Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes: A No-Bullshit Guide to World Mythology (16 page)

Okay, so there’s this dude Eshu Elegba, right?

He’s one of the main gods in the Yoruba pantheon

and also a pretty crazy dude.

Basically, he is what it would be like

if Loki was pretty much allowed to run his whole pantheon.

He is associated mainly with roads, trickery, pipe-smoking, and dongs.

The last two may be interrelated.

Hell, the last three.

You know what?

Everything is related to dongs.

MOVING ON.

So there are these two farmers.

They are best buds, and they live across the street from each other.

So one day they’re sitting out on their respective porches

enjoying the sunshine and each others’ companionship

when Eshu Elegba walks by real fast

and the farmer on the north side of the road is like “Dude, did you see that guy just now?

The one with the red hat?”

and the farmer on the south side of the street is like “Uh, I saw a guy

but he was wearing a BLUE AND WHITE hat.

I think maybe you’ve had too much to drink.”

And the first farmer is like “Guess again, shit eyes.

That guy’s hat was clearly red.”

And the second farmer is like “YOU are the one with shit for eyes.”

And the first farmer is like “I’LL SHIT IN YOUR EYES.”

And just then, Eshu Elegba walks past in the other direction

and the first farmer is like “Holy balls, you’re right.

The dude’s hat IS blue and white.”

And the second guy is like “What are you talking about?

YOU are the one who is right.

That guy’s hat is CLEARLY red.”

And the first farmer is like “YOU KNOW WHAT’S RED?

MY FIST

AFTER I USE IT TO RIP YOUR STILL-BEATING HEART FROM YOUR CHEST.”

And the other guy is all “NOT AS RED AS HIS HAT, YOU SHANDY-PANCAKE.”

and the first guy is like “WHAT THE HELL IS A SHANDY-PANCAKE?”

and the second guy is like “I DON’T HAVE TO KNOW WHAT IT IS

TO CUT YOUR FACE OFF WITH IT.”

And then the neighbors show up like “Okay, guys, enough is enough.

We’re gonna take you both to the king and let him sort it out.”

So they go all the way to the king

and they get into the throne room

and then Eshu shows up like “POOF KLAZAM, DICKHEADS.”

And they see his hat from the front

because I guess they never tried to look at him

while he was RUNNING TOWARD OR AWAY FROM THEM

and WHAT DO YOU KNOW:

IT’S HALF RED AND HALF WHITE/BLUE

IT IS BASICALLY THE ULTIMATE U.S.A. PARTY FEDORA

and Elegba is like “Guess what, guys:

YOU JUST GOT PUNK’D.

This is what happens when you make a new friend without consulting me first

BECAUSE I’M ELEGBA

APPROVER OF FRIENDSHIPS.

JK, guys, I actually just kinda wanted to see a fight.

CAUSING STRIFE IS MY GREATEST JOY.”

And then he runs off and everyone is like “Wow.

Who put that dude in charge of the universe?”

Which is a question I think has been asked many times about pretty much every god.

So the moral of the story

is make sure to eat your carrots

because good eyesight may just save your friendship.

So considering how the current official religion of China

seems to be something like “Stand still while we bulldoze your house to build this dam”

it’s hard to put a finger on the relationship between ancient Chinese tales

and any specific religion.

In fact

the way it really works

is that wayyy back in the day, some dudes got together and made up some sweet stories

but they kinda forgot to attach a religion to them

so then later on, all these other religions came along

like Taoism and Confucianism and Buddhism

they were all like “Whoa, these myths are pretty sweet!

Let’s steal them!”

So all the tropes of the old myths got repurposed to make the points of all these new religions

and meanwhile

a whole bunch of the old myths made it through more or less intact

so in this section

I’m gonna try to give you a little taste of all the different religions

that bastardized Chinese mythology

just like I’m about to.

Okay, so Pan Gu, right?

Apparently he was a dude living inside an egg back in the day.

Where was the egg, you ask?

Probably in China

because that is where this myth is from.

BZZ

WRONG.

CHINA DOESN’T EXIST YET IN THIS STORY.

THIS IS A CREATION MYTH

TRY TO KEEP UP.

Actually this egg is pretty much all there is anywhere

and inside the egg is all this cool stuff

like lava and birds and mountains and boobs

and also this dude Pan Gu, like I said.

But even though Pan Gu literally has access to EVERYTHING THERE IS

he gets pretty bored inside this egg

and he’s like “OKAY, THAT’S ENOUGH.”

and he picks up an ax and breaks that egg in half LIKE A BOSS.

Then he proceeds to have an EIGHTEEN-THOUSAND-YEAR growth spurt

constantly holding the top of the egg balanced on his head in the process

which basically turns the top of the egg into the sky

and the bottom into the earth.

It is very important that Pan Gu maintain proper posture

because otherwise we’re all pooched.

But so yeah then his beard turns into forests and whatnot.

I think his bone marrow turns into rubies also

and something about his breath and wind and birds.

Whatever.

