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

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

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.

BOOK: Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes: A No-Bullshit Guide to World Mythology
2.37Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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