Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes: A No-Bullshit Guide to World Mythology (20 page)

We all know that lumberjacks are badasses.

But have you ever stopped to wonder
how
we know that?

I’LL TELL YOU HOW.

PAUL BUNYAN IS HOW.

Because that dude

was
big.

HOW BIG WAS HE?

He was SO BIG

that it took three storks to deliver him to his parents.

He was SO BIG

that when he was old enough to laugh and clap his hands

he DESTROYED HIS HOUSE.

He was SO BIG

that one time he dragged his ax behind him when he was walking

and made the Grand Canyon.

This guy was BIG.

But all of that is baby stuff, compared with the time he tamed the Whistling River.

So the Whistling River

is a river that has somehow come into possession of some rudimentary intelligence

and a WHOLE LOT OF GUFF which it hands out to all comers

because as you may have noticed

guff is America’s chief natural resource.

See, this river likes to rear up at random times throughout the day

and let out a piercing whistle that annoys the crap out of everyone for MILES AROUND.

This river is also a total dick.

It breaks up log rafts

it drowns loggers

it does everything a river is not supposed to do and laughs about it

or whistles about it, I guess.

But then the river makes a crucial mistake

because one day Paul Bunyan is sitting by the river, eating some flapjacks

when the river rears up

and chucks FOUR HUNDRED AND NINETEEN GALLONS OF MUDDY WATER

INTO HIS BEARD.

Now I’m sure I don’t have to tell you

that a lumberjack’s beard is NOT TO BE TRIFLED WITH

but Paul Bunyan gives the river a pass.

He just goes back to his pancakes and figures the river will behave itself.

But that river rears up

and chucks FIVE THOUSAND AND NINETEEN MORE GALLONS

AND SOME TURTLES AND SOME FISH AND SOME MUSKRAT

DIRECTLY INTO PAUL BUNYAN’S ALREADY SOAKING WET BEARD

plus his flapjacks are pretty wet.

This is the kind of thing any self-respecting lumberjack cannot ignore.

So what does Paul Bunyan do?

Does he get up and move someplace where the river can’t soak him?

NO.

Instead, he decides to TAME the river.

But how?

Well, Paul Bunyan settles down to do some serious thinking

and the way lumberjacks think

is they sit down and they eat popcorn

for DAYS.

Paul Bunyan eats so much popcorn

that after a week, the ground is covered with eighteen inches of popcorn scraps

for THREE MILES AROUND

and animals that wander into the area immediately think it is winter

and freeze to death before they have a chance to actually think about what they are doing.

Anyway, finally Paul Bunyan leaps up like “AHA!

I bet if I took all the bends out of the river it would straighten up and fly right.

So I’ll just tie it to Babe, my massive blue ox and she’ll tow it straight.

Oh wait, it’s made of water.

How am I going to attach my ox to it?

HMM.”

So Paul Bunyan and his ox go to the North Pole

and he makes a box trap baited with icicles

and then goes and plays fetch with Babe for a while using GLACIERS

but he has to stop because he floods Florida.

Then he goes back to check on his trap

and finds that he has caught SIX BLIZZARDS.

Man, I wish I had a box big enough to catch six blizzards.

I’d open up a blizzard stand

and no one would buy any

BECAUSE BLIZZARDS ARE A THING THAT NOBODY WANTS.

But Paul Bunyan doesn’t see it that way.

He grabs two of those blizzards and he takes them back to his logging camp

and has his friend Ole—

who is not a lumberjacking matador but rather a big Swede—

make two huge logging chains to attach to the blizzards.

Then he goes to the river and jams the blizzards into it

which freezes it FOR SEVENTEEN MILES

then he hooks the river up to Babe

and it is GO TIME.

But that river is TOOOO ornery

it won’t budge

even though Babe pulls those chains into solid iron bars

and digs ruts into the solid rock she is running on.

But that’s when Paul Bunyan just cuts straight through the bullshit

by grabbing the chains and pulling them so hard

that he and Babe drag the river free of its banks and through the prairie.

