Author Archives: Ovid

Everybody Trusts Robin Hood for Some Reason

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It’s been a long time since I talked about everybody’s favorite green forest burglar
I think the last story I told about him was pretty violent
like unnecessarily so
and the one before that was 80% sex and disguises
but Robin Hood is supposed to be about tricking dudes and stealing shit
he was played by a fox in the Disney movie for christ’s sake
like they brought in an actual live fox to model for that character
they lost three animators trying to put it in a green tunic
it was an incredible waste of money and life.
Anyway here’s a story where Robin does something clever for once.

So Robin Hood and Little John are walking through the forest
(and now you have that song stuck in your head)
when they see this potter driving a cart down the road.
Now, I went and looked up what a potter is, just to make sure
because sometimes ye olde jobbe tittles don’t mean what they seem to mean
like a cooper makes barrels and a cockswain is not a gay porn director
but it turns out a potter is exactly what it sounds like:
a dude who makes pots and then sells the pots.
The reason I bothered to look this up
is that I can think of no reason why a dude who makes pots all day
would be better at fighting than two dudes who FIGHT AND ROB PEOPLE ALL DAY
but this is the world these people live in I guess
because Little John sees the potter and he’s like “OH FUCK
ROBIN
THIS IS THAT POTTER I WAS TELLING YOU ABOUT”
and Robin is like “Chill out baby
you mean the Potter you tried to rob
but instead of getting robbed by you he broke three of your ribs?”
and little john is like “Yeah dude, he really fucked me up
just like he’ll fuck you up if you try to rob him”
and Robin’s like “Oh yeah?
I bet you 40 bucks I can get him to give me his money”
and Little John is like “Ok dude but when I win
I am not going to use any of that money to pay your medical bills”

so Robin hood jumps out of the forest in front of the potter like “sup”
and the potter’s like “nm, you?”
and Robin is like “Oh you know, just running this invisible toll booth here
right in the middle of the forest.
Give me 40 bucks and you can pass by.”
Guys, this is how Robin Hood makes his money:
by extorting working class travelers in “his” forest.
If anybody did this today we would be fucking horrified
but somehow this guy gets to skate by because occasionally he robs bad guys.
Obviously the potter refuses
because nothing about Robin Hood says “licensed toll collector”
so Robin Hood is like “awesome” and pulls out his sword
and the potter pulls out a big stick and fucks him with it.

So Robin Hood is lying on the ground bleeding from everywhere
and Little John runs up like “haha pay up cripple”
so Robin Hood pays him
and then the potter is like “dude
that was a real dick move, trying to rob me like that”
and Robin Hood is like “Your violence has convinced me that you are right
let’s be bros
let’s wear each other’s clothes”
and the potter is like “…what?”
and Robin Hood is like “Dude I’m serious
switch clothes with me
I’ll go to Nottingham and pretend to be you
we’re bros now this is what bros do.”
and the shrewd potter is like “Alright
but only if …
you take all my merchandise too
and sell it in town on my behalf”

so that’s what happens.
Robin Hood puts on the potter’s clothes and goes to town
with all the potter’s pots
and he rolls right up to the Sheriff of Nottingham’s house
(played by a fat wolf in the Disney version)
and sets up his stand.
It turns out, to no one’s surprise, that Robin Hood doesn’t know shit about pots
he is selling them for so cheap that everyone thinks he is an idiot
but as my grandpappy used to say:
idiot pots work just as well as non-idiot pots
(my grandpappy had a lot of really specific ceramics-related sayings)
so everybody buys all of the dumb idiot’s stupid pots
ALL BUT FIVE, THAT IS.
Robin Hood has been saving his last five pots
so he can give them away for free
to the wife of his mortal enemy
THE SHERIFF OF NOTTINGHAM.

So Robin gets invited to dinner because of his gifts
and because Robin is not dressed like a jolly green asshole
the Sheriff does not recognize him at all
and is instead very thankful for the nice pots.
Meanwhile two of the sheriff’s guys start arguing about who can shoot better
and they start betting each other money
so Robin Hood is like “move over shitbirds” and takes them to arrow school
and the Sheriff is like “HOLY SHIT THAT BOY CAN BOW”
and Robin Hood is like “yeah dude I shoot bows with robin hood all the time
I can take you to meet him if you want”
and the Sheriff is like “I WILL ACCEPT THIS UNCRITICALLY”

Now I’m sure you can guess how this is going to go at this point:
Robin Hood leads the Sheriff to the potter dressed in his clothes
the Sheriff arrests the potter and Robin Hood flips everybody off with both hands
EXCEPT IT LOOKS LIKE YOU GUESSED WRONG.
Robin Hood just leads the Sheriff into the forest
has his dudes ambush him
and then takes all his loot and sends him home on a shitty horse
then he gives like half the money he made on heavily discounted pots to the potter
which means the potter basically got paid minimum wage to get drunk with criminals all day
so everybody goes home happy
except the Sheriff of Nottingham
but at least he gets to go home.

