Yes, They Have Lumberjacks in Vietnam

Today’s myth
goes out to the much-maligned sister
of notorious serial killer Kratos “The March Mangler” October
apparently said sister is having a birthday
and likes fucked up shit
so here is a story about the pharmaceutical industry

so this story is about a lumberjack
his name is cuoi
which is not a super badass name for a lumberjack
but we will let it slide
because the first thing that happens in this story
is Cuoi is wandering through the woods
and he kills FOUR LIONS
FOUR
THIS IS THE KIND OF BEHAVIOR YOU COME TO EXPECT FROM LUMBERJACKS
oh shit wait they’re actually just cubs
NEVERMIND
way to go pusspants mcgee
way to kill babies with an axe

but Cuoi gets his comeuppance for this dickery
because suddenly HERE COMES MOMMA LION
like ROARR FUCK YOU
and Cuoi runs his ass up a tree and hides
so momma lion gets bored and kind of pokes her childrens’ corpses a little bit
doesn’t seem too upset
and then goes over to some weird bush
chews it up
and vomits it into all her kids’ mouths
AND THEY PROCEED TO COME BACK TO LIFE

so Cuoi is up in his tree like SWEET WIGGITY WIZARDS
THAT MUST BE THE HERBAL TREE OF LIFE RESTORATION HEALING TREE
I’M RICH
and he waits for the momma lion to leave with her zombie kids
and then he jumps down and digs up the tree

but on his way home he trips over some dude’s dead body
and he’s like oh snap
what a perfect opportunity to use this tree I stole
so he chews up some leaves and vomits them into the old guy’s mouth
and then the old guy wakes up like SHIT YESSSSS
I HAD NOT LIVED NEEDLESSLY LONG ENOUGH
THANK YOU SIR YOU ARE PRETTY COOL
OH WHAT IS THIS IS IT THE HERBAL TREE OF LIFE HERBS RESTORATIVE LIFE LIFE HEALING?
DUDE YOU ARE A PRETTY LUCKY GUY
JUST MAKE SURE NOT TO WATER IT WITH DIRTY WATER
OR IT WILL BLAST OFF INTO SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE
and Cuoi is like okay crazy old dude
that sounds just about as reasonable as everything else

so Cuoi gets home
plants his tree
waters it with crystal clear spring water
and becomes INSTANTLY FAMOUS
i mean he is a dude who owns a tree that is basically a big leafy wang
dangling in the face of death
repeatedly slapping death’s nose and then jiggling a little
word is bound to get around
and things are going pretty well for Cuoi
he resurrects a dog
and boom
free dog
he resurrects a chick
and boom
free wife
Cuoi’s circle of friends
is limited only by the number of bodies he can dig up at the local mortuary

but then shit turns sour
and not in the way you are probably thinking
no, the world does not become overrun with old dudes who refuse to die
like in that Kurt Vonnegut story
where they all live in these tiny apartment complexes and I think eat each other
No instead what happens
is it turns out that that free wife Cuoi got hooked up with
actually already had a whole buttload of wealthy suitors
and they are a little miffed that Cuoi has suddenly stolen their prized booty
so what they do is they wait til Cuoi is out in the woods
and they all ambush his wife like HEY GURL WE GOT RICHES BUT WE ARE LACKING BITCHES
PERHAPS YOU COULD RECTIFY THIS DEFECIT
and Cuoi’s wife is like ew no guys
go away
so they kill her
OBVIOUSLY
THAT IS WHAT YOU DO WHEN PEOPLE DON’T WANNA MARRY YOU
this kind of begs the question
in a world where anyone who dies can be immediately revived with tree shit
does murder suddenly become less of a thing?
is it the kind of thing where like
somebody beats you at chess
or gives you incorrect change at 7-11
and suddenly it is blood city and you are the mayor
yes
I think that is exactly what it’s like

but so anyway these dudes get done killing this chick and they’re like oh shit
we just killed the wife of the guy who can RESURRECT PEOPLE
we have effectively accomplished NOTHING AT ALL
but wait
what if we just sort of
sprinkle her intestines everywhere
make a scavenger hunt out of her internal organs
no way can she get revived without all those things
ULTIMATE SUCCESS

so these jerks leave the wife’s disembowelled body by the river
and they all go home
and then Cuoi shows up like oh hey my wife’s dead
guess I better just revive WHERE THE FUCK ARE HER ORGANS
DAMMIT WOMAN WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT KEEPING YOUR ORGANS INSIDE YOUR BODY
THIS IS A DISASTER
but actually it’s okay
because his dog is like hey Cuoi you should totally disembowel me
and use my crazy dog organs to revive your wife
except dogs can’t talk
so really what the dog said was WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF
and Cuoi was like KILL YOU AND USE YOUR ORGANS YOU SAY?
DON’T MIND IF I DO
and then he cuts open his dog and stuffs its lungs inside his dead wife

