Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes: A No-Bullshit Guide to World Mythology (18 page)

Now the problem with dedicating a section to the whole of Native American mythology

is that there were a lot of people living in this country before we showed up and set it on fire

and some of them didn’t get along too well

and they ALL had their own stories

so trying to tell a cohesive Native American mythology

with only a handful of myths

is a lot like trying to cook an alphabet soup using only the letter “A”

so I highly recommend that you go online

and look up some Native American myths on your own

because there’s a TON of them

and they’re great

but for now

I am going to attempt to give you a small spoonful

of the alphabet soup that this country used to belong to.

Now I know I told you there were a thousand and one pantheons to choose from here

but at least as far as creation myths are concerned

all the Native American stories start to sound pretty much the same after a while

so I picked the Algonquin version

because it is the one with the highest concentration of hilarious jerks.

Speaking of hilarious jerks, meet Wisakedjak.

His name is sometimes anglicized as Whiskey Jack

but that’s needlessly confusing

’cause this dude has nothing to do with whiskey

and in fact was around WAYYYY before whiskey

because what kind of creation myth would this be otherwise?

A much drunker one, that’s what kind.

But Wisakedjak is not the kind of dude who NEEDS whiskey to get down.

See, he’s a trickster god

who happens to be real tight with the creator.

So basically

the creator makes the world

and then he’s like “Dude, Wisakedjak

I am so tired from making this world and stuff.

How about you handle everything else now.

Like, teach everyone what roots are good to eat

and keep them from killing each other and stuff.

You know, pretty much everything I am actually personally responsible for doing

but like, the not-fun part of it.”

So the creator goes to sleep

and Wisakedjak proceeds to do the exact opposite of everything the creator told him to do

as in, he feeds everyone poison and goes around starting fights.

So then the creator wakes up from like a ten-year nap

and he’s like “Whooooaaaa, dude.

What did I tell you to do?

I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that.

You best clean up your act

Or else I’m gonna kill everybody and then you’ll be bored.”

So Wisakedjak calls bullshit

and just goes right on doing what he was doing

except like NINE TIMES HARDERRRR

he is running up to dudes like “HEY:

HEYYYY:

SEE THAT GUY OVER THERE?

HE KILLED YOUR DOG

HE KILLED YOUR PARENTS

MURDER HIM.

EAT THIS CYANIDE.

GO GO GO.”

And he just keeps doing this

until the earth is literally saturated with blood

there is nowhere for all this blood to go

it’s pretty upsetting

so at this point the creator shows up again like “THAT’S IT.

EVERYBODY DIES.”

So then everything floods, as usual

and the only things left alive

are Wisakedjak

(even though he is almost the entire problem)

plus an otter, a beaver, and a muskrat.

No fish, apparently

which is something I always wonder about in these flood myths.

Like, a flood seems like a really great way to punish every living creature in the world

except for fish.

What the hell is a god supposed to do when all the FISH start being assholes?

Anyway, let’s just sidestep that plothole completely

and cut to Wisakedjak sitting in the water with his animal pals

crying and feeling sorry for himself

when all of a sudden he has an idea.

He’s like “DUDES:

I can’t create anything ’cause I spent all my attribute points on being a dick

but I CAN infinitely expand anything that has already been created.

So I need one of you guys to dive all the way to the bottom of this water

and get me some dirt to expand.

HEY, CREATOR IT’S OKAY IF I DO THIS, RIGHT?”

And the creator is like “Sure you can make a new world

as long as you use all the material I wasted on the old world.

I don’t wanna have to go out and get a bunch of new dirt and whatnot.”

Man

the Algonquin people have them one LAZY creator.

So Wisakedjak is like “OTTER

YOU’RE SO BRAVE

GO DO IT AND I’LL MAKE SURE YOU ALWAYS HAVE FISH TO EAT”

so otter dives down

and comes back up with NO DIRT AT ALL

and he keeps trying until he is too weak to dive anymore

and Wisakedjak is like “Wow, dude

I am pretty disappointed in you.

Okay, it’s beaver’s turn.

Beaver, if you bring me some dirt then I will build you a house”

so beaver dives

and I’m pretty sure we all know how that turns out

because it’s not like beavers live in five-star hotels is it?