When finally they stop running and turn around

they see that the river has become TOTALLY STRAIGHT

but it is also somehow much shorter

because all the elbow joints that made the bends are now scattered across the prairie.

So Paul Bunyan packs up all the extra bends

and uses them later, when he needs to float logs in the middle of the desert

even though that’s not how that works and there aren’t even any logs in the desert

because you get to ignore physics as long as you are really, really big.

Anyway, then the river refuses to whistle

because it has basically just undergone the river equivalent of traumatic castration

and strangely enough, this makes everyone really pissed off at Paul Bunyan

because it turns out that everyone was using the river as an alarm clock

and they need to wake up early

because trees are easier to cut down when you catch them snoozing.

But luckily this dude comes along named Squeaky Swanson

who has a speaking voice that is never above a whisper

but a shriek that can physically LIFT THE BLANKETS off of everyone in camp.

So every day, Squeaky Swanson wakes up at the crack of dawn

and shrieks everyone awake

thus solving every problem forever.

So once again

the real hero of the story is not Paul Bunyan

who actually ruined the whistling river

and broke physics

and littered a lot of popcorn scraps all over

and flooded Florida

but rather an unassuming man

with some kind of weird voice problem.

So God bless America

home of the little guy

as long as the little guy can yell really loud.

All right, my friends.

It is time for you to hear about a man whose ass is SO BAD

other asses cower at the mere mention of it.

The owner of this ass is named PECOS BILL.

But Pecos Bill was not always named that.

For a while he was just named Bill.

This dude was not alive more than, say, ten seconds

before he started chewing knives and riding horses

and then crawling out of his mom’s wagon when she wasn’t looking

and wrestling BEAR CUBS

and WINNING.

But as if that wasn’t enough

the way Pecos Bill gets the Pecos part of his name

is that one day his family is crossing the Pecos River

and Bill falls out of the wagon into the water

probably because he was trying to bust out and wrestle bears at the wrong time

and his family is like “DAMMIT.

HE WAS GONNA BE SUCH A BADASS.”

And then his mom dies of being sad.

But it’s okay, guys

because Pecos Bill gets fished out of the river BY COYOTES.

THAT IS A REASSURING THING TO HAVE HAPPEN, RIGHT??

Actually, yes

because in this case, the coyotes make the incredibly un-coyote-like decision

to raise this delicious human baby as one of their own for fifteen years.

Yeah, that’s right. He’s one of THOSE kids.

But then after fifteen years, Pecos Bill is drinking from the river that bears his name

when his brother comes along

punching cattle, like people do in Texas.

(I think punching cattle is an expression meaning to herd cattle or something

but I really prefer to imagine

that Pecos Bill’s brother is just SOCKING COWS IN THE FOREHEAD

ALL ACROSS THE PRAIRIE.)

Anyway, he sees Pecos Bill squatting by the river

and he’s like “HEY

Aren’t you my long lost brother?”

and Pecos Bill is like “NO.

I AM A COYOTE.

AWOOOO.”

And his brother is like “Bullshit.

If you are a coyote, then where’s your tail?”

And Pecos Bill is like “Hmm, tough question.

Well, I definitely have fleas, AND I howl at the moon.”

And his brother is like “Son

EVERYONE in Texas has fleas and howls at the moon.

Also, you clearly speak English and walk on two legs

both of which are suspiciously un-coyote-like even in Texas.

Now cut the bullshit

put on this hat

and come be a cowboy like me.”

And Pecos Bill is like “Okay, you talked me into it.”

So he becomes the best cowboy ever.

He invents branding cattle

and also sitting on cattle until they behave

and also the lasso

and his brother is like “Not bad

for some crazy asshole who thought he was a coyote for fifteen years.

Keep practicing, kid. Some day you’ll be a great cowboy.”

And he turns out to be TOTALLY RIGHT.

Which just goes to reinforce the point I’ve been making

which is that Pecos Bill is clearly not the hero of this story

(just like Paul Bunyan was not the hero of his story

and John Henry was not the hero of HIS story)

because without his brother

Pecos Bill would have farted around that river with a pack of rabid coyotes

until some poacher found this naked dirt-streaked thing

fucking a she-coyote in the underbrush

and put an end to his special crazytime.