So the moral of the story
is if you’re getting mugged
just start taking off all your clothes and offering them to your mugger
it will turn out super well
history has shown this.

The end.

Peter Pan is as Shitty as Every Other Child

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Hello boys and girls

today I am going to tell you a story
about a racist sociopath from your childhood
he is not that special as far as racist sociopaths go
other than HE CAN FLY AND IS IMMORTAL
but yeah anyway
this story doesn’t start with Peter Pan
it starts with this girl named Wendy
and her brothers, Michael and John
they live in boring old London
which we are going to need to get out of ASAP
in order for this story to be any fun.

Luckily, Peter Pan decides to KIDNAP Wendy and her brothers
because he likes going over to her house to listen to bedtime stories
but he hates the commute.
The first time he comes by to hang out
she scares him so hard HIS SHADOW FALLS OFF
because he is a SHODDILY CONSTRUCTED PERSON
but she glues that shit back on
and then he’s like “Awesome, come to Neverland with me
you can be my mom.”
and Wendy is like “Uh”
and he’s like “No it’s okay
look I’m gonna cover you in magic dust and now you can FLY”
[just so you know
so many children thought they could fly after seeing this play
that the fairy dust rule had to be added in as a fucking safety measure
WRITERS: CHILDPROOF YOUR STORIES
CHILDREN ARE DUMBER THAN YOU CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE.]

So by bribing her with performance enhancing drugs
Peter is able to convince Wendy to come back to his place
along with her two bros.
Unfortunately, Peter has already been shacking up with a fairy
a literal magic fairy named Tinkerbell
and Tinkerbell is NOT about to be usurped by some gullible sky-tramp
so when she sees Wendy coming
she rounds up Peter’s crew
(a gang of perfect idiots called the Lost Boyz)
and she’s like “HEY LOOK THERE IN THE SKY
IT’S A BIRD
PETER WANTS YOU TO SHOOT IT”
and boys love to fucking kill shit for no reason i guess
because they shoot wendy and she almost dies
but then they feel bad and make her their mother.

Here’s the problem
WENDY IS A GOD-DAMN CHILD STILL
SHE IS BARELY OLDER THAN ANYONE ELSE
so she starts doing all the things she thinks a mother does
like “give them medicine”
(actually just water in a bowl)
“feed them food”
(actually just pretend to feed them food)
and “force them to take naps.”
(there is no way to fuck this up because naps are amazing)
but her most important job
is to tell them bedtime stories
which she is really good at because her mom knows a ton of them.

But why the fuck do these kids care about bedtime stories?
THEY LIVE WITH A FAIRY, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE
THEY FIGHT PIRATES
THEY KILL PEOPLE LIKE EVERY DAY
nothing Wendy is telling them is more interesting than their actual lives
like one time they go out to the beach
and while they’re hanging out there some pirates show up
with a tied-up indian chick named Tiger Lily
(Tiger Lily is an indian as in native american
not as in actually from india
but it’s weird to call her a native american
because these people are nowhere near america.
The book calls them redskins
which is probably even worse.
They also call them Picaninnys
which i think is a little better
but ultimately what they are
are the products of the imagination of a racist child.)
So Peter is like “OH SHIT PIRATES GOTTA KILL EM”
and then he starts flying around punching pirates
ESPECIALLY a pirate named Captain Hook.

Captain Hook cannot possibly be this guy’s real name
he got ‘Captain’ from being a captain
and ‘Hook’ because he has a hook for a hand
which is like if I called my grandpa “Captain Cane”:
RUDE.
The reason Hook is missing a real hand
is that Peter Pan RIPPED IT OFF AND FED IT TO A CROCODILE.
Maybe you were waiting for the part where Peter was actually a sociopath
because you missed the part where he drugged and kidnapped three kids
well, here it is.
You don’t have to do that to someone’s hand
like, if you chop off someone’s hand
there is absolutely no reason to pick it up
unless you made a big mistake and you want to sew it back on.
Every other reason for picking up a severed hand is a bad reason
pretending to shake the hand? NOT OKAY.
dismembered high five? IN POOR TASTE.
feeding it to a live fucking crocodile
who then develops a taste for the flesh of the hand’s owner
and follows that dude around FOREVER AFTER?
ULTIMATE PARTY FOUL.