so then his wife comes back to life
apparently the tree cannot tell the difference between dog lungs and human lungs
and then Cuoi feels bad about the whole dog thing
so he makes some replacement dog lungs out of clay
and stuffs them in his dog
and APPARENTLY THAT WORKS
so now Cuoi is surrounded by a shambling charnel-house
that vaguely resembles his loved ones
and he’s like SWEET
PROBLEM SOLVED FOREVER

except no
problem not solved at all
because it turns out that a chest full of dog lungs
makes you terminally unable to follow directions
case in point:
Cuoi keeps telling his wife that if she needs to take a piss
she should do it on the west side of the house
as far away from the magic tree as possible
the magic tree that is not supposed to be watered with dirty water
and which has resurrected this woman not once but TWO FUCKING TIMES
and what does she do?
she goes over to the east side of the house
pops a suat
and PISSES DIRECTLY ON THE HERBAL TREE OF TREE HERBS HEALTH HEALING RESURRECTION HERB

so Cuoi is inside the house
doing whatever it is lumberjacks do when they’re not jacking lumber
and suddenly there’s this HUGE EARTHQUAKE
and he runs outside to find ALL HIS PLANTS BLASTING OFF INTO SPACE
and his wife is standing with her pants around her ankles looking FURIOUS
and Cuoi is like WOMAN I HAVE NO TIME FOR YOUR FURY I HAVE A TREE TO CATCH
and he runs up to the tree
which is just now exploding out of the garden
and he hooks his axe to it
and just flies STRAIGHT TO THE GODDAMN MOON
and I guess he’s still there
you can see him if you squint
and apparently one leaf falls off that tree towards earth every year
but it always either gets burned up in the atmosphere or stolen by dolphins
because I sure as shit haven’t seen any immortality leaves around lately

so the moral of the story
is don’t put a dog in your wife
or you wife will put you in the dog house
ha HA

the end.

Phu Dong Loves Iron Almost as Much As Dwarves Love Fucking Gold

Today’s post brought to you by Luke “Tendicks” Coulter! Enjoy!

Okay, so I’m not the normally profane and blasphemous fellow you’re used to seeing here (as evidenced by the fact that this line is longer than any line in the past fourteen months. Maybe. I haven’t actually gone back and checked.) but you guys are going to have to deal with it. Or snort in derision and press the close button on this tab as you stroke your white cat and push your thick framed glasses up your nose you fucking snob.

For those of you still here, you’re in for a treat. Today, we are figuratively travelling to the far east with my words, which are like first class if first class didn’t have snobs, who aren’t here any more because of that thing we just went over.

Anyway, this story takes place during the reign of King Hung the Sixth, a fact which I only included because King Hung sounds like the name of a male Asian stripper with no sense of subtlety. Other important things that happened during his reign: Grass grew, paint dried, and he took off all his clothes just before he dropped dead, which makes him sound even more like a stripper but with death instead of sex. Maybe he was a stripper for necrophiliacs?

I have gone off on a tangent. This will probably happen a few times before I’m finished.

The legend I’m about to tell isn’t actually about King Hung. It is about Phu Dong, which also sounds like the name of a male Asian stripper with even less sense of subtlety. He may get naked, too, later, but you’ll have to read on to find out.

It starts out with an old, childless couple just kind of hanging out in their house, talking about how miserable life is and how much they’d love to have a baby. If you really want to dwell on this part (I have no idea why you would, but sad, boring and depressing is what some people really enjoy. Otherwise, why the hell would you ever set foot into a cubicle? Personally, I start screaming whenever I get within ten feet of one and don’t stop until I can’t see it anymore or it’s burned to the ground. This quirk made “take your kid to work” day pretty interesting during my childhood.) just imagine basically any scene from any artsy French movie ever. Or… France in general.

Anyway, they finish their annoying conversation, cry a bit, and then the lady goes out to work in the rice paddy while the husband sits on his lazy ass and masturbates or something. It doesn’t really give an explanation for why this old lady is doing back breaking labor while her husband hangs out at home, but these are the questions that you’re not supposed to ask in the middle of myths. So as this lady’s walking around in the rice field, doing whatever the fuck you do in a rice field, she comes upon a massive footprint.

Now, if I randomly happened upon a huge footprint, my first reaction would be to run away before I got raped by giants, but this is an old lady who just doesn’t give a shit anymore. “Giant footprint?” she says, “Don’t mind if I do!” and goes and steps right the fuck in it.

And then she gets raped by giants. Duh.

Well, not really. Then she gets pregnant, which is a lot less tragic. Still, I kind of prefer to think that it was, like, really fast giants or something. Like maybe so fast she didn’t even notice. Here, I wrote them a theme song, look.

Premature Ejaculation Giants, roaming the land,
Impregnating sterile women who step in footprints, just because they can!
PREMATURE EJACULATION GIANTS!
Doo doo de doo okay so maybe I suck at writing songs.

I’m on a tangent again.

Okay, so this lady steps into this footprint and balloons out like a… a… balloon, I guess. Hm. Lost that one.

