Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes: A No-Bullshit Guide to World Mythology (10 page)

I’ve never been freaked out by a calendar even a little

just getting a rise out of me with a calendar is a feat on its own

but the Mayans are the MVPs of making calendars, man.

You have to hand it to a culture that can make a calendar SO INTENSE

that it is still freaking people out CENTURIES LATER.

And they didn’t stop at just freaking people out.

No, see, these dudes wrote a whole fan fiction for their calendar.

It’s called the Popol Vuh

and it is basically just a super-complicated code version of the calendar itself

secretly translated by some Mayan dudes

around the time that the Spanish were killing everybody

and now

it is time to take that sacred and clandestine work of those brave souls

and mock the shit out of it.

So there is this one Mayan dude, right?

he has like fifty goddamn names

Like Hurucan, and Gugumatz, and Heart-of-Sky

and I’m not even really sure if he is one Mayan dude

or like, a collection of Mayan dudes

because they keep acting like he is two people

but the two people never do anything independently

so they’re basically just one person

or some kind of hive mind.

Anyway, we’re going to call this thing Quetzalcoatl.

Quetzalcoatl is bored, because all there is anywhere

is just a whole bunch of water and some sky

and it’s not even interesting sky because there is no light

so Quetzalcoatl is like “Okay, boom.”

And there is some light

and then he goes boom again

and there is some land

but this is still pretty lame because what is the point of being able to do this kind of shit

if there is no one around to get freaked out by how cool it is?

Now, this may sound pretty familiar so far

but here’s where it gets crazy:

Quetzalcoatl’s master plan for getting worshippers

is to invent JAGUARS.

And then he’s like “WHOA, JAGUARS LOOK, I JUST FUCKING MADE YOU.

PRETTY NEAT, HUH?”

And the jaguars are all “Rarrrr, we are jaguars.

We can’t talk or be impressed.”

So Quetzalcoatl is like “Aww, fuck you guys.

I’m gonna make some way more awesome creatures

and they are going to worship me

and you are going to be their SLAVES.”

So he gets some dirt

and he makes dirt-people

but the dirt-people really suck

because first of all, they are made out of dirt

second of all, they only speak gibberish

and third of all, they dissolve in water

so Quetzalcoatl figures that even if they COULD worship him

he would get pretty embarrassed

so he kills all of them by dumping water on them

and then he calls these two other dudes

Xmucane and Xpiacoc

who have names that sound like prescription drugs

designed to treat nasal congestion and erectile dysfunction respectively

and he’s like “Hey, is it a good idea for me to make people out of wood?”

And they say “Yeah, go for it.”

So he makes people out of wood

like a whole bunch of wooden robots, basically

and they can speak and walk around

and they don’t dissolve in water

but they are TREMENDOUS assholes.

One might even say they have a STICK up their asses.

Get it? Get it?

Aw, screw you guys.

Anyway, they totally forget to worship Quetzalcoatl even a little bit

and he’s getting pretty pissed at this point

because he has seriously made EVERYTHING THAT EXISTS

and no one is giving him ANY CREDIT

so he kind of freaks out a little

and causes fire to rain from the sky

and burns everything to cinders

and then makes all of the wood-people’s cookware come alive and kill them

and all the animals move into their houses and eat them

even though they are made of wood and totally not tasty

and meanwhile Quetzalcoatl makes a bunch of ACTUALLY delicious people out of tortillas

and those people are supposedly us

and as soon as Quetzalcoatl gets bored he is going to make us into burritos

and then feed us to jaguars or whatever

and this story was apparently plausible enough

to freak out THE ENTIRE GODDAMN WORLD ALL THE WAY THROUGH 2012.

But anyway, everyone lives happily ever after

except the wood-people

who get chased into the woods and turned into monkeys.

So the moral of the story is

never set fire to a monkey

because it is made out of wood

and you will start a forest fire.

So there are these two dudes

Hun Hunapú and Vucub Hunapú.

They are twins, or at least brothers.

Anyway, they piss off the gods of the underworld with their constant ball playing.

Yes, that is right

they play sports SO HARD

that it upsets MAYAN SATAN.

Anyway, the gods summon them down to the underworld

(which is called Xibalbá

because no Mayan story is complete

without about six thousand proper nouns beginning with the letter “X”)

and the gods are all “Hey, guys we heard you like ball playing

GET IT?

WE HEARD.

BECAUSE YOU ARE SO LOUD.”

And the twins are like “What of it?”

And the gods are like “Well if you like ball games so much

how about you play ball with us

FOR YOUR LIIIIVES?!?!”

And the twins are like “This sounds like THE ULTIMATE RUSH.”

Now, if this was a Greek myth

the twins would use some kind of mad skill or insane trickery to beat the gods.

But this is a Mayan myth.

The dudes get killed before the game even starts for smoking a cigar the wrong way

and then they get decapitated and buried under the ball court

except for Hun’s head which they put that on a calabash tree for some reason.

This turns out to be a bad idea

because some chick named Xquic walks by

and Hun spits in her hand

and he is such a true man that this causes her to get pregnant and she gives birth to TWINS.

Fellas

think you’re hot shit because your penis is one and a half inch longer than the national average?

try impregnating a random chick in her hand

with your saliva

from a tree

on which someone has deposited YOUR SEVERED HEAD.

Wait, wait, I went and read it again

it wasn’t even his head

it was just his skull.