So naturally Hook wants to murder Peter
and Peter is such a cocky asshole
he almost pushes Hook off a cliff
but then sticks out his hand to save him
so Hook STABS HIM IN THE HAND
and then leaves him and wendy to die
on a rapidly-submerging rock.
Wendy gets away because there’s a little life raft there or something
but Peter has to die
which he’s totally okay with, because in his words,
“To die will be an awfully big adventure”
PROVING ONCE AGAIN THAT HE HAS NO REAL UNDERSTANDING OF DEATH.
Then a bird sacrifices its children to save him though
so it looks like Peter gets to spend another day
not learning about consequences.

Peter comes back home
and the whole Picaninny tribe is super pleased with him
because Tiger Lily is safe
(PS: the pirates caught her trying to sneak on board and murder them all
by herself
so she’s pretty cool)
so by way of saying thanks
they agree to guard Peter’s underground base
in case the pirates show up.

GUESS WHAT? THE PIRATES SHOW UP.
They show up at the worst possible time:
right when Wendy has told Peter that she’s going back to boring London
and taking all his friends with her.
See, she was actually kinda starting to have a thing for Peter
so she was like “Hey Peter, how do you feel about me”
and he was like “You are like a mom to me”
and she was like “AW FUCK, FRIENDZONED”
and also it turns out she has no idea how to be a mom
and she misses living in a house instead of a dirthole
and she is worried about PIRATES
and all the Lost Boys sort of see her point
because at this point they have been kids for god knows how long
and the whole time they have been killing pirates basically nonstop
so they are seriously warped
they have no idea what normal life is like
and they would like to give it a try.

But right when they’re all about to leave
the pirates jump on the Picaninnies and kill most of them
instead of adhering to what the book calls a time-honored tradition
of waiting until morning and letting the indians ambush them to death.
Then they steal the war-drums
and start beating on them like the Picaninnies won
so Wendy and co are like “Oh I guess it’s safe to go out now”
and then they get kidnapped by pirates
and Peter has no idea
b/c he’s already decided that his friends are disposable and gone to sleep.

When Hook is tying up the prisoners, shit gets even worse
because he discovers that Slightly, one of the lost boys, is fat
(dunno how he got fat when all their meals are imaginary
the book says he drank a lot of water
which makes me think of him as a balloon filled with warm piss)
what this means is that there must be a way into peter’s hole
that is big enough for a fat child/Captain Hook to fit through
so he finds that hole
and sneaks down to murder Peter in his sleep
but for some reason he can’t get through the door
so instead he just poisons peter’s “medicine”
which he refused to take because fuck wendy
and also because IT’S JUST WATER.

Then Captain Hook leaves and Tinkerbell shows up
(she was gone because fuck wendy)
and she’s like “PETER, EVERYONE IS KIDNAPPED”
and Peter is like “DANG”
and Tink is like “ALSO YOUR MEDICINE IS POISONED”
and Peter is like “LOL NO IT’S NOT”
and he starts to drink it
so Tinkerbell has to take one for the team and chug the poison instead
and peter is pretty pissed until she starts dying
but then he’s just sad
except it turns out Tinkerbell can’t die if children believe in faries
and luckily children will believe fucking anything
so she comes back to life with no problems
(this part is way more dramatic in the play.
you can tell he tried to make it work in the book but it’s pretty dumb.)

Once again saved from the consequences of his dumb actions
Peter sneaks onto the Pirate ship by pretending to be the crocodile
frees all the prisoners
kills all the pirates
and then front-kicks Captain Hook into the real crocodile’s mouth
which Hook gets all smug about because it isn’t sporting.
SPORTING?
YOU’RE A PIRATE, BRO
ALSO DEAD.

So Wendy is like “Wow thanks for saving us, Peter
you’re still an asshole though, bye.”
But Peter’s like “I’LL SHOW YOU WHO’S THE ASSHOLE
I’LL RACE YOU HOME AND LOCK YOUR WINDOW
SO YOU’LL THINK YOUR MOM FORGOT ABOUT YOU AND COME BACK AND LIVE WITH…
Oh wow, it’s me. I’m the asshole.”
So Wendy goes home and her mom is very stoked
she is so stoked she agrees to adopt four new children on the spot
and she raises all of them and they all get high-paying adult jobs
and then many years later Peter shows up
and he’s still a kid but Wendy is a grown-up
and Peter is like “AW FUCK WHAT HAPPENED”
and Wendy is like “It’s okay Peter
you can have my daughter”
and Peter’s like “Any port in a storm i guess.”

So he takes Wendy’s daughter until she gets sick of him
and then later she gives him HER daughter
and so on and so on
like the way some tribes sacrifice virgins to volcanoes.

So the moral of the story is lock your fucking windows.

The end.

The Kalevala is SERIOUS ABOUT BEER

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(Today’s mythos was selected by Patreon backers!)

