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

  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

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  USA / Canada / UK / Ireland / Australia / New Zealand / India / South Africa / China

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  For more information about the Penguin Group, visit penguin.com.

  Copyright © 2013 by Cory O’Brien

  Illustrations by Sarah E. Melville

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  PERIGEE is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “P” design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  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.

  Most Perigee books are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, or educational use. Special books, or book excerpts, can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write: Special Markets, Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  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 things 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.
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br />   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

  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 cr
azy 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)

  HOT.

  So Zeus

  who is an eagle right now and also a super creepy voyeur

  is like WHOA BABY

  GOTTA GET ME SOME OF THAT

  and immediately starts having an affair with her.

  Now Hera finds out about this

  like she always does.

  I mean, first of all

  after the number of women Zeus has slept with

  this chick has got to have like

  spidey senses for infidelity

  not that Zeus makes ANY EFFORT AT ALL to cover his tracks

  and second of all, why is Hera still his wife?

  I mean is he just so incredibly unfaithful