The other night the Geek Husband What Rules, Martian and myself were sitting at the dining room table, when I saw a post with excerpts from Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes.

Holy shit, you guys!

I have not laughed so hard in aeons.

Then immediately bought it.

Ok, now, it does help to have a working knowledge of mythology, but I don’t think it’s necessarily required.

Basically, Mr. O’Brien, who has a website where you can read many of these for free, retells classic myths in the modern vernacular.  Therefore you get gems like:

Then Uranus’s dick falls into the ocean
and makes a whole ton of foam
ant that is where Aphrodite comes from eventually
from dick foam.
You know that painting with her standing on the shell
with all the angels and stuff?
Dick foam.
All of it.

Or…

So Freyja wakes up
notices her necklace is gone
notices her door is open
and is like, “DAMMIT LOKI!”
But wait
Loki would be too much of a pussy to do this on his own
DAMMIT ODIN!
But how would Odin know about my necklace?
DAMMIT LOKI!
But Loki is probably nine countries away at this point.
I’M GONNA GO YELL AT ODIN.”

Honestly, these are not even close to the funniest bits, but I did not want to spoil it for anyone.  Seriously, it opens with Uranus, Gaea and the Titans.  The phrase “SEND THESE BABIES BACK TO THE BABYSTORE!” will never not be funny.

O’Brien covers several mythologies, including Greek (not Roman, since Roman is just Greek with the serial numbers filed off), Norse, Egyptian, Mayan, Judeo-Christian, Hindu, Japanese, African (yes, I know Africa is many different cultures, and I’m guessing, hoping, he does too), Chinese, Sumerian, Native American (again many different cultures, guys), and the United States of America, but oh, yes, do we have a mythology.

They aren’t all gems, like I said those above are not the funniest bits.  But the book as a whole is pretty damned hilarious, especially when Gilgamesh meets Enkidu in the Sumerian section.

While he does take the occasional liberty with the stories, for the most part he stays really true to the “original” stories.

As someone who once summarized a speech by Petronius as “Damn kids, get off of my lawn!” for a report in Latin class, this book was kind of made for me.  Seriously, read some of those speeches in the Satyricon.  Grumpy old man kicked up to 11.

He does use some misogynist and homophobic language, your mileage may vary on how much that bothers you.

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