Everybody loves weddings
weddings are great
I used to bartend at weddings
it’s cool because you get to watch people in suits get hammered
but guys
can you imagine going to a wedding
where like thirty percent of the guests
are FUCKING WIZARDS?
I KNOW
IT WOULD BE A TOTAL SHIT SHOW
IT ALMOST ALWAYS IS
I USED TO BARTEND AT WIZARD WEDDINGS
IT’S COOL BECAUSE YOU GET TO WATCH PEOPLE IN SUITS TURN INTO ACTUAL HAMMERS

uh anyway
let me tell you about the one wizard wedding that only ALMOST went terribly
it is the wedding of Ilmarinen and the Maiden of the Rainbow.
Ilmarinen is prolly one of the less shitty wizards in the Kalevala
which isn’t saying much
because as the Finnish like to say,
“With great power
comes the ability to be a huge asshole constantly with no consequences.”
So naturally people are overjoyed when Ilmarinen gets hitched
they are SO OVERJOYED
that they set about causing themselves infrastructure problems
just to throw a bangin’ party.

The first thing they do is they breed this ox.
Now the text says that this ox is not the smallest or the biggest
but it is at least big enough
that it cannot be killed by conventional weapons
it is the godzilla of livestock
it eats all the grass normally reserved for the cows
and probably also accidentally eats some cows
and every time a dude goes out to kill it
that dude quickly ends up inside the nearest bush
shitting himself in mortal terror
until this one dude literally washes up on the sea shore.
According to the text this dude is not the smallest or the biggest
but he is at least small enough
that he can sleep inside a seashell
and another interesting fact about him is that he is mostly made of steel
so he’s basically a combination and man/iron man
which is incredibly sweet
and raises the question
of why tony stark didn’t just build those suits for everybody
like, he clearly has the money
and dozens and dozens of suits lying around
at least make a suit for hawkeye
hawkeye is literally just a normal guy with a suboptimal weapon
he needs all the help he can get
nobody cares about any of those characters besides iron man anyway
if you put them all in suits it might fool people for a second.

WHERE WAS I?
Oh yeah, Ant Man jumps out of the sea and kills the ox with one punch
so meat for the party is covered.
BUT WHAT ABOUT BOOZE?
The hostess for this wedding
(Louhi)
is flipping the hell out trying to answer that very important question.
So she runs around town yelling “HOW I MAKE BOOZE”
until some old dude is like “Oh I’ll tell you
I’ll tell you a really long story
about the first time someone made booze
when she just tried to boil hops and barley
and it was shitty
so she kept scraping off wood from the beer barrels
and giving it to a wizard she knew
and the wizard kept turning it into animals
and the animals kept bringing back leaves and bark and bear spit and acorns
until finally the wizard turned the wood into a bee
and the bee got some honey and the beer turned out great
so yeah the answer is honey
put honey in your beer, problem solved.”

So Louhi is like “Great, thanks dude
you probably could have just skipped to that last hot tip
but i guess it’s hard to fit a practical beer recipe
into trochaic quadrameter
so i should prolly cut you some slack.”
Then she goes and makes the beer
and it’s GREAT

PERHAPS TOO GREAT
this beer is so great that it has developed RUDIMENTARY INTELLIGENCE
the beer is like “HEY LOUHI
GET ME A DOPE-ASS SINGER TO SING ABOUT HOW GREAT I AM”
so Louhi brings in a big bag of fish
but fish can’t sing
so she bring in a child
but fuck children
and then she’s out of ideas
and is totally starting to freak out
when Ilmarinen finally shows up.
Everybody is so excited
they physically rip off the door to make it easier for him to get in
and then his guest room turns into a chromed out bang palace
because that’s why wizards study magic
and then the party gets started
and everybody drinks the great beer
which has remained woefully unsung this whole time
and this dude Wainamoinen is like “HOLY SHIT WAIT
SOMEBODY NEEDS TO SING ABOUT THIS FUCKING BEER
NOT SINGING ABOUT BEER
IS BASICALLY LIKE SAYING THE BEER IS SHITTY
AND THIS BEER HAS EARS, MY FRIENDS
IT WILL FUCK YOU UP
AFTER FUCKING YOU UP.”
but everybody is too chickenshit to sing about the beer
so this one little kid is like “I mean I could -”
and Wainamoinen is like “NO, FUCK YOU KID
SOMEBODY GET THIS KID OUT OF HERE.”
and this old dude is like “well i used to be a singer
but now I -”
and Wainamoinen is like “Okay fine i’ll sing about the beer
jesus you guys, take a music class.”

It turns out Wainamoinen is actually a legendary bard
so i dunno why he was bugging everybody else
could have just sung and not made a fucking scene
but anyway it’s great
everybody agrees its great
and the beer fails to erupt out of their chests like an alien.

The moral of the story
Is that you should only go to karaoke bars
it is the safest way to drink.

The end.

Death Awaits Us All!

