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.

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 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)

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

that it wraps around and he is actually a good husband?

Anyway, Hera finds out about this latest sexcapade

and instead of divorcing her husband

she decides to prank him.

So she goes down to Earth and finds Semele

and she’s like “Hey, I’m Zeus’s wife.”

and Semele is like “AAAAH DON’T KILL ME”

and Hera is like “Hahaha I’m not going to kill you.

I am fine with my husband’s infidelity for some reason.

In fact I just wanted to let you know

that he and I have WAYYYY better sex than you and him.”

And Semele says “I dunno, man we have had some pretty epic boner adventures.”

And Hera says “Oh honey, you don’t even know.

Next time you two are doing the horizontal monster mash

ask him to stick it to you like he sticks it to ME.”

So Semele says “Hmm, okay

you can’t possibly have any ulterior motives for telling me this.

I’ll do it.”

So next time she and Zeus get busy

she is like “Hold on there, bad boy

make love to me like you make love to your WIFE.”

and Zeus is like “Aww man, way to kill the mood.

Look, if I did that, you would explode.”

and Semele, thinking that he is speaking figuratively

is like “Come on, handsome, I can take it.

and anyway, I totally won’t believe you’re Zeus unless you do this.”

and Zeus is like “WHAT? NO, I’M TOTALLY ZEUS WHO SAYS I’M NOT?”

and he turns into lightning

and sets her on fire

and she explodes

and Zeus is like “Aww dammit

I knew this was gonna happen.

Now I gotta save the baby I was keeping inside of her

especially since I’m pretty sure my wife is gonna try and eat it or something.”

so Zeus grabs the baby

as it flies out of its mother’s exploding corpse

and he thinks real fast and sews it up in his thigh

and then after a few months of walking VERY awkwardly

and avoiding his wife even more than he already does

he goes and hides in a cave

and gives birth to this baby out his thigh

and this baby is none other

than Dionysus

the god of drinking so hard you wake up with TWO hangovers and then they FIGHT.

And later

when Dionysus grows up

he goes and frees Semele from Hades

and makes her a goddess

with a different name for some reason

(Thyone)

maybe so Hera won’t go catfight her ass.

So basically what this story teaches us

is that when you are having sex

you should never be lightning

but that’s not the last tomfoolery Dionysus finds himself in the middle of.

Oh no, my friends.

Read on . . .

KING MIDAS IS: GOLDFINGER

So one day, Dionysus wakes up from a drunken stupor to find his foster father missing.

This surprises no one

because, see, Dionysus would not stand for having a foster father

who was not some kind of alcoholic satyr

and so naturally the two of them just get shitfaced like all the time

and Dionysus doesn’t even need to worry about being hung over at school

’cause his alcoholic foster father IS ALSO HIS SCHOOLMASTER.

His name is Silenus, by the way. He’s awesome.

Anyway, Dionysus wakes up one day and Silenus is not there

because he got real hammered and passed out in a rose garden

which happened to belong to this king named Midas.

Now, Midas is a pretty good king

and I will tell you why:

It is because when he finds some drunk satyr passed out in his rose garden

he does not get all butthurt about it and call the guards.

No, he invites the guy inside and makes him some sandwiches

and lets him crash on his couch for TEN DAYS while he nurses his epic hangover

at which point he gives him a ride home to Dionysus’s place

and Dionysus is all “NICE YOU BROUGHT MY DAD BACK.

Do you want a beer?”

And Midas is all “No thanks, man, I gotta drive home.”

And Dionysus is like “Well, I want to do something to thank you

but all I’ve got are these beers and these wishes.”

And Midas is like “I WISH FOR EVERYTHING I TOUCH TO TURN TO GOLD.”

and Dionysus is like “DONE.”

And then he and his dad go off to get trashed again

and probably get lost and end up granting some more ridiculous wishes

because that is how they do.

Anyway, Midas gets home and is like “GENTLEMEN

PREPARE ME A MARVELOUS FEAST.”

And he sits down at his ludicrous feast table

and he picks up this big ol’ leg of mutton

but before he can put it in his mouth

IT TURNS INTO GOLD

and he is like “OH NO.

Well, at least I can still get drunk.”

And he picks up his wineglass

which turns to gold, obviously

and he downs his wine

except that when it goes into his mouth it also turns into gold

and probably chokes him.

Maybe he even throws up in his mouth a little

but if he does

that shit TURNS TO GOLD.

AWESOME.

Actually I’m not sure what’s keeping all of Midas’s organs and bodily fluids

from turning his body into a California Gold Rush of suffering

but thank gods for the little things, right?

Anyway, King Midas is pretty hungry and thirsty

and he can’t think of anything to do about this shit

so he goes into his house and just starts turning everything into gold

because gods dammit

if he’s gonna starve to death

at least he is gonna starve to death in a weird gold house

and he gets so caught up in doing this

that he does not notice his daughter come into the room

and his daughter loves him so much

that she just wants to surprise him with a BIIIIG HUG

only she is the one who gets surprised

’CAUSE HER ASS GETS TURNED TO GOLD

not just her ass either

her whole body, and also her clothes.

Also, she is not the only one who is surprised

Midas is pretty surprised too

because he has just accidentally killed his daughter

but also made her like a billion times more valuable.

Seriously, who needs kids when you have solid gold statues of your kids?

But Midas doesn’t see it that way

because he has some kind of weird parent thing.

So he starts crying

and his tears probably turn into gold

which is incredibly uncomfortable

and just makes him cry more

but finally he gets ahold of himself and he’s like “HEY DIONYSUS

COME FIX THIS SHIT FOR ME.”

and Dionysus is like “What? Oh shit.

What have you done, man.

What is it with you mortals always starving to death and petrifying your daughters?”

Okay, well, I guess what you can do

is go bathe in this river called Pactolus

and that will solve your problems.”

so Midas does that, and it takes away his superpower

while simultaneously turning all the sand in the river gold

but does nothing to fix the fact

that Midas’s daughter is made of gold

which was kind of the most important thing but whatever.

So you know how when you’re eating a food you really like

and then you get the flu

and you vomit nonstop for like nine whole days

and then suddenly you do not like that food anymore?

Okay.

So imagine your favorite food is gold

and instead of an upset stomach

your daughter is dead.

Now you understand how Midas feels.

So he turns into a filthy gold-hating hippie

and abandons his entire kingdom

and becomes a follower of this god named Pan

who is a satyr and is in charge of playing music on some pipes

and Midas gets taught to play music by Orpheus

who I will totally tell you about later

because he is SO SWEET.

So then one day Pan is talking shit about Apollo the god of guitar riffs and prophecy

and saying how he can totally play better music than that guy

so Apollo shows up and is like “Bring it.”

and Pan definitely brings it

and Midas is all clapping his hands and singing along

but then Apollo just plays a SINGLE POWER CHORD

and this power chord is so legit that the judge just immediately gives him the win

But Midas is like “Dude, he didn’t even play a song.

Try not to choke on that dick, guys.”

and Apollo is all “I’LL TEACH YOU TO LISTEN TO MUSIC CRITICALLY.”

and BAM

Midas suddenly has donkey ears.

He gets super-embarrassed and hides his ears under a massive turban all the time

but of course his barber knows his secret

because even as a filthy hippie Midas is too regal to cut his own hair

and he swears the barber to secrecy

but the secret is TOO GREAT AND IMPORTANT FOR ONE MAN TO BEAR

so the barber does the only sensible thing

which is to dig a hole in the ground and whisper the secret into it.

But then a bunch of reeds grow out of the dirt and start whispering the secret everywhere

like “KING MIDAS HAS DONKEY EARS”

even though it is totally none of their business.

All of which just further proves the old adage:

Mo’ money

mo’ problems.

TIRESIAS IS TWICE THE MAN/WOMAN YOU’LL EVER BE

Let me introduce you to the baddest prophet around.

His name is TIRESIAS.

So besides having an awesome name

Tiresias is this guy who was out hiking one day

and he sees these two snakes doing it

and so he just goes “WHAT?

I DON’T WANNA SEE NO SNAKES DOIN’ IT UP ON THIS MOUNTAIN.”

and just runs up and beats them to death with his trusty walking stick

LIKE A BADASS.

Now that’s all well and good

but apparently Hera was REALLY excited about seeing these snakes do it

because then she gets REALLY pissed

and says “SO YOU LIKE BEATING THE SHIT OUT OF SNAKES, HUH?

WELL HOW ABOUT I MAKE YOU

. . . into a woman for some reason.”

So bam, Tiresias becomes a woman for seven years.

He doesn’t treat it as a punishment basically at all

and in fact he just shits right into Hera’s hands

by becoming the best prostitute the world has ever seen.

S/he invents so many new sex positions

that they have to revise gravity to accommodate them.

It is that kind of party.

So after seven years of awesome loveless sex

Tiresias is wandering through the mountains again

and he/she sees two snakes doing it

and just says “Fuck it” and runs up and beats them to death again

at which point Hera kind of sighs

and realizes that she is not going to teach this motherfucker anything about anything

and turns him back into a man

because if you are going around beating the shit out of reptiles

what are you, if not the ultimate man?

CUT TO A FEW WEEKS LATER.

Zeus and Hera have kind of an argument

which is not unusual for them.

The argument is about who enjoys sex more:

dudes or chicks.

Hera says it’s gotta be dudes

presumably because she has never enjoyed sex with her awful cheating husband

and Zeus says it’s definitely gotta be chicks

presumably because he has a hyperinflated sense of his own sexual prowess

so the two of them yell at each other and throw lightning for a while

until finally they’re like “Wait a second

we totally know a dude who has also been a chick

and has had SCADS of sex as both types.

Maybe we should try asking him?”

So they go hit up Tiresias like “Yo

who has sexier sex, dudes or chicks?”

And Tiresias is like “OH MAN

I thought you would never ask.

Now, I have had some sex in my day

I’ve played naked Twister and Boner Bingo

and all the different kinds of Yahtzee

but I’ve gotta say

when it comes to chicks and dudes

I actually figured it out mathematically

and it turns out chicks enjoy sex exactly NINE TIMES MORE THAN DUDES.”

And Zeus is like “HAH!

I TOLD YOU, HERA!

JUST BECAUSE I PUT NO EFFORT INTO OUR SEX LIFE

DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOUR EXPERIENCE IS THE NORM.”

And Hera is like “GODS DAMMIT, TIRESIAS

MY HUSBAND DID NOT NEED ANOTHER EXCUSE TO NOT TRY IN BED.

LET’S SEE HOW MUCH YOU ENJOY SEX

WITHOUT YOUR EYESSSS.”

and Tiresias is like “Well, actually the eyes are not erogenous zones so . . .

OH SHIT, I’M BLIND NOW.”

And Zeus is like “Hera, why you gotta be like that?

Is it because I blackmailed you into marrying me and now I only bang whores?

Because if so then there’s no reason to take it out on Tiresias.

Yo, T-dawg, I’m sorry about my wife, bro.

Lemme go ahead and give you the gift of prophecy to make up for that.”

And Tiresias is like “Okay that works out pretty well actually.”

And then after that he shows up in a whole bunch of stories

and he is always right about everything he says

and no one ever fucks with him because he is psychic and also probably a sex god.

So the moral of this story is for the fellas.

Fellas

before you complain that pleasing your lady is too difficult

try walking a mile in her boobs.

And as long as we’re talking about things Tiresias did . . .

NARCISSUS PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE JUST LEARNED TO MASTURBATE

So this story begins, like all good stories, with a hot nymph.

She’s blue

literally, her skin is blue.

That’s not really important to the story I’m just giving you all the facts.

Anyway, one day she’s out near some river

and the local river god Cephisus

who no one has ever heard of

is like “Maybe if I rape this nymph the other gods will take me seriously.”

So he half drowns poor Liriope by encircling her with his winding streams

(wink wink)

and then at that point she really has nothing to do but get seduced

so they have a kid.

This kid is named Narcissus.

Narcissus is gorgeous.

Like, imagine if someone could look exactly like bacon tastes

and you have a pretty good picture of Narcissus

(unless you’re a vegetarian).

So his mom is like “Oh snap

my skin is BLUE and I STILL got raped.

What the hell is going to happen to my kid?

He’s not even a year old and already looks like he could suck the red off a fire truck.”

So she takes Narcissus to see the baddest motherfucker in the land

who is of course Tiresias

And Liriope is like “Is my son going to get raped?”

and Tiresias looks up from his work

which is beating snakes to death with a stick whenever they try to get their freak on

And he’s like “Bitch, please.

Kid’s gonna be fine

just as long as he doesn’t COME TO KNOW HIMSELF.”

And Liriope is like “What the hell does that even mean?”

And Tiresias is like “QUIET, WOMAN.

I THINK I HEAR SOME SNAKES HAVING SEX.”

Then he runs off, brandishing his stick.

So Liriope is just like whatever

and Narcissus grows up to be a strapping young lad

so strapping in fact

that by the time he is sixteen

every last person in his town wants to bang the bajeezus out of him.

But Narcissus is like “Sorry ladies/dudes/centaurs

I have unreasonably high standards.”

So basically, no one is happy.

Then one day

Narcissus goes walking in the forest

where bad shit just generally tends to happen

and this nymph named Echo sees him

and of course, being as this nymph has eyes

she is instantly head over vagina in love with him.

There is a problem though

which is that “Echo” is not just some kind of playful nickname

it refers to the fact

that she cannot say anything except for things she has just heard other people say

because Hera got pissed off about how she used to use her silver tongue

to buy Zeus some precious escape time during his adultery runs

and maybe also used her silver tongue on Zeus in other ways.

Would that feel good, even?

A silver tongue?

ANYWAY.

So Echo is stalking Narcissus through the woods

not able to say anything

but I guess she makes some kind of noise

’cause then Narcissus is all “WHO’S THERE?”

and Echo is like “WHO’S THERE?”

and Narcissus is like “NARCISSUS”

and Echo is like “NARCISSUS”

and Narcissus is like “YES”

which Echo mistakes for consent

so she jumps out of the woods like “YESSSS”

and comes running toward him, totally nude

and Narcissus is like “Hey, totally naked hot nymph

allow me to introduce you to my unreasonably high standards.

Unreasonably high standards, meet naked hot nymph.”

So Echo runs back into the woods crying

except she probably can’t even cry without hearing someone else do it first

but anyway she gets pretty butthurt about the whole thing

and not in the good way that she wanted

so she just mopes around the forest

until her body actually DISAPPEARS

and only her voice remains

and then she uses that voice

to pray to Aphrodite

(or actually Venus because this is the Roman version of the story)

and is like “Mess this dude up for me, okay?”

I’m not sure how she managed to make up this prayer all on her own

but I like to think she probably did it

by hanging around the legions of chicks

who all wished Narcissus was dead because he wouldn’t bone them.

So Venus hears the prayer and is like DONE

and Narcissus suddenly gets super thirsty

and the only water in the woods happens to be this deep pool

of crystal-clear springwater

so he starts drinking out of it

but then he stops

because he realizes that what he is drinking

is the face of the most beautiful man he has ever seen.

He falls so in love with this hunk of pubescent glory

that he pines after this dude for like, days

until he realizes

PLOT TWIST

the dude in the pond is actually a reflection OF NARCISSUS HIMSELF

because apparently

for the last SIXTEEN YEARS OF HIS LIFE

he has NEVER SEEN HIS OWN REFLECTION.

He has never taken a bath

or like, had a cup of water

or, you know, stared REALLY HARD at a bald guy.

He has led a pretty sheltered life, apparently.

So anyway he gets REALLY DEPRESSED

and like, rips off all his clothes

and refuses to eat

which not only makes him more attractive to himself

but also dead

and he goes down to basically the shittiest part of hell

and spends the rest of forever staring at his reflection in the river Styx.

Meanwhile, Echo’s voice shows up in the woods and finds Narcissus’s body

and is like “Dammit.

Wish I’d kept my body.

Can’t even fondle his corpse now.”

And she kind of feels pretty bad about the whole thing

and makes a flower grow out of his corpse

as a kind of a consolation prize for dying.

So from now on

every time you see a narcissus flower

just remember

that if you are beautiful

you should never drink water

because it is too dangerous.

PERSEPHONE IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTION . . . NO, WAIT . . .

So Persephone is the daughter of this chick Demeter

who is the goddess of like fertility and crops and whatnot

and she is also incredibly hot.

So hot, in fact

that Hades is down in the underworld (which is also called Hades actually)

and he looks up one day and he sees her and he goes “DAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAA

AAAAA

AAAA

YUM.

I gotta get me some of that.”

So he just pops on up to the world in his black chariot of ultimate wretchedness

and he says “Hey, little girl do you want to come to hell?”

and she probably would have said no

only he kidnapped her.

Basically Hades is the ultimate ladies’ man.

So then they’re kind of hanging out down in hell

and it’s always been pretty depressing in hell

but it’s actually a little bit better with Persephone there

because she’s not a little emo bitch like Hades is all the time

even though he has a WHOLE BADASS KINGDOM ALL TO HIMSELF.

Seriously, why’s he always gotta be moping?

Anyway, Persephone pulls some interior decorating like some spooky feng shui and shit

and WHAM

hell is a pretty okay place to live all of a sudden.

But all is not well

because meanwhile, Persephone’s mom, Demeter, is up in the regular world

fretting the shit out of herself over her missing daughter

and it does not help at all when she finds out that she was kidnapped by the king of hell.

So Demeter gets real depressed

and when Demeter gets depressed

all the plants die

and everything freezes

and being alive just kind of starts to suck

because she is the goddess of like crops and seasons and whatnot.

And see, up to this point no one has even heard of winter

but now they are getting nothing but winter

nonstop and out of control

24/7/365

except actually maybe only for several months

but either way

shit is intolerable.

So Zeus gets fed up

and he goes and hits Demeter up, and he says

“HEY, BITCH, WHAT’S WITH ALL THE WINTER?”

and Demeter says “Hmm, I dunno.

Maybe it’s because your brother is raping my daughter in hell?”

And Zeus says “Hmm, good point.”

So he goes down to the underworld

and he says “Listen, bro

I hate to block your cock, but like

shit is completely intolerable up in the real world

and it is downright impossible for me to get any quality dick laid down

at this ball-freezing temperature.

So give Demeter her daughter back

and don’t you dare try any funny business

such as for example feeding her any food at all from the underworld

because as you know

if she eats any of it

she will be forced to stay in Hades with you forever.

’Cause that’s one of those dumb rules you have when you’re a god.”

And Hades says “Yeah, bro, for sure. That would be a tragedy.

Nobody wants that.”

and then as soon as Zeus is out the door Hades turns around

all like “’Sup, Persephone?”

and Persephone says “’Sup?”

and Hades is like “Hey, are you hungry?”

and she says “Well, now that you mention it

I haven’t eaten or drunk a single thing since you brought me down here months ago.”

(Hades is the consummate host)

So Hades goes “Well, hey

absolutely the only thing we have to eat here in the underworld

is POMEGRANATES.”

(Which is yet another reason the underworld is awesome and Hades should stop whining.)

So he starts feeding her the pomegranate seeds one at a time

and he manages to stuff six into her mouth

when her mom shows up

like “Okay, honey

time to go home”

and Persephone says “Okay

I was getting kind of tired of getting raped in hell anyway.”

and Hades says “HAHAHA PRANK’D

I FED HER SOME FOOD SHE HAS TO STAY NOW”

And Demeter is like “ZEUUUUSSSS!”

And Zeus is extremely flustered

because he has probably just been interrupted in the midst of a whole litany of vigorous boning

and he says “OKAY

YOU KNOW WHAT YOU GUYS

JUST . . . JUST FUCKING COMPROMISE

LIKE I KNOW THERE’S A RULE ABOUT THE FOOD OR WHATEVER

AND I DONT EVEN KNOW WHY WE HAVE THAT RULE HONESTLY

BUT LIKE

I AM LITERALLY FREEZING MY BALLS OFF UP HERE

SO HOW ABOUT HADES GETS HER FOR SIX MONTHS

AND DEMETER GETS HER FOR THE OTHER SIX?”

and Demeter says “Fine

but I’m gonna freeze the shit out of everything for the six months my daughter is gone.”

and Zeus says “Fine

guess I’m just going to have to double up on the amount of banging I do in the summer.”

and Hades says “Fine

I guess I’ll have to double up on the amount of banging I do during the winter.”

And it works out in the end

because both Zeus and Hades know

that when either one of them is getting laid

he does not have to ever worry about thinking about the other one having any sex

and just ruining the mood

because they both know for a fact

that they are never getting laid at the same time ever.

That’s how that works.

So the moral of this story is once again for the gentlemen:

Gentlemen

learn to cook

one home-cooked meal, and BAM

she will be trapped inside of your house forever

or for half the year if she has a good lawyer.

HEPHAESTUS GETS DICKED AROUND A LOT

So one of the most inexplicable things about the Greek pantheon

is that Aphrodite is married to Hephaestus

Aphrodite is like the high school cheerleader of the Greek pantheon

and Hephaestus is the guy with the gimp leg

who is always making historically accurate World War II models.

He doesn’t actually make World War II models

because World War II has not been invented yet

but he does have a gimp leg I’m not making that part up.

He got it because when Zeus and Hera first had him

he was SO UGLY

that they actually THREW HIM OFF OF MOUNT OLYMPUS

and he fell for seven days

and they only ever let him back up on Olympus

once he showed them that he could make them really nice jewelry.

ZEUS AND HERA:

ULTIMATE PARENTING

Look, the point is that Aphrodite is the goddess of boning everyone all the time

and Hephaestus is the god of sitting in a forge all day

making armor and swords for all the muscle-y dudes

who go out and murder other muscle-y dudes and then bone everyone all the time

So why the fuck is Hephaestus married to Aphrodite?

How did he score such sweet tail?

Well, first of all Hera felt bad about chucking him off a cliff

and her idea of an apology was to GIVE HIM APHRODITE.

(Ultimate parenting)

And second of all

Aphrodite is the goddess of boning EVERYONE

ALL THE TIME

so it’s not like she’s gonna actually be faithful or anything

and in fact she is sort of making a habit of boning Ares the god of war

who is like the quarterback to her slutty cheerleader.

She is actually doing this IN HEPHAESTUS’S BED when he is out working at the forge

probably making armor for Ares even.

But Hephaestus gets wise to their crafty scheme

mainly because the Sun is a gossipy bitch

and he decides to show his cheating whore of a wife what’s what

WITH SCIENCE.

So he melts down the armor he was making for Ares

and he uses all the metal to make some chains

and then he uses his mad skills to turn these chains into a giant indestructible net

that is also invisible somehow

and then he hangs the net over his bed like a canopy

and the next time Aphrodite and Ares hop in there for a little bit of wango bango

Hephaestus leaps into the room all like

“SURPRISE, BITCH!”

Except he can’t leap because he has a gimp leg

but anyway he drops the net on them

and it traps them on his bed

BUT THE JOKE’S ON HIM because they had no intention of leaving the bed

and they’re both like “Welp

we’re caught.

Might as well continue our boner fiesta in plain view.”

BUT THE JOKE’S ON THEM

because Hephaestus invited all the other gods to come hang out in his bedroom today.

So they all start rolling in

and Dionysus is laughing his ass off

because he can totally see nipple

and Poseidon pokes Zeus and says “Would you tap that?”

and Zeus says “Probably I already have.”

(I am not making that up.

That shit is in The Odyssey.)

But really the joke is still on Hephaestus

because his wife is boning another man right in front of him

and even the best blacksmith cannot repair a broken relationship.

ORPHEUS ROCKS HARD

Seriously, this dude has all the hookups.

First of all his mom is a Muse

specifically the Muse of singing.

Second of all, when he is like five years old Apollo shows up at his house

all like, “WHAT UP, ORPHEUS

I AM HERE TO BANG ONE OF YOUR MOM’S SISTERS

HEY, DO YOU WANT A LYRE?”

For those of you who don’t know

a lyre is basically a kind of ultraharp.

Pretty much how it works

is if Apollo gives you one then you have a future in the music industry.

So naturally at some point Orpheus just goes down to Earth

and starts melting face with his amazing music.

Seriously, this shit is fantastic.

It is so fantastic that when this dude Jason is getting some Argonauts together

(Argonauts are dudes who go around on a boat called the Argo)

he is like

“I know we are all seriously bad dudes on this ship

with like muscles and stuff

but you know what we need?

We need a dude with a lyre.”

And they get Orpheus.

And then when they sail past the Sirens

who sing such sexy music that any dude who hears it drowns himself trying to hit that

Orpheus proceeds to solo SO HARD

that nobody can hear the Sirens

and anyway nobody cares

because Orpheus is wayyyy better than those skanks.

So obviously a dude like this is pulling down tail left and right

like he’s trying on costumes at the Godzilla costume warehouse

but his favorite chick is this broad named Eurydice.

I don’t know that much about her

but probably she was pretty hot

because, I mean Orpheus was essentially the ultimate rock star

with, like

additional rock stars taped to each of his fingers.

He had his pick of the crop is what I’m saying.

But Eurydice is none too bright.

because one day

when she and Orpheus are out walking

she steps on a shitload of snakes

and the snakes kill her, obviously.

This is what happens when you step on snakes.

If only Tiresias had been around this might never have happened.

So Orpheus just sits right down and composes THE ULTIMATE EMO SYMPHONY.

It is so incredibly drenched in secret pain

that Zeus comes down and is like “Hey, man

I cannot get these chicks in the mood with this Linkin Park shit you got goin’ on.

Play some Barry Manilow or something, jeez.”

But Orpheus says “Sorry, man I am just way too bummed.”

and Zeus says “Okay, crybaby

why don’t you just go down to Hades and get your lady back, then?”

Orpheus says “I think I will.”

So Orpheus goes to Hades

and he just charms the pants off of Hades so hard

with his lyre and his singing

that Hades says

“Fine, dude.

Give me back my pants you just charmed off

and I will give you back your woman

but only if you pass a ludicrous and arbitrary test:

See, your chick’s ghost will follow you all the way out of Hades

but you can’t look at her until you’re both in the real world, or I get her for keepsies.

Make sense?”

and Orpheus says, “Not really, but okay.”

And he starts walking.

And on the way out he sees a bunch of demons

So he’s like “Hey, demons.”

