Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes: A No-Bullshit Guide to World Mythology
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Authors: Cory O'Brien
ZEUS GRANTS STUPID WISHES
A No-Bullshit Guide to World Mythology
Cory O’Brien
I
LLUSTRATIONS BY
S
ARAH
E. M
ELVILLE
A PERIGEE BOOK
A PERIGEE BOOK
Published by the Penguin Group
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Copyright © 2013 by Cory O’Brien
Illustrations by Sarah E. Melville
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
O’Brien, Cory.
Zeus grants stupid wishes : a no-bullshit guide to world mythology / Cory O’Brien ; illustrations by Sarah E. Melville.— First edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-101-61967-4
1. Mythology—Humor. I. Melville, Sarah E., illustrator. II. Title.
BL311.O25 2013
201'.30207—dc23 2012042666
First edition: March 2013
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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To Tiresias Chang
For giving me the idea for this whole thing in the first place.
And to Christina Sheldon
I met you in a bar when I was thirteen
and promised to dedicate my first book to you.
You probably thought I was joking.
INTRODUCTION (Right after this table of contents, dumbass.)
Zeus Sticks It to Semele a Little Too Hard
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
Friends Don’t Let Friends Bang Cows
Odin Gets Construction Discounts with Bestiality
The End of the Norse World as We Know It
Ra and Sekhmet, or: How Beer Saved the Universe
Thoth Is Just Giving Out Scorpions
Horus Jerks Off in Set’s Salad
The Mayans Have the Most Brutal Calendar
Hunahpú and Xbalanqué: ULTIMATE BALLERS
Zipacna and the Four Hundred Boys
Cain and Abel Invent the Sibling Rivalry
Abraham Is Totally Cool About Stabbing His Kid in the Face
King Solomon and the Disposable Baby
The Hindus Like to Chop Dudes Up
Anything Kali Can Do, Shiva Can Do Better
Ganesh Is the Very Definition of an Unplanned Pregnancy
Susanoo Has No Idea What He’s Doing
Amaterasu and the Crippling Depression
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
Fei Chang-Fang and the Poop Mystic
The Ancient Sumerians Knew How to Party
Enki and Nimmah Party Far Too Heartily
Gilgamesh and Enkidu: ULTIMATE BROMANCE
Wisakedjak Is Highly Irresponsible
Killer-of-Enemies and the International House of Vaginas
Rabbit Takes Summer Fun to the Next Level
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
(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.
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.