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So today I was just hanging out
you know
contemplating my mortality
and I was like man
it sure would be cool if I could cheat death
I wonder if there are any stories about that.
It turns out there are
there are a ton of stories about that
but this one is better so here it is:

One time in Baghdad
like, before it was shitty
there was this merchant with loads of dough
(I am using dough here to refer to money
although maybe he traded in actual dough too
I dunno
I’m a storyteller, not an economist)
and one day he is feeling pretty chill
so he tells his servant to go out to the market and get some brews.
The servant goes to the market alright
but he comes back WOEFULLY UN-BREWED
plus he is flipping the hell out
he is like “BOSS
BOSS
I just saw DEATH.
Like, the actual personification of death was walking through the market.
I ran into her
and she turned and saw me
and she was like ‘WHOA!
YOU!’
which is NOT A THING YOU WANT TO HEAR DEATH SAY
in fact I am pretty sure there is NOTHING I WANT TO HEAR DEATH SAY
I would MUCH PREFER if death was too far away for me to hear.
Boss, please
lemme borrow one of your horses
I am gonna ride all night to Samarra
which is really far away
so death will totally not find me.”
Now, this is a pretty bullshitty story
plus the servant’s endgame here isn’t clear
like, is he gonna come back to Baghdad once he’s no longer worried about death?
is he gonna hole up in a little cottage with “NO DETH ALLOWED” scrawled on a sign out front?
but the merchant is an economist, not a sorcerer
he doesn’t think about these obvious problems.
Instead he’s just like “Sure dude, I have a ton of horses
borrow one, I don’t care.
You’ve got some saved up PTO anyway.
Technically this might even count as medical leave.
Go nuts.”
and the servant is like “WAY AHEAD OF YOU”
and then he grabs a horse and rides as fast as he can to Samarra.

So once his servant is gone
along with his fastest horse
it finally occurs to the merchant that maybe he should check out the servant’s story
so he goes down to the marketplace
just kind of searching for somebody who looks like death
and what do you know, death’s still hanging out in the marketplace
having a burger
and the merchant is like “yo, death
what the fuck
why’d you threaten my employee?”
and death is like “lol
what?
You mean that dude from earlier?
I didn’t threaten him
I was just surprised to see him
BECAUSE I’M SUPPOSED TO MEET UP WITH HIM TONIGHT IN SAMARRA.”
and the merchant is like “Oh DAAAAAAAAAMN.”
and then he never gets his horse back.

The moral of the story is don’t lend your horses to people
horses are valuable and people are idiots.

The end.

Where Was This Little Dutch Boy During Katrina?

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A dutch person emailed me today
and it reminded me of this story
which is a dutch story
in the same way that “pocahontas” is a native american story
but it’s the first thing I think of when I hear “dutch”
other than “good weed”
and I am already so high I’m nearing government controlled air space
so THE LITTLE DUTCH BOY IT IS

okay so there’s this kid
he lives in a misspelled version of Harlem called Haarlem
and his parents are so neglectful
they send him off alone with a bunch of baked goods
which he is supposed to give to some random blind dude across town
he is like a blond male Little Red Riding Hood
except instead of grandma it’s a TOTAL FUCKING STRANGER
but anyway this kid makes it out of the blindhaus
totally molestation free
and starts wandering back towards his house
wasting time like little kids do
picking flowers and making airplane noises and pooping himself
when all of a sudden
he hears water
TRICKLING

now in order for you to understand how terrifying this noise is
I have to tell you something about Holland:
Holland is not a place where people are supposed to live
it is a place where fish are supposed to live
but a long time ago some people were like “hey
fuck fish”
and they forcibly removed all the water from a bunch of land
and then built there houses there
below sea level.
this is widely known as
“a bad idea”
because all that water is pretty pissed about being exiled
so it’s just hanging out on the outside of these huge dykes
(which is a really offensive term for walls that keep water out)
just WAITING for a hole to open up
so it can pour roll in and piss on everybody’s beds.
So when Little Blond Walking Hood hears water trickling
it’s like when you’re on a nearly abandoned spaceship by yourself
and you hear a faint dripping noise
and you immediately know that it is either your friend’s blood
or alien saliva

So this kid looks over at the dyke
and he sees a little trickle of water coming out of it
and since he doesn’t just carry caulk around with him
(and also dykes don’t really like caulk)
he does the only sensible thing for a young boy to do:
he shoves his finger in that hole.
This is a great plan
this kid is a fucking hero
except there is literally NOBODY ELSE OUT HERE
and it is rapidly getting dark
so this little numbnuts is stuck outside
in the dark
in the cold
with a city-destroying amount of water
gently lapping at his fingertip.
This is a form of torture
the CIA uses this on all their dutch prisoners to this day.
the boy’s mind is utterly destroyed
his muscles seize up
he begins to hallucinate from sleep deprivation
ironically, he becomes dehydrated

by the morning, there is nothing left of the boy’s once bright personality
he stands shackled to the uncaring dyke by his one numb finger
convulsing with cold, thirst and exhaustion
he longs for nothing more than the sweet release of death
at which point a priest walks by
ON TOP of the dyke
because apparently that’s also an option
and he sees the kid and he’s like WHOA WHAT THE FUCK
and the kid is like “k-k-k-kill me
or send people to fix this dyke i guess.”