Skulls don’t even MAKE saliva

so . . . I guess when he still had skin and stuff he just collected a big glob of spit in there

and he HELD IT.

WAITING.

I want that shit on one of those posters that says “HANG IN THERE.”

So yeah, Xquic gives birth to twins

they are called Hunahpú and Xbalanqué

and these two guys are alive for like five minutes

before they discover their dad’s ball-playing gear

and start playing ball SO GODDAMN HARD

that they piss off the underworld AGAIN

and THEY get summoned down there

and the gods are like “Hey

you may have noticed that severed head hanging from that tree by your house.

That was the last dude who kept us awake with his ball playing.

That was also your dad, FYI.

Why the hell do you guys even like playing ball this much?

Okay, look, do you want to play ball for your lives?”

and the twins are like “THE ULTIMATE RUSH.”

So they play ball

and see, if this was a Roman myth

or maybe like a Norse myth

these guys would totally have won and avenged their father(s)

but like I said, Mayans are assholes

so the gods win again

and they kill the twins and bury them under the ball court.

But there is a TWIST

because it turns out the twins are IMMORTAL SOMEHOW

so they dig themselves up and sneak away

and they come up with a crafty plan

which is to come directly back to the underworld, dressed as traveling performers

and the gods are like “SWEEEET”

because it is boring in Xibalbá without the constant noise of ball playing.

So Hunahpú and Xbalanqué put on a fantastic show full of amazing feats.

Maybe they even do an astonishing magic trick

where they make their names easier to fucking type.

But anyway, for the finale

one of them cuts off the other’s head and then puts it back on without any problems.

So all the gods are like “AAAAWESOME!

DO ME DO ME DO ME.”

And the twins are like “Sure, okay.”

And just go and chop off the gods’ heads without any resistance whatsoever

because that is how slick they are

and then they go dig up their dads and resurrect them

and none of them ever forget how lucky they are

to be able to use their DICKS to get women pregnant.

So the moral of the story

is to ball so hard

mothafuckas wanna murder you and bury you under the ball court.

No, this is not the title of a hard-core Mayan gangbang porno.

This is an honest-to-goodness myth from the Popol Vuh

that just HAPPENS to have four hundred boys in it.

Let’s do this:

So Zipacna is the son of this guy named Seven Macaw

who is basically a rogue sun god who hangs out on Earth and causes problems.

Zipacna is responsible for making all the mountains

and he has a bro named Earthquake who is responsible for

PUPPIES.

Wait, no, it’s earthquakes.

Sorry, I read that wrong.

Look, none of that is really that important

except to establish that Zipacna is the sort of dude who CAUSES MOUNTAINS.

So Zipacna is taking a bath in the river one day

and these four hundred boys waltz by

carrying a big tree they just chopped down to make their house with.

They had to chop down a big tree, you see because there are four hundred of them.

They are having some trouble, though

because I guess their eyes were bigger than their biceps.

They are just dropping this tree all over the place

and Zipacna sees them and he’s like “Dudes let me help you with that.”

And then he just picks up the tree all by himself and takes it to the boys’ crib-in-progress

and doesn’t even ask for a tip or anything.

Zipacna is a pretty nice dude.

He is the only one.

’Cause see, then what happens

is the four hundred boys have a meeting

and they’re all like “Guys

Zipacna just did us a major solid.

How should we reward him for his altruism?

Oh

how about WITH MURDER?

Seriously, we cannot have any really strong dudes running around being stronger than us.

We have an inferiority complex!

Or rather

we have FOUR HUNDRED INFERIORITY COMPLEXES.”

So they come up with this brilliant plan

which is that they call up Zipacna and they’re like “Hey, man

thanks for all your help with that big log

but we have another problem now

we need a really big hole for some reason.

We need you to come dig us a really big hole and then stay in it while we bury you alive.

Okay?”

And Zipacna is like “Anything I can do to help.”

But Zipacna is too crafty for their clever ploy!

I mean he digs the hole, sure

but he also digs a special SIDE HOLE to hide in when the four hundred boys try to bury him.

Actually they don’t even try to bury him

they just try to drop a big-ass log down the hole and crush him

which is dumb, because he just lifted one of those for them

and that is why they wanted to kill him in the first place.

But either way, it doesn’t matter because Zipacna is safe in his side hole.

So the boys are all up on the surface celebrating their dumb plan

but then they’re like “Wait!

If Zipacna was really dead we would have heard his death cry just now!”

And Zipacna is like “Oh, uh . . .

Owwww, I’m dead now.”

And the boys are like “PERFECT.

But WAIT!

If Zipacna is really dead

then a bunch of ants will probably show up the day after tomorrow to eat his tasty corpse.

Let’s wait for that to happen so we can make sure he’s really dead.”

So Zipacna just chops off all his hair and bites off all his fingernails

and when the ants show up

he just gives all his hair and fingernails to the ants

and they all scamper all over the place carrying his body stuff

because I guess ants think hair is delicious?

Reason number a million not to be an ant.

Anyway, then the boys are TOTALLY CONVINCED.

So obviously they all go get trashed to celebrate their totally bogus victory

and meanwhile Zipacna tunnels out of his hole

and then he crushes all four hundred boys inside the house he helped them build.

So the moral of the story

is that I don’t care what your mom says

biting your fingernails may just save your life.