And they’re like “’Sup, Orpheus?”

And he says, “Oh, just leading my chick out of hell.”

And they say, “Your chick? What chick?”

and then they kind of chuckle a little bit.

So this is making Orpheus nervous like, REAL nervous

and he really wants to look

but he knows he can’t look

so at the VERY MOMENT that he steps out of Hades

he turns around to see if she’s really there

and guess what?

SHE IS

but she is STILL IN HELL.

So Orpheus fails the test

and Eurydice disappears forever

and he’s back to square motherfuckin’ one.

This upsets him so much that he vows to only screw underaged boys for the rest of his life.

So he goes and sits on a hill

and dyes his hair black and just plays emo shit all the time

until one day all of these followers of Bacchus show up

and they’re like “Hey, dude, we’re having a party right here right now.

You still down with Bacchus?”

and Orpheus is like “Fuck no. I only worship the SUN.”

And they are like “Dude, are you sure about that?

We are a bunch of hot chicks and we are about to have an orgy

and only people who are down with Bacchus are invited to the orgy.”

And Orpheus says “Hell no. I only have sex with people’s SONS.”

And the chicks are all like, “Well, okay, if you say so”

and then they tear off his skin

and rape his corpse

and rip his head off

and chuck it into a river

along with his lyre which he is inexplicably still able to play

and he just floats off down the river making awesome music forever.

So the moral of the story is

Unless you can play your instrument with your head ripped off

and your arms and skin missing

You Are Not a Real Musician.

FRIENDS DON’T LET FRIENDS BANG COWS

So this dude Minos is having all kinds of problems being king of Crete

because his brothers all want to be the king of Crete instead

so they are all murdering each other like nonstop

until Minos is like “Hey, Poseidon you should make me win.”

And Poseidon is all “Okay I am going to send you a bitchin’ white bull.

It means you will win

but you have to kill it later in my honor.”

And Minos says “Sure, okay, just make me king already.”

So Poseidon sends this bull

and Minos becomes king

but then he REALLY likes this bull.

I don’t think you guys understand what hot shit bulls were in ancient Greece

you have to remember Minos didn’t have the Internet

so bulls were like THE HEIGHT OF TECHNOLOGY

and this was like the APPLE IPAD OF BULLS

so he decides “How ’bout I don’t kill this bull?

What’s the worst that could happen?

I’m already king, right?”

WRONG.

Well, I mean, he is already king

but something bad definitely happens

because Minos has a wife

and Poseidon goes and hits up Aphrodite like “You know what you should do?

You should make Minos’s wife

fall in love with MY BULL.”

and Aphrodite looks up from giving Ares a blow job and she’s like “Okay, lemme just finish this.”

So all of a sudden Minos’s wife is like mad attracted to this cow

but the problem is that the cow is not at all into chicks.

Human chicks, I mean.

It’s not a gay cow.

Not that that would have been a problem.

Some of my best friends are gay cows.

But anyway Minos’s wife has this brilliant idea so she calls up this dude Daedalus

and she is like “I need someone to build me a giant wooden cow suit

so I can fuck cows”

and Daedalus

who is a fantastic genius inventor with no concept of right and wrong

is like “Sure, no problem.”

And he makes her the suit

and she puts it on

and she goes out and makes hot animal love to that bull

simultaneously inventing furries

and getting totally preggers

and Minos is none the wiser until she gives birth to a HIDEOUS COWBABY

aka THE MINOTAUR.

So Minos does the smart thing and calls up the Oracle at Delphi

because that never leads to bad decisions

and the Oracle says “Dude, just build a maze around it. No harm no foul.”

So Minos calls up Daedalus

(the same Daedalus who caused all these problems with his excellent cow suit)

and he hires him to build this awesome maze

and then instead of paying him with money

he pays him with years in prison

locked in a tower over the ocean with his son Icarus.

Minos is a dumbass though

because he has locked a master craftsman and his son in a tower

along with an apparently unlimited supply of feathers and wax.

So they make wings with that stuff

and jump out the window.

But you know who else is a dumbass?

ICARUS

because he does not understand that the sun is made of heat

whereas his wings are only made of wax and bird hair

so he flies way the hell up toward the sun

and the sun says “Aw hell no”

and Icarus’s wings melt and he drowns

and his genius dad lives happily ever after no longer hampered by his dumbass son

or else he flees all over the country for years trying to avoid Minos

before finally convincing someone to murder Minos in a bathtub

or maybe both

and then it turns out Daedalus even fucked up the labyrinth

because a few weeks later some dick named Theseus just rolls in and kills the minotaur

and then escapes and gets laid a whole bunch and then falls off a cliff and dies

but that’s a whole other story and I just told you all the good parts anyway.

So the moral of the story

is don’t count your chickens before they hatch

because the chickens might be minotaurs.

NORSE

Holy shit, my friends

this mythos we are coming up on right now

is the cosmological equivalent of French-kissing a battle-ax.

These myths are rude, crude, and probably radioactive

they play music too loud and draw disapproving looks from the elderly

they will wake your mother up in the middle of the night by driving a Humvee through the armoire.

Seriously

any mythology in which the principal characters are a suicidal pirate-wizard

and what essentially amounts to a beard with a hammer sticking out of it

is the mythology for me

and for you too

once the Norse get through with you.

THE NORSE ARE METAL

So you might already know the way the Greeks thought the world got made

and also the Romans because the Romans are goddamn copycatters

and maybe you have listened to some scientists or some creation scientists

and you know one or two other ways.

Listen

I want you to forget everything you know about creation myths

because this myth

is going to BLOW YOUR DICK OFF FROM PURE WONDERMENT

and if you do not have a dick it is going to SEW ONE ON

and then IMMEDIATELY BLOW IT OFF.

Wanna know why?

because it’s NORSE MYTHOLOGY TIME.

SHIT YEAH.

So to start out, the world is already pretty badass.

It is just two things:

One is a sea of pure all-devouring fire called Muspell

guarded by a dude named Surt who is just WAITING

to ride out and murder all the gods and then set the world on fire.

By comparison, the other half of the world is pretty lame.

It is just a whole bunch of ice called Niflheim.

But the best part is that in between Muspell and Niflheim

there is a big-ass trench called Ginnungagap

which is empirically proven to be the number one funnest thing to say.

Go ahead and say it. I’ll wait.

So Ginnungagap is where shit starts to get real

because the cold from Niflheim

bumps up against the heat from Muspell

and causes a bunch of vapor to condense

in Ginnungagap

to create a frost giant

in Ginnungagap

named Ymir

(not Ginnungagap)

Actually, Ymir is more of an ogre than a giant

and he is actually more of a wuss than an ogre

because what is the first thing this guy does?

He goes to sleep

right there

in Ginnungagap.

Sleeping and sweating like a motherfucker.

He sweats so hard

that a man and a woman grow out of his armpit

and then he sweats EVEN HARDER

causing his legs to fuck each other

and have a baby

so then this cow shows up and starts shooting milk everywhere

and Ymir drinks all of it

’cause there’s pretty much no one else to drink it

other than his legbaby and the armpit people.

Then the cow gets bored and starts licking ice

and all of this licking melts away enough ice to form the shape of a dude

or maybe it is just the same dude who appeared in Ymir’s armpit.

(Ymir has mastered the fine art of being a neglectful father.)

Anyway, this guy’s name is Bor.

He marries Bestla, the daughter of some giant.

Maybe the daughter of Ymir, who knows?

Bor is quite a catch because he is the only man in existence.

So Bor and Bestla have three kids

Odin, Vili, and Vé.

Really the only one anyone gives a shit about is Odin.

He is the ruler of all things, essentially

and he gets his brothers to help him kill Ymir

who is probably still asleep

and has definitely not done anything to deserve being murdered

but Odin seems to think that he has become TOO EVIL

which probably just means that he was snoring REALLY LOUD.

Whatever the reason, they kill Ymir.

Nice patricide, Odin.

What are you going to do next

further desecrate your grandfather’s body by tearing him apart

and using his limbs as decoration for a universe you and your brothers are making?

Yes.

This is exactly what Odin and his brothers do.

I mean you gotta give them credit

they use pretty much every part of this dude.

Like, not only do they make his blood into lakes and oceans

and his bones into mountains

and skin into earth

and his teeth into tiny rocks

but they use his skull to make the sky

which is such a dumb idea that they have to get some cheap slave labor to make it work.

So they go over to Ymir’s corpse

which is crawling with maggots at this point

and they are like “Hey, maggots

wanna be a sentient humanoid species?”

And the maggots are like “DO WE?”

So they turn into dwarves

and Odin is like “Great, awesome

how about you repay us by holding up this skull we found.

We wanted to make it into the sky but skulls are not really meant for that.

We’ll even name the guys who do it North, South, East, and West.

It will be awesome.”

And the dwarves are like “Okay, fine.”

But listen, guys

just because they have already used Ymir’s skull and skin and bones and teeth and blood

does not mean they are finished defiling his corpse

because the next thing they do

is they chuck his brains into the air

and they become CLOUDS.

Did you think clouds were beautiful fluffy collections of water vapor?

WRONG, ASSHOLE.

BRAAAAINS.

Then they make the stars out of all the sparks coming out of Muspell

and give all the land along the coast to the giants

I guess to say sorry for murdering Ymir and building a world out of his corpse.

But the giants are still pissed

and Odin is like “I need a fort to protect myself from all these giants.

What will I build it out of?

Oh, I know

EYEBROWS.”

The fort he builds becomes a safe haven for all the humans, called Midgard.

Also, they drag Ymir’s corpse over Ginnungagap

And Odin makes a place called Asgard

using surprisingly few of Ymir’s body parts

and he lives there with his wife, Frigga

and is startlingly faithful to her

and fathers all the other gods, who are called the Aesir.

So the moral of THIS story

is that we need to invent space travel with a quickness

because all of Ymir’s body parts are about to get REAL ripe, REAL fast.

THOR GETS HAMMERED

When Odin finally gets done making the world

and settles down to get busy with his wife, Frigga

the first radical dude to get born is named Thor.

Thor is pretty much the baddest motherfucker you will ever lay eyes on.

In fact, if you ever laid eyes on him

he would probably walk up to you and DESTROY YOUR EYES WITH HIS HAMMER.

Thor’s hammer is called Mjolnir and it was made like so:

So Loki (the god of being a needless prick all the time)

sneaks up on Thor’s wife, Sif, one day

and shaves off all of her hair like he’s one of the guys on Jackass or something

and Thor really loves hair, I guess

so he gets SUPER ANGRY and he chases down Loki and is like “Hey

how about I cut off all your FACE?!”

and Loki is like “But I need my face for making infuriating smirks with!”

And Thor is like “Well, how about . . . I just break every bone in your body?”

and Loki is like “No, I need those too.

How ’bout instead I have the dwarves make your wife some new hair?

it will be made of GOLD and it will grow like NORMAL HAIR.”

and Thor is like “AWESOME.”

So Loki goes to these dwarves

like “Guys, I sorta promised Thor that you would make his wife the ultimate toupee.”

And the dwarves are like “Sure, no problem.

Do you want us to make it out of gold

or DOUBLE GOLD?

We REALLY FUCKING LIKE GOLD because we are DWARVES.”

Hey, by the way I’m sorry if I’m being racist against dwarves

but that is just how dwarves are, okay?

Some of my best friends are dwarves.

Anyway, Loki is like “Regular gold is fine”

and the dwarves are like “Okay, okay

well, how about we also make you a boat called Skidbladnir

which can fit all your friends and all your treasure

and always has wind in the sails

and can be folded up and put in your pocket when not in use

and how about we also make Odin a spear

scratch that, an UNSTOPPABLE spear.”

and Loki’s like “Damn.

All WE ever did for YOU GUYS was make you hold up the sky for forever.”

So Loki brings all this sweet loot back to the gods

and then he gets this great idea

which is to bet the dwarves that they can’t make three more EVEN BETTER treasures

FOR FREE.

But he doesn’t have much cash on him, so instead he just bets them his HEAD.

And these dwarves named Brokk and Eiti take the deal

because it’s not like they have to bet anything themselves

and they go to the forge

and Brokk pulls out this big-ass boar skin and he is like “Okay, Eiti.

It is completely crucial that you crank the bellows constantly.”

so Eiti starts doin’ it

and pretty soon a big-ass fly lands on his hand and stings the shit out of it

but Eiti does not care. He is going crazy with that bellows.

and Brokk makes what he was trying to make.

He brings it to Loki and is like “Okay so we all love boars, right?

But you know what would make a boar even better?

GOLD.

GOLD MAKES EVERYTHING BETTER.

I AM A DWARF AND I COVERED THIS FUCKING BOAR IN GOLD.”

Okay, look, guys, I am just telling the story.

It is not fair to apply our modern conception of racism to a bygone past, okay?

I forget what the term for that is, but don’t do it.

Anyway the filthy dwarves still need to make two more things

so Brokk decides to cut out the middleman and just put some gold directly on his forge

and he’s like “Hey, Eiti remember what you did with the boar?

Just do exactly that, because it is totally crucial.”

so Eiti starts working the bellows and lo and behold

the same fucking fly shows up and bites him on his NECK

but Eiti just toughs it out and keeps on pumpin’

and Brokk finishes the thing he was making and brings it out to Loki

like “Check this gold ring I made.

I call it Draupnir.

But see the thing is, this is just one gold ring.

Do you think that is enough gold? I don’t think that is enough gold

so what I made it do, is every ninth night

it shits out EIGHT IDENTICAL RINGS.

There will be SO MANY RINGS.

I can melt them down for their gold

and use them to make more rings

that drop out MORE RINGS.

I HAVE CREATED INFINITE GOLD.

This is the dream of every dwarf, because we love gold so much.

Did you know we invented rings so we could have sex with gold?”

Okay, okay, hold on, guys.

If you have any dwarf friends

maybe you should just have them not read this myth

if they have read this far it is already too late

we’re pretty much done with the gold part and you have lost a friend.

Anyway, then Brokk puts a big-ass chunk of iron on the forge

And Eiti starts pumping that bellows

and then this SAME FUCKING FLY comes back and bites his eyelids. His EYELIDS.

But Eiti still just keeps on pumping

until blood from the gaping wounds this fly has inflicted trickles down into his eye

and he takes one hand off the bellows to wipe away all the blood

and the bellows stops and everything is RUINED.

It was supposed to be a hammer called Mjolnir

but now it is a hammer called Mjolnir WITH A KINDA SHORT HANDLE

and Brokk is like “Dang maybe I won’t get Loki’s head after all.”

But he still bundles up all the shit and takes it to Asgard because quitting is for pussies.

And in Asgard all the gods are like “HOLY DAMN

YOU MADE A RING THAT SHITS OUT MORE RINGS.

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE A DWARF TO APPRECIATE INFINIGOLD.

Oh, and the boar is pretty nice too.

It could use more gold, maybe.”

And then Thor is like “Guys, this hammer is so sweet. It hits anything I throw it at

and then it always comes back to my hand.

I mean the handle is a little bit short but that doesn’t keep it from NEVER MISSING.

Guys, do you REALIZE how many frost giants we can kill with this?

This is the best Norse Christmas EVER.”

and Brokk is like “Looks like I won the bet, Loki

I am going to dip your head in gold and then probably fuck it.

That’s what I do, because I’m a dwarf.”

Look, I lied when I said the gold part was over.

If you had your dwarf friend just keep reading because you thought the damage was done

then I am really sorry, man

but you need taller friends.

So Loki starts running as fast as he can

but Thor just got that hammer that can hit anything 100 percent of the time

so he just kind of knocks Loki out and brings him back

and Loki is like “WAIT

I promised you my head but I never promised you the neck it rests on!

So you can’t cut it off. HAH.”

So Brokk just sews Loki’s mouth shut instead

which is probably the best thing for everybody.

So what we have learned today

is that dwarves give the best birthday gifts

so you should try and make up with your dwarf friends

no matter how short they are, or how bad they smell

or how much they keep eyeing your gold earrings

and licking their lips.

But that’s not the last wacky plan the gods come up with to avoid paying for shit . . .

ODIN GETS CONSTRUCTION DISCOUNTS WITH BESTIALITY

So as our story begins everything is going pretty good

the giants are leaving everyone alone for a minute

and everything is pretty okay

so obviously Odin has to go and fuck it all up by making a shitty deal with a giant.

He is like “Hey, giant

bet you can’t build a wall around my entire city in nine months.”

And the giant is like “What do I get if I win?”

And Odin is like “Well, I’m kinda cash poor at the moment.

How about Freyja?”

(Freyja is the goddess of love and other icky stuff

gifted to the Aesir by a group of identical gods they tried to kill one time.

What Odin is doing is called regifting and it is in poor taste.)

But Freya is way hot, so the giant is like “Sweet, okay.”

And Odin is like “Oh, and if you can’t finish the wall in time, then I get it for free.”

And the giant is like “Sure dude, whatever.”

Now Odin is pretty confident that there is no way the giant can build a wall in time.

I mean, Asgard is pretty much HUGE.

They had to build a six-mile-long feast hall just to accommodate Thor’s LEFT NUT.

So he just sits back and prepares to have a partially finished wall

TOTALLY FOR FREE.

You don’t become a god by being bad with money that is a fact.

But this plan is about to backfire SO HARD.

The giant and his unreasonably strong horse

are putting up this wall like it’s going out of style.

There are still several months to go

and the wall is almost totally finished.

So Odin is like “Oh shit, I might have to pay this giant for all the work that he’s doing.

UNACCEPTABLE.”

So he calls up Loki like “LOKI SOLVE MY PROBLEMS WITH GIANTS.”

And Loki is like “What? Why?”

And Odin is like “REMEMBER HOW WE HAVE AN OATH OF KINSHIP

THAT MEANS YOU HAVE TO DO WHAT I SAY?”

And Loki is like “Oh yeah.

Why did we do that again?”

And Odin is like “NO TIME FOR QUESTIONS. STALL THAT GIANT.”

So Loki is like “Sheeeeyiiiit.

I’m a pussy. I can’t stop a giant.

But WAIT!

I can stop his horse!

WITH MY PUSSY!”

so he turns into a superhot sexalicious girlhorse

with her lady parts all distended and pungent

and the manhorse gets a whiff of that shit

and is like “I AM CALLING A TIME-OUT ON ALL THIS WORKING.

A SEX TIME-OUT.”

(Feel free to use these in your everyday life.

I know you were all searching desperately for some way to justify dropping everything

and just having a bunch of sex.

NOW YOU HAVE THAT JUSTIFICATION.)

So then the giant is like “How am I supposed to finish this wall without my powerhorse?

I feel like I may have been cheated by Odin just now.

I’m going to go yell at him.”

So he goes to Odin’s room like “ODIN WHAT DID YOU DO WITH MY HORSE?”

and Odin is like “I dunno what you’re talking about. It was all Loki’s idea.”

and the giant is like “FUCK THIS I’M TAKING FREYJA.”

and Freyja is like “Who’s taking what now?”

because apparently Odin completely forgot to tell her about this deal.

So she’s like “THORRRR.”

and Thor runs into the room like “What?

Oh, you need me to kill a giant?

Yeah, all right.”

So he kills the giant

thus once again saving Odin from the consequences of his shitty actions.

So a couple months later

Loki finally comes back to Asgard

leading the megahorse he seduced and also another smaller horse

but what this horse lacks in size

it makes up for in TOO MANY LEGS.

Yes sir, this is THE OCTOHORSE.

(aka Sleipnir)

So Odin is like “Oh shit, give me those.”

and Loki is like “NUP. I’m totally giving the ultrahorse to Freyja.”

and Odin is like “Can I at least have the octohorse?”

and Loki is like “Only if I don’t have to do what you say anymore.”

and Odin is like “FINE.”

and Loki is like “HAHA, I PRANKED YOU

THAT HORSE CAME OUT OF MY HORSE VAGINA.”

And Odin is like “Ew, ick.

I still want the horse though.”

So the moral of the story

is that only a sucker pays full price for masonry.

Oh, speaking of which

let me tell you about another really gross thing Loki had sex with . . .

FENRIR IS A DILF

So one day, Loki’s wandering around Jotunheim

and he sees this chick Angrboða

pronounced ANGER BOW THE

and he is like “Well, I know she’s pretty ugly

and her name is kinda like a reference book entry for THE ANGER BOW

but you know what?

I’m gonna tap that

and have three kids with that

and all three of those kids are going to be horrible beasts that bring on the apocalypse.

I see no problems with this.”

So for now, let’s just focus on the first kid: a giant wolf named Fenrir.

Now Loki brings baby Fenrir to Asgard

and the Aesir all instantly know that this wolf is gonna be the death of them

mainly because it is a GIANT WOLF NAMED FENRIR.

But instead of doing anything about it

they decide to see if they can just raise it as their own

presumably because they don’t want to hurt Loki’s feelings.

So this god Tyr

the god of single combat and being awesome

gets put in charge of feeding Fenrir

because he’s the only person with sufficient testicular mass to actually go near the wolf

and Fenrir gets bigger

and bigger

and holy shit bigger

until the gods start to be like “Uhh . . . we should really do something about this wolf.”

So what they do is they make a big metal chain.

This chain is so incredibly massive

that they don’t feel right until they give it a name

that name is Leyding.

So they go up to Fenrir like “Hey, man

I bet you totally can’t break out of this chain.”

And Fenrir is like “Okay, bring it.”

So they tie him up

and he pretty much just breaks the chains like cobwebs

and he gets famous because of that

and the gods are like “Fuck, that backfired.

Okay, let’s make a better chain.”

so they make a chain that is TWO TIMES AS STRONG

and they name it Dromi

and they go back to Fenrir like “Bet you can’t break THIS chain.”

And Fenrir is like “I don’t know if I want to let you tie me up again.”

And the gods are like “Don’t you want to be double famous?”

and Fenrir is like “Ugh, okay.”

So he lets them tie him up again

and he flexes a little, but the chain doesn’t break

so then he kicks the chain, and it does break

and the gods are all like “Okay we definitely need a better chain.

Somebody call some dwarves.”

So the dwarves are like “Okay the mistake you guys have been making

is you have been trying to make a chain out of actual things that exist

such as metal

instead of abstract concepts

such as the sound of a cat’s footfall.”

So what the dwarves do

is they take the sound of a cat’s footfall

along with the roots of a mountain

the sinews of a bear

the beard of a woman—

remember, these are dwarves—

and the breath of a fish, and the spit of a bird

so that’s why you can’t hear cats walking around

and mountains don’t have roots

and fish don’t breathe, and birds don’t spit

but I think bears still probably have sinews

and I have definitely met me some bearded ladies

so I guess the dwarves were not that thorough.

But anyway

somehow they manage to distill all this shit into THE ULTIMATE CHAIN.

Except it’s not a chain, it’s a ribbon called Gleipnir.

It is thin and pink and soft

and the gods go and bring it to Fenrir

and are like “Bet you can’t get out of this ribbon.”

And Fenrir is like “Come ON, guys.

There is no fame to be gained from breaking a little girl’s pretty, pretty princess bow.

Plus, this is OBVIOUSLY a trap.”

And the gods are like “A trap? Whaaaat?

Why would we trap you?

What do you think we are desperately afraid of you or something?

We just thought

that if the great wolf Fenrir was too much of a pussnexus

to let himself get tied up by a pretty pink ribbon

we might just go and tell everybody about that

and then they would laugh at you.”

So Fenrir is like “OKAY FINE.

But I seriously don’t trust you guys

so how about I let you tie me up

if one of you puts your hand in my mouth as collateral.”

And all the gods are like “Um . . . well . . .”

Until Tyr is like “I’ll do it.” Because Tyr is a FUCKING BADASS

moved almost to the point of vomiting

but what tremendous wusses all his friends are.

So then they tie Fenrir up

and Fenrir flexes

and then he tries kicking

and then he tries flailing around like a fucking lunatic

but that ribbon does not break

and he is like “DAMMIT.”

And bites off Tyr’s hand

and everyone laughs at Fenrir

except for Tyr

because he just got his hand bit off.

And Fenrir is all trying to scream and bite everyone

so they jam a sword in his mouth to keep it open forever

and Fenrir drools so much that it makes an entire fucking river

called “hope” in Norse for some reason

like this is some kind of fucked up morbid motivational poster.

HOPE:

YOU WILL EVENTUALLY ESCAPE YOUR HELLISH PRISON

AND RAIN DEATH AND FIRE UPON MIDGARD.

Because actually that is what the Norse prophecy says.

It says that eventually, at the end of the world

Fenrir will get loose and eat Odin.

So I guess the moral of the story

is that if your friend keeps bringing home his mutant babies

it is not your responsibility to raise those babies.

Remember this.

SEX 4 GOLD

Before we go any further

I feel like I need to tell you a little bit about the kind of person Freyja is.

But it is difficult to find a myth about Freyja

in which her main role isn’t just as something people give each other.

This is because the Norse appear to treat women as currency.

But don’t worry, guys

I found one

(kinda)

So Freyja wakes up one morning

and she is like “I JUST HAD A WET DREAM ABOUT SOME GOLD

AND NOW I WANT SOME.

But where shall I get some?

Oh wait

I live in a world that has dwarves.

WHAT A STUPID QUESTION.”

So she walks over to Dwarftowne

and while she is walking, Loki sees her and he is like “Oh man

that chick looks like she is about to get some TREASURE

I want to RUIN THAT ACCOMPLISHMENT FOR HER

because I am Loki and that is what I DO.”

So Loki follows Freyja all the way to the house of these four dwarves

and sitting on their pedestal

is just the most astonishing display of golduggery EVER.

(Golduggery is exactly like skulduggery

except instead of doing crimes you do gold)

It is a necklace of such INDESCRIBABLE VALUE

that all the Norse scribes purposefully lost most of the text of this myth

and no one actually knows what it looks like

or even if it is a necklace really

we’re kind of just guessing here

more or less based on the fact that a necklace is the only form of gold

big enough to fit four dwarf dicks simultaneously.

So these four skeezy dwarfs pop out, and Freyja’s like “Ew, gross

I mean hey, guys, how’s it going?

Think I could have this necklace or whatever it is?

I’ll pay you GOLD for it.”

And the dwarves are like “We don’t need any more gold.”

WHOA, RECORD SCRATCH.