So then they fix the dyke
the child is never the same again
the accolades of the town fall on deaf ears
his development is arrested
and he goes through his life a mere shell of a human
but at least his town is saved, right?

This boy’s eternal suffering
brings us to the moral of this story
which is that sometimes
to quote the Geto Boys
“you gotta let a hole be a hole.”

Thank you.

William Cole Buys a Lot of Poop

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Today’s story was brought to my attention
by professional wastoid/Patreon backer Jay “Jagermeister” Drunkboy.
It is the story of one of history’s most pointless people.

This dude’s full name is William Horace De Vere Cole.
He lived around the turn of the 20th century
yes, the same century that ended with the internet and boy bands
began with a dude name William lying his way onto a war boat for no reason.

You see, unlike other famous Williams of British history
Cole doesn’t seem to have any ulterior motives for his wily bullshit
he’s born rich
he has no political aspirations
literally his sole purpose in life is to fuck with people.
Some people make sculptures
William Horace De Vere Cole impersonated foreign royalty.

Lemme backtrack a little:
back when Cole was at Cambridge
(because of course he went to Cambridge)
he heard that the Sultan of Zanzibar was in London
so he called up the heads of Cambridge
like “Yeah, I’m that Sultan
come pick me up at the train station.”
So he gets some of his bros together
and they all pretend to be the sultan and his entourage
which the heads of one of britain’s leading academic institution
TOTALLY BELIEVE.
THEY GIVE EVERYBODY A GRAND TOUR
A WOMAN TRIES TO TALK TO THE SULTAN IN HIS NATIVE LANGUAGE
AND WILLIAM TELLS HER SHE CAN ONLY TALK TO HIM IF SHE JOINS HIS HAREM.

So this prank goes amazingly
Cole goes on to get a degree in What the Fuck Ever
and then a few years later
he and his pals bluff their way onto a FUCKING BATTLESHIP
by pretending to be king of Abyssinia and his entourage.
They put on BLACKFACE for this
because apparently nobody in the british navy
has ever seen an actual black person
and they speak a language called Not Actually Swahili
which is really just badly pronounced greek and latin
mixed with the word “Bunga” whenever they don’t now what else to say
and oh yeah
one of the members of the royal entourage
is actually VIRGINIA FUCKING WOOLF
which makes me respect everybody involved so much fucking more.

It takes the Navy weeks to figure out what happened
and when they finally do they are too sad to press charges
so William Cole is free to keep being an asshole until he dies.
He takes advantage of this freedom.
One time he puts his gold watch in the pocket of the prime minister
and then is like “HEY MAN LET’S RACE”
and the prime minister is like “YEAAAAAAAAH”
and then he starts beating William
and they’re racing in the street
they are street-racing
so William just starts yelling STOP THIEF
and then the police arrest him and find William’s watch
which, okay, that’s a pretty good prank
but really the best part
is just that he convinced the prime minister to RACE HIM
ON FOOT.

He also does shit like dress up as a construction worker
and get all his friends to just dig a huge trench
in the middle of a crowded intersection
and then leave.
Again, the real prank here
is that he got his friends to waste a day digging a hole.
He also buys all the tickets for a play one time
and then passes them out to bald guys
so that when the lights come out
THEIR HEADS SPELL OUT A BAD WORD
THE PLAY IS RUINED.
None of the sources say what the bad word is
but one sourceclaims that the letter “i” in the word is dotted
so i’m pretty sure it’s “tits”
I’m pretty sure William Cole spent a bunch of money
to spell out “tits” in a theater with bald people.
He also throws a party one time
where every guest has the word “bottom” somewhere in their name
because he is like five years old.

William gets married somehow
and goes to Venice
and promptly ditches his fiancee
to buy a boatload of horse manure
literally a boatload, because everything travels by boat in venice
which is why people are so confused
when they wake up in the morning and find horse poop everywhere
because like
there are no horses.
Again, I think historians are missing the point of this prank
which really had nothing to do with horses
and everything to do with throwing poop everywhere.
Obviously his marriage does not last very long.