See, this is what the United States of America is all about.

You can wrestle a thousand bears

and chew on a billion knives

but in the end, you are only as good

as the dude who stops you from dying of a gunshot while fucking a coyote.

DAVY

DAAAAVY CROCKETT

HE’S GOT A DONG THAT’S EIGHT MILES LONG

HE KILLED LIKE A MIIIILLION BEARS

AND HE’S SUCH A BIG PIMP THAT HE GOT HIS OWN SONG.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen

you are about to hear about the rootinest, tootinest

alligator-shootinest son of a gun

ever to be a
United States Congressman
?

Yep, I’m talking about Davy Crockett, apparently.

It’s okay, I didn’t know he was a congressman either

but I guess it’s not particularly surprising

given our history, re: guns.

We’ll get to the politics part later, though.

Right now, let’s talk about this guy’s childhood.

So first of all, it is a well-established, canonical fact

that Davy Crockett killed his first bear when he was THREE YEARS OLD.

Then they tried to put him in school

but he ran away

because he was afraid that he might mistake his fellow students for bears

and then MURDER THEM.

Just kidding

Davy Crockett was never afraid of anything

he just had trouble fitting his massive balls through the schoolhouse door.

Anyway, his dad gets pretty mad at him after that

mainly because he’s jealous of his son’s megaballs

so Davy Crockett runs away and kills more bears

maybe he gets raised by wolves

or maybe he raises some wolves himself and that is why wolves are so hard-core now

but either way he eventually comes back home

just in time to handle his dad’s shit for him because his dad sucks at business.

Then he runs for Congress and WINS

(on his second try).

He remains a congressman for several terms, on and off

during which time he does nothing but make threats and animal noises.

Seriously, here’s a quote:

“Who-Who-Whoop—Bow-Wow-Wow-Yough.”

This is the kind of stunning oratory Davy Crockett’s constituents come to expect.

And eventually people get tired of this, and Davy fails to get reelected

so he tells everyone to go to hell

(including his wife and kids)

and then HE goes to the next best place:

Texas.

Now at this time, Texas was kind of a fiasco.

It was this great big swath of furious gunfire trying real hard to be its own country

and Mexico was making this real hard by supplying a large amount of the gunfire.

Remember I told you about the gunfire before?

Yeah, this is one of the places where the gunfire is happening.

So Davy Crockett shows up with thirty well-armed bad boys ready to take on the world

or at least Mexico, which is really what they need in Texas at that moment

and he makes some speeches to his adoring public

like about how he can “walk like an ox

run like a fox

swim like an eel

yell like an Indian

fight like a devil

spout like a geyser

make love like a mad bull

and swallow a Mexican whole without choking

if you butter his head and pin his ears back.”

Wait, never mind. That’s just another one of his speeches from Congress.

Speeches or no speeches, it’s not too long before Davy Crockett ends up at the ALAMO

and we all know what happens at the Alamo, don’t we?

Wait, you don’t?

Are you telling me YOU DON’T REMEMBER THE ALAMO?

Well basically, there’s this bad, bad dude called General Santa Ana

and he is romping and stomping his way from Mexico into Texas

to make Texas into Mexico

and right smack-dab in the path of Santa Ana’s army is this old church called the Alamo

which has been turned into a fortress and filled with Texan dudes.

The Texan dudes aren’t doing too well, though because there aren’t that many of them

so Davy Crockett sees this as a perfect opportunity

to back up some of that ridiculous game he’s been talking

and he brings his thirty guys to the Alamo

and they put up a good fight but they still all get killed

including Davy Crockett, who dies surrounded by SIXTEEN DEAD MEXICANS

only one of which he appears to have stabbed

so I imagine he just stared all those other dudes down.

Then Santa Ana’s troops keep on marching

but they are so demoralized by having removed such a legit badass from the world

that they are pretty easy to kill after that.

Later, Disney makes a movie out of Davy Crockett’s life!

So the moral of the story

is by all means, talk the talk

but think twice before you walk the walk

because you might get shot.