Did you just hear what I heard?

DWARVES

do not need more

GOLD?!

These are clearly not four dwarves

but rather eight babies in four dwarf suits.

But that just makes this next part weirder

because then Freyja is like “Well, gold is pretty much all I have.

Credit cards haven’t been invented yet, nor has investment banking.”

and the dwarves are like “WELL YOU HAVE A VAGINA, RIGHT?

HOWSABOUT WE ALL USE THAT FOR LIKE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS APIECE.”

and Freyja is like “Hmm

. . .

Okay!”

So each of the dwarves does the teenie-weenie with Freyja for a solid day/night cycle

and they are very civil about it and no one minds getting sloppy seconds

and at the end of the four days the dwarves are like “Welp

we’re about as sexually satisfied as we are ever going to be in our sad, sad lives.

Here, have this necklace.”

And Freyja is like “SWEET!

This was ALMOST worth debasing myself in this manner!”

And meanwhile, Loki

who, remember, followed Freyja here

is like “DAMN, I WISH I HAD FILMED THAT.

I BET THERE’S A WHOLE INTERNET FETISH ABOUT THIS KIND OF SHIT.

I guess I’ll just have to settle for ruining her accomplishment like I planned.”

So Freyja goes home to enjoy her necklace and take a loooong shower

and Loki hauls ass over to Odin’s place

and he’s like “Odin, Odin, guess what?

I know I’m the god of lying all the time

but you gotta trust me when I say

Freyja just fucked four dwarves for a necklace.”

And Odin is like “Yeah, that sounds like Freyja.

I mean WHAT??

I WANTED TO FUCK FREYJA.

WE ALL WANTED TO FUCK FREYJA.

THAT’S LIKE THE WHOLE REASON WE KEEP HER AROUND

AND ALL WE HAD TO DO ALL THESE YEARS WAS OFFER HER JEWELRY?

UNACCEPTABLE.

GO STEAL HER NECKLACE.”

and Loki is like “Did somebody say STEALING?”

and Odin is like “Yes, Loki, that was me who said that.”

but Loki doesn’t hear him because he is already at Freyja’s place

STEALING.

So he gets to Freyja’s place and the door is locked

so he turns into a fly and goes in through a crack in the roof.

But then Freyja is sleeping on her back

with the clasp of her necklace completely inaccessible

so Loki turns into a flea and mauls her cheeks until she flips over

and then Loki turns into Loki and just steals her necklace.

So Freyja wakes up

notices her necklace is gone

notices her door is open

and is like “DAMMIT LOKI.

But wait

Loki would be too much of a pussy to do this on his own.

DAMMIT ODIN.

But how would Odin know about my necklace?

DAMMIT LOKI.

But Loki is probably nine countries away at this point.

I’M GONNA GO YELL AT ODIN.”

So she shows up at Odin’s place, all angry and shit

and Odin is like “WELL, WELL, WELL

IF IT ISN’T SLUT CITY.

HEY, I HAVE SOME BRASS PLATES AND A SHINY ROCK.

WANNA GIVE ME A RIMJOB OR SOMETHING? THEY’RE ALL YOURS.”

And Freyja is like “VERY FUNNY ASSHOLE.”

and Odin is like “I BET YOU WON’T THINK MY ASSHOLE IS VERY FUNNY

WHEN YOU ARE GIVING ME A RIMJOB.

But seriously, it’s because of shit like this that we keep trying to sell you to giants.

So I’m going to punish you.”

and Freyja is like “Aw Frigg.

What’s it gonna be?”

And Odin is like “Well, I’ll let you have the necklace back

but only if you make all the races of men in Midgard fight wars forever.

Oh wait, that’s not really a puni—”

AND FREYJA IS LIKE “YES, DONE, THANK YOU.”

Then there is war forever

but at least Freyja looks pretty.

So the moral of the story

is that apparently women ARE currency

but the exchange rate of women to gold isn’t actually that great.

THOR GETS JACKED

So Thor’s sleeping one night

prolly dreaming about lightning and murder

and he wakes up like “Man, that was a good dream.

’Bout to go make it a reality with the help of my trusty OH SHIT

WHERE IS MY HAMMER??

LOOOOKIIII”

and Loki shows up like “I didn’t do it.

I mean . . . Hey, Thor, what’s good?”

And Thor’s like “SOMEONE STOLE MY HAMMER.”

And Loki is like “Wow. I actually seriously am not responsible for once.

Here, dude, let me help you find it.”

So they go see Freyja

and Freyja is like “Hey, Thor, what’s good?”

And Thor is like “SOMEONE STOLE MY HAMMER.

WAAAAHHHH.”

and Freya is like “Shut the fuck up, man.

We can solve this mystery.

Loki, did you steal the hammer?”

And Loki is like “Nope.”

And Freyja is like “Well, I’m out of ideas.”

and Loki is like “I know, right?

But how about this:

how about you lend me your cloak of feathers that lets you fly

so I can fly over to the land of the giants

and ask them where they hid Thor’s hammer

because as you know

if it wasn’t me, it was definitely the giants.”

And Freyja is like “Sure, man

take my super valuable cloak.”

So Loki takes it

and COMPLETELY FAILS TO STEAL IT all the way to Jotunheim.

and he glides right up to some really rich giant named Thrym

who is just sitting up on a mountain with some hounds on gold leashes

and he is like “Yo, Loki, my man, what’s good?”

and Loki is like “You didn’t happen to steal Mjolnir, did you?”

and Thrym is like “HAHA, YOU GOT ME

I STOLE IT AND THEN I BURIED IT

AND I’LL NEVER GIVE IT BACK UNLESS I GET TO MARRY FREYJA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.”

So Loki flies back to Freyja and Thor

who are both like “HOLY SHIT, LOKI

Did you forget to steal that cloak or something?

It’s like you’re suddenly respecting people’s possessions. It’s creepy.”

And Loki is like “I KNOW, RIGHT?

Look, I can get Mjolnir back super easy.

Here, Freyja, just put on this wedding dress

and Freyja is just like “HELLLLLLLL

NO.

What do you think I am some kind of slut who trades sex for treasure?

Make Thor do it.”

And Thor is like “NOOOOOOOO WAY, JOSÉ.

What do I look like some kind of cross-dressing motherfucker?

Bitch you could not find a vagina on me if you CUT ONE INTO MY FLESH.

SHIT WOULD GROW BACK.

I AM A VIRILE DYNAMO WITH THE HEALING POWERS OF WOLVERINE.”

and Freyja is like “Yes, Thor, we all understand.

But if you don’t get that hammer back who is going to kill all the giants?

Those giants are going to remain woefully unkilled.”

And Thor is like “Fine, I’ll put on the dress.”

So they pull out ALL the fucking stops

this is like Pimp My Ride for drag queens right here.

They give him a veil and a dress

and Freyja’s pretty necklace and some house keys

’cause apparently there is some Norse wedding tradition

where they lock you out of a house and you have to get inside or else you’re divorced

and Thor just feels SOOOO PRETTY

but he won’t let anyone know

’cause he’s Thor, all right?

And then Loki gets jealous of how pretty Thor is

and is like “I wanna dress up too.”

And Freyja is like “All right.

You can be her—I mean HIS wingman or whatever.”

Hey, is there a female version of wingman?

Wingwoman sounds awkward.

I’m coining a new phrase:

Titcaptain.

Tell your friends.

So Loki and Thor show up at Thrym’s place

and Thrym makes the colossal mistake of inviting Thor to have dinner with him

so Thor eats an entire ox, and then eight salmon

and all the little cakes and shit they can bring him

and chugs a ton of mead

until Thrym is like “Whoa, baby.

Might wanna slow down there.”

And Loki is like “No, man, it’s totally cool.

She hasn’t eaten in EIGHT DAYS

’cause she was SO EXCITED ABOUT YOUR DICK.”

So Thrym is like “Oh okay.”

But then he’s like “Man I really wanna kiss my bride right now”

so he lifts up her delicate veil and WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?

Here come Thor’s furious eyeballs, flaming with pure black hatred

and that is NOT what Thrym was looking for

and he is like “MY, WHAT BIG EYES YOU HAVE”

and Loki is like “No, man, it’s fine.

She just hasn’t slept for the last eight days

’cause she was so excited about your dick, like I said.

Honestly I don’t know how she’s even alive

except for the whole immortality thing, I guess.”

So then this random chick busts into the room

one of Thrym’s daughters or something

and is like “FREYJA, GIVE ME A WEDDING GIFT

EVEN THOUGH I AM NOT GETTING MARRIED.

GIVE ME RINGS OF RED GOLD.”

and Thor is like “Fuck your red gold.

What do I look like, some kind of red dwarf?

Hey, Thrym, I want a wedding gift actually. I want Mjolnir.”

and Thrym is like “ANYTHING YOU SAY, HONEY.”

and goes and digs up Mjolnir and gives it to Thor

and Thor is like “OH, IT IS PARTY TIME NOW, MOTHERFUCKERS.”

So he kills Thrym

and then all of Thrym’s dudes

and then that chick who asked him for gold, just for good measure

and then he’s like “WHO’S THE MAN?

WHO’S THE MAN?

ME RIGHT?

’CAUSE THIS WHOLE THING KINDA MADE ME QUESTION MY SEXUALITY.”

So the moral of the story is

if at first you don’t succeed

try cross-dressing.

ALL’S WELL THAT MIMIR’S WELL

Odin is constantly doing weird shit for secrets.

Like every morning, he sends out his two ravens—Hugin and Munin—to go fly around

and then in the evening they come back and tell him what’s up.

But DISASTER STRIKES

because one day

instead of telling him all the shit they saw

all the birds will say is “OHH SHIT. GOT SOME FOREBODING SHADOWS UP IN THIS BITCH.”

And Odin is like “FOREBODING SHADOWS?

THOSE ARE THE WORST KIND OF SHADOWS!”

At which point his wife, Frigga, busts in like “HUSBAND, STOP YELLING”

and Odin is like “HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO STOP YELLING

WHEN THERE ARE FOREBODING SHADOWS GOING ON ALL OVER THE PLACE??”

And Frigga is like “Okay, tell you what

how about we go hit up these chicks called the Norns

who live at the bottom of Yggdrassil—

THE TREE OF LIFE—

and look into their eyes for a bit and see the future?”

And Odin is like “Okay, I GUESS.”

So Odin gets all his buddies together

them being Tyr, the one-armed badass murder convention

Baldur the prettiest and best loved of all the gods

and Thor, who has a hammer.

They all walk over to this fabulous rainbow bridge

that connects Asgard to the base of Yggdrassil

and Odin goes up to Heimdall who is the keeper of the gate of Asgard

and also has a sweet gold grill

and Heimdall opens up the gate

and Odin walks through, and Tyr walks through, and Baldur walks through

and Thor tries to walk through and Heimdall is like “NOPE, NO THORS ALLOWED.”

and Thor who is the god of getting real pissed real fast

is all “DON’T MAKE ME COME OVER TO YOUR HOUSE AND BEAT YOUR WIFE.

OH WAIT, YOU DON’T HAVE A WIFE

SO I GUESS I AM GOING TO HAVE TO WAIT

UNTIL SOME POOR SKANK FINDS YOUR WEAK-ASS GOLD GRILL ALLURING

AND THEN WHEN YOU ARE CUTTING THE CAKE AT YOUR WEDDING

I WILL BUST OUT OF THE CAKE

AND CLOCK YOUR NEW WIFE IN THE JAW WITH MY HAMMER

BECAUSE IF THERE IS ONE THING THAT DEFINES ME AS A PERSON

IT IS MY MASSIVE FUCKING HAMMER.”

And Heimdall is like “Actually your hammer is kind of the problem

the weight of your hammer combined with the weight of your fat, fat ass

would break the rainbow bridge.

So I’m sorry, dude but you’re going to have to stay home.

UNLESS you want to wade across these two smothering miserable cloud rivers

and meet your bros on the other side.”

and Thor is like “SOUNDS AWESOME.”

So nine hours later, Thor finally catches up to everyone at the base of Yggdrassil

and then Odin goes over to stare at the Norns for a bit.

There are three Norns:

Urda, the old one

Verdandi, the hot one

and Skulda, the emo one

and in their eyes Odin can see the future

and I dunno exactly what it is

but it’s apparently pretty depressing

and then Frigga shows up

with Sif (Thor’s wife)

and Nanna (Baldur’s wife. Lucky bitch)

and she looks at the Norns for a bit

and then looks real sad at Baldur, who is her son

presumably because she saw him die in the future or some shit.

Who knows?

(Spoiler alert: He totally dies.)

So Odin turns around like “Hey, guys I need to go to Midgard for a bit.

I need to drink from the well of Mimir

because it is fortified with wisdom and shit

and all these foreboding shadows are going wayyy over my head.”

And then Thor has to figure out how to get back home.

So Odin trades in his spear, and all his armor and his eight-legged horse, and his name

for a blue cloak and a staff and a big floppy hat

and the name VEGTAM THE WANDERER

and he starts walking through Jotunheim looking for giants.

Pretty soon he sees him a giant

So he walks up to this giant like “Hey, bro, what’s your name?”

and the giant is like “I AM VAFTHRUDNIR WISEST GIANT EVER.”

Odin has heard about this dude

and he knows that he is not bullshitting

so he is like “Oh damn, I am in luck.

Wanna hook me up with some wisdom?”

and Vafthrudnir is like “OKAY, BUT FIRST ANSWER SOME RANDOM TRIVIA

AND IF YOU ANSWER WRONG I GET TO CUT OFF YOUR HEAD.”

This may seem strange

but actually this is just how they play trivial pursuit in Sweden.

So Vafthrudnir tosses out a bunch of questions

but his quiz is actually super weak sauce

because like 100 percent of the answers can be readily found on Wikipedia

so Odin proceeds to hand him his ass

and Vafthrudnir is like “Aww dang.

Now you gotta ask ME a question.”

and Odin is like “How about this one:

WHAT ARE THE LAST WORDS THAT ODIN WILL SAY TO HIS SON BALDUR?”

And Vafthrudnir is like “COME ON, THAT IS ENTIRELY UNFAIR

ONLY ODIN WOULD KNOW THE ANSWER TO—Waaait a second.

You’re Odin, aren’t you?

You motherfucker.

Okay, what kind of wisdom did you want to get hooked up with?”

And Odin is like “I just wanna know how much it costs to drink from Mimir’s well.”

and Vafthrudnir is like “Oh damn, is that all? You probably could have just asked Mimir.

He generally just charges people THEIR RIGHT EYE.”

And Odin is like “Really?”

And Vafthrudnir is like “Yup.”

And Odin is like “Does he ever charge . . . anything else?”

And Vafthrudnir is like “Nope.”

So Odin is like “Fuuuuck, man

I need my right eye

for like, depth perception

and keeping bacteria out of my bleeding eye socket.

Maybe I shouldn’t go through with this.”

But then he remembers that he’s not a huge wuss

so he goes to Mimir’s well

and he’s like “Hey, Mimir

hook it up.”

And Mimir looks at him and is like “You know how much it costs, right?

’Cause a lot of people show up here like ‘GIMME SOME WISDOM’

and I’m always like ‘Sure. One eyeball, please.’

And they are like ‘NOOOO WAYYYY.’

I mean, I know you’re not gonna pussy out

because I drink from this wisdom well all the time and I’m wise as shit

but I still gotta ask for legal reasons: You down to give me your right eye?”

and Odin is like “OH HELLS YES.”

So Mimir gives him the water of knowledge right away

which strikes me as an incredibly unwise move

because Odin could have just drunk all the water

and then left without giving away any of his eyeballs

and in fact if that water had really given him ultimate wisdom

that’s probably exactly what he would have done.

But no, he drinks the water

and he sees what he has to do to mitigate the horrible foreboding shadow

not that it can be stopped or anything because Norse mythology is pretty gloomy

and then he puts down the drinking horn and he plucks out his eye

and he puts his still-warm bleeding eyeball in Mimir’s well

proving once and for all

that the Norse may not have been a very smart people

or a very happy people

but no matter what

THEY WERE ALWAYS METAL.

THE END OF THE NORSE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT

Bad news, guys. In this myth all the Norse gods die.

Yeah, this is the big one:

RAGNAROK

THE END OF THE GODDAMN WORLD.

So basically the first thing that’s gonna tip everyone off that the world is ending

is this thing called Fimbulvetr

which just means THE WINTER OF WINTERS

and that is exactly what it is.

It is a winter

MADE OF MULTIPLE WINTERS

like, there is going to be a winter

and then once that winter is finished there will be ANOTHER WINTER.

And then after that maybe it will be spring?

Think again, son.

MORE WINTER.

The whole point of this endless winter is just to put everyone in a really bad mood

to prepare them for the next stage of the apocalypse

which is CEASELESS WARS.

Which is funny because that is also the Norse idea of heaven.

Like, that is seriously what everyone is doing in Valhalla all the time.

But then finally after that goes on for a while

this wolf Skoll

who is one of the sons of Fenrir

is gonna eat the sun.

Then Fenrir’s other kid, Hati, will eat the moon, because he’s a fucking copydog.

Then the cock Fjalar will crow to the giants

all like “TIME FOR WAR, MOTHERFUCKERS”

and the golden cock Gullinkambi will yell the same thing at the gods

and then a third cock will raise the dead.

Hehe, cock.

THEN

there’s gonna be A WHOLE BUNCH OF EARTHQUAKES

and this is going to have the effect

of finally releasing that evil wolf bastard Fenrir

and his bottom jaw is gonna touch the earth

and his top jaw is gonna touch the sky

and his eyes are going to be on FIRE

and there’s gonna be a whole bunch of tsunamis and shit too

because the Midgard serpent, who holds up the world

(and is also another one of Loki’s horrible children)

is going to start having seizures all over the ocean

on its way to fuck up the land.

And not only that

but he’s going to breathe poison all over everything constantly

completely destroying all the air

and all the land.

And all the waves caused by the serpent

are gonna set free this ship called Naglfar

full of giants who are ready to romp and stomp everyone

and another ship is gonna set sail from hell

with all the dead people on it

and Loki is gonna be driving it

because the gods sure as shit want nothing to do with him at this point

and guess who else is coming to the party?

FIRE GIANTS.

What are fire giants you ask?

Oh, I don’t know, maybe giants MADE OF FIRE

the sole purpose of whom is to show up at this EXACT MOMENT

led by this guy SURT

and fucking set fire to EVERYTHING.

So this is when Heimdall is going to blow his horn

signaling that SHIT is finally about to get REAL

and Odin and all the other gods

and all the elves, dwarves, demons and basically just anything ever

are going to ride onto this one battlefield called Vigrid

which means BATTLESHAKER

and they are going to tear each other to pieces in the following order:

Odin is going to fight Fenrir

and Fenrir is going to eat Odin

and then Odin’s son Vidar is gonna be like “NOOOO.”

and run up and rip Fenrir’s jaw in half

which is pretty appropriate because Vidar is the god of revenge

not that he has anything to really be vengeful about because Odin is EVERYONE’S dad.

Meanwhile, Thor is gonna fight the Midgard serpent

and he is gonna kill it

but then its poison is gonna kill HIM.

And Surt is just gonna pick the weakest-looking god

Freyr

who is the god of the sun and elves and shit

and just kill him straight up

because Freyr is a tremendous pussy

who actually FORGOT TO BRING A SWORD TO THE APOCALYPSE.

Then Tyr is gonna look around like “Shit I need to kill someone to prove I’m a badass.

How about this terrible wolf, GARM?!”

and he kills it, despite the fact he only has one hand

but then Garm also kills him. Boo.

Also, Heimdall kills Loki, FINALLY

but Loki also kills Heimdall, so that will suck.

And on top of ALL OF THAT

Surt is gonna just start chucking fire in every direction

burning everything

so it won’t even really matter if you survive the epic battle

because everyone is catching fire anyway

except for these two people

Lif and Lifthrasir

a dude and a chick who will just be sleeping in the indestructible forest.

Wait, there’s an INDESTRUCTIBLE FOREST??

Why doesn’t everyone just evacuate there?

That would seriously minimize some casualties.

Anyway, when it’s all over

and the earth dives underwater to try and put out all the fire

and then comes back up again all fresh and new

Lif and Lifthrasir are gonna repopulate the world

and everything is going to be great forever.

So the moral of the story

is that when the going gets tough

the tough get going

but the SMART get inside the invincible forest.

EGYPTIAN

You might not guess from their tame 2-D cave paintings

but the ancient Egyptians liked to tell some seriously messed-up myths

they’ve got all the essentials:

booze, blood, and jerkin’ it

(if you thought that the essentials were food, water, and shelter

then you, my friend have been reading the wrong myths)

and if any mortals actually managed to survive the constant barrage of nonsense from above

Egyptian lore says you had to get your soul weighed against a FUCKING FEATHER

by a pitiless demon with a dog for a head

and if your soul is heavier than the feather

YOU GO TO HELL.

So I hope you can hear me in hell, every dude who ever lived in ancient Egypt

because I am about to seriously bastardize your canon up in here.

RA HAS SEX WITH HIMSELF

So there is this dude named Ra.

This dude does not exist

At least not at the beginning of the story.

All there is is this totally boring infinite water called Nu

but then Ra

who—remember—doesn’t exist

is like “This sucks.

How about I CREATE MYSELF USING PURE WILLPOWER!??”

So now Ra is standing around

except actually he is not standing.

He hasn’t invented standing yet and anyway there is no place to stand

so Ra is like “Okay, time for some terrain features.

Let’s start with the ones that look the most like tits.”

So he makes a hill

and he stands on it

and later someone builds a temple BUT LET’S NOT GET AHEAD OF OURSELVES.

So Ra gets pretty bored

seeing as all there is in the ENTIRE GODDAMN UNIVERSE is a hill and some water.

So he hangs out on the hill for a bit

waiting for other awesome dudes to will themselves into being

but they don’t

so he’s like “MAN, YOU GUYS ARE SOOOO LAZY

FINE, I’LL MAKE MY OWN FRIENDS.”

But there is a problem

because, although Ra can make hills

and also HIMSELF

he apparently can’t make people.

Sexual reproduction is ruining everything, as usual.

But Ra does not even give a shit

he just goes right ahead and FUCKS HIS OWN SHADOW UNTIL HE GETS PREGNANT.

THEN HE GIVES BIRTH TO KIDS OUT OF HIS MOUTH

IN THE TWO LEAST CLASSY WAYS POSSIBLE. Yes, guys.

If Egypt is to be believed

you are all either descended from spit or puke

(depending on whether you are a boy or a girl).

See, Ra has two kids.

The phlegm kid is this dude called Shu

the god of air and stuff

meanwhile the vomit kid is a chick named Tefnut

goddess of moisture

not water mind you, but moisture

which makes sense with the whole vomit thing, I guess.

Anyway, Shu and Tefnut get together

and by their powers combined

manage to be exponentially more bored than even their omnipotent father could have imagined.

So they are sitting around and they are like “Hey

wanna hit each other with bricks?

Oh wait, bricks don’t exist. Just like absolutely everything else other than hills.

Fuck it, let’s make up some codes of laws and then get lost.”

So they make up some laws and then they get lost in the middle of an endless ocean fiasco

which is kind of like SeaWorld

if SeaWorld was everything everywhere

and there was no Shamu

and there was no amusement park

or hot dogs or whatever.

It is actually just the water part of SeaWorld.

And there are only three people there

and two of them are lost

and they are made of spit and vomit.

Actually, that last part sounds a lot like SeaWorld.

So Ra is like “GUYYSSSS

I fucked my own SHADOW so I wouldn’t be lonely.

Come baaaack.”

And then he takes out his one eye

(by the way, he only has one eye)

and he is like “Hey, eye

go find my kids.”

So it does, and it brings them back to Ra

and he starts crying

either because he is so happy to have his kids back or because now he has to raise kids

but the myth is not clear on whether he puts his eye back in before he does this

or whether it is just this weird floating sadness orb

but that is not important at all.

What is important is that those tears hit the hill Ra made

and they turn into people

and then Shu and Tefnut start boning

like siblings do.

They pop out this kid Geb, the earth

and Nut, the sky

(those are extremely large babies, no lie).

Then later, Geb and Nut give birth to all the trendy gods

like Isis and Osiris and whatever

and things proceed pretty much as would be expected

with a lot of murder and sex and stuff.

So basically what it all comes down to

is that we are made of tears

from the disembodied eyeball

of a guy who fucks his own shadow and surrounds himself with spit and puke.

I’m gonna go cry now.

I hope it doesn’t turn it into babies.

RA AND SEKHMET, OR: HOW BEER SAVED THE UNIVERSE

So Ra creates the world.

Sure, great

but just because you create the world

doesn’t mean you get to just be king of it forever.

I mean you get to be king of it for a while

(like for example what Ra does

is as soon as he’s done creating everything

he turns into a dude and becomes king of Egypt)

but the problem with dudes is that they get old

and the problem with old dudes is that they are constantly getting guff

from ALL DIRECTIONS

and the problem with being a god

is that you are constitutionally incapable of taking ANY GUFF WHATSOEVER

so naturally

when everybody starts laughing at Ra’s old hair and senility

he gets real pissed

and when you are a god

and you are real pissed

there is only one solution, my friends:

GENOCIDE.

So basically what Ra does

is he turns around and gives Egypt the world’s DEADLIEST STINKEYE

this eye is so stinky

it produces an entire brand new goddess

the goddess is named Sekhmet

and she is basically like a lioness

with chainsaws for legs

SEKHMET:

THE ORIGINAL THUNDERCAT.

Sekhmet’s job is simple:

KILL.

EVERYONE.

So that is what she does.

She just tears all around everywhere

mauling the ever-loving crap out of people until the ground is like

permanent red

which is disconcertingly tacky.

Eventually Ra wakes up from his old-man sleep

and he’s like “WHOA

WHERE DID ALL THE PEOPLE GO?

Damn, I feel kinda bad now.”

Gods are always doing things like this if you haven’t noticed.

But the problem is that by now Sekhmet is an unstoppable murder engine.

But the good news

is that there is ONE THING

with the power to stop an unstoppable murder engine

and that thing

is BOOZE.