But William Cole’s best prank in my opinion
is also his simplest
what he would do is take a piece of string
dress up as a construction worker
and ask some random dude to hold one end of the string
then he would take the other end around a corner
find another dude
and ask him to hold that end of the string
and then he would leave them there
just holding some string
for however long it took them to figure shit out.
I like to imagine that in some forgotten corner of London
there is still a pair of ancient british gentlemen
gamely holding onto two ends of a piece of string
waiting for that construction worker to come back
and that my friends
is true immortality.

The moral of the story is an old one
oft echoed in the mythology of our time:
do unto others
whatever you think is really fucking funny.

The end.

The Kalevala Has Weird Ideas About Iron

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YES IT IS TIME
TIME FOR A MYTH
FROM A MYTHOS
CHOSEN BY MY PATREON BACKERS.
This month:
a quick just-so story from the Kalevala!

Ok so this story isn’t part of like
the main story of the Kalevala
which is mainly about wizards being assholes.
This is actually just a side-story
told by an asshole wizard named Wainamoinen
who has just lost literal boatload of blood
so take what he says with like a million grains of salt.
Like, get salt poisoning and die is what I’m saying.
It will protect you from believing wrong things.
It is hard to believe wrong things when you’re dead
this is why the phrase “dead wrong” is so bogus.

Anyway this story gets told
because when Wainamoinen goes to a dude for medical help
the dude instead asks Wainamoinen to tell him a story
about the origin of iron
so Wainamoinen is like “Uh ok
kinda going into shock here buddy
but here we go:

So back in the day there were these 3 chicks
they were the daughters of some god
which explains their nonsense behavior I guess.
What they do is they fly around everywhere
squeezing milk out of their tits
and only one of them has normal colored milk
one of them has red milk and one of them has black milk
which are not colors you want coming out of your body
like, ever.
But anyway they spray this bodyjuice all over the world
and it turns into iron
which, again
probably says bad things about their health prospects.

The different colored milk turns into different kinds of iron
but it doesn’t really matter in the end
because the iron all becomes one being
with like, a primitive hive mind
and the hive mind wakes up one day
and is like “Hm … pretty lonely down here on the earth
I’ma go visit my brother Fire.”

Fire is a terrible brother to have
because fire only interacts with things by setting them on fire
so Iron shows up at Fire’s place like hey bro
and Fire is like “ROARRRRR IMA EAT CHOO”
and Iron is like “oh shit this was a bad idea”
and runs away and hides in the ground
which is why iron is in the ground now
so thanks a lot, fire.

Iron isn’t super well hidden, though.
We know this because pretty soon
this blacksmith god Ilmarinen comes down
and builds a big forge
and just starts kidnapping iron and throwing it in his forge
and Iron is like “NOOO WHAT THE FUCK
I DON’T WANNA BE WEAPONS”
and Ilmarinen is like “TOUGH BRO, DUDES GOTTA DIE”

but the Iron isn’t cooperating
it’s soft and shitty, like a bag of worms
so Ilmarinen is frustrated, obviously
he needs to figure a way to make this iron better
and what he decides
is that it needs to be bribed with honey
so he finds a bee that can speak Finnish
(which, luckily, are more common in Finland than elsewhere)
and he’s like “I need a bunch of honey to rub on my swords”
and the bee is like “Sure dude
no questions asked as long as you pay me.”

But you know who’s eavesdropping on this conversation?
A motherfucking WASP.
And wasps just gotta fuck things up for everybody.
So this wasp gets up from his polished mahogany dinner table
climbs in his minivan
and goes to OSH and buys as much poison as he can find
and he brings it all back to Ilmarinen
like “Hey, here’s the honey you ordered”
and Ilmarinen can’t tell the difference between bees and wasps
because he is an insect racist
so he lets the wasp pour poison and violence all over his swords
and then the swords all wake up like “RAAAAA
FUCK PEACE
GONNA BE THE WORST THINGS EVER FROM NOW ON”
and that is why iron stabs people all the time now.

So yeah, Wainamoinen tells that whole story
and the dude he’s with is like “Wow, I had no idea
fuck Iron, am I right?”
and Wainamoinen is like “yeah seriously.
So can I get like a bandaid?”
and the dude is like “Oh yeah, whoops”
and everybody learns a valuable lesson
which is that iron is the worst
and it’s a good thing we invented safe weapons like atom bombs
because no bees were harmed in the making of those missiles.

The end.

So I Wrote a New Book

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george washington bigYup, pretty straightforward.
I have been biting my tongue so hard for the past few weeks
every time someone is like “HEY YOU SHOULD WRITE ANOTHER BOOK”
because I wrote it in like October
It’s called
GEORGE WASHINGTON IS CASH MONEY
and it’s coming out next month
and you can preorder it RIGHT NOW
and in fact, if you do preorder it
and email a receipt to bettermyths[at]gmail.com
I will give you some FREE BONUS WORDS
including my version of the Notorious Jumping Frog
(Originally by Mark Twain)
and THE BILL OF FUCKING RIGHTS.
WHY ARE YOU STILL READING THIS WHEN YOU COULD BE READING ABOUT MY BOOK
OR JUST READING MY BOOK????

