Ave atque vale for this term, readers, and I hope that you have found my column edifying and humbling. By now, I hope that I have taught you that your ancestors were entirely full of it – and do not forget that in 200 years, the Titanium-Ceramic Composite Warrior will run articles about the horrifying and foolish lives that we live today.
Without more ado, here is the last hurrah of grotesquerie this term. There should be something for everyone; I hope this collection is eclectic enough for your tastes.
Getting Your Husband by the Balls
These days, society is encouraging men to take on a bigger share of childcare. While most husbands and dads are great, Huichol men would put any modern guy to shame. They wouldn’t just help out with the childcare – they would help out with childbirth, in a horrifyingly literal fashion.
When an old-timey Huichol man’s wife started to go into labour, the husband would climb onto the roof, or onto a tree above her. This was not so that he could jump onto her belly to send the baby flying out. Instead, he would tie a long string around his testicles, and give her one end. Every time the wife experienced a painful contraction, she would pull on the string, allowing her husband to share in the pain of childbirth. It is not clear why he would need to climb up on the roof for this, but I suppose it would allow her to put her weight behind it.
I think that the female audience would get behind a revival of this custom immediately.
How to Cheer Up Mourners
If one of your friends has recently had a death in their family, it falls to you as a friend to cheer them up. How? Let’s take a lesson from Greek mythology. As many of you will know, winter was invented when the god Hades kidnapped and raped his niece Persephone, leading to, in all honesty, one of the healthiest relationships in any Greek myth. (That was not hyperbole.) When Persephone disappeared, her mother Demeter assumed the worst and blasted the earth, prevented crops from growing, and stopped that course you wanted to take from being offered this term. Demeter wandered around crying and mourning for her daughter, and everybody tried to cheer her up. However, she was far too sad to listen to any of their jokes.
However, there was one nice old granny named Baubo who could always get a laugh. First, she encouraged Demeter to get drunk. When Demeter refused, on account of her missing daughter and all, Baubo pulled up her skirt to expose her vulva. Demeter decided that she really needