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

by Cory O'Brien

  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.”

  DA
Y 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.

&n
bsp; 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