Sister Fox and Brother Wolf in: What The Hell Did I Just Read?

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So the actual Ilya of Murom emailed me the other day
asking me to do more russian fairytales
and I can’t very well turn down a young murdergod
so here is the kind of story they tell in russia:

Right so there’s this fox
this fox is a terrible person
like if a dish glove full of garbage juice was a person
telling you how terrible she is is sort of a spoiler
because at the beginning she is acting pretty normal
you know
THE WAY SOCIOPATHS DO
like, it’s getting cold outside
and she doesn’t have a lighter to start her fire
so she goes out to her neighbor’s place
and she’s like “Hey old lady
you got a light?”
and the old lady is like “Yes of course
I am a lovely old lady who takes care of her neighbors
/ smokes HELLA weed
lemme just take these delicious pastries out of the oven
and leave you with them unattended for a minute
while I go get my lighter.”

So obviously Fox steals a pastry
but she doesn’t just regular steal it
she cuts a hole in it
sucks out the insides
and then stuffs it with straw.
Then she peaces out of the old lady’s house
with the straw-filled pastry
but WITHOUT the lighter she wanted
and wanders around until she finds some dudes.
These dudes have a bull and are idiots
so Fox is like “Hey boys
I’ll trade you this pastry for that bull
but you can’t eat the pastry until I’m gone.
Deal?”
and the boys are like “DUHHHH”
which is close enough to “Deal” to be legally binding
so the fox gives them the pastry
and takes the bull
and they wait until she’s gone
and then try to eat the pastry
and get a mouthful of straw.
They are not in the story any more after that
they fucked up their one chance to not be idiots
and now we are moving on.

So Fox still doesn’t have a lighter for her stove
but she DOES have a cow
which is a pretty good get.
It’s like Fox forgot what she was doing
and accidentally became Kyle MacDonald
so then she goes out into the woods
chops down some trees
and turns them into a sled.
She straps the bull to the sled
and starts tearing ass through the countryside.
This is when her equally terrible friend shows up.
His name is brother wolf
and if Sister Fox is a dish glove full of garbage juice
brother wolf is a dish glove full of slightly dumber garbage juice.

So brother wolf shows up like “HEY LEMME RIDE YOUR SLED”
and Fox is like “NO YOU’LL BREAK IT”
and brother wolf is like “NO COME ON BABY JUST THE TIP”
and then proceeds to put his paws on the sled
one at a time
until he predictably breaks it.
So obviously Fox is pissed
she stole good trees for that sled
so she tells wolf that he has to go chop down trees
using a magic spell she teaches him
but he fucks up the magic spell
so she’s like “ugh fine I’ll go do it”

but while she’s gone, Wolf gets hungry
and he can’t find any food in Fox’s house
because Fox doesn’t go grocery shopping
she just steals shit from her neighbors.
The only thing for wolf to eat is the bull
but Wolf isn’t content to just eat the whole bull
no, what he does is he drills a hole in the bull
SLURPS OUT ITS INSIDES
and then replaces its organs with LIVE SPARROWS.
Then he stuffs up the hole with straw
turning the remains of the bull into a writhing sack of birds
like this but with sparrows instead of cockroaches
then fox peaces out
because that’s what criminals do after crimes.

so Fox gets back to her house
with a beautiful new sled
only to discover that her cow is a fucking bird grenade
like, she ties it to the sled
hits it with a whip
and birds fucking swarm out of it
it is a terrifying experience
and it like sextuples the special effects budget for this myth.
No one is happy.

Obviously, Fox won’t stand for this shit
so she does the most straightforward thing she can do:
plays dead in order to stow away on the fish cart
because the fish cart drivers want to sell her body for booze
then chuck fish out the back
creating a hansel and gretel trail but way stinkier
and then wait at the end of the trail for wolf to show up.
And when wolf does show up
all like “Holy shit how did you get all these fish”
she’s like “Dude, so easy
just go find a hole in the ice
and swish your tail around in it
yelling “HEY, FISH, JUMP INTO MY BUTT”
it works every time.”

So Wolf immediately goes and does this
while fox hides in the bushes
and uses magical spells to make the water freeze on Wolf’s tail
trapping him in the ice.
Then she goes to the village
and tells everyone there’s a wolf on the ice
and the village people come kill him.
Like, HOLY SHIT
I THOUGHT Y’ALL WERE FRIENDS
OR AT LEAST SIBLINGS.
Whatever, though
now wolf is dead.
Then Fox goes home and freezes to death
because she NEVER GOT A LIGHT FOR HER FIREPLACE.

The moral of the story
is ADHD kills.

The end.