So finally Wisakedjak turns to the muskrat

and he’s like “All right, my man

I do not have high hopes for you.

In fact my hopes for you are practically subterranean.

But that may actually work in our favor in this situation

so if you make it to the bottom I’ll give you infinite roots to eat forever

plus rushes to make a house out of

and you’ll have, like, a billion babies. Seriously.”

So muskrat dives

and he comes up

and he has

NO DIRT

so he tries again

and he’s gone for a while

and he comes up real tired

and he still has no dirt

but here’s the important thing:

He SMELLS like dirt.

So Wisakedjak is like “Dude, you are so close.

Try one more time.”

So the muskrat dives down

and he’s gone for a LOOOONG time

and everyone is pretty sure he’s dead.

But then they see some bubbles

so they reach in and pull out the muskrat

who is pretty much dead

but he has just a little bit of dirt with him

which Wisakedjak turns into an island

and then they finally get to stop sitting in the water.

So then in the following days Wisakedjak finds some bones

and uses them to make animals

and he makes trees out of some wood

and then the creator waits for him to finish all this work

and then he’s like “All right, dude.

I just decided you don’t get to have powers anymore.

You just get the power to lie like a motherfucker.”

So Wisakedjak just uses that power as hard as he can for ever and ever

starting by failing to ever reward the muskrat

because at the end of the day what worse punishment is there

than being a muskrat?

So the moral of the story

is practice holding your breath

it’s good for more than just weird sex stuff.

So this is one of those myths where I almost don’t even need to retell it

I could just transcribe it word for word

and it would just end up looking like something I made up.

Watch:

So there’s this house full of vaginas, right?

Yup.

Just a big ol’ house stuffed full of vaginas.

They have actually got vaginas hanging on the walls

thick as wall scrolls in an
otaku
’s cave.

My friends, this is the quintessential tunaparty

tacofest

clambake

cervical circus

this place is lousy with vaginas, is what I’m saying.

But the lousiest vaginas of all

are these four girls called the vagina girls.

They are actually just giant vaginas.

Giant, shape-shifting vaginas that look like girls.

Oh, also

there are no vaginas anywhere else on earth at this point.

This place is essentially the Fort Knox of vagina

except the security team is actually just one guy

or actually one monster, named Kicking Monster

whose MO is to roll up on any poor jerk who enters the vicinity

and kick him INTO THE HOUSE.

This is not how guards work usually

but hey

no one who gets kicked into the house ever leaves

so Kicking Monster must be doing something right

although I think that may have more to do with the fact

that this is a house filled with ALL OF THE VAGINAS.

But even despite Kicking Monster

dudes are lining up around the block to take a crack at this vagina house

because let me reiterate

this is a house full of ALL THE VAGINAS

That would be like if someone took all the

well

it would be like if someone took all the vaginas in the world and put them in one house.

I don’t know how to make it any clearer than that.

So dudes keep mysteriously disappearing into this vagina house

until finally this one badass rolls up

named Killer-of-Enemies

Who is much more popular than his little brother

Killer-of-Babies-and-Small-Woodland-Creatures

and Killer-of-Enemies takes it upon himself to fix this vagina problem.

So he kicks Kicking Monster in the nuts and he busts into the house

and here come the four beautiful vagina girls like “OH MY GOD, TAKE US NOW.”

And Killer-of-Enemies is like “That is a tempting offer

but first I gotta ask you ladies

what happened to all the dudes who got kicked in here?”

And the vagina girls are like “Oh

we ate them with our vaginas

which are also our whole bodies

and are full of thousands of incredibly sharp teeth like in a horror movie.

That’s kinda what we do.”

And Killer-of-Enemies is like “WHAT?

THAT’S NOT HOW YOU USE A VAGINA.

Look, ladies

I’m totally down for some frisky sexin’

but first you gotta take these drugs I brought with me.”

And the vagina girls are like “FREE DRUGS? COUNT US IN.”

So Killer-of-Enemies feeds these girls sour berries

which are actually just a ton of Rohypnol and ecstasy

and also some kind of tooth-decaying powder to remove their unpleasant vag teeth

and the vagina girls are like “OH MY GOD THIS SEX FEELS SO GOOD.”