Does anybody else think this sounds a little unbelievable? Like… a month later, when she finally tells her husband she was pregnant and he’s all “What?! How!?” and she says “Well, a while ago I stepped in a huge footprint…” and the husband was all “Are you sure it wasn’t that gang bang that I heard about out in the field that I missed because I’m a lazy fuck?” and the lady was all “NOPE, NOPE, IT WAS THE FOOTPRINT.” Reminds me of another story about a girl who got pregnant and nobody was sure how… What was it again? Agh, it’s on the tip of my tongue…

Ah well, it’ll come to me.

OR! OR! As soon as she stepped in the footprint, a four month old fetus popped into her uterus! That would have been hilarious to see. An old lady in a rice field randomly falls over and when she stands up she’s fat.

Where was I?

Oh! Right! Baby gets borned, and appears to have all of the cognitive function as a sack of potatoes with way less practicality, since you can eat potatoes but eating your own children is generally frowned upon unless you’re a shark. For three years this thing is a vegetable (see what I did there?), until one day a messenger of King Hung (hur hur) sprints into the village, looks around wildly, grabs the nearest dude by the lapels and screams “OH CONFUCIOUS (Or Buddha? Maybe I should research this so as not to offend anyone…) SAVE US THE CHINESE ARE ATTACKING AND WE’RE TOTALLY FUCKED TELL ME DO YOU HAVE ANY MIRACLE BABIES STASHED AWAY SOMEWHERE THAT CAN FIX THIS!” and the villagers are all like “Nope no miracle babies here, sorry, all we’ve got is this really stupid one who can’t walk or talk or anything.” and the baby is all “sup?” and the villagers are like “What the fuck?” and the messenger is like “YOU’LL DO, EVEN THOUGH THERE IS OBJECTIVELY NOTHING SPECIAL ABOUT YOU.” and the baby is like “Yeah, I’m gonna need you to go and get me a fuckton of arbitrary shit. I want a metal stick, and a metal helmet, and some sweet ass metal armor, and a metal pony.” and the messenger is all “YESSIR RIGHT AWAY SIR.” and runs off to get the king to do the bidding of some random bumpkin kid.

Meanwhile, back in the village, the kid looks around and says “Okay, time for you guys to start doing my bidding, too. I want a mountain of chocolate, a million tons of rice, some dog (because this is Vietnam) some goat, some snails, some more rice, a bit more chocolate, and I want it all yesterday! Feed me I am hungry!”

So they begin feeding this kid, and he eats more than an industrial shredder. Like… once a cart of schoolchildren were going to school and they accidentally drove in front of him and there were huge casualties. And, as they’re feeding this kid, he grows an grows and grows until he is roughly the size of a barn. A small barn, but a legitimate one. One that could fit horses and hay bales and stuff.

Anyway, the messenger comes back, hauling all this iron shit that the kid wanted. The kid (who, although he is now huge, is still 3 years old. Remember that.) stands up, straps on the armor, (which somehow fits him, a plot hole that I can’t figure out, but fuck that, it’s magic!) picks up the iron stick, climbs on the iron horse, and rides off to do battle.

Does anybody else want to know what would happen if you got the wooden horse from that cat myth earlier and this iron horse together? I bet it would be horrific to see, but I also bet I would get some sweet furniture out of it. Like a bed frame made of horse legs, or a nightstand that whinnies. Or at least a freaking sweet album cover, if I had a camera handy.

Back to the battle, the entire An army (that’s it’s name. It is an army, and also the An army. Awesome.) sees this freak of nature coming, a sort of colossus made of metal, swinging a metal stick, and riding a metal horse that is breathing fire at this point, because why the fuck not, and all of the soldiers are basically like nope nope nope nope and they turn around and run away.

See, if this was a modern day myth, that would be the end of it, but no. There hasn’t been nearly enough bloodshed. So Phu Dong rides after them, swinging his metal stick around and screaming, and he hits the army (the whole army and nothing but the army) SO HARD that he breaks his IRON STAFF in half.

Again, this could possibly be the end of it, a properly chastened enemy getting their ass handed to them by a three year old baby with a glandular problem. But no. “No iron stick?” says Phu Dong. “That’s okay. There’s a whole bamboo forest over there I can use.” So he rides his iron horse over there, picks up the bamboo forest, and hits the fleeing An army with THAT, too. Until they were all dead.

That last part is probably an allegory or something, but I don’t really care. A baby just picked up a bamboo forest and beat one of the modern world’s superpowers over the head until it died, while riding a fire breathing horse made out of metal.

And after Phu Dong did that, he and his horse flew to the top of a mountain where they both lived forever.

The moral of the story is listen to your coworker’s baby stories, because, if you’re lucky, you will hear something more metal than you have ever heard in your entire life. Also, don’t invade Vietnam, but we already fucked that one up so there’s not really much of a point in including it.

When Mister Tendicks isn’t lampooning the Vietnamese, he is busily lying to the internet over on this website