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 dis- tributed 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 num- bers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of public- ation, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for er- rors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does 4/494 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 pur- chases 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 Inven- tion . No, Wait . Hephaestus Gets Dicked Around a Lot 7/494 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 8/494 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 Un- planned Pregnancy 9/494 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 10/494 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 12/494 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 frantic- ally accumulating mythological knowledge and distilling it into what some have affec- tionately called “the death of intellectual- ism.” I am proud of this, because I think that lately, myths have suffered from a severe in- tellectualism 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 drunk- en barbarians. These things are holy, sure, in a way. But they are definitely designed to cater to the lowest common denominator. 13/494 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 in- credibly sweet title and an incredibly insight- ful book. One of the things he spends a lot of time talking about is how similar the mytho- logies of different cultures are, and how that arises out of our innate neurological similar- ities 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 intro- duction, which is that a lot of the psycholo- gical 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 14/494 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 an- cient priest, the role of guiding people through their spiritual crises with mytho- logy, has been taken over by the modern psy- chologist. 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. 17/494 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 ver- sions 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.