So what Ra does

is he gathers up all this really good beer

and all this really good red food coloring

and he mixes it all together

and he dumps it all over the fields that Sekhmet has scheduled for murdering the next day

so that when she shows up

she just sees a big lake of what she can only assume is blood

blood that smells like booze

so, like

the blood of really drunk people?

and she’s like “ALL RIGHT

LOOKS LIKE MURDERING IS DONE EARLY TODAY

TIME FOR MY SECOND FAVORITE PASTIME:

DEVOURING THE BLOOD OF THE INNOCENT.”

So Sekhmet just dives right in and starts slurping the boozeblood

which is such good shit that everybody calls it “THE SLEEPMAKER”

and because of that she ends up passing out pretty quick

and she wakes up all hung over

and Ra is like “HaHAAAA

from now on you will be known as Hathor

and the only thing you will kill people with

is KINDNESS.”

And basically whatever Ra says just immediately happens

so that’s who Sekhmet becomes from then on.

So obviously the moral of the story

is that the best way to deal with a rampaging psychopath

is to get them really, really drunk.

ISIS HAS BAD TASTE IN JEWELRY

So time passes, and now Osiris is the king of the gods

he thinks he’s hot shit, with his godly appendages up whole vast swathes of blouse.

But meanwhile there’s this dick Set.

That is his name

Set.

I’m not talking about some kind of dick set

such as you might purchase for an adult tea party.

I am talking about the Egyptian god of the desert

and also storms, darkness, and chaos.

Basically if you are not having a good time

Set is right there, flipping you off with both hands

while jacking off

with his third hand?

Or maybe with a hand he stole

FROM A BABY.

What I mean is, Set’s a dick.

The reason I mention Set

is that he gets all butthurt over not being king of the gods

so he has this great plan

which is he makes this coffin out of wood

which is like tailor-made for Osiris basically

and then he calls up all the gods like “HEY, GUYS YOU SHOULD COME OVER

I’M HAVING A WEIRD COFFIN PARTY.”

And all the gods are like “Oh shit, weird coffin party.

We’ll be right over.”

So they all get there and Set is like “All right I made this coffin.

Whoever fits perfectly inside it gets candy.”

And of course, all the gods think this sounds like an awesome idea

so they all take turns trying to get into the coffin

and they all fail

but then it’s Osiris’s turn

and Osiris is like “I dunno, guys this seems like a transparent ruse.”

but then he gets in the coffin anyway

and it slams shut and locks

and Set lines it with lead and throws it in the Nile river

and everyone is like “Whoa, major coffin-party foul.”

and Set is like “So I get to be king now, right?”

AND HE DOES.

So naturally Osiris’s wife Isis decides to go find him

so she can at least bury him properly now that he has drowned

and she finds out that the coffin has floated all the way to Byblos

(which is actually just Lebanon in disguise)

and gotten absorbed by an oak tree

which got cut down

and used to build a support pillar

in a palace

for the king of Byblos.

Shiiiit.

So Isis shows up in Byblos like “Hey queen

my husband is embedded in your palace

may I please extract him?”

And the queen is like “Sure, go ahead.

It’s not like he’s a major structural support or anything, right?”

and Isis is like “Haha, sucker.”

And she goes and removes the pillar

WITHOUT DAMAGING THE PALACE AT ALL

thus inventing Jenga.

Except instead of delicately placing the coffin on top of the palace

Isis takes out Osiris’s body and drags it back to Egypt

and buries it in the desert

so he can finally rest in peace

apparently forgetting that Set is the GOD OF THE DESERT.

So Set very quickly sniffs out Osiris’s grave

and is like “Hmm I haven’t fucked with this guy enough.

How about I tear him into fourteen pieces

and then EAT HIS DICK.”

So that is what he does

and he chucks the other thirteen pieces all the fuck everywhere

and then Isis is like “What is that noise?

It better not be my husband getting ripped up and thrown everywhere.”

BUT IT IS TOO LATE

IT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED

and Isis finds out and she is like “Seriously? I just buried this guy.

Now I gotta go find all these body parts and bury them AGAIN

even though Set will prolly just find them again and rip them into SMALLER pieces.”

Anyway, she manages to find all the pieces

(which have turned into full moons by the way)

except for his dick

because like I said

SET ATE IT

so Isis is like “Maaaan

Osiris’s dick was like the most important part of his personality”

so what she does

is she makes a GOLD COCK

and she hangs it around her neck

and BAM

Osiris is alive again

with a golden dong

thus laying the groundwork for Mike Myers’s cinematic triumph, Goldmember

and also getting Isis pregnant with Horus

because I guess that dick necklace was more potent than she bargained for.

So ladies

I guess the moral of the story is

don’t wear a cock around your neck

because unplanned pregnancy is the WORST accessory.

THOTH IS JUST GIVING OUT SCORPIONS

So Osiris is back in action and his dick is more blinged out than ever

BUT ALL IS NOT WELL

because as soon as Osiris gets resurrected

ISIS GIVES BIRTH TO THIS DUDE NAMED HORUS.

Actually, that is not the bad part

because Horus is a pretty cool dude, honestly.

No, see, the bad part

is that seeing as Set was totally willing to EAT OSIRIS’S DICK

just to prevent him from getting a proper burial

all signs point toward he is going to murder the CRAP out of this baby

especially since Horus is totally fated to murder Set if he ever gets old enough.

So Isis is pretty careful about keeping her baby away from murder

but then one day, Set is like “HEY, ISIS COME INTO THIS SPINNING MILL.”

and Isis is like “SPINNING MILL, HOORAY.”

And then Set is like “Oh, did I say spinning mill?

I meant WRETCHED IMPRISONMENT FOREVER

I AM SORRY FOR THE CONFUSION

JUST KIDDING, TOTALLY NOT SORRY.”

So Isis is understandably upset about this

and so is this super-wise dude named Thoth

so he comes down and is like “Hey, Isis how would you like to escape this prison?”

And Isis is like “I would like that a lot.”

so Thoth is like “Boom. You got it.

Here, have some scorpions.”

And Isis is like “WHAT, WHY WOULD YOU GIVE ME SCORPIONS?”

And Thoth is like “Chill out. These scorpions will guide you to safety.

I’m the god of wisdom, okay? I’ve got this handled.”

so Isis takes Horus, and they follow these seven scorpions for like a WEEK.

No one has any ideas where they are going

probably because the guides in this scenario are SCORPIONS.

SCORPIONS ARE NOT THE ULTIMATE GUIDES, MY FRIENDS.

THEY ARE FANTASTIC AT STINGING THE CRAP OUT YOU

BUT I FEEL LIKE THEY ARE NOT KNOWN FOR THEIR SENSE OF DIRECTION.

But after a lot of bullshit, Isis and the scorpions and Horus finally arrive in some town

and Isis goes and knocks on the door of some rich chick’s house

and the rich chick is like “Oh, why hello there HOLY SHIT SCORPIONS.

NO NO NO NO NO.”

But so no sooner has the rich chick slammed her door

than this poor chick is like “Hey there.

I see you have some scorpions.

I’m so poor that I have even pawned my fear of death.

Come crash at my hovel.”

But then PLOT TWIST

the scorpions all throw a fit about not being invited into the other house

so they go inside and sting the crap out of the rich chick’s baby

and she hears the baby crying and she is like “What’s that noise?

I hope it’s not the sound of my baby getting stung by SCORPIONS.

OH SHIT SCORPIONS.”

And Isis hears all this commotion

and she is like “SCORPIONS YOU ARE THE SHITTIEST GUIDES.

NOW I HAVE TO SOLVE ALL THE PROBLEMS.”

So she runs up to where the baby is busy dying

and she is like “Hey, poison, get out of that baby.”

And the poison is like “Maaaan . . . fine.”

and then Isis leaves, like “ANOTHER DAY SAVED

THANKS TO ME AND NO THANKS TO THESE SCORPIONS.”

And then she ends up in the marsh she was supposed to check out

and she hides Horus in the mud, like “Okay, son

I am going to bury you in marsh filth now

among poisonous animals some of which I KNOW to be irritable scorpions

so just try not to move around too much. I’m gonna go get burgers.”

So Isis comes back later

and she is like “Hey, Horus would you like some burgers?

Hmm . . . you don’t seem to be moving at all or breathing or anything.

Oh noooo.

Set, did you turn into a snake and poison my baby?”

And Set is like “Yup.”

And Isis proceeds to scream the most heavy metal scream possible

it is so metal that it STOPS THE SUN

or more accurately, THE SUNBOAT.

And Ra is chilling in the boat with all of his hookers and stuff

and it stops all of a sudden

with one of those record scratch noises you hear in bad teen movies

and everyone is like “Whaaaat?

Thoth, go find out what Isis is angry about.”

so Thoth goes down there like “Woman, I hooked you up with scorpions and everything. What now?”

and Isis is like “Look, I know you are itching to get your bone on in the backseat of the sunboat

but could you do me a solid and just revive my son real quick?”

and Thoth is like “Oh yeah, no problem. Done.

By the way, how were those scorpions? Pretty sweet, right?”

and Isis is like “They were a pack of angry scorpions

that you gave to a single mother with a child.”

Anyway Horus is alive now

but he and Isis still have to hide out in the marshes

while his balls gather sufficient mass to allow him to murder Set.

So basically the moral of the story

is that scorpions are only good for one thing

and that one thing is rad tattoos.

HORUS JERKS OFF IN SET’S SALAD

So Horus grows up

and Isis is like “Hey, son, remember that asshole Set? The one who you are destined to ruin?”

and Horus is like “I mean you never stop talking about him

and also he turned into a snake and poisoned me to death when I was a baby.

That tends to make people pretty memorable when they do stuff like that.”

and Isis is like “Well, why haven’t you killed him yet?”

and Horus is like “JEEZ, MOM, FINE GET OFF MY BACK.

HEY, SET, I’M ’BOUT TO KILL YOU GET READY.”

So Set shows up like “OH NO, YOU DIDN’T.”

And Horus is like “HOLD STILL FOR A SECOND. LET ME STAB YOUR FACE.”

And Isis is like “OH SHIT, STOP. I JUST REMEMBERED THAT SET IS MY

BROTHER.”

and Horus tries to break her legs

but then she stabs him

and Set gets away

and Horus is like “Wow, Mom.

Seriously?”

But Isis heals him later so it’s fine.

Wait, what am I talking about

shit is so un-fine you could coat sandpaper with it and then use it to shave off a goat’s face.

Because now Set is thinking as HARD AS HE CAN about how to screw over Horus

and finally he’s like “I KNOW

I will use my SEMEN to solve this problem.

HEY, HORUS, WANNA HAVE SEX?

And Horus is like “Well, normally I would say no

but today I am an idiot, so okay.”

and they have a bunch of sweaty sex

but then right at the crucial moment

Horus uses his lightning reflexes to parry Set’s manbatter

because apparently it’s not gay if the jizz stays outside your butt.

So then he’s got a handful of manana cream pie

and he’s like “Eww, what am I going to do with this?

I KNOW, I’LL THROW IT IN A RIVER.”

and thus invents hand washing and pollution SIMULTANEOUSLY

so now HORUS is thinking about how to fuck over SET

and he’s like “Hmm . . .

Apparently the name of the game

is ‘get your semen inside of the other guy’s body.’

I don’t make the rules

I just make the jizz.

Let’s make this happen.”

So he sneaks into Set’s house and jerks off in his salad

and then Set eats the salad and Horus is like “HAHA YOU JUST ATE MY SPOOGE.”

Is it just me, or is spooge the single least attractive synonym for dickglue?

Anyway, Set is like “BULLSHIT.

LET’S GO BEFORE THE REST OF THE GODS

AND NEEDLESSLY AIR OUR DIRTY LAUNDRY

IN HOPES OF DETERMINING SUPERIORITY.”

So they call together the other gods

and Set is like “Guys

I totally jizzed in Horus’s butt.

That means I’m better than him, right?

and Horus is like “You didn’t jizz in my butt. What are you talking about?

Go ahead and call for your sperm.

See where they’re at.”

Yeah, apparently these dudes keep in touch with all their sperm.

Talk about being a devoted father.

Anyway, Set is like “FINE.

OHHH SPERRMMMM. WHERE AAARE YOUUUU?”

And the sperm is like “HERE WE ARE IN THE RIVER.”

and Set is like “Dammit, Horus

Did you block my cock?”

and Horus is like “That is in fact exactly what I did.

Now hold on lemme find out where my sperm is at real quick.”

And the sperm is like “HERE WE ARE IN SET’S STOMACH.”

And Set is like “NOOOO.”

And everyone else is like “Wow.

This is astonishingly stupid

how about we settle this pissing contest with a reasonable competition

like a boat race

except the boats are made of stone.

THAT’S PERFECT THAT’S NOT STUPID AT ALL.”

So Set and Horus get their boats ready

but Horus has a secret

which is that his boat is actually MADE OF WOOD

it’s just painted to look like stone

which raises a couple of questions:

First of all

why didn’t anyone check to see if Horus’s boat was actually made of stone?

And second of all

since they didn’t

WHY DID SET NOT DO THIS?

DOES HE NOT REALIZE THAT STONE IS THE WORST THING TO MAKE BOATS OUT OF?

I mean, maybe he thinks they are trying to race to the bottom of the lake

in which case I understand

either that or he’s SCRUPULOUSLY HONEST

but we’re talking about the god of storms, chaos, and evil

who has been known to do things like eat the balls of his enemies

and then try to kill their babies

and then when their babies grow up

try to have buttsex with the very same babies

so I feel like honesty is not top of his priority list.

But anyway they have the race and Set’s boat sinks

and Horus wins

and as a result he gets to be king of Egypt

and Set has to be his bitch forever.

So the moral of the story

is next time you are jockeying for a sweet promotion

consider jizzing in your coworkers’ food

but make sure to also brush up on your boat-racing just in case.

MAYAN

I’ve never been freaked out by a calendar even a little

just getting a rise out of me with a calendar is a feat on its own

but the Mayans are the MVPs of making calendars, man.

You have to hand it to a culture that can make a calendar SO INTENSE

that it is still freaking people out CENTURIES LATER.

And they didn’t stop at just freaking people out.

No, see, these dudes wrote a whole fan fiction for their calendar.

It’s called the Popol Vuh

and it is basically just a super-complicated code version of the calendar itself

secretly translated by some Mayan dudes

around the time that the Spanish were killing everybody

and now

it is time to take that sacred and clandestine work of those brave souls

and mock the shit out of it.

THE MAYANS HAVE THE MOST BRUTAL CALENDAR

So there is this one Mayan dude, right?

he has like fifty goddamn names

Like Hurucan, and Gugumatz, and Heart-of-Sky

and I’m not even really sure if he is one Mayan dude

or like, a collection of Mayan dudes

because they keep acting like he is two people

but the two people never do anything independently

so they’re basically just one person

or some kind of hive mind.

Anyway, we’re going to call this thing Quetzalcoatl.

Quetzalcoatl is bored, because all there is anywhere

is just a whole bunch of water and some sky

and it’s not even interesting sky because there is no light

so Quetzalcoatl is like “Okay, boom.”

And there is some light

and then he goes boom again

and there is some land

but this is still pretty lame because what is the point of being able to do this kind of shit

if there is no one around to get freaked out by how cool it is?

Now, this may sound pretty familiar so far

but here’s where it gets crazy:

Quetzalcoatl’s master plan for getting worshippers

is to invent JAGUARS.

And then he’s like “WHOA, JAGUARS LOOK, I JUST FUCKING MADE YOU.

PRETTY NEAT, HUH?”

And the jaguars are all “Rarrrr, we are jaguars.

We can’t talk or be impressed.”

So Quetzalcoatl is like “Aww, fuck you guys.

I’m gonna make some way more awesome creatures

and they are going to worship me

and you are going to be their SLAVES.”

So he gets some dirt

and he makes dirt-people

but the dirt-people really suck

because first of all, they are made out of dirt

second of all, they only speak gibberish

and third of all, they dissolve in water

so Quetzalcoatl figures that even if they COULD worship him

he would get pretty embarrassed

so he kills all of them by dumping water on them

and then he calls these two other dudes

Xmucane and Xpiacoc

who have names that sound like prescription drugs

designed to treat nasal congestion and erectile dysfunction respectively

and he’s like “Hey, is it a good idea for me to make people out of wood?”

And they say “Yeah, go for it.”

So he makes people out of wood

like a whole bunch of wooden robots, basically

and they can speak and walk around

and they don’t dissolve in water

but they are TREMENDOUS assholes.

One might even say they have a STICK up their asses.

Get it? Get it?

Aw, screw you guys.

Anyway, they totally forget to worship Quetzalcoatl even a little bit

and he’s getting pretty pissed at this point

because he has seriously made EVERYTHING THAT EXISTS

and no one is giving him ANY CREDIT

so he kind of freaks out a little

and causes fire to rain from the sky

and burns everything to cinders

and then makes all of the wood-people’s cookware come alive and kill them

and all the animals move into their houses and eat them

even though they are made of wood and totally not tasty

and meanwhile Quetzalcoatl makes a bunch of ACTUALLY delicious people out of tortillas

and those people are supposedly us

and as soon as Quetzalcoatl gets bored he is going to make us into burritos

and then feed us to jaguars or whatever

and this story was apparently plausible enough

to freak out THE ENTIRE GODDAMN WORLD ALL THE WAY THROUGH 2012.

But anyway, everyone lives happily ever after

except the wood-people

who get chased into the woods and turned into monkeys.

So the moral of the story is

never set fire to a monkey

because it is made out of wood

and you will start a forest fire.

HUNAHPÚ AND XBALANQUÉ: ULTIMATE BALLERS

So there are these two dudes

Hun Hunapú and Vucub Hunapú.

They are twins, or at least brothers.

Anyway, they piss off the gods of the underworld with their constant ball playing.

Yes, that is right

they play sports SO HARD

that it upsets MAYAN SATAN.

Anyway, the gods summon them down to the underworld

(which is called Xibalbá

because no Mayan story is complete

without about six thousand proper nouns beginning with the letter “X”)

and the gods are all “Hey, guys we heard you like ball playing

GET IT?

WE HEARD.

BECAUSE YOU ARE SO LOUD.”

And the twins are like “What of it?”

And the gods are like “Well if you like ball games so much

how about you play ball with us

FOR YOUR LIIIIVES?!?!”

And the twins are like “This sounds like THE ULTIMATE RUSH.”

Now, if this was a Greek myth

the twins would use some kind of mad skill or insane trickery to beat the gods.

But this is a Mayan myth.

The dudes get killed before the game even starts for smoking a cigar the wrong way

and then they get decapitated and buried under the ball court

except for Hun’s head which they put that on a calabash tree for some reason.

This turns out to be a bad idea

because some chick named Xquic walks by

and Hun spits in her hand

and he is such a true man that this causes her to get pregnant and she gives birth to TWINS.

Fellas

think you’re hot shit because your penis is one and a half inch longer than the national average?

try impregnating a random chick in her hand

with your saliva

from a tree

on which someone has deposited YOUR SEVERED HEAD.

Wait, wait, I went and read it again

it wasn’t even his head

it was just his skull.

Skulls don’t even MAKE saliva

so . . . I guess when he still had skin and stuff he just collected a big glob of spit in there

and he HELD IT.

WAITING.

I want that shit on one of those posters that says “HANG IN THERE.”

So yeah, Xquic gives birth to twins

they are called Hunahpú and Xbalanqué

and these two guys are alive for like five minutes

before they discover their dad’s ball-playing gear

and start playing ball SO GODDAMN HARD

that they piss off the underworld AGAIN

and THEY get summoned down there

and the gods are like “Hey

you may have noticed that severed head hanging from that tree by your house.

That was the last dude who kept us awake with his ball playing.

That was also your dad, FYI.

Why the hell do you guys even like playing ball this much?

Okay, look, do you want to play ball for your lives?”

and the twins are like “THE ULTIMATE RUSH.”

So they play ball

and see, if this was a Roman myth

or maybe like a Norse myth

these guys would totally have won and avenged their father(s)

but like I said, Mayans are assholes

so the gods win again

and they kill the twins and bury them under the ball court.

But there is a TWIST

because it turns out the twins are IMMORTAL SOMEHOW

so they dig themselves up and sneak away

and they come up with a crafty plan

which is to come directly back to the underworld, dressed as traveling performers

and the gods are like “SWEEEET”

because it is boring in Xibalbá without the constant noise of ball playing.

So Hunahpú and Xbalanqué put on a fantastic show full of amazing feats.

Maybe they even do an astonishing magic trick

where they make their names easier to fucking type.

But anyway, for the finale

one of them cuts off the other’s head and then puts it back on without any problems.

So all the gods are like “AAAAWESOME!

DO ME DO ME DO ME.”

And the twins are like “Sure, okay.”

And just go and chop off the gods’ heads without any resistance whatsoever

because that is how slick they are

and then they go dig up their dads and resurrect them

and none of them ever forget how lucky they are

to be able to use their DICKS to get women pregnant.

So the moral of the story

is to ball so hard

mothafuckas wanna murder you and bury you under the ball court.

ZIPACNA AND THE FOUR HUNDRED BOYS

No, this is not the title of a hard-core Mayan gangbang porno.

This is an honest-to-goodness myth from the Popol Vuh

that just HAPPENS to have four hundred boys in it.

Let’s do this:

So Zipacna is the son of this guy named Seven Macaw

who is basically a rogue sun god who hangs out on Earth and causes problems.

Zipacna is responsible for making all the mountains

and he has a bro named Earthquake who is responsible for

PUPPIES.

Wait, no, it’s earthquakes.

Sorry, I read that wrong.

Look, none of that is really that important

except to establish that Zipacna is the sort of dude who CAUSES MOUNTAINS.

So Zipacna is taking a bath in the river one day

and these four hundred boys waltz by

carrying a big tree they just chopped down to make their house with.

They had to chop down a big tree, you see because there are four hundred of them.

They are having some trouble, though

because I guess their eyes were bigger than their biceps.

They are just dropping this tree all over the place

and Zipacna sees them and he’s like “Dudes let me help you with that.”

And then he just picks up the tree all by himself and takes it to the boys’ crib-in-progress

and doesn’t even ask for a tip or anything.

Zipacna is a pretty nice dude.

He is the only one.

’Cause see, then what happens

is the four hundred boys have a meeting

and they’re all like “Guys

Zipacna just did us a major solid.

How should we reward him for his altruism?

Oh

how about WITH MURDER?

Seriously, we cannot have any really strong dudes running around being stronger than us.

We have an inferiority complex!

Or rather

we have FOUR HUNDRED INFERIORITY COMPLEXES.”

So they come up with this brilliant plan

which is that they call up Zipacna and they’re like “Hey, man

thanks for all your help with that big log

but we have another problem now

we need a really big hole for some reason.

We need you to come dig us a really big hole and then stay in it while we bury you alive.

Okay?”

And Zipacna is like “Anything I can do to help.”

But Zipacna is too crafty for their clever ploy!

I mean he digs the hole, sure

but he also digs a special SIDE HOLE to hide in when the four hundred boys try to bury him.

Actually they don’t even try to bury him

they just try to drop a big-ass log down the hole and crush him

which is dumb, because he just lifted one of those for them

and that is why they wanted to kill him in the first place.

But either way, it doesn’t matter because Zipacna is safe in his side hole.

So the boys are all up on the surface celebrating their dumb plan

but then they’re like “Wait!

If Zipacna was really dead we would have heard his death cry just now!”

And Zipacna is like “Oh, uh . . .

Owwww, I’m dead now.”

And the boys are like “PERFECT.

But WAIT!

If Zipacna is really dead

then a bunch of ants will probably show up the day after tomorrow to eat his tasty corpse.

Let’s wait for that to happen so we can make sure he’s really dead.”

So Zipacna just chops off all his hair and bites off all his fingernails

and when the ants show up

he just gives all his hair and fingernails to the ants

and they all scamper all over the place carrying his body stuff

because I guess ants think hair is delicious?

Reason number a million not to be an ant.

Anyway, then the boys are TOTALLY CONVINCED.

So obviously they all go get trashed to celebrate their totally bogus victory

and meanwhile Zipacna tunnels out of his hole

and then he crushes all four hundred boys inside the house he helped them build.

So the moral of the story

is that I don’t care what your mom says

biting your fingernails may just save your life.

JUDEO-CHRISTIAN

So here’s a religion you may have heard of.

In fact, I am willing to bet that nine out of ten of you

when you hear the word “religion”

think of this one first.

But did you know

that this popular high-school jock of religions

is JUST AS SUPREMELY MESSED UP as all the other ones?

Yeah, no foolin’.

And it’s even crazier

because what masquerades as a single holy book

is actually more like a short-story collection by like a million crazy desert dudes!

I’m mainly gonna focus on the Old Testament in this section

because the Old Testament God gets up to some seriously brutal shit

but the New Testament

(the one with Jesus in it and stuff)

is messed up in a whole other way.

OKAY, ENOUGH TALK

LET THE FIASCOS BEGIN!

GOD MAKES A LOT OF STUFF

Okay so God, right?

No, I didn’t leave out any letters up there.

That is not a typo.

No, see, in this pantheon

THERE IS ONLY ONE GOD.

I KNOW.

PRETTY LAME.

But anyway, this God guy is facing a problem that you should be pretty familiar with at this point.

The problem is that there is water AND NOTHING ELSE.

ALSO IT’S SUPER DARK.

So BAM, he invents light, day one

and then he misses the dark part so he invents night too

and then he’s like “Oh, looks like it’s nighttime.

Better go to sleep.”

DAY TWO:

God basically just makes a big divider right in the middle of the water

and all the water below the line is earth

and all the water above the line is heaven.

(This is why angels are traditionally depicted wearing scuba gear.)

Day three is when God finally gets around to inventing dry land.

Seriously?

It took Ra like all of thirty seconds

to invent dry land AND HIMSELF.

Is this just not something that occurred to God until he had two nights to sleep on it?

Oh, and he makes plants too.

On day four God invents the sun and the moon and the stars

which begs the question

WHERE WAS THE LIGHT COMING FROM BEFORE?

And then he’s like “Oh shit, the moon.

Better go to sleep.”

This dude needs an awful lot of sleep for an omnipotent dude

which may explain why wars happen.

So on day five, God invents animals.

ESPECIALLY WHALES.

The Bible is very specific on this point.

By day six, God is pretty pleased.

He’s like “Wow, this is awesome.

How can I ruin it?”

So he invents mankind

and also cows

because he forgot about cows.

Then he gets real hammered to celebrate

and he passes out on Saturday

and doesn’t wake up until MONDAY.

In fact he sleeps through Sunday SO HARD

that NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO DO WORK ON SUNDAY EVER AGAIN.

That is a true power nap.

So when he finally wakes up

he makes this garden called the Garden of Eden

and he puts the guy he made in there

and the man (whose name is Adam) is like “God, I’m bored.”

and God is like “Ooh, I know a great game we can play.

It’s called name all the animals.

Ready? Go.”

So Adam falls for this transparent ruse to get him to do God’s work for him

and he names all the animals

but then he gets done doing that and he is like “Still bored, God.”

And God is like “Okay, I got this.”

And BAM

knocks him out and steals one of his ribs.

This is some straight-up Tijuana shit is what this is.

So Adam wakes up in a bathtub full of ice

like “Whaaaat happened?”

and God is like “Look, dude, I made you a chick.

She is made of your rib, so she might be kinda dumb

I tried just making one out of clay, like how I made you

but she was harboring all these problematic delusions of equality

so I had to find a workaround

anyway, she’s totally hot, so don’t worry about it.

Oh, by the way, I should warn you guys

you can totally eat from any tree in the garden

EXCEPT FOR THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL

THAT ONE OVER THERE

THE TOTALLY UNGUARDED ONE WITH THE DELICIOUS-LOOKING APPLES”

and Adam and Eve are like “Okay, whatever dude”

(Eve is the name of the chick God made, by the way)

and they go off somewhere to bone.

But there is a SERPENT in this garden.

I think he is supposed to be Satan

but really I think he’s just a serpent who happens to be a big jerk.

This serpent runs up on Eve when she is off on her own

and he is like “Hey, gurl, try one of these apples.”

And Eve is like “YOU MEAN THE APPLES OF KNOWLEDGE?

THE ONES THAT GOD EXPLICITLY FORBID US FROM EATING??

NOOOO WAY.”

And the serpent is like “No, come on.”

And Eve is like “Okay.”

So she eats the apple

and it is DELICIOUS

and so she takes the rest of it to Adam, all like “Here, eat this.”

And Adam is like “What? No, God said if we ate that then we would die or something.”

And Eve is like “Uhhh . . . totally still alive over here.”

And Adam is like “Okay, fair point.”

So he eats the apple

and suddenly both of them realize HOW INCREDIBLY NAKED THEY ARE.

THIS IS WHAT THE TREE DOES

IT LETS YOU KNOW YOU’RE NAKED

THE MYTHICAL TREE OF KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL

COULD HAVE EASILY BEEN REPLACED

BY A FIVE-DOLLAR MIRROR FROM A COLOMBIAN BROTHEL.

So they make themselves some clothes, ’cause they’re embarrassed

and then God wakes up from one of his meganaps

and he’s like “HEY

WHO THE FUCK TOLD YOU YOU WERE NAKED?”

See, this was his big plan.

His big plan was just to look at naked people all day.

Now the plan is ruined so he responds in the rational way

which is to put curses on everybody and then kick them out of his garden.

He curses the serpent to have to crawl on its belly forever

apparently forgetting that that is what SERPENTS DO ALL THE TIME

and he curses Eve to undergo tremendous pain during childbirth

because apparently he is able to imagine some crazy parallel universe

where pushing something the size of a screaming football out of your vag

is somehow NOT INCREDIBLY PAINFUL

and then he curses Adam to toil endlessly

and Adam is like “Come on!

Couldn’t you just curse me to like . . .

have testicles or something?”

But by then he is already kicked out of Eden

and there is a big flaming sword guarding the door

and there is nothing left to do

but have a bunch of kids and try to forget the whole fiasco.

So the moral of the story

is to never be naked

because God is a creepy pervert who invented you so he could look at your junk.

CAIN AND ABEL INVENT THE SIBLING RIVALRY

So Adam and Eve know each other.

Oh wait

I read that wrong.

Adam and Eve totally have SEX with each other.

It’s just that the Bible is cagey about shit like that

so instead of writing “Adam boned Eve in a moist, raunchy sex fiasco.”

the Bible guys would put “Adam KNEW Eve in a moist, raunchy sex fiasco.”

It’s awesome once you know about it

and now you do.

BUT SO ANYWAY

Adam and Eve bang the daylights out of each other

and they have two kids: Cain and Abel

and these dudes are farmers

because what else are they gonna do?

No one has built any of the cool stuff yet.

So Abel becomes a sheep farmer

and Cain becomes a vegetables farmer.

Then harvest time comes

(I am guessing that harvest time for sheep is whenever they start to piss you off)

and Abel makes an offering to the LORD

(always in all caps, by the way)

of like, the fattest sheep he owns.

Dude, he could have totally eaten that.

MEANWHILE

Cain makes an offering

of all his choicest vegetables

and God gets all of these things

and he is like “OH SNAP

DELICIOUS LAMB MEAT

THAT I HAVE NO USE FOR BECAUSE I AM IMMORTAL AND OMNIPOTENT AND STUFF.

GOOD JOB, ABEL.

BUT WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT, CAIN?

VEGETABLES?

IF I WANTED TO EAT VEGETABLES

WHY DO YOU THINK I INVENTED MEAT HUH?

YOU’RE NOT MY DAD, CAIN.

YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT’S BEST FOR ME.”

So Cain goes and hits up Abel later.

He’s like “Yo, bro

God really dug your offering, huh?”

and Abel is like “Yeah, well, it was pretty sweet.”

And Cain is like “Yeah . . . yeah . . .

Hey listen, I actually dug something of yours as well.”

And Abel is like “Oh yeah, what is it?”

And Cain is like “YOUR GRAVE, MOTHERFUCKER!”

Then he stabs him and puts him underground

thus SINGLE-HANDEDLY INVENTING MURDER.

Yeah

before this, murder didn’t even exist.

Cain is seriously like the Thomas Edison of stabbing people.

So pretty soon God comes poking around

like “HEY, ABEL

ME AND THE HOLY GHOST ARE HAVING A BARBECUE.

GOT ANY MORE OF THAT DELICIOUS LAMB MEAT?”

And then he sees Cain and he’s like “OH HEY, DIPSHIT

NO, I DON”T WANT ANY VEGETABLES

THERE IS NOT GOING TO BE A ‘VEGAN OPTION’ AT THIS BARBECUE.

HEY, HAVE YOU SEEN YOUR BROTHER ANYWHERE?”

And Cain is like “What? Noooo.

What am I, my brother’s babysitter or some shit?

Find him yourself.”

And God is like “Oh hold on, I’m getting a phone call.

Hello?

Oh hi, Abel’s blood.

What’s that?

Cain murdered you and hid you underground

foolishly believing that six feet of dirt would obscure you from THE OMNISCIENT CREATOR?!

YOU DON’T SAY.

CAIN, YOU ARE SO GETTING PUNISHED.”

So he curses Cain so that the earth will refuse to get farmed by him

and he has to roam forever and everyone will hate him

and Cain is like “But, Godddd

now everyone I meet is just gonna kill me.”

And God is like “Oh, good point.

How about I make a law that says no one can kill you

and I put a mark on you to let everyone know that you are a dude not to kill?”

And Cain is like “Uh . . . yes.”

At this stage of the Bible, God is not very good at coming up with punishments.

Don’t worry, he gets way better.

But yeah, then Cain goes off to live in the land of Nod

and everyone is either unhappy or dead or omnipotent.

So the moral of the story

is that God hates vegetarians.

ABRAHAM IS TOTALLY COOL ABOUT STABBING HIS KID IN THE FACE

Seriously?

SERIOUSLY?

Okay, here we go:

So one day this guy named Abraham is out working in the fields

and God is like “Abraham! Abraham! Hey!”

Abraham is like “Chill out, I’m right here. What do you want?”

And God is like “You know your son?”

And Abraham is like “My only son? Yeah, you could say I know him.”

And God is like “Okay, here’s what I want you to do:

I want you to take your son

up to a mountain that I’m gonna show you

and I want you to kill him and set him on fire for me.”

And Abraham is like “Okay, well I guess you know what you’re doing.”

So Abraham goes and gets his son

and he’s like “Come on, son, let’s go on a nice father-son trip to a mountain that God will show us.

We are going to make a blood sacrifice it will be a great bonding experience.”

So they start going to the mountain

along with some donkeys, and some slaves which God is apparently cool with

and Abraham makes his son carry the wood

and he carries the fire and the knife

and halfway there, his son is like

“Uhh, Dad?”

And Abraham is like “What?”

And his son is like “Dad where is the lamb we’re gonna sacrifice?”

And Abraham is like “Uh . . . well . . . God is going to provide a lamb for us, son.”

HE IS REMARKABLY CALM ABOUT THIS WHOLE THING.

PERHAPS FOR ABRAHAM

ONE SON IS TOO MANY SONS.

So anyway, they get to the mountain

and Abraham straps his son down

and his son doesn’t say anything

presumably because the level of shitty parenting going on here has rendered him speechless

and Abraham raises up the knife

and God is like “WHOA, WHOA, ABRAHAM!!!!”

and Abraham is like “WHAT?!

I’m kind of in the middle of something right now.”

And God is like “Haha, PSYCH!

I was totally just kidding about the whole sacrificing your son thing.

But, dude, that was HARD-CORE.

Tell you what, man

I like a man with big balls

so how about I make it so that your children WILL OUTNUMBER THE STARS IN THE SKY.”

And Abraham is like “WHAT

THAT IS TOO MANY KIDS.”

and God is like “Haha, no need to thank me, buddy.

Your thoughtless attempted sacrifice of your own son is all the thanks I need.”

And then Abraham finds a ram

which he sacrifices to God instead of his son

and then I guess the two of them go home

or actually, they go to a place called Beersheba

which is clearly the party city of ancient times

and I like to imagine that they partied so hard

that afterward they had to go to Bathsheba just to wash the stank off

and things are pretty awkward between Abraham and his son from then on

but it’s okay, because Abraham has a ton more kids.

So the moral of the story

is that it’s never a bad idea

to try to set your kids on fire

as long as the voices tell you so.

NOAH IS ON A BOAT

So God makes a bunch of people

they fuck up and kill each other

but then they feel bad about it

so they have, like, CRAZY makeup sex

and the next NINE THOUSAND PAGES OF THE BIBLE

(depending on how big you make the text)

are about all the babies people made

because the Bible predates condoms

and I think we should all remember this.

So everyone has a bunch of kids

but it doesn’t matter

because apparently they all suck

and God decides he’s had enough of this shit.

He’s just gonna kill everybody

kinda like that other god in that Mayan myth.

See what I mean about how all this junk starts to run together after a while?

And he totally rips off Quetzalcoatl even harder

because his method of choice for killing everyone

is a GIANT FLOOD

(P.S.:

Did you know that whenever H. P. Lovecraft uses the word “antediluvian”

what he means is “predating the biblical flood?”

Because yeah

apparently H. P. Lovecraft knows EXACTLY WHEN THIS HAPPENED.)

But God can’t just kill EVERYONE

because he put a lot of work into this whole humanity thing

so he picks the least sucky dude in the world

whose name is Noah

and he’s like “YO, NOAH!

EVERYBODY’S GOING TO DIE, EXCEPT YOU

CONGRATULATIONS.

HOPE YOU DON’T HAVE ANY FRIENDS.

GONNA NEED YOU TO BUILD A REAL BIG BOAT, BUDDY

BUT NO FRIENDS ALLOWED ON THIS BOAT

JUST ANIMALS

SEVEN PAIRS OF EVERY KID OF ANIMAL

(unless they are really filthy in which case you can just get one pair)

’CAUSE YEAH, I SPENT A LOT OF TIME ON THOSE ANIMALS

BUT I FORGOT TO MAKE THEM SMART ENOUGH TO BUILD BOATS

SO THAT IS YOUR JOB NOW.”

So this sounds like a lot of work to Noah

but hey, it’s better than dying

so he gets some lumber and he gets to work

and somehow he manages to pull it off in time

with all his neighbors showing up at his house and calling him an idiot all day.

Well, joke’s on them.

They all die.

But then, joke’s on Noah

because now he has to live on a boat full of nothing but animals and his wife.

Nobody wins except for God

who is playing a game called “Do Whatever the Hell I Want Because I’m God”

So anyway, the whole world stays flooded for FORTY DAYS

which is actually just Bible speak for AN ARBITRARILY LONG TIME

but Noah is patient

because, oh yeah, I forgot to tell you:

NOAH IS SIX HUNDRED YEARS OLD.

Okay, now I’m super impressed.

This six-hundred-year-old dude managed to build a massive boat in just a couple months

AND

MORE IMPRESSIVELY

he managed to live six hundred years on Earth without committing ANY MORTAL SINS.

So anyway, the rain stops eventually

and Noah’s family and all the animals are getting pretty antsy

no pun intended

because only some of them are actually ants

but anyway, Noah’s solution is to send birds out to find land.

First he tries sending out a raven

but that’s useless.

The raven pretty much just flies back and forth a lot.

So Noah sends out a dove

and the dove fails to find land

so Noah KEEPS sending it out

until on the third try it finally brings back an olive branch

indicating that it found a tree somewhere

and this somehow became an international symbol for peace

when what it SHOULD symbolize is “HOORAY WE ARE NO LONGER COVERED IN WATER.”

So yeah, after that everything is pretty straightforward.

They find some land

and Noah makes an altar

and God makes a rainbow

which is his way of saying “Sorry, dudes won’t happen again.”

And he has kept that promise

SO FAR.

So the moral of the story

is that if you are planning on being a terrible person your whole life

you can just keep a big boat in your garage and you’ll be totally safe.

KING SOLOMON AND THE DISPOSABLE BABY

So there’s this king named Solomon.

It doesn’t really matter what he’s king of.

You know how it was in Bible times.

Kings all over the place.

But the thing about Solomon

is that unlike most of the kings who were all over the place in Bible times

Solomon is INCREDIBLY WISE.

Observe:

So one of the things a king used to have to do

was to sit in a room while people shouted their problems at him

and then solve the problems using his king powers.

So one day, Solomon is doing this

and two ladies walk in with a dead baby, a live baby and a SERIOUS DOOZY OF A PROBLEM.

One woman is like “Hey, Solomon I gave birth to this healthy baby five days ago

but then my bitch of a roommate gave birth to a DEAD baby two days later

and she thought it would be a good idea

to pull some Indiana Jones shit

and switch my live baby for her dead one.

Make her give me my baby back.”

And the other woman is like “Nuh-uh! This is totally my baby

your baby DIED because you are a terrible parent.”

So Solomon is like “Hmm, this is a tough one.

Oh wait, no, it’s not. I have swords.

Hey, guards

cut the baby in half give a piece to each of these ladies.

PROBLEM SOLVED.”

And the first lady is like “Jesus Christ just give her the baby.

What is wrong with you?”

And the second woman is like “DIBS ON THE TOP HALF.”

And Solomon is like “Ah-HAH!

The baby must belong to the first lady

because mothering instincts generally prevent people from agreeing to bisect their babies

and even if the first lady ISN’T the mother

the baby should still probably go to the woman who is NOT WILLING TO CUT IT WITH SWORDS.

Seriously, lady

what were you even planning on doing with the top half of a baby?

You’ve already got 100 percent of a dead baby no questions asked.

What are you, making a casserole?

Case dismissed.”

So the moral of the story

is you should always do a background check on all your potential roommates.

HINDU

No culture before or since

has so flawlessly combined the disparate realms

of brutal murder

and epic dance battles

as did the ancient Hindus

which I suppose makes sense coming from the nation that gave us Bollywood.

People in Hindu myths are ready to cut a rug at the drop of a hat

and they are also ready to cut other things

and in fact, maybe the reason that the hat dropped in the first place

was that someone cut off the head it was resting on

and then ate it

because that’s how the Hindu gods roll

but it is not all decapitation and bump ’n’ grind, my friends

Hindu mythology gets up to some seriously cosmic shit as well.

Observe:

THE HINDUS LIKE TO CHOP DUDES UP

So back in the days before there was stuff and things there was a dude.

Just this one dude, as far as the eye could see

spanning the entire breadth of the universe, plus like ten extra feet for good measure.

His name

was the Dude

but not the Dude from The Big Lebowski.

This is a significantly Bigger Lebowski we are talking about here.

This is a Lebowski as Big as the entirety of creation.

He is so big that he exists at all times both before and after his birth

and like a quarter of his body is made up of all the animals ever

and the other three-fourths is all the gods

and he actually gives birth to a dude named Virj

who then gives birth to HIM.

WHAT.

So obviously the gods get tired of trying to conceptualize this universal dude

and they’re like “Screw this, let’s sacrifice him.”

So they tie him down and cut him up

and just start flinging pieces of his body ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE

and all the giblets start turning into things

like all the tasty clarified butter they boil off him turns into ANIMALS

even though I thought animals were already a quarter of his body.

I guess a quarter of his body was butter?

Fatty.

Anyway, the gods are pretty much making up ceremonies as they go along

so those kind of get written down and preserved for all eternity.

Also, I gotta hand it to these gods

it takes some serious effort/cojones

to kill and butcher someting that is 75 percent COMPOSED OF YOU.

But anyway, his mouths become priests

and his arms become nobles

and his thighs become the general rabble

and his feet become the slaves.

His brain turns into the moon and his eyeballs are the sun

and the sky comes out of his ears and the ground forms under his peasant feet

and the gods make sure to start a whole assload of fires

because if you’re gonna butcher the universe it might as well also be on fire

and those fires turn into the IDEAL SOCIAL ORDER somehow.

No one mentions what happens to the Dude’s dong or his chest actually.

My guess is that some creeper god stole that shit and built himself a pan-galactic RealDoll.

So the moral of the story

is next time you are getting sexed up

just remember that both you and your honey are made out of the same dude

so basically

everybody is gay.

SHIVA CANNOT BE STOPPED

Okay, so there is this dude Brahma, right?

He is the creator of everything.

So one day

he takes his mind

and makes a hot chick come out of it.

This hot chick is his daughter.

But as soon as he pops out this brainbaby

Brahma is like “OH DAMN.

I WANT TO DO THINGS TO THAT

THAT HAVEN’T EVEN BEEN INVENTED YET.

GOOD THING I AM THE CREATOR

AND CAN INVENT THOSE THINGS RIGHT AWAY.”

And then he goes ahead and gives himself THREE EXTRA HEADS

so he can check out his daughter from all angles

thus causing the world to get divided into four directions

because the creator suddenly desires something that is outside himself.

BUT ENOUGH SPIRITUALITY.

BACK TO TITS AND BAD DECISIONS.

Okay, so Brahma’s daughter gets wind of all this exquisite voyeurism going down

and she gets pretty embarrassed

and since she can’t stop being hot

she decides to stop being on Earth instead

and she goes up to heaven.

So now Brahma is like “AUGH.

I WANT TO CONTINUE TO LOOK AT TITS

BUT MY HEADS ONLY LOOK DOWN.

LOOKS LIKE I NEED ANOTHER HEAD.”

See this is the thing about being the creator.

You do not consider options such as

oh, I don’t know

moving your neck.

NO.

You grow an extra fucking head

looking STRAIGHT UP

and then you send it shooting toward heaven

all like “NOM NOM NOM, TITS TIME.”

So at this point

Brahma’s daughter is up in heaven

like “What am I going to do about this encroaching molester head?”

and this is when Shiva steps up to the plate

like “THAT IS ENOUGH BULLSHIT, BRAHMA.”

Then he chops off Brahma’s head

USING ONLY HIS THUMBNAIL.

But instead of a hearty thank-you

and maybe some victory poontang

Shiva gets Brahma’s gross skull stuck to his hand

and he is like “AW BALLS.

THIS IS MY JERKIN’-IT HAND”

And he transforms into Bhairava

aka THE SHIVA OF ULTIMATE RAGE

and he is like “HERE IS WHAT I AM GOING TO DO:

I AM GOING TO WRECK SOME SHIT

AND THEN I AM GOING TO WRECK SOME SHIT.”

And Brahma is like “Oh no you are not, son.

You are going to get banished all the way on out of here that is what you are going to do

and then you are going to roam around the land as a mad beggar

until you get arbitrarily forgiven.”

So this is exactly what Shiva does

until one day he stumbles upon a group of sages

all sitting around praying the bajeezus out of themselves

and Shiva rolls up

like “HEY HEY, OOGA-BOOGA CRAZY HOMELESS GUY HERE, WHAT’S UP?”

And the sages are like “What.”

And the sages’ wives are like “OH MAN, I WANNA TAP THAT LIKE A KEG O’ BONERS.”

and they all go dance the crazy wango-bango tango with Shiva

and the sages are like “WHAT.”

So obviously they send a tiger after Shiva

and Shiva responds by TAKING OFF THE TIGER’S SKIN

and WEARING IT AS A SKIRT.

So then they send a poisonous snake after Shiva

and Shiva picks up the snake

and WEARS IT AS A GODDAMN NECKLACE.

So then they send an evil dwarf after Shiva

rightly assuming that there is probably no way for Shiva to wear a dwarf.

(That’s right, guys.

They have fuckable gold in India too.)

But Shiva just sort of kicks the dwarf over

stands on his face

and takes his club.

Then he turns around like “COME ON, HOT BITCHES.

FOLLOW ME INTO THE FOREST.”

So they do

and then Shiva (aka Bhairava, remember)

goes to Vishnu’s crib

like “Hey, Vishnu, lemme in”

and Vishnu’s bouncer is like “Who are you? You’re not on the list.”

And Bhairava is like “I AM THE GUY WHO IS STABBING YOU TO DEATH WITH A TRIDENT.”

And then Vishnu jumps out of the back room like “OH SNAP

I WILL SHOOT BLOOD OUT OF MY FACE AT YOU UNTIL YOU GO AWAY.”

And Bhairava fills Brahma’s sticky skull with Vishnu’s blood

like “THANKS, SUCKER.

I WAS JUST DROPPING BY TO ASK IF I COULD BORROW A CUP OF YOUR BLOOD.”

And then he dances off into the forest

carrying the doorkeeper’s body and a skull full of blood.

He dances all over everywhere

until he gets to the holy city Varanasi

at which point he is pardoned for his crimes

and gets to go back to heaven

. . . ?

So I guess the moral of the story

is if you are ever indicted for murder

your best bet

is to do more murders

and then fill the skulls of your victims

with the blood from your other victims

and maybe stage an impromptu dance party with some women you stole

and eventually people will realize that you can’t be stopped

and you can go to heaven.

Excuse me while I go convert to Hinduism.

ANYTHING KALI CAN DO, SHIVA CAN DO BETTER

So we’ve established that Shiva’s a badass

but it turns out that his main job

is to make sure his wife Kali

who is the goddess of having a thousand furious arms covered in knives and murder

doesn’t get too shitfaced off all the blood she drinks and destroy the world

like this one time

where he lies in front of her on the battlefield

or this other time

when he turns into a baby

like “WAH WAH, TITS PLEASE”

and Kali is overcome by MOTHERING INSTINCTS.

But there is one particular instance of Shiva handling Kali’s shit

that is particularly fantastic:

Okay, so this story begins like all stories about Kali:

Kali just killed a bunch of dudes.

Probably they were demons

but really, who knows?

Anyway, to celebrate

Kali takes up residence in a nearby forest with a bunch of her asshole friends

and starts terrorizing the countryside

stabbing the villagers

then stabbing their stab wounds

then stabbing the blood in their stab wounds

on and on, till the break of dawn

and then after the break of dawn too.

So finally one of the villagers

who is sick of getting stabbed every day

and is also a follower of Shiva

comes running up to Shiva like “HEY, SHIVA

CAN YOU HANDLE THIS SHIT FOR US?

WE REALLY NEED THIS SHIT HANDLED.”

and Shiva is like “Dude, can’t you see I am busy ripping tigers in half or something?”

And the dude is like “KALI IS STABBING EVERYONE.

SHE MIGHT DESTROY THE WORLD EVEN, WHO KNOWS?”

And Shiva is like “Okay, my schedule just cleared up.”

So Shiva shows up in the forest

and Kali is like “HEY, DICKFACE.”

And Shiva is like “Hey, Kali.

We’ve talked about this.

You need to stop stabbing all the time.

This right here?

This is what is known as too much stabbing.”

And Kali is like “NEVER STOP STABBING.”

And Shiva is like “That is in fact the opposite of what I said.

All right, this is going nowhere.

How about this:

We have a dance contest

and when I utterly hand you your shit in the contest

you agree to stop stabbing for a while?”

And Kali is like “OH BITCH YOU ARE ABOUT TO GET SERVED.”

So they drag out the boom box

spread out the cardboard

dust off their dopest moves

AND PROCEED TO BUST THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS LIKE TEAR-AWAY PANTS.

These moves they are busting?

Guys:

They are ludicrous moves.

Like, remember the dance contest in Pulp Fiction?

This was nothing like that.

John Travolta is terrible at doing the twist.

This is way better.

But finally, Shiva busts out the ULTIMATE MOVE:

THE TANDAVA DANCE

which is just basically a super-energetic dance

and I guess Kali is so tired from stabbing

that she cannot match his dance moves

and so she reluctantly agrees to stop murdering for a couple days and go home.

AND THUS BOLLYWOOD WAS BORN.

So the moral of the story

is that we could end all wars forever

if we just weaponized THE POWER OF DANCE.

GANESH IS THE VERY DEFINITION OF AN UNPLANNED PREGNANCY

So Shiva is married to Kali, right?

WRONG.

Well yes, Shiva is married to Kali

but as it turns out

Shiva is ALSO married to this other chick Parvati

who is a gentle goddess of life and stuff.

BUT

as it turns out

Parvati and Kali

ARE THE SAME PERSON

WHOA, SNAP, PLOT TWIST.

Yeah, apparently she can transform between sweet loving life goddess

and unspeakable hurricane of death

for ANY REASON

at ANY TIME.

This is what is known as an exciting marriage.

Anyway, in this story Parvati is busy being Parvati

which is good news for everybody

except for Shiva

because now all the time Kali would have spent murdering and busting sweet dance moves

Parvati spends thinking about having babies

and Shiva is not ready to be a father.

I mean he kind of created the entire universe

but he does NOT want to be tied down, okay?

So Parvati gets sick of bugging him to have a baby with her

and she’s like “Wait a second . . .

I’m a goddess . . .

Having babies in unconventional ways is what we DO.”

So she just goes ahead and makes a baby all by herself

and she names him Ganesh

and then goes to take a shower and tells Ganesh to guard the door

because apparently her sole motivation behind having kids

is to make sure no one sees any naked boobs while she is washing up.

IT WOULD HAVE PROBABLY BEEN SIMPLER TO JUST LOCK THE DOOR, PARVATI.

CHILDREN ARE A SERIOUS RESPONSIBILITY.

And of course this is the exact moment that Shiva decides to come along

and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that neither of these people should have kids

because he sees the shower house where his wife is showering

and he’s like “Oh man

what a perfect opportunity for steamy shower sex!”

So he just marches on over there

except instead of getting inside

he gets some impudent baby blocking his path

and Shiva is like “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?”

And Ganesh is like “No, dude. I’m a baby.”

And Shiva is like “WELL THEN

YOU CAN CALL ME

THE GUY WHO JUST CHOPPED OFF YOUR HEAD JUST NOW.

ZING.”

And OF COURSE

this is the moment that Parvati chooses to finish her shower

and she comes sauntering out of the shower house

and sees her husband standing over her dead baby

and she’s like “SHIVAAAA

YOU BRING MY BABY BACK TO LIFE OR ELSE.”

And Shiva is like “Or else what?”

And Parvati’s like “Or else I’m gonna turn into Kali

and you’re gonna have to chase me down and dance me into submission again.”

And Shiva is like “Hmm. Good point.”

So Shiva sends out some of his dudes

to go grab the first head they find

and bring it back to him

and I guess he has pretty dumb servants

because they come back with the head of an ELEPHANT

and Shiva is like “Guys

I feel like it would have been easier to just decapitate a baby

rather than a full-grown elephant

and also you should have figured out from context clues what I meant.

But whatever, I guess I’ll make it work.”

So he just glues this elephant head onto the dead baby

and that somehow causes it to come back to life

and that is why Ganesh has an elephant head now

and also why he is the god of wisdom

which is bad news for Shiva

because an elephant

NEVER FORGETS.

So the moral of the story

is that you shouldn’t worry if you accidentally kill your baby

just kill another baby and glue pieces of it to the first baby until it comes back to life.

Works every time

or at least

this one time.

JAPANESE

ARE YOU READY FOR DISTENDED RACCOON TESTICLES?

NO?

WELL, YOU BETTER GET READY QUICK

BECAUSE JAPAN JUST CALLED

AND IT’S ’BOUT TO DELIVER ONE WHOPPER OF A BALLSACK TO THE BRAINPAN.

I think you may find it comforting to know

that Japan was no less strange two thousand years ago than it is today

they did not have the technology to build flying boobs and hand-job robots

but weird shit has always been Japan’s prime natural resource

as the thousand-plus deities in the Shinto pantheon can proudly attest

so have a seat

get comfortable

but I cannot assure you

that what you are sitting on

is not a raccoon’s nuts.

IZANAMI GETS REAL SORE

So where do we begin?

Oh, I know

HOW ABOUT THE BEGINNING?

DURRRR.

Okay, so apparently there’s like a hojillion generations of gods in Japan.

In fact, there are so many generations

that it takes seven of them JUST TO GET US TO THE DUDES WHO CREATE THE EARTH.

What the hell were those other generations of gods doing?

Just havin’ orgies not messing with ANY MORTALS AT ALL?

That . . . sounds pretty ideal, actually.

Anyway, after seven generations we finally get our two main characters:

Izanagi (meaning “he who invites”)

and Izanami (meaning “SHE who invites”)

(that has nothing to do with how they behave or who they are or anything.

It’s not like the entirety of creation is a fancy dinner party.

Just thought it would be a nice detail to include.)

Izanagi and Izanami are probably siblings based on how similar their names are.

(See also: Tweedledee and Tweedledum)

And seeing as this is mythology

their first act is to be like “HEY:

I MIGHT LIKE YOU BETTER IF WE SLEPT TOGETHER.

LET’S LEGITIMIZE IT WITH MARRIAGE!”

But since all the gods have just been chilling out having nothing but orgies for millennia

no one even knows how marriage WORKS

so Izanagi and Izanami have to make it up from scratch

and what they come up with actually makes a lot of sense:

Izanagi’s like “All right

what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna see you and get REEEEALLY EXCITED

and then you are also gonna get REALLY EXCITED

and then we’ll be married!”

And Izanami is like “Sounds great!

I mean, normally women are supposed to be super passive and not speak unless spoken to

but I guess I will make an exception in this case

because, bro

I am dying to get my bone on with you, bro.”

So they do their crazy marriage thing

and then immediately get down to business

and then suddenly Izanami gives birth to a hideous mutant leech baby.

BIG SURPRISE, ASSHOLES.

Y’ALL ARE SIBLINGS.

Actually, I want to go ahead and applaud the Japanese

for having the first mythos that accurately portrays the outcome of incest.

Oh wait

I spoke too soon.

Turns out they had a leechbaby because Izanami TALKED DURING THE WEDDING.

WOMEN AREN’T SUPPOSED TO TALK, GUYS.

IT’S UNLADYLIKE, AND THEY WILL BE PUNISHED WITH LEECHES.

So they take a mulligan on the marriage

and this time Izanami keeps her fat mouth shut

and then they get bizzay

and give birth to

THE ISLAND OF JAPAN.

OW.

Not only is that not a living thing

thus making it even more mutant status than the leechbaby

but just imagine trying to push Japan out your ladyhole.

Izanami just gets all kinds of screwed over in this story.

Oh, I forgot to say

they bone so hard in the water that they create bubbles

and the bubbles turn into all the other landmasses on Earth

which is good

because it means Izanami doesn’t have to individually birth EVERY SINGLE OTHER PLACE

but even so

Japan is not the last-level hazard Izanami has to scooch out her cooch.

Enter (or rather exit) KAGUTSUCHI

GOD OF FIRE.

OWWWW.

This is disgusting, guys.

I am disgusted.

Oh, and that’s finally what kills Izanami

so now she’s dead

but it’s okay

(kind of)

because when Izanami dies a whole bunch of other gods fly out of her corpse

like the god of earth and stuff

and then Izanagi starts crying about it and his tears turn into MORE GODS

and then he gets pissed off and cuts Kagutsuchi into pieces

and guess what the pieces turn into

DING DING DING

MORE GODS.

Is there anything anyone can do in ancient Japan that does not result in more gods?

Answer: no.

So then Izanami calms down a little bit

(he is cycling through the stages of grief mighty fast)

and he decides to go down to Yomi

which is Japanese hell

and try and get her back.

So he goes down there and finds Izanami and he’s like “’Sup, gurl

wanna come be alive with me again or something?”

And Izanami is like “Aw shit, bro

I already ate a bunch of pomegranates or whatever and now I can’t leave.

Here, let me introduce you to my friend Persephone.

I understand she has had the EXACT SAME EXPERIENCE IN ANOTHER COUNTRY.”

So Izanagi is pretty disappointed

but he decides to chill out in Yomi for a while anyway

except here’s the problem

at some point he lights a torch

and he sees his wife

and she appears to have traded in her hotness for a lifetime supply of MAGGOTS

and he’s like “AW HELL NO, GIRL

I was gonna ask about conjugal visits in hell

but I think I need to change my mind

BECAUSE IT JUST SHAT ITSELF WITH HORROR.”

And Izanami is like “Come back, bro, don’t be a pussy.”

And Izanagi is like “HIGGITY-HELL NO.”

And Izanami is like “Fine, dick.

How about I kill a thousand people a day for the rest of eternity?”

And Izanagi is like “Okay, you do that.

I will create ONE THOUSAND AND FIVE HUNDRED people every day.

Suck it, uggo.

Or actually, don’t suck it.

I don’t want to come down with a case of maggot dong.”

So I guess they probably have a bidding war for a while

where Izanami ups the number of dudes she kills

and Izanagi ups the number of dudes he makes

and they keep doing that basically forever, as far as I can tell

and that’s where overpopulation comes from!

So the moral of the story

is that access to safe and effective birth control should be a human right

because no woman

should ever have to give birth

to Japan.

SUSANOO HAS NO IDEA WHAT HE’S DOING

So I don’t know whose bright idea it was to have storm gods

but these guys are nothing but problems.

We’ve got Zeus for starters

(I don’t even wanna open that can of philandering worms right now)

and then there’s Thor

world-champion ruckus causer

but as if those two problem machines weren’t enough

we also have one of the ultimate prodigies of irrational sex and violence.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present to you:

SUSANOO

Now I know what you’re thinking

you’re thinking that SUSANOO sounds like an overacted exclamation from a bad soap opera.

My friends, I assure you that it is not.

It is actually the name of the Japanese god of storms

birthed by Izanagi one day when he was washing his nose.

So one day Susanoo gets kicked out of heaven for being too rowdy

and on his way out he goes to say good-bye to his sister Amaterasu.

Now, Susanoo and Amaterasu are not on the best of terms

so Amaterasu thinks her bro might be trying to play one last prank on her on his way out

but Susanoo is like “No, sis, I just wanna say good-bye.

Here, let me prove my sincerity to you

by engaging you in a VERY WEIRD CONTEST.”

So what they do

is they each pick an inanimate object

and see how many gods they can make the object give birth to

because in ancient Japan

causing unlikely things to give birth

is a time-honored tradition.

In fact, having babies the normal way is considered kinda gauche.

So Amaterasu picks Susanoo’s sword

and she makes it give birth to three chicks

and meanwhile Susanoo is using his sister’s necklace to make five dudes

and then Susanoo is like “Well, I guess I win

because my sword was what gave birth to chicks

and chicks are worth double points.”

And for some reason they don’t argue over this at all

and everything is great.

BUT NOT FOR LONG

because seeing as he is the god of storms

it takes all of six seconds for Susanoo to start making bad decisions.

Everyone is basically just going around minding their own business

when WHAM WHAM WIMMY WOZZLE

here comes Susanoo, shitting on everybody’s rice fields

then he cuts up a pony and throws it at his sister’s loom

and then kills one of her attendants for no good reason.

Basically you can tell he didn’t spend very long planning this rampage

but even so, it ends up being so horrible that his sister crawls into a cave and refuses to come out.

So of course now he gets exiled for REAL

and on the way out he figures he should get some groceries

so he hits up the food goddess for some food

and she hooks him up with all kinds of stuff

but apparently she is taking all of this stuff out of really gross places on her body

and Susanoo is not okay with that

so he kills her.

GREAT JOB, DICK.

WHERE IS ALL THE FOOD GONNA COME FROM NOW?

But it’s okay

because since she is the food goddess

her whole dead body immediately turns into food

so like

silkworms come out of her head

and rice comes out of her eyes

and small beans come out of her nose

and millet comes out of her ears

and barley shoots out of her junk

and then large beans come out of her fundament

which is what my sourcebook seems to think a butt is called.

So that all turns out okay

but now Susanoo is FOR REAL TRIPLE EXILED

So he’s wandering around down on Earth

when he sees this man and woman crying all over their daughter

and he’s like “Whoa, whoa, stop that.

What’s going on?”

And they’re like “Well, see we used to have eight daughters

but every year for the last seven years

one of our daughters has been eaten by the YAMATA NO OROCHI.”

And Susanoo is like “Uhh, what is that?”

And they’re like “WELL.

It’s a snake

but instead of one head, it has eight

and instead of one tail, it has eight

and instead of being normal snake size it is as long as eight hills and eight valleys.

ARE YOU BEGINNING TO NOTICE A THEME?

Also, moss grows on its back and its eyes are like cherries

I don’t know how the world turtle and Santa Claus got mixed in here

but HOLY CANNOLI THIS THING IS SCARY.”

And Susanoo is like “Pshaw, my friends

I am your local god of storms

romping and stomping is what I DO.

How about you let me have your daughter and I will kill this big snake?”

And the parents

(who are names are Foot-Stroker and Hand-Stroker)

are like “Okay, sure, sweet.”

So immediately Susanoo goes WAZZAP KAGOW

and turns the daughter

(whose name is Beautiful-Rice-Field-Princess)

into a comb

which he immediately stuffs in his hair

presumably to keep her safe

but more likely because he has no idea how sex actually works.

We are talking about guy who has made a career out of forcing necklaces to give birth.

And then he’s like “ALL RIGHT, GUYS

HERE’S THE PLAN:

I need you to build eight gates

and eight pedestals to put behind the eight gates

and I want you to make eight pots

full of booze that has been distilled EIGHT TIMES

because we’re kind of on a roll with the whole eight thing

and then I want you to set that all up for me

and we should be good.”

So they set all that stuff up

and pretty soon the snake comes along

and it smells the octuple-distilled booze and it is like “OH DAMN

LOOKS LIKE SOMEONE IS HAVING A PARTY.

TIME TO TRANSFER THE ENTIRE LIQUOR CONTENT OF THAT PARTY INTO MY BODY.”

Which is basically what I yell every time I show up to a party.

But yeah, the snake gets absolutely trashed in all eight of its heads

and then they passes out

at which point Susanoo just strolls by

idly decapitating each of the heads in succession

except he only gets halfway

when his sword hits something and TOTALLY BREAKS.

Oh wait, it’s fine.

It turns out what he broke his sword on is just A BRAND-NEW SWORD

so it looks like it all worked out in the end.

Pretty soon after that they let him back into heaven

because who is going to argue with a guy who just decapitated a snake eight times?

So the moral of the story

is that no matter what shape or size

drunk animals are ALWAYS hilarious.

AMATERASU AND THE CRIPPLING DEPRESSION

So, Amaterasu is hiding in a cave.

She is doing this because this is what you do when your brother is the god of storms

and he does things like tear up ponies and shit in rice fields for absolutely no reason.

This is a problem.

This is a problem because Amaterasu is the sun

and the sun is important for things, like

for example

organic life.

But no one can talk Amaterasu out of her sadhole

no matter how many funny voices they do

and the gods are all starting to get pretty nervous

because how are they going to have sweet beach parties without the sun?

So they have a big meeting of all the gods

and that is quite a thing

because there are about EIGHT HUNDRED GODS.

Yeah

Shintos don’t mess around.

And all of these gods sit down and they start brainstorming

and I don’t think they ever got more than halfway through brainstorming

because here is what they end up doing:

They get a mirror

and a giant necklace

and some cherry bark

and they put it on some tree they found

and then they get this chick named Ama-no-Uzumi

whose name means “DREAD CELESTIAL FEMALE”

to do a silly dance on a washtub until everybody is just laughing their holy asses off.

Okay, so far it sounds like a pretty good party

but where does the plan come in?

Well, see, what happens

is that Amaterasu hears everybody having a good time

and she comes out of her cave like “Hey wait, why is everybody so happy?

Last thing I remember

some dude was chucking dead horses through everything.”

And all the other gods are like “Oh we are SO over that now.

Now we are all about this new goddess we found.

She is SOOOO much prettier than you it is amazing.

Look, check it out.”

And then they hold up the mirror

and Amaterasu thinks that her reflection is a DIFFERENT PERSON.

You heard it here first, my friends

the sun is on the same level intellectually

as that puppy you had when you were five

you know

the one that kept beating its head against the hall mirror because it was trying to play with itself.

So Amaterasu is so into her own radiant glory

that she can’t stop herself from walking toward the mirror

and meanwhile some other gods are creeping along behind her

roping off her escape route so she HAS to go back into the sky

and then she does

and everyone is free to get as many sunburns as they can handle.

So the moral of the story

is don’t wear reflective clothing

because the sun will think you are her

and then she will incinerate you while trying to make your acquaintance.

TANUKIS HAVE BIG BALLS

So tanukis:

First of all, tanukis are a type of animal that is as adorable as a bullet train full of kittens

(assuming that conveying things at high speed makes them more adorable).

Second of all they are a cross between raccoons and dogs

making them utterly terrifying ur-bastards of the highest caliber.

Third of all, they have the BIGGEST TESTICLES POSSIBLE.

This is not a metaphor.

These dudes were rooting through the bargain bin at Balls City

where they unearthed a whole case of super deluxe triple XL men-tronomes

and then proceeded to use the ungodly influx of testosterone

to go EVERYWHERE and cause ALL THE PROBLEMS.

Seriously, the Japanese cannot stop making statues of these little jerks

getting wrecked in straw hats then dropping ludicrously ill beats

drummed out on their DISTENDED MANBULGES.

Think I’m making this up?

I dare you to put down this book right now

and go look up “tanuki testicles” on Google image search.

Yep

those guys on the second row are using their balls to bludgeon large fish to death.

You’re welcome.

BUT YOU DID NOT BUY THIS BOOK TO HEAR ME WAX POETIC ABOUT RACCOON BALLS

(or if you did then you have oddly specific taste in literature.)

So here is a myth about a tanuki:

Okay, so a tanuki gets married to a fox and they have a baby

but they are having problems finding food because their forest is WAYYY overhunted.

And they’re about to starve to death when the tanuki is suddenly like “Oh wait

we have magical shape-shifting powers.

Man, it is so great being a mythological creature.”

So the fox shape-shifts into a dude and the tanuki shape-shifts into a dead tanuki

and the fox carries the tanuki into town and is like “Hey, guys, who wants to buy a tanuki?”

And everyone is like “I WILL GIVE YOU A HUNDRED BUCKS FOR THAT TESTICLE DOG.”

And the fox is like “SOLD.”

Then she uses the money to go buy a ton of food

and meanwhile the tanuki escapes from the house of the dude that bought him and goes home.

But one of the sucky things about food

is that it gets eaten and then it turns into poop

and so eventually they need to come up with a plan to get more food.

So the fox is like “All right, well I should probably be the dead body this time

because it would be kinda suspicious if I walked into town again and tried to sell the same tanuki.”

So the tanuki turns into a peasant dude

and the fox turns into a dead fox

and the tanuki carries the fox into town.

But oh no

it looks like some of those leviathan testicle veins have burrowed into the tanuki’s skull

because this is the point where his balls seize control of his entire brain

and start hammering on the button marked “BAD DECISIONS.”

See, he gets into town and he negotiates a sale

and then he’s like “You know one of the bad things about a wife

is you have to share food with her

so how about I tell the dude I’m selling my wife to that she’s still alive

and then he’ll kill her and I’ll live happily ever after!”

So he does that terrible thing and the guy kills the fox with a brick

and then the tanuki celebrates his newfound bachelorhood by going out and getting TRASHED

and he stumbles back home to his son at like three a.m.

and the kid is like “Hey, Dad what happened to mom?”

And the tanuki is like “Uh, well

whatever it was, it definitely had nothing to do with me purposefully getting her bricked to death.”

And the kid is like “Uh, sure.”

But as the days go by the kid starts to get more and more suspicious

and also the tanuki is being a huge dick and not sharing any food with him

so he’s really got no love for this dude whatsoever

and finally one day he’s like “Yo, Dad

you know mom taught me all her magical secrets before she died?”

And the tanuki is like “Bullshit. Prove it.”

And the kid is like “Okay. How about you go to a bridge in the forest

and I will shape-shift into something and try to cross the bridge

and if you can recognize me, you win.”

and the tanuki is like “YOU’RE ON, SON.”

So he goes to this bridge in the middle of the woods

and a few minutes later his son shows up

but his son doesn’t cross the bridge.

He just chills out by the far end of the bridge and waits for his dad to screw himself

and sure enough, here comes the local king on his chariot of jewels and human misery

and the tanuki is like “HAHAHA, NICE TRY, SON.

YOU THOUGHT I WOULDN’T RECOGNIZE YOU

AS A PROCESSION OF NOBLEMEN AND ALSO A CHARIOT.

ALLOW ME TO RUN UP AND PUNCH YOU IN THE FACE.”

And the king is like “Okay, why is a raccoon dog trying to blackjack me with his ballsack?

Guards, I believe you are trained to handle wild animals and their comically large genitals?”

And the guards are like “SIR YES SIR.”

And they throw the tanuki into the river where he proceeds to die like a chump.

After that, I guess the kid starves to death

because he just killed his only surviving family member

and now who is he going to pretend to sell to the villagers?

So the moral of the story

is that although the temptation may be great

you should not assume that everybody you meet is a shape-shifter.

It is almost as dangerous as not assuming everyone you meet is a shape-shifter.

AFRICAN

Okay, so Africa

it’s a big place

full of a lot of dudes with a lot of myths

so it’s not like there is this big established canon of pure uncut AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY

more like there’s a bunch of little African mythologies scattered all over the place

but like every single one of my girlfriends has told me with a smile and a pat on the back

“It’s not the size that matters

but if you ARE gonna have a tiny penis, you gotta at least be really freaky in bed to make up for it.”

Uh

anyway

what I’m trying to say is that I can’t tell all the myths from all the mythologies here

so I’m just gonna pick all the sweetest ones

in order to give you what I hope is a balanced picture of what I think is the main through-line of African mythology:

ordinary dudes

making ordinary mistakes

except those ordinary dudes happen to be gods so then there’s problems.

OBATALA HAS A DRINKING PROBLEM

So there’s this dude Obatala.

He’s one of the orisha

which are basically a bunch of gods that exploded out of some other god’s corpse

when one of his slaves dropped a big rock on him.

So, already this story is shaping up to be pretty sweet

but then it hits a major roadblock real fast:

Obatala wants to make a world

but he has NO IDEA HOW TO DO IT.

Frankly, I find the realism in this myth to be highly refreshing.

I mean, can any of us honestly say we know the first thing about creating a world?

Oh, look at me, I’m Ra

let me just will myself into being out of nothing

and then create land with nothing but my left nut and PURE GUMPTION.

NO.

THAT’S NOT HOW THIS WORKS.

You have to SIT YOUR ASS DOWN and you have to BRAINSTORM.

So that’s what Obatala does.

He hits up his buddy Olorun, the sky god

and he’s like “Yo, Olorun I wanna make a world with some people in it.”

and Olorun, who is the king of the gods

is like “Oh man, that sounds great

but it also sounds REALLY HARD.

Do you have any plans? Like some blueprints or something?”

And Obatala is like “Uhh . . .

I’ll get back to you.”

So at this point Obatala really only has one option

and that is to go see Orunmila, their resident fortune-teller.

So Obatala goes over to Orunmila’s house and Orunmila is like “Duuuude!

I can totally tell you how to make a world.

Let’s go into my back room and stare at my nuts for a while.”

(He tells fortunes by throwing palm nuts and reading their patterns

but I failed to clarify that because I was looking for an excuse to write “stare at my nuts.”)

So after peering intently into his nuts for a while

Orunmila is like “All right, dude here’s what you gotta do:

Step one

descend down to Earth on a GOLD CHAIN ATTACHED TO THE SKY.

Oh man

that would make such a sweet album cover.

Uh, uh . . . STEP TWO!

Go down to Earth carrying a hen, a black cat a palm nut, and a snail shell full of sand.”

And Obatala is like “What?”

And Orunmila is like “What?

Sorry, dude, I’m pretty high right now.”

But it’s not like Obatala has any better ideas

so he goes about trying to make this ultimate gold chain

but he doesn’t have NEARLY enough gold

so he gives the gold he DOES have to the celestial goldsmith

and then he goes all over the sky, collecting investors.

He’s like “GUYS

GUYS.

Have I got a deal for YOU!

So I don’t know if you’ve noticed

but there’s a whole world of untapped real estate down underneath this sky place.

Why, I ask you

are we totally underutilizing this prime acreage

when AS WE SPEAK

dudes could be down there CAUSING PROBLEMS??

Think about it

a whole world full of wretched, fleshy problem machines

for you to set on fire and put your dicks in.”

And all the gods are like “SIGN ME UP.”

So Obatala goes back to the jewel smith with a big sack full of gold

but it STILL won’t quite reach the Earth

so Obatala is just like “Screw it, man just make it as long as you can.

I’ll figure something out.

There’s gotta be some reason I exploded out of my dad’s corpse, right?”

And then he takes the chicken, the cat, the palm nut and the snail shell full of sand

and he starts climbing down to Earth.

I am kinda curious where he got the chicken and stuff from

seeing as there is not really any land or animal life or anything

but I’ll let it slide.

THIS TIME.

So he gets down to the bottom of the chain

and he can’t quite reach the dim, watery morass that is the whole world

so he’s trying to figure out what to do

when here comes Orunmila’s voice from the sky like “Duuuude:

Empty out that snail shell.”

So he does, and the sand falls down below him and it makes some land

and then Orunmila is like “Duuuude:

Drop your chicken on the sand.”

You know what this feels like?

This feels like one of those adventure games

where you spend like seventeen hours wandering around the haunted mansion

with a backpack full of junk and a heart full of fury

because you didn’t think to stuff the pigeon in the jukebox or something.

Like, how was Obatala supposed to figure this shit out?

But anyway, he drops the chicken

and the chicken kicks the sand all over the place

and it turns into all the land

and then Obatala drops down there with the cat

but then he’s totally out of ideas

so he just kinda sits there and waits for something to happen.

About a week later Olorun sends one of his dudes to see what’s up

and Obatala is like “Man, I dunno.

This seemed like a great idea, but it’s really dark down here and I’m starting to lose motivation.”

So this message gets passed along to Olorun

who is just like “Oh, no problem. Boom.”

And he makes the sun.

Are you telling me this dude knew how to make the sun all along

but couldn’t figure out how to populate the damn Earth?

Well, whatever.

What’s important is that Obatala gets super jazzed by all the sunlight

and he plants that palm nut

and it turns into a palm tree

and then he decides to make a bunch of humans out of clay

because he forgot that that was why he came down here in the first place.

So he’s working on the hot sun sculpting all these dudes

and he gets pretty thirsty

so he starts drinking some palm wine

because it’s not like he’s SURROUNDED BY WATER or anything.

So he’s sculpting all the dudes

and drinking all the wine

and by the time he’s sculpted the last dude

he is so tipsy he is basically like a one-man teeter-totter

like if he were to breathe into a Breathalyzer

the BREATHALYZER would get drunk.

Dude is triggity-trashed, is what I am trying to say.

So Obatala goes and passes out and sleeps off all that wine

and when he wakes up he goes to admire all the dudes he made

but he notices that some of the dudes got a little messed up

because he was so totally plastered when he was molding them.

Actually, they’re more than a little messed up

because this is where shit like POLIO and BLINDNESS comes from.

Great job, Lushy McDrunkenstein

you invented birth defects.

Huzzah!

But to his credit

Obatala does feel REALLY bad about all this

and I don’t know whether it’s his guilt

or the WICKED hangover he must be dealing with

but he is like “Ugh

I am NEVER drinking again.”

And then he doesn’t

and he also devotes his life to helping crippled dudes

so I guess it turns out okay.

So the moral of the story

is that if you die and it turns out reincarnation exists

try to come back as a cat

because that little bastard got a free pass to Earth and he didn’t have to do SHIT.

LOCAL FATHER DISCOVERS IMMORTALITY WITH THIS ONE WEIRD TIP!

One day Anansi the Ashanti spider-man is dicking around in the wilderness outside his town

and he gets bored and thirsty

and he sees this house with an old man sitting on the porch.

Now, when I say old

I mean OLLLLD

this guy makes the Crypt Keeper look like Natalie fucking Portman.

So Anansi walks up to this old man

and he’s like “Excuse me, you fugly sonofabitch

can I get some ice-cold drinking water?”

And the old man doesn’t say anything.

So Anansi is like

“I said: CAN I GET SOME ICY COLD WATER PRODUCT UP IN HERE?”

And the old man says nothing.

So Anansi is like “Please continue sitting motionless if you want me to go inside and raid your fridge.”

And the old man says nothing

so Anansi goes inside and has a gay old time.

He has such a gay time that he comes back the next day

and the next day

just straight up pillaging this dude’s pantry.

And I don’t know what this dude has in his pantry

but whatever it is, it must be pretty good

’cause one day Anansi brings his eldest daughter with him to the house

and he is like “Thank you so much for all this free food, creepy silent old guy.

To thank you, here is my eldest daughter.

You guys are married now. Have fun.

Also, daughter?

Go inside and make me a sandwich.”

And then he eats the sandwich and leaves his daughter and goes home.

So the next day he goes back for more free food

and maybe to see his daughter, I guess.

But his daughter isn’t there.

WHERE DID SHE GO?

He knows she likes to play hide-and-seek so he starts looking all over the house

and finally he goes and looks in the last possible place

THE OVEN

and what does he find in there?

THE WEDDING RING HE GAVE HIS DAUGHTER.

So he runs outside to the old man like “HEY ASSHOLE

WHY DID YOU TAKE OFF MY DAUGHTER’S WEDDING RING?

SHIT WAS EXPENSIVE.”

And the old man FINALLY starts talking.

He’s all “Do you know who I am?

I’m Death.

You showed up at my house

you ate all my food

and then you married me to a gross ugly spider chick without my consent

so I ATE YOUR DAUGHTER

and now I am also going to eat YOU.”

And Anansi is like “No no no.

I like not having consequences for my actions.

This seems like a consequence. This is terrible.”

So he starts running.

He figures Death is probably pretty slow given how old he is

but no, he’s keeping up

and Anansi starts getting tired, so he climbs a tree

and he’s about to jump to another tree

when he looks down and sees Death just standing there

because guess what, guys:

DEATH CANNOT CLIMB TREES.

I guess this explains why squirrels are immortal?

So the personification of death itself is just standing at the bottom of this tree

and he starts chucking everything in arm’s reach at Anansi

and eventually he runs out of shit to throw

and goes to find more shit

at which point Anansi jumps out of the tree and books it for his house, screaming “HEY, HEY

WIFE AND KIDS:

CLIMB UP TO THE CEILING

DEATH IS COMING.

MY WILD IRRESPONSIBLITY HAS ONCE AGAIN ENDANGERED MY ENTIRE FAMILY

AM I, PERHAPS

THE BEST HUSBAND AND FATHER?”

And his wife is like

“WHAT’S THAT?

I CANT HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF OUR FOUR STARVING CHILDREN

STUCK HERE ALL DAY WHILE YOU RAID DEATH’S KITCHEN FOR YOURSELF.”

And Anansi is like “FINE. I’ll take them up to the ceiling MYSELF.”

So he runs into the house and drags everybody up to the ceiling

and Death runs in after him and sees everyone up on the ceiling

and he can’t do a thing about it except pull up a chair

grab a burlap sack

and just sit there

waiting.

So it’s not too long before Anansi’s youngest son starts losing his grip on the ceiling.

Wait. Since when has a spider had ceiling problems?

Spiders LIVE on my fucking ceiling.

THEY WON’T LEAVE.

The only explanation is that these spiders are like . . . reverse Spider-Man

with all the disadvantages of a spider

coupled with all the disadvantages of a man.

So anyway, this kid is like “DADDY, HELP!”

And Anansi is like “HOLD ON, JUNIOR.

IF YOU FALL, DEATH WILL EAT YOU.”

So Junior falls

and Death catches him and is like “I’m only after your dad, kid.

But I’m still gonna stick you in this burlap sack.”

Then Anansi’s youngest daughter falls off

and the same thing happens

and again and again

until it’s just Anansi up there

and he’s about to lose his grip

when he goes “WAIT!

DEATH!

I am SOOOO FAT

from eating SOOO MUCH OF YOUR FOOD.

If I fall to the floor I’m totally going to explode on impact

and then what are you gonna eat?

Spider guts?

Gross.

What you SHOULD do

is go get my big barrel of flour from the kitchen and put it under me

so that when I fall, you get a nice breading on me.”

So Death is like “Dur, okay.

Just let me leave you alone in the room real quick.”

And Anansi is like “YESSSS.

Man, I am such a genius. Holy shit!

I can’t believe I have LITERALLY CHEATED DEATH with my sheer genius!”

But by the time Anansi is done congratulating himself Death has come back in with the barrel

and Anansi is like “Balls.”

But all is not lost

because when Death leans over the barrel to make sure it’s centered

Anansi drops down on the back of his head

which freaks him out

because, you know

spider on his head

and in the resulting confusion and flour-induced blindness

Anansi is able to grab his wife and kids and run out the door

and he’s been escaping Death ever since.

Actually, that’s why those spiders won’t leave my ceiling.

It’s because Death still hasn’t figured out how to use ladders.

So now you know, guys.

The secret to immortality

is to duct tape yourself to the ceiling

You’re welcome.

ESHU ELEGBA IS PROBABLY THE LAST DUDE YOU WANT APPROVING YOUR FRIENDSHIP

Okay, so there’s this dude Eshu Elegba, right?

He’s one of the main gods in the Yoruba pantheon

and also a pretty crazy dude.

Basically, he is what it would be like

if Loki was pretty much allowed to run his whole pantheon.

He is associated mainly with roads, trickery, pipe-smoking, and dongs.

The last two may be interrelated.

Hell, the last three.

You know what?

Everything is related to dongs.

MOVING ON.

So there are these two farmers.

They are best buds, and they live across the street from each other.

So one day they’re sitting out on their respective porches

enjoying the sunshine and each others’ companionship

when Eshu Elegba walks by real fast

and the farmer on the north side of the road is like “Dude, did you see that guy just now?

The one with the red hat?”

and the farmer on the south side of the street is like “Uh, I saw a guy

but he was wearing a BLUE AND WHITE hat.

I think maybe you’ve had too much to drink.”

And the first farmer is like “Guess again, shit eyes.

That guy’s hat was clearly red.”

And the second farmer is like “YOU are the one with shit for eyes.”

And the first farmer is like “I’LL SHIT IN YOUR EYES.”

And just then, Eshu Elegba walks past in the other direction

and the first farmer is like “Holy balls, you’re right.

The dude’s hat IS blue and white.”

And the second guy is like “What are you talking about?

YOU are the one who is right.

That guy’s hat is CLEARLY red.”

And the first farmer is like “YOU KNOW WHAT’S RED?

MY FIST

AFTER I USE IT TO RIP YOUR STILL-BEATING HEART FROM YOUR CHEST.”

And the other guy is all “NOT AS RED AS HIS HAT, YOU SHANDY-PANCAKE.”

and the first guy is like “WHAT THE HELL IS A SHANDY-PANCAKE?”

and the second guy is like “I DON’T HAVE TO KNOW WHAT IT IS

TO CUT YOUR FACE OFF WITH IT.”

And then the neighbors show up like “Okay, guys, enough is enough.

We’re gonna take you both to the king and let him sort it out.”

So they go all the way to the king

and they get into the throne room

and then Eshu shows up like “POOF KLAZAM, DICKHEADS.”

And they see his hat from the front

because I guess they never tried to look at him

while he was RUNNING TOWARD OR AWAY FROM THEM

and WHAT DO YOU KNOW:

IT’S HALF RED AND HALF WHITE/BLUE

IT IS BASICALLY THE ULTIMATE U.S.A. PARTY FEDORA

and Elegba is like “Guess what, guys:

YOU JUST GOT PUNK’D.

This is what happens when you make a new friend without consulting me first

BECAUSE I’M ELEGBA

APPROVER OF FRIENDSHIPS.

JK, guys, I actually just kinda wanted to see a fight.

CAUSING STRIFE IS MY GREATEST JOY.”

And then he runs off and everyone is like “Wow.

Who put that dude in charge of the universe?”

Which is a question I think has been asked many times about pretty much every god.

So the moral of the story

is make sure to eat your carrots

because good eyesight may just save your friendship.

CHINESE

So considering how the current official religion of China

seems to be something like “Stand still while we bulldoze your house to build this dam”

it’s hard to put a finger on the relationship between ancient Chinese tales

and any specific religion.

In fact

the way it really works

is that wayyy back in the day, some dudes got together and made up some sweet stories

but they kinda forgot to attach a religion to them

so then later on, all these other religions came along

like Taoism and Confucianism and Buddhism

they were all like “Whoa, these myths are pretty sweet!

Let’s steal them!”

So all the tropes of the old myths got repurposed to make the points of all these new religions

and meanwhile

a whole bunch of the old myths made it through more or less intact

so in this section

I’m gonna try to give you a little taste of all the different religions

that bastardized Chinese mythology

just like I’m about to.

PAN GU IS A PRETTY BIG DUDE

Okay, so Pan Gu, right?

Apparently he was a dude living inside an egg back in the day.

Where was the egg, you ask?

Probably in China

because that is where this myth is from.

BZZ

WRONG.

CHINA DOESN’T EXIST YET IN THIS STORY.

THIS IS A CREATION MYTH

TRY TO KEEP UP.

Actually this egg is pretty much all there is anywhere

and inside the egg is all this cool stuff

like lava and birds and mountains and boobs

and also this dude Pan Gu, like I said.

But even though Pan Gu literally has access to EVERYTHING THERE IS

he gets pretty bored inside this egg

and he’s like “OKAY, THAT’S ENOUGH.”

and he picks up an ax and breaks that egg in half LIKE A BOSS.

Then he proceeds to have an EIGHTEEN-THOUSAND-YEAR growth spurt

constantly holding the top of the egg balanced on his head in the process

which basically turns the top of the egg into the sky

and the bottom into the earth.

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

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)

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.

GILGAMESH 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.”

so he goes back to Gilgamesh’s kingdom

where Gilgamesh is right in the middle of trying to bang some dude’s wife

and Enkidu shows up like “Dude what the hell are you doing?

WANNA BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF EACH OTHER INSTEAD?”

And Gilgamesh is like “YESSSS.”

so they punch at each other until they get tired of gargling their own teeth and then decide to be BFFs.

I am not a scientist, but this may be why women live longer than men.

Anyway, their first act as ULTIMATE BESTIES

is to walk all the way across the known world to punch Humbaba, the magic tree guardian.

Humbaba is not a bad dude or anything

he’s really more like those hippies that chain themselves to live oaks and whatnot

except he has INTESTINES all over his face

and his breath is a combination of DEATH and FIRE.

Anyway, Gilgamesh and Enkidu skip off toward this sacred cedar tree

LITERALLY HOLDING HANDS.

IT IS ADORABLE.

They skip for LEAGUES AND LEAGUES AND LEAGUES

and Gilgamesh keeps waking up in the middle of the night like “BRO, I HAD A BAD DREAM

IT WAS ABOUT VOLCANOS OR FIRE-BREATHING BIRDS OR LIGHTNING OR SOMETHING.”

And Enkidu is like “Naw, bro, those are totally sweet and appropriate things to dream about.”

BUT THEN THEY FINALLY FIND HUMBABA’S FOREST

and Humbaba pops out like “’Sup.”

And then this god Shamash who is apparently the sun god

suddenly shows up and hits Humbaba with ALL THE WINDS.

First there’s the winds you would expect like north, south, east, etc.

Then there’s some kinda reasonable stuff like blizzard, storm, and sandstorm.

But then shit really flies off the handle and we get whistling wind, ice wind, demon wind

and just straight up BAD WIND.

Anyway, all those winds immobilize Humbaba in an aethereal bukkake throwdown

so Gilgamesh is about to chop off Humbaba’s head

and Humbaba is like “DUDE WE ARE IN A FOREST.

THERE IS WOOD LITERALLY COMING OUT OF OTHER WOOD.

YOU DO NOT NEED TO MURDER ME FOR THIS SPECIFIC TREE.”

But Gilgamesh murders him anyway

and then he’s like “Sweet now I can use this tree to make a huge door.

I don’t really have a place to put a huge door right now

but like my grand-pappy used to say:

‘You never know when you’re gonna need a really huge door.’”

So they’re back at home, enjoying this sweet door and also each other’s company

when Ishtar has to come along and fuck it all up.

(Ishtar, by the way is the goddess of basically everything worth doing:

sex, war, and babies.

Wait, I don’t mean that you should do babies, though. That is gross/illegal.)

So Ishtar is like “HEY, GILGAMESH I HAVE THIS GAPING HOLE IN MY BODY

I’M WORRIED IT MIGHT JUST START SHOOTING OUT MY ORGANS OR SOMETHING

I HEAR YOU HAVE SOMETHING ABOUT THE RIGHT SIZE TO PLUG THIS HOLE

IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.”

And Gilgamesh is like “Whoa, girl, slow your roll.

Your tits are exceedingly fine but I am aware of a little something called history

and history tells us that every dude you have banged

has either caught on fire or turned into a dwarf.

I am sure there are dongs aplenty in this kingdom of mine.

Go nuts.

Just steer clear of MY nuts.”

So Ishtar goes up to Godtowne and she is like “GUYS GILGAMESH WON’T STUFF MY MUFF.

GIVE ME THE BULL OF HEAVEN SO I CAN GO RUIN EVERYTHING.”

Yeah, apparently they keep this bull around for if they ever need to ruin everything

and the gods are pretty laissez-faire about how it gets used

so Ishtar drags the bull down to earth

and Gilgamesh eventually sees it after it’s killed like a million people

and then he and Enkidu are like “BEST BUDS TAG-TEAM MURDERCYCLE YEAH!”

and they handle the bull to pieces in a matter of seconds, and steal its horns

and then they high-five so hard that another thousand or so people die.

BUT ALL IS NOT WELL, MY FRIENDS

because tonight it is ENKIDU’S TURN TO HAVE THE DREAMS.

He dreams that the gods are all sitting around talking

and they’re like “Man,

Enkidu and Gilgamesh are a two-man meatgrinder grindin’ up all our best abominations.

We gotta kill one of them, but we can’t kill Gilgamesh his name is in the title.

Guess we better kill Enkidu, huh?”

And Enkidu wakes up like “THERE IS NO POSSIBLE WAY TO INTERPRET THIS FAVORABLY.”

Then he gets real sick and he dies.

Now, we all know about the nine stages of grief or whatever

but those are for CHUMPS.

Gilgamesh’s grieving process has three steps:

Step one: Cry about it.

Step two: Make everyone else cry about it using your fists.

Step three: SEEK IMMORTALITY.

So he goes and talks smack to some scorpion dudes, who let him walk through a mountain

and then on the other side he finds THE WATERS OF DEATH

which is probably not the first place I would look if I were searching for immortality

but anyway, there is an inn there

and Gilgamesh threatens the innkeeper until she tells him how to get across the water

and then he threatens the guy who can get him across the water

and then he has to rebuild the boat he destroyed while threatening that guy

but finally they sail to the other side which is where Gilgamesh was trying to get, apparently.

And there’s this dude there called Utnapishtim

and he’s like “Whoa, you got some balls coming over here, son. What’s your name?”

and Gilgamesh is like “I’M GILGAMESH.

MY BEST PAL DIED NOW I WANNA BE IMMORTAL.”

And Utnapishtim is like “That is the most weak-sauce reason anyone has given me to do anything.

But anyway, let me tell you my life story:”

SUMMARY:

UTNAPISHTIM IS NOAH

EXCEPT HE SAVES A LOT MORE HUMANS AND THEN HE GETS TO BE IMMORTAL

THE END.

And after his story, Utnapishtim is like “So, you see I busted my ass for immortality

and frankly I don’t think the gods are down to do that again.

You may want to just take your punk ass back across the waters of death and go die like a man.”

But joke’s on Utnapishtim

because Gilgamesh got so bored of the story that he actually FELL ASLEEP.

But actually, joke’s on Gilgamesh

because Utnapishtim bakes a ton of bread and puts it next to Gilgamesh’s face

so that when he wakes up SEVEN DAYS LATER

he sees all this moldy bread and he is like “Ew, gross.”

But then I guess Utnapishtim feels bad about his prank

so he tells Gilgamesh about this weird immortality plant that grows at the bottom of the ocean

and then obviously Gilgamesh ties rocks to his feet and sinks to the bottom of the ocean

(Again, this does not seem like the behavior of a dude who is trying to not die)

and he gets this plant

but then he stops to take a bath on his way back home and a snake steals the plant

and then eventually Gilgamesh gets old and dies miserable and alone

or maybe content and surrounded by whores.

The epic is not clear on this point.

So basically

Enkidu wouldn’t have died if that chick hadn’t boned him and then made him take a shower

and Gilgamesh would’ve had eternal youth if he hadn’t stopped for a bath

so the moral of the story

is that REAL HEROES NEVER BATHE.

NATIVE AMERICAN

Now the problem with dedicating a section to the whole of Native American mythology

is that there were a lot of people living in this country before we showed up and set it on fire

and some of them didn’t get along too well

and they ALL had their own stories

so trying to tell a cohesive Native American mythology

with only a handful of myths

is a lot like trying to cook an alphabet soup using only the letter “A”

so I highly recommend that you go online

and look up some Native American myths on your own

because there’s a TON of them

and they’re great

but for now

I am going to attempt to give you a small spoonful

of the alphabet soup that this country used to belong to.

WISAKEDJAK IS HIGHLY IRRESPONSIBLE

Now I know I told you there were a thousand and one pantheons to choose from here

but at least as far as creation myths are concerned

all the Native American stories start to sound pretty much the same after a while

so I picked the Algonquin version

because it is the one with the highest concentration of hilarious jerks.

Speaking of hilarious jerks, meet Wisakedjak.

His name is sometimes anglicized as Whiskey Jack

but that’s needlessly confusing

’cause this dude has nothing to do with whiskey

and in fact was around WAYYYY before whiskey

because what kind of creation myth would this be otherwise?

A much drunker one, that’s what kind.

But Wisakedjak is not the kind of dude who NEEDS whiskey to get down.

See, he’s a trickster god

who happens to be real tight with the creator.

So basically

the creator makes the world

and then he’s like “Dude, Wisakedjak

I am so tired from making this world and stuff.

How about you handle everything else now.

Like, teach everyone what roots are good to eat

and keep them from killing each other and stuff.

You know, pretty much everything I am actually personally responsible for doing

but like, the not-fun part of it.”

So the creator goes to sleep

and Wisakedjak proceeds to do the exact opposite of everything the creator told him to do

as in, he feeds everyone poison and goes around starting fights.

So then the creator wakes up from like a ten-year nap

and he’s like “Whooooaaaa, dude.

What did I tell you to do?

I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that.

You best clean up your act

Or else I’m gonna kill everybody and then you’ll be bored.”

So Wisakedjak calls bullshit

and just goes right on doing what he was doing

except like NINE TIMES HARDERRRR

he is running up to dudes like “HEY:

HEYYYY:

SEE THAT GUY OVER THERE?

HE KILLED YOUR DOG

HE KILLED YOUR PARENTS

MURDER HIM.

EAT THIS CYANIDE.

GO GO GO.”

And he just keeps doing this

until the earth is literally saturated with blood

there is nowhere for all this blood to go

it’s pretty upsetting

so at this point the creator shows up again like “THAT’S IT.

EVERYBODY DIES.”

So then everything floods, as usual

and the only things left alive

are Wisakedjak

(even though he is almost the entire problem)

plus an otter, a beaver, and a muskrat.

No fish, apparently

which is something I always wonder about in these flood myths.

Like, a flood seems like a really great way to punish every living creature in the world

except for fish.

What the hell is a god supposed to do when all the FISH start being assholes?

Anyway, let’s just sidestep that plothole completely

and cut to Wisakedjak sitting in the water with his animal pals

crying and feeling sorry for himself

when all of a sudden he has an idea.

He’s like “DUDES:

I can’t create anything ’cause I spent all my attribute points on being a dick

but I CAN infinitely expand anything that has already been created.

So I need one of you guys to dive all the way to the bottom of this water

and get me some dirt to expand.

HEY, CREATOR IT’S OKAY IF I DO THIS, RIGHT?”

And the creator is like “Sure you can make a new world

as long as you use all the material I wasted on the old world.

I don’t wanna have to go out and get a bunch of new dirt and whatnot.”

Man

the Algonquin people have them one LAZY creator.

So Wisakedjak is like “OTTER

YOU’RE SO BRAVE

GO DO IT AND I’LL MAKE SURE YOU ALWAYS HAVE FISH TO EAT”

so otter dives down

and comes back up with NO DIRT AT ALL

and he keeps trying until he is too weak to dive anymore

and Wisakedjak is like “Wow, dude

I am pretty disappointed in you.

Okay, it’s beaver’s turn.

Beaver, if you bring me some dirt then I will build you a house”

so beaver dives

and I’m pretty sure we all know how that turns out

because it’s not like beavers live in five-star hotels is it?

So finally Wisakedjak turns to the muskrat

and he’s like “All right, my man

I do not have high hopes for you.

In fact my hopes for you are practically subterranean.

But that may actually work in our favor in this situation

so if you make it to the bottom I’ll give you infinite roots to eat forever

plus rushes to make a house out of

and you’ll have, like, a billion babies. Seriously.”

So muskrat dives

and he comes up

and he has

NO DIRT

so he tries again

and he’s gone for a while

and he comes up real tired

and he still has no dirt

but here’s the important thing:

He SMELLS like dirt.

So Wisakedjak is like “Dude, you are so close.

Try one more time.”

So the muskrat dives down

and he’s gone for a LOOOONG time

and everyone is pretty sure he’s dead.

But then they see some bubbles

so they reach in and pull out the muskrat

who is pretty much dead

but he has just a little bit of dirt with him

which Wisakedjak turns into an island

and then they finally get to stop sitting in the water.

So then in the following days Wisakedjak finds some bones

and uses them to make animals

and he makes trees out of some wood

and then the creator waits for him to finish all this work

and then he’s like “All right, dude.

I just decided you don’t get to have powers anymore.

You just get the power to lie like a motherfucker.”

So Wisakedjak just uses that power as hard as he can for ever and ever

starting by failing to ever reward the muskrat

because at the end of the day what worse punishment is there

than being a muskrat?

So the moral of the story

is practice holding your breath

it’s good for more than just weird sex stuff.

KILLER-OF-ENEMIES AND THE INTERNATIONAL HOUSE OF VAGINAS

So this is one of those myths where I almost don’t even need to retell it

I could just transcribe it word for word

and it would just end up looking like something I made up.

Watch:

So there’s this house full of vaginas, right?

Yup.

Just a big ol’ house stuffed full of vaginas.

They have actually got vaginas hanging on the walls

thick as wall scrolls in an otaku’s cave.

My friends, this is the quintessential tunaparty

tacofest

clambake

cervical circus

this place is lousy with vaginas, is what I’m saying.

But the lousiest vaginas of all

are these four girls called the vagina girls.

They are actually just giant vaginas.

Giant, shape-shifting vaginas that look like girls.

Oh, also

there are no vaginas anywhere else on earth at this point.

This place is essentially the Fort Knox of vagina

except the security team is actually just one guy

or actually one monster, named Kicking Monster

whose MO is to roll up on any poor jerk who enters the vicinity

and kick him INTO THE HOUSE.

This is not how guards work usually

but hey

no one who gets kicked into the house ever leaves

so Kicking Monster must be doing something right

although I think that may have more to do with the fact

that this is a house filled with ALL OF THE VAGINAS.

But even despite Kicking Monster

dudes are lining up around the block to take a crack at this vagina house

because let me reiterate

this is a house full of ALL THE VAGINAS

That would be like if someone took all the

well

it would be like if someone took all the vaginas in the world and put them in one house.

I don’t know how to make it any clearer than that.

So dudes keep mysteriously disappearing into this vagina house

until finally this one badass rolls up

named Killer-of-Enemies

Who is much more popular than his little brother

Killer-of-Babies-and-Small-Woodland-Creatures

and Killer-of-Enemies takes it upon himself to fix this vagina problem.

So he kicks Kicking Monster in the nuts and he busts into the house

and here come the four beautiful vagina girls like “OH MY GOD, TAKE US NOW.”

And Killer-of-Enemies is like “That is a tempting offer

but first I gotta ask you ladies

what happened to all the dudes who got kicked in here?”

And the vagina girls are like “Oh

we ate them with our vaginas

which are also our whole bodies

and are full of thousands of incredibly sharp teeth like in a horror movie.

That’s kinda what we do.”

And Killer-of-Enemies is like “WHAT?

THAT’S NOT HOW YOU USE A VAGINA.

Look, ladies

I’m totally down for some frisky sexin’

but first you gotta take these drugs I brought with me.”

And the vagina girls are like “FREE DRUGS? COUNT US IN.”