And Killer-of-Enemies is like “Dang, girls I ain’t even banged you yet.”

And then later he totally bangs them

right in their domesticated vaginas

and I guess he probably distributes the loose assorted vaginas amongst the people

and no one has to deal with unsightly vagina teeth or women’s rights ever again.

So the moral of the story

is that people who live in vagina houses

should not get stoned.

Summer can be a drag

but what if you could solve summer

using VIOLENCE?

Well, my friends, it turns out you can

as long as you are a mythical rabbit with unlimited reserves of CHUTZPAH.

See, once upon a time the sun used to be even more of a bastard than it is now.

It would take a flying leap off the horizon in the morning

and then spend the rest of the day doing flaming kickflips of disaster off the clouds.

But one day Rabbit decides he has had enough of this nonsense.

He is trying to get his chill on in the shade of a shady oak tree

but the sun is just pretty much PRYING THE SHADOWS STRAIGHT OFF HIM

and then BAKING CANCER INTO HIS SKIN.

Anyway, Rabbit is not about to take guff from some puffed-up ball of superheated gases

so he grabs his gun

and he starts walking.

Yes, of course I can repeat that:

Rabbit grabs a GUN

and he starts walking east, to where the sun lives

so that he can SHOOT THE SUN FOR BEING TOO HOT.

So Rabbit is stomping his way to the horizon

and on the way, he
practices

which yes, means exactly what you think it means.

It means this rabbit is stomping his way to the horizon

shooting
EVERYTHING.

Rocks

lizards

other rabbits.

Nothing can escape Rabbit’s sociopathic target practice.

But finally he gets to the horizon

and this is before sunrise, you understand

so he’s sitting there waiting for the sun to come up.

But the problem with crossing an entire world while firing your gun constantly

is that it tends to sort of telegraph your future plans

so the sun already knows what’s up

and it responds by rising REALLY FAST and off to one side

which totally fakes Rabbit out

and by the time he gets a bead on the sun it is already too far away to shoot.

But Rabbit is not gonna give up that easily.

This is a dude who is SERIOUS about taking naps under trees.

So he sits there for DAYS

while the sun continues to fake his ass out.

Sometimes it rises to the left

sometimes to the right

sometimes it does barrel rolls and cartwheels

and all this time, Rabbit stays right there

WAITING for the sun to fuck up.

It is terrifying to me to imagine that the sun is capable of EVER making mistakes

but that is exactly what it does.

Maybe it comes up a little too slow or in the wrong place

but whatever it is, Rabbit is ready for it

and he shoots it RIGHT IN THE FACE.

So hooray, right? The sun is wounded and we have all learned a valuable lesson.

NOT SO FAST.

See, the thing about the sun—

and you would think that Rabbit might have considered this—

is that it is a giant ball of superheated hatred that BLEEDS FIRE.

So while Rabbit is busy congratulating himself on his expert marksmanship

the sun is busy bleeding a geyser of piping hot apocalypse all over the world.

Now, Rabbit is not about to pull off the greatest drive-by in history

just to get barbecued by a celestial body

so he starts running for cover

and the first cover he finds is a big tree

so he comes running up to the tree, like “Quick! Tree! Hide me under your branches!”

And the tree is like “Dude, I am a
tree.

I am made of
wood.

Have you considered hiding under
non
flammable things?”

So Rabbit keeps running, asking all the trees to shelter him

and they keep saying no, because they are
trees.

But finally, Rabbit manages to con this bush into sheltering him

and then the sun’s fire passes over them

and all that happens to the bush is that the leaves turn kind of yellow forever

which isn’t that bad, all things considered.

But there
are
real consequences to this cavalcade of tomfoolery.

For one thing, Rabbit is afflicted with a serious case of PTSD

which is why rabbits are total wusses nowadays.

The sun survives the ordeal somehow

But it’s hard to do your job

when you’re worried someone is gonna shoot you every time you clock in

which is why the sun rises really slowly and cautiously now

and also why it is so bright:

It is so that you cannot get a good bead on it with a sniper rifle.

So the moral of the story

is that we don’t need to worry about global warming

as long as we have guns.

The end.