’s gone through an awful lot of changes too
and a Taoist monk systematically unlearns his world knowledge
as fast as any scientist can learn it.
Now, I’m not trying to undermine the importance of science
personally, I’m all about it.
And I’m not saying I think Creationism and Evolution should be taught side by side in schools.
Largely because Creation Science is taught as an aggressive argument against evolution
as opposed to something that stands on its own.
Plus it misuses a lot of the methodology of science in a very misleading way
without accepting most of the founding principles
which would be a lot like coming up with a basic theory of Christianity
based on the assumption that God doesn’t exist and that anyone who thinks he does is an asshole.
No, see what I’m trying to say is that I watch people organizing themselves
into these neat little conflicts:
Atheists versus Christians
Jews versus Muslims
Fundamentalists versus basically everybody
and I feel like a kid in a broken home who can’t get Mom and Dad to stop fighting.
Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes: A No-Bullshit Guide to World Mythology Page 19