So Killer-of-Enemies feeds these girls sour berries

which are actually just a ton of Rohypnol and ecstasy

and also some kind of tooth-decaying powder to remove their unpleasant vag teeth

and the vagina girls are like “OH MY GOD THIS SEX FEELS SO GOOD.”

And Killer-of-Enemies is like “Dang, girls I ain’t even banged you yet.”

And then later he totally bangs them

right in their domesticated vaginas

and I guess he probably distributes the loose assorted vaginas amongst the people

and no one has to deal with unsightly vagina teeth or women’s rights ever again.

So the moral of the story

is that people who live in vagina houses

should not get stoned.

RABBIT TAKES SUMMER FUN TO THE NEXT LEVEL

Summer can be a drag

but what if you could solve summer

using VIOLENCE?

Well, my friends, it turns out you can

as long as you are a mythical rabbit with unlimited reserves of CHUTZPAH.

See, once upon a time the sun used to be even more of a bastard than it is now.

It would take a flying leap off the horizon in the morning

and then spend the rest of the day doing flaming kickflips of disaster off the clouds.

But one day Rabbit decides he has had enough of this nonsense.

He is trying to get his chill on in the shade of a shady oak tree

but the sun is just pretty much PRYING THE SHADOWS STRAIGHT OFF HIM

and then BAKING CANCER INTO HIS SKIN.

Anyway, Rabbit is not about to take guff from some puffed-up ball of superheated gases

so he grabs his gun

and he starts walking.

Yes, of course I can repeat that:

Rabbit grabs a GUN

and he starts walking east, to where the sun lives

so that he can SHOOT THE SUN FOR BEING TOO HOT.

So Rabbit is stomping his way to the horizon

and on the way, he practices

which yes, means exactly what you think it means.

It means this rabbit is stomping his way to the horizon

shooting EVERYTHING.

Rocks

lizards

other rabbits.

Nothing can escape Rabbit’s sociopathic target practice.

But finally he gets to the horizon

and this is before sunrise, you understand

so he’s sitting there waiting for the sun to come up.

But the problem with crossing an entire world while firing your gun constantly

is that it tends to sort of telegraph your future plans

so the sun already knows what’s up

and it responds by rising REALLY FAST and off to one side

which totally fakes Rabbit out

and by the time he gets a bead on the sun it is already too far away to shoot.

But Rabbit is not gonna give up that easily.

This is a dude who is SERIOUS about taking naps under trees.

So he sits there for DAYS

while the sun continues to fake his ass out.

Sometimes it rises to the left

sometimes to the right

sometimes it does barrel rolls and cartwheels

and all this time, Rabbit stays right there

WAITING for the sun to fuck up.

It is terrifying to me to imagine that the sun is capable of EVER making mistakes

but that is exactly what it does.

Maybe it comes up a little too slow or in the wrong place

but whatever it is, Rabbit is ready for it

and he shoots it RIGHT IN THE FACE.

So hooray, right? The sun is wounded and we have all learned a valuable lesson.

NOT SO FAST.

See, the thing about the sun—

and you would think that Rabbit might have considered this—

is that it is a giant ball of superheated hatred that BLEEDS FIRE.

So while Rabbit is busy congratulating himself on his expert marksmanship

the sun is busy bleeding a geyser of piping hot apocalypse all over the world.

Now, Rabbit is not about to pull off the greatest drive-by in history

just to get barbecued by a celestial body

so he starts running for cover

and the first cover he finds is a big tree

so he comes running up to the tree, like “Quick! Tree! Hide me under your branches!”

And the tree is like “Dude, I am a tree.

I am made of wood.

Have you considered hiding under nonflammable things?”

So Rabbit keeps running, asking all the trees to shelter him

and they keep saying no, because they are trees.

But finally, Rabbit manages to con this bush into sheltering him

and then the sun’s fire passes over them

and all that happens to the bush is that the leaves turn kind of yellow forever

which isn’t that bad, all things considered.

But there are real consequences to this cavalcade of tomfoolery.

For one thing, Rabbit is afflicted with a serious case of PTSD

which is why rabbits are total wusses nowadays.

The sun survives the ordeal somehow

But it’s hard to do your job

when you’re worried someone is gonna shoot you every time you clock in

which is why the sun rises really slowly and cautiously now

and also why it is so bright:

It is so that you cannot get a good bead on it with a sniper rifle.

So the moral of the story

is that we don’t need to worry about global warming

as long as we have guns.

The end.

THE MOON IS MADE OF MEAT

So there’s this place in Idaho or Montana or something, and it has no moon.

Everyone hates it , because how are they supposed to have sexy late-night disco parties?

Electricity has not been invented yet, my friends.

This is what was once known as BAD TIMES FOR DISCO.

So everyone gets together and they’re like “Guys we need a MOON.

Then we can truly boogie

ALL NIGHT LONG

without someone tripping and putting his face through a disco ball like LAST TIME.

I mean, whose bright idea was it to bring a disco ball to a party WITHOUT ANY LIGHTS?

But okay, let’s see . . . What do we have a lot of that we’re not using?

Oh, that’s right.

ANIMALS.”

So they call up all the animals, and they are like “Okay here’s how it’s gonna be:

One of you is going to crawl up into the sky

and curl up into a ball and reflect sunlight at us while we boogie

ALL NIGHT LONG.”

And Fox

who is dumb and eager to please

is like “OH MAN, GUYS I WILL BE THE BEST MOON.”

So he runs up into the sky

and he curls himself up into a ball

and he starts reflecting the PANTS off that sun

which is quite an achievement because I didn’t know the sun wore pants.

But here’s the problem, my friends:

Fox is WAY TOO GOOD AT HIS JOB.

It’s like straight-up daylight all over the place.

Everyone caught with their wangs out on the dance floor

totally embarrassed.

So everybody’s like “Sorry, Fox

but we need a little more mood lighting for this sexy party we’re having.

Gonna need you to step down from the sky.”

And Fox is like “Aww, okay.”

And then Raven is like “OH SNAP NOW’S MY CHANCE.

NOTHING IS SEXIER THAN BLACKLIGHT.”

So raven flies up there and balls himself up

but as everybody but Raven already knows

black is TERRIBLE for reflecting sunlight

so pretty soon everyone is right back to putting various parts of their anatomy through disco balls.

DID YOU KNOW: Disco balls are not actually in this story and I am just making that part up.

Anyway, everybody gets their shit straightened out and cleans all the blood off their faces and wangs

and then they’re like “Okay, Raven

I know we said we wanted someone to be less good at their job

but we did not mean for someone to come in and drive the failbus straight off a cliff.”

So Raven slinks back down to earth, all humiliated

because at least Fox only got fired for being too GOOD at his job

and it is at this point that Coyote decides to make his move.

He shows up like “GUYS, LOOK AT ME.

MY FUR IS EXACTLY THE RIGHT COLOR.

THIS IS ONE JOB SITUATION

WHERE RACIAL PROFILING IS TOTALLY OKAY.”

And everyone is like “Well, we are uncomfortable with your rhetoric, but okay.”

So Coyote gets his ass up in the sky and curls into a ball

and it’s perfect, it’s great.

Everyone is dancing up a storm

but not a literal storm.

(That would be bad and probably interrupt the dancing.)

No, this is a figurative storm

composed of gyrating pelvii and windmilling dangly bits.

It’s great. You would have loved it.

But then Coyote gets all bored

’cause this dude has some serious ADD

so he starts using his privileged position up in the sky

to get all up in everyone’s business.

He’s all peeping in the ladies’ windows

like “HEY, EVERYONE

SUSAN JUST INVENTED THE STAR-GROPE.

COME LOOK.”

And everyone comes and looks

except for Susan, who doesn’t come at all

because a screaming busybody moon is the ultimate mood killer.

Coyote also uses his moon powers to keep homeless guys from stealing food and to cheat at cards.

So everyone gets pissed off, and they decide to fire him.

But he’s like “HAHA, YOU CAN’T REALLY FIRE ME.

I’M THE PERFECT COLOR.”

and everyone is like “Dude

there are pretty much a hojillion animals with the same color fur as you.

Case in point: Rabbit

and Rabbit is not such a fucking spaz either.”

so they send Rabbit up to be the moon

and Rabbit ends up being pretty chill about the whole thing

FOREVER.

And that is why Coyote is always howling at the moon.

It’s because he just cannot get over that stuff that happened that one time.

So the moral of the story

is that we should seriously consider firing the moon

because I didn’t know we could do that

and I bet we have the technology now

to genetically engineer a WAY BETTER MOON than some dumb rabbit.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICAN

So first, a quick disclaimer:

Throughout this section, I’m gonna be calling the United States of America “AMERICA”

and you are going to deal with this

because America is just flat out easier to type than “The States”

or “The U.S. of A.”

or “That Big Basket of Jerks under Canada”

But second off, don’t you think it’s weird

that of all the myriad ethnic groups we have shoehorned together in this wide western world of ours

our predominant mythological tradition

is tied to a bunch of ancient dead dudes whose religion no one even worships anymore?

Now, I’m not denying Greek myths are super sweet

there is nothing better, if you want to watch a bunch of children boinking and killing each other.

But I feel like it is my duty as an American

to raise awareness

of some goddamn AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY UP IN HERE.

But there’s a problem:

America is not very old, my friends.

We have not had time to develop a really spectacular cast of magical jerks to talk about.

Oh snap, wait a second.

I totally take that back.

We’ve got a whole pantheon of crazy dudes to choose from

and they are called

THE FOUNDING FATHERS

but I could write a whole other book about those guys

and maybe someday I will

so for now, you’re gonna have to settle for a whirlwind tour

OF THE MYTHOLOGY WE’VE MADE SO FAR.

THE CREATION MYTH . . . OF AMERICA

Now, normally in these creation myths

we start out with a vast ocean

and then some guy comes along and puts land in it.

America is no exception.

This time, the ocean is called the Atlantic Ocean

and the guy is called Christopher Columbus.

The only difference is that Columbus doesn’t MAKE the land

he just finds it, on his way to go find something else

because apparently some gods put it there a long time ago and forgot to tell anyone about it.

There are also already people in this America place

but that’s not a big deal because people are pretty easy to get rid of.

See also: the biblical flood.

Anyway, for the time being Christopher Columbus names these people Indians

because that is the name of the people in the place he was supposed to be looking for

and he is still laboring under some misapprehensions.

Time passes

and a bunch of Christopher Columbus’s friends show up

a whole pantheon of legendary bastards called the conquistadors

and they populate the land with themselves

while depopulating the land of everybody else.

Then even MORE time passes and some other guys start showing up

from this place called the BRITISH EMPIRE

which sounds like it must be a pretty nice place.

Like, the sun never sets there so it’s basically an eternal beach party all the time

but with more fog.

But even so tons of dudes keep getting on boats and leaving

and sailing across a WHOLE OCEAN

to get to this hip new America place everyone is talking about

because Britain is nice and everything

but it is totally played out.

Amongst the British dudes who show up

are a bunch of people who are practicing this crazy souped-up version of Christianity.

In this scenario, they will be our CHOSEN PEOPLE.

They meet all the requirements:

(1) They are the dudes who ultimately get the promised land

and (2) They get the promised land by killing a WHOLE BUNCH OF PEOPLE.

Yeah, basically what happens is that they’re hanging out in America for a while

when suddenly, the king of England

(who is named George)

starts being a TOTAL DICK.

He’s like “I PUT ALL YOU PEOPLE IN THIS NEW LAND.

NOW YOU HAVE TO PAY TRIBUTE TO ME.”

But all the American dudes are like “No way!”

And then instead of killing them with a massive flood

like a REAL divine emperor would have

King George tries to kill them with an army of really flashily dressed guys.

But as we have already established guys are REALLY easy to kill

and they are even easier to kill when they are covered in bright red dress-coats

so the Americans just get a whole bunch of guns and shoot at England until it goes away

and then they shoot at the conquistadors until they go away too.

Then they shoot at the natives

and then when they run out of natives they shoot at each other.

Then they’ve still got a lot of bullets left over so they have to keep finding more people to shoot.

Also, I think someone writes a constitution?

Anyway, that’s where America comes from.

So the moral of the story

is that the primary ingredient for a successful nation

is guns.

JOHN HENRY WAS A STEEL-DRIVIN’ MAN

I SAID, JOHN HENRY WAS A STEEL-DRIVIN’ MAN.

Do you guys know what that means?

That means that he was a dude who worked on a railroad

and his job

was to KILL MOUNTAINS.

Now, the way he did this

was that some poor sonofabitch named Little Bill

would hold a steel drill in place against the rock

while John Henry BEAT ON IT AS HARD AS HE COULD

WITH A TWENTY-POUND HAMMER

and Bill had to keep turning the drill after every strike

and eventually the drill would get dull

so he had to swap it out

for another drill

that someone would hopefully hand to him at about that time

WITHOUT MISSING A BEAT

and then they would bring the old drill to a blacksmith

so the blacksmith could fix it

and then bring it back to Bill so he could switch it out AGAIN

and meanwhile John Henry’s hammer is just whistling right past Bill’s junk

or face, or ribs, or wherever he has to hold the drill

in order to make sure the rock is getting brutalized in the right direction.

Meanwhile, John Henry has it easy.

All HE has to do is heft a TWENTY-POUND HAMMER

over and over again

with perfect accuracy

all day

through solid rock

never stopping, never getting tired

under constant threat of rockslides and disfigurement.

So this is this guy’s job.

Now John Henry works for a pack of rat bastards called the C&O Railroad Company.

I know they are rat bastards because one day John Henry’s railroad team

rolls up on this big, big mountain

and the railroad crew is all like “Oh wow, bummer.

Guess we better start going around this mountain, huh?”

And aforementioned rat bastards from C&O

are like “NOPE.

GOIN’ STRAIGHT THROUGH THE MOUNTAIN.

IT IS ONLY LIKE A MILE AND A HALF THICK.

YOU GUYS LIKE HAVING JOBS, RIGHT?

SO DO IT.”

So they do it

most of these guys are freed slaves

so they don’t exactly have their pick of the crop as far as employment opportunities go.

This goes double for John Henry

who is not only a freed slave

but also an UNSTOPPABLE BADASS WHO NEVER QUITS.

So every day all the steel drivers go to work

and they fling themselves mercilessly at this mountain

and like twenty people die

but John Henry just keeps abusing that stone

making a solid ten-foot tunnel every day, at LEAST.

So, you know, great for him

but all his friends are still dead

and the dicks at C&O are getting impatient

so when this traveling salesman shows up with a steam-powered drill machine

they are like “SIGN US UP.

P.S.: Everyone who works for us is fired now.

ESPECIALLY JOHN HENRY.”

Now John Henry is the kind of man who takes absolutely no guff from anybody.

It is unreal how little guff this man takes.

Like, if there were a great big pile of guff by the side of the road

and John Henry walked by

that pile would remain completely undisturbed

because he would take none of it.

So when he sees this guff coming his way he just sidesteps the lot of it

and then he turns around like “Hey, traveling salesman

I bet I can drill harder, better, faster, AND stronger than your candyassed machine.”

And the traveling salesman is like “YOU’RE ON.”

So the next day John Henry lines up next to this machine

along with his trusty shaker Little Bill

and TWO twenty-pound hammers

and they get. to. work.

So John and the drill are staying pretty much neck and neck

even though the drill doesn’t have a neck.

Maybe the drill is even doing a little better

but then it gets STUCK in a hole in the rock

and John Henry just goes grunting and flailing and sweating

FOURTEEN FEET INTO THE HEART OF THAT MOUNTAIN.

BAM CLINK CACHANG POW BOOM PEW PEW PEW.

I DON’T KNOW WHAT SOUND A HAMMER MAKES.

So, final score:

Newfangled steam drill: nine feet.

One man armed with nothing but sweat and hammers: fourteen feet.

Oh wait.

Did I forget to mention

that since John Henry is using two hammers, he drilled TWO HOLES

while the steam drill only made ONE??

So really, the score was nine to TWENTY-EIGHT.

Yeah.

But there’s some bad news too.

See, as soon as he finds out his score

John Henry puts down his hammers and dies

because he just hammered that rock so hard

he gave himself a stroke.

It doesn’t say in the ballad

but I like to think that his last words were something like

“. . . Damn right.”

Anyway, then he’s dead

so I think they end up using the steam drill anyway

although they have to cancel work for like a week

because everyone is convinced that John Henry’s ghost lives in the tunnel

also later on it turns out that the tunnel is notoriously unstable

because it is a bad idea to use contests to construct structurally delicate railway tunnels.

But none of that matters

because the real hero of this story

is Little Bill

who held two drills

right next to all the tenderest parts of his body

against a solid stone wall

while an absurdly muscular dude repeatedly charged toward him

flailing two twenty-pound hammers.

And he kept holding those drills

and turning them

and shaking out the stone debris

and switching out the drills when they got dull

FOR THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES

AND TWENTY-EIGHT FEET

and he didn’t have a stroke

or even poop himself a little.

So let’s hear it for Little Bill

the real American hero.

PAUL BUNYAN WAS A LOG-DRIVIN’ MAN

We all know that lumberjacks are badasses.

But have you ever stopped to wonder how we know that?

I’LL TELL YOU HOW.

PAUL BUNYAN IS HOW.

Because that dude

was big.

HOW BIG WAS HE?

He was SO BIG

that it took three storks to deliver him to his parents.

He was SO BIG

that when he was old enough to laugh and clap his hands

he DESTROYED HIS HOUSE.

He was SO BIG

that one time he dragged his ax behind him when he was walking

and made the Grand Canyon.

This guy was BIG.

But all of that is baby stuff, compared with the time he tamed the Whistling River.

So the Whistling River

is a river that has somehow come into possession of some rudimentary intelligence

and a WHOLE LOT OF GUFF which it hands out to all comers

because as you may have noticed

guff is America’s chief natural resource.

See, this river likes to rear up at random times throughout the day

and let out a piercing whistle that annoys the crap out of everyone for MILES AROUND.

This river is also a total dick.

It breaks up log rafts

it drowns loggers

it does everything a river is not supposed to do and laughs about it

or whistles about it, I guess.

But then the river makes a crucial mistake

because one day Paul Bunyan is sitting by the river, eating some flapjacks

when the river rears up

and chucks FOUR HUNDRED AND NINETEEN GALLONS OF MUDDY WATER

INTO HIS BEARD.

Now I’m sure I don’t have to tell you

that a lumberjack’s beard is NOT TO BE TRIFLED WITH

but Paul Bunyan gives the river a pass.

He just goes back to his pancakes and figures the river will behave itself.

But that river rears up

and chucks FIVE THOUSAND AND NINETEEN MORE GALLONS

AND SOME TURTLES AND SOME FISH AND SOME MUSKRAT

DIRECTLY INTO PAUL BUNYAN’S ALREADY SOAKING WET BEARD

plus his flapjacks are pretty wet.

This is the kind of thing any self-respecting lumberjack cannot ignore.

So what does Paul Bunyan do?

Does he get up and move someplace where the river can’t soak him?

NO.

Instead, he decides to TAME the river.

But how?

Well, Paul Bunyan settles down to do some serious thinking

and the way lumberjacks think

is they sit down and they eat popcorn

for DAYS.

Paul Bunyan eats so much popcorn

that after a week, the ground is covered with eighteen inches of popcorn scraps

for THREE MILES AROUND

and animals that wander into the area immediately think it is winter

and freeze to death before they have a chance to actually think about what they are doing.

Anyway, finally Paul Bunyan leaps up like “AHA!

I bet if I took all the bends out of the river it would straighten up and fly right.

So I’ll just tie it to Babe, my massive blue ox and she’ll tow it straight.

Oh wait, it’s made of water.

How am I going to attach my ox to it?

HMM.”

So Paul Bunyan and his ox go to the North Pole

and he makes a box trap baited with icicles

and then goes and plays fetch with Babe for a while using GLACIERS

but he has to stop because he floods Florida.

Then he goes back to check on his trap

and finds that he has caught SIX BLIZZARDS.

Man, I wish I had a box big enough to catch six blizzards.

I’d open up a blizzard stand

and no one would buy any

BECAUSE BLIZZARDS ARE A THING THAT NOBODY WANTS.

But Paul Bunyan doesn’t see it that way.

He grabs two of those blizzards and he takes them back to his logging camp

and has his friend Ole—

who is not a lumberjacking matador but rather a big Swede—

make two huge logging chains to attach to the blizzards.

Then he goes to the river and jams the blizzards into it

which freezes it FOR SEVENTEEN MILES

then he hooks the river up to Babe

and it is GO TIME.

But that river is TOOOO ornery

it won’t budge

even though Babe pulls those chains into solid iron bars

and digs ruts into the solid rock she is running on.

But that’s when Paul Bunyan just cuts straight through the bullshit

by grabbing the chains and pulling them so hard

that he and Babe drag the river free of its banks and through the prairie.

When finally they stop running and turn around

they see that the river has become TOTALLY STRAIGHT

but it is also somehow much shorter

because all the elbow joints that made the bends are now scattered across the prairie.

So Paul Bunyan packs up all the extra bends

and uses them later, when he needs to float logs in the middle of the desert

even though that’s not how that works and there aren’t even any logs in the desert

because you get to ignore physics as long as you are really, really big.

Anyway, then the river refuses to whistle

because it has basically just undergone the river equivalent of traumatic castration

and strangely enough, this makes everyone really pissed off at Paul Bunyan

because it turns out that everyone was using the river as an alarm clock

and they need to wake up early

because trees are easier to cut down when you catch them snoozing.

But luckily this dude comes along named Squeaky Swanson

who has a speaking voice that is never above a whisper

but a shriek that can physically LIFT THE BLANKETS off of everyone in camp.

So every day, Squeaky Swanson wakes up at the crack of dawn

and shrieks everyone awake

thus solving every problem forever.

So once again

the real hero of the story is not Paul Bunyan

who actually ruined the whistling river

and broke physics

and littered a lot of popcorn scraps all over

and flooded Florida

but rather an unassuming man

with some kind of weird voice problem.

So God bless America

home of the little guy

as long as the little guy can yell really loud.

PECOS BILL WAS A CATTLE-DRIVIN’ MAN

All right, my friends.

It is time for you to hear about a man whose ass is SO BAD

other asses cower at the mere mention of it.

The owner of this ass is named PECOS BILL.

But Pecos Bill was not always named that.

For a while he was just named Bill.

This dude was not alive more than, say, ten seconds

before he started chewing knives and riding horses

and then crawling out of his mom’s wagon when she wasn’t looking

and wrestling BEAR CUBS

and WINNING.

But as if that wasn’t enough

the way Pecos Bill gets the Pecos part of his name

is that one day his family is crossing the Pecos River

and Bill falls out of the wagon into the water

probably because he was trying to bust out and wrestle bears at the wrong time

and his family is like “DAMMIT.

HE WAS GONNA BE SUCH A BADASS.”

And then his mom dies of being sad.

But it’s okay, guys

because Pecos Bill gets fished out of the river BY COYOTES.

THAT IS A REASSURING THING TO HAVE HAPPEN, RIGHT??

Actually, yes

because in this case, the coyotes make the incredibly un-coyote-like decision

to raise this delicious human baby as one of their own for fifteen years.

Yeah, that’s right. He’s one of THOSE kids.

But then after fifteen years, Pecos Bill is drinking from the river that bears his name

when his brother comes along

punching cattle, like people do in Texas.

(I think punching cattle is an expression meaning to herd cattle or something

but I really prefer to imagine

that Pecos Bill’s brother is just SOCKING COWS IN THE FOREHEAD

ALL ACROSS THE PRAIRIE.)

Anyway, he sees Pecos Bill squatting by the river

and he’s like “HEY

Aren’t you my long lost brother?”

and Pecos Bill is like “NO.

I AM A COYOTE.

AWOOOO.”

And his brother is like “Bullshit.

If you are a coyote, then where’s your tail?”

And Pecos Bill is like “Hmm, tough question.

Well, I definitely have fleas, AND I howl at the moon.”

And his brother is like “Son

EVERYONE in Texas has fleas and howls at the moon.

Also, you clearly speak English and walk on two legs

both of which are suspiciously un-coyote-like even in Texas.

Now cut the bullshit

put on this hat

and come be a cowboy like me.”

And Pecos Bill is like “Okay, you talked me into it.”

So he becomes the best cowboy ever.

He invents branding cattle

and also sitting on cattle until they behave

and also the lasso

and his brother is like “Not bad

for some crazy asshole who thought he was a coyote for fifteen years.

Keep practicing, kid. Some day you’ll be a great cowboy.”

And he turns out to be TOTALLY RIGHT.

Which just goes to reinforce the point I’ve been making

which is that Pecos Bill is clearly not the hero of this story

(just like Paul Bunyan was not the hero of his story

and John Henry was not the hero of HIS story)

because without his brother

Pecos Bill would have farted around that river with a pack of rabid coyotes

until some poacher found this naked dirt-streaked thing

fucking a she-coyote in the underbrush

and put an end to his special crazytime.

See, this is what the United States of America is all about.

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 suddenly 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

something 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.

The assumption that every one of these groups is making—

and I think it’s important to acknowledge that every group, from scientist to Sikh, assumes this—is that they are right. That they are somehow behaving rationally.

But the fact that we can get so angry about this stuff means that it’s not rational

and I think we could get a hell of a lot further by synthesizing these beliefs

than by finding more and more nuanced ways to call each other dicks.

So I guess the moral of the story

is that all you religious people need to stop hating on the scientists, and vice versa

because at the end of the day, we are all united

by our desire for sweet explosions.

THE END.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cory O’Brien (aka Ovid Naso)

is a dude who likes myths a whole lot.

When he’s not writing them in books

he is usually yelling them at people in bars

or posting them on his website bettermyths.com.

He grew up on top of a hill in Los Angeles, California

where there are basically no myths at all

but where one time a guy got shot in the leg outside his friend’s house

and broke in to use the telephone.

Now he lives in Chicago, Illinois where it is much colder

but on the other hand no injured people have broken into his house. Yet.

He is currently doing an MFA in writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago

not that it shows.

Also, birds really freak him out.

They’re like tiny, winged sociopaths.

Seriously, have you ever looked at those things?

Table of Contents

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

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

ABOUT THE AUTHOR