This dude is literally everything

so you can kind of assume that if there is a thing

it probably came about as a result of one of Pan Gu’s bodily processes.

But the best part is where humans come from

because apparently

humans are the lice that come off this dude’s corpse when he dies.

Yep

we are all lice, ladies and gentlemen.

So the moral of the story is

never bathe

because it is genocide.

Okay, so you guys know about the sun, right?

It’s this big ball of fire and explosions that flies around giving people cancer.

But did you know there used to be TEN SUNS?

Yeah

it SUCKED.

It sucked so bad that Di Jun (aka Chinese Zeus)

(aka the father of all these rambunctious suns)

(Get it? Suns? Sons? It’s brilliant.)

had no idea what to do

so here’s what went down:

There’s this really great archer named Hou Yi

and he’s chilling in his heavenly crib with his wife Chang’e

and all of a sudden the phone rings and it’s Di Jun.

Hou Yi is like “Yo, Di Jun, my man, what’s cookin’?”

And Di Jun is like “My friend the entire Earth is cooking.

You could fry an egg on a goddamn glacier right about now

and it ain’t none of this sous-vide bullshit or nothing.

This is honest-to-goodness summer backyard barbecue

except instead of a big plate of watermelon on the back porch

everyone’s skin is melting off.

Can you solve this problem for me?”

And Hou Yi is like “You got it, buddy.”

So Hou Yi grabs his trusty arrows and goes outside

and just kills nine out of the ten suns

and then he stares at the tenth sun real hard and he’s like

“You best behave, sun.”

And the sun is like “OKAY DUDE, NO PROBLEM.”

And promptly dives underground and takes the subway home

and Hou Yi is like “Well, that was easy.

You’re welcome, Di Jun.”

And Di Jun is like “WHAT THE HELL, DUDE

YOU JUST KILLED 90 PERCENT OF MY SUNS.

I MEAN SONS.

I MEAN TECHNICALLY BOTH, BUT WHATEVER.”

And Hou Yi is like “Dude, do you even know who you called to solve your problem?

You called Hou Yi the immortal archer.

And you know what they say:

When the only tool you have is a hammer

every problem starts to look like you can solve it by shooting your friend’s sons.

Ummm, I think I may have mixed my metaphors a little bit.”

And Di Jun is like “DAMN RIGHT YOU DID.

I AM HEREBY REVOKING YOUR IMMORTALITY.

ALSO:

YOUR WIFE’S IMMORTALITY.”

And Chang’e is like “Wait, what did I do?”

So now Hou Yi and Chang’e are both mortal

and Chang’e will NOT stop bitching about it for good reason.

So finally Hou Yi is like “GRR, FINE.

I will go get us some immortality.”

So he goes all the way to the west

and he finds Xiwangmu, the good witch of the west

who gives him a couple pills of immortality

and she’s like “Careful, dude.

This is some heavy shit.

Don’t take too much.”

And Hou Yi is like “Sure, no problem.”

And then proceeds to go home and leave all the pills with his wife

while he goes out to shoot more things with arrows.

Now, different tellers of this story ascribe different motivations to Chang’e here.

Some say she was a greedy twank who wanted all the immortality for herself.

Some say that there were some robbers and she took all the pills to spite them.

Some say she got hungry and confused.

Whatever the reason, the point is that Hou Yi isn’t gone for fifteen seconds

before all the pills are in his wife’s mouth

at which point she proceeds to have THE ULTIMATE OVERDOSE.

But instead of throwing up and then dying

which would be SILLY

Chang’e becomes TOO IMMORTAL

and apparently immortality = buoyancy

so she floats to the moon

and her husband comes home and sees her floating to the moon

and he’s about to take out his bow and try to shoot her down

but everyone is all “NO, HOU YI

SOMETIMES YOU CANNOT SOLVE PROBLEMS BY SHOOTING THEM.”

And Hou Yi is like “Seriously?

Why did nobody tell me this before?”

and then his wife lives on the moon with a rabbit forever

and later another guy named Wu Gang gets sent there.

He’s like Sisyphus except with a tree instead of a rock

and chopping it down instead of pushing it up a hill.

So the moral of the story

is don’t do drugs

unless you wanna wake up on the moon

with nothing but a rabbit and a deranged lumberjack to keep you company.

Take it from me, man.

Take it from me.

Okay, you are about to hear a story about magic and poop

and I wish I could say that the magic was the most important part.

So Fei Chang-Fang is a dude who is interested in the Tao from a very early age

and then at a slightly less early age he becomes a police officer

but then he quits because fuck the police.

So then one day he is hanging out at a restaurant

and he sees this old man come walking into the town square

and the old man sits down and pulls some medicinal herbs

(cough cough)

out of a large gourd

and proceeds to sell them all day.

Now Chang-Fang, having just quit his job

has nothing better to do than sit in the restaurant and watch this dude sell drugs all day

and at the end of the day

the old dude puts all his herbs back into the gourd

and then SHOOP

jumps into the gourd himself

and Chang-Fang just sits there like

“what.”

