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

  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.