So he sits at the restaurant every day for a week, watching this guy do this

and finally he’s like “Screw it I’m just gonna go talk to this dude.”

So he gets up and walks across the courtyard

but right when he is about to get up in the old guy’s business

the old guy goes SHOOP SHOOP BA-DOOP

and jumps into his gourd.

so Chang-Fang goes and looks in the gourd

and I will be DAMNED if there isn’t an entire HOUSE chilling out inside that gourd.

And the old dude is all up in there

and he walks right up to the mouth of the gourd

and looks Chang-Fang right in the eye

and is like “HOW DID YOU SEE ME GO INTO THE GOURD?

ONLY PEOPLE WHO CAN LEARN MAGIC CAN SEE ME GO INTO THE GOURD.

HERE. COME HAVE LUNCH IN MY GOURD.”

So Chang-Fang jumps into the gourd with the old dude and they have a tasty lunch

and they have many tasty lunches for days afterward

and discuss the mysteries of the Tao.

But one day the old man in the gourd is like “Hey Chang-Fang

I like how your name rhymes

and also I have a confession to make:

I am actually a Taoist immortal

imprisoned on earth for breaking the laws of heaven

they make me sell drugs down here

to atone for selling drugs up there.

Anyway, I get out tomorrow and I’m totally going back to the immortal kingdom.

Wanna come with?”

And Chang-Fang is like “DO I?

Oh wait, do I?”

’Cause, see, Chang-Fang has a family

and he doesn’t want them to worry about him.

But the old dude is like “Boy do I have a solution for THAT.

Here, take this bamboo stick and hang it from a tree in front of your house.”

So Chang-Fang does

and then his parents come outside

and they see the stick

only instead of a stick they see THEIR SON.

HE KILLED HIMSELF.

THEY ARE SO SAD.

And meanwhile Chang-Fang is standing next to them like “Totally not dead, guys.”

But they don’t see or hear him

so the old man from the gourd is like “Welp

looks like I just destroyed your only reason for not coming with me.”

And Chang-Fang is like “Checkmate, sir.”

And they journey to the immortal mountains.

So the old man leads Chang-Fang into a cave

and makes him sit down on a slab of rock

and then he’s like WAM BAM WIZZOW

and conjures a huge rock over Chang-Fang’s head

suspended by a puny-ass rope

and then he’s like FIZZANG PACHOW BLORB

and summons a bunch of snakes to bite the crap out of the rope

and the rope starts to fray

and Chang-Fang is just like “Yawn.

I see you have some snakerope.

Well done, I guess.”

So the old man is like “NICE!

You are totally worthy to learn magic and divination.”

And then he leads him up a mountain pass

and then he waves his hands and ABRA-KA-GODDAMN-DABRA

IT’S POOPTIME

Seriously, there is just so much poop all of a sudden.

Just a massive pile of poops.

And do you know what it is covered in?

not marshmallows

or peanut brittle.

Nope

MAGGOTS

JUST A WHOOOOLE BUNCH OF MAGGOTS

and the old man grabs three maggots and is like “Here, Chang-Fang.

Here are some maggots for you to eat.”

And Chang-Fang is like “What? No.”

And the old man is like “Aww, man.

I thought you were cool.

Looks like you don’t get to be an immortal now.”

And Chang-Fang is like “I guess I’m okay with that

if being an immortal means I have to eat poop maggots.

Anyway, do you have any magic consolation prizes for me?”

And the old man is like “VANNA TELL THE MAN WHAT HE’S WON.”

And Vanna White doesn’t say anything because she’s not there and the old man is crazy

so then he’s just like “Well you can have my gourd full of drugs

and you can have this magic teleporting walking stick.

GOOD-BYE I WILL NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN.”

So then Chang-Fang kind of starts to wonder how his parents are doing

so he teleports home and knocks on his door

And his dad opens up the door like “OH NO A GHOST.”

But then Chang-Fang is like “Calm down, Dad.

I’m not a ghost.

I just pranked you into burying a bamboo stick using magic.

Here, I’ll prove it.”

So they go dig up the stick

and then everyone is happy again and they have a banquet.

But Chang-Fang is confused

because his relatives are all mega old for some reason

and he is like “Mom, why are you guys so old?

I was only gone for like a day.”

And his mom is like “WRONG, SON.

YOU WERE GONE FOR FIFTEEN YEARS BECAUSE OF CELESTIAL TIME DILATION.”

And Chang-Fang is like “Oh dang.

Well . . . I gotta go help people now with my magic drugs.

I’ll try to visit sometimes.”

So then he travels all over the place

healing the sick and capturing demons and stuff

and eventually dies

because he refused to eat poop that one time

although I’m not really sure whether Chang-Fang really had a chance

or if that whole poop mountain thing was just that asshole immortal’s idea of a really great prank

which just goes to show

that you should never eat poop

or the maggots that live in poop

no matter who tells you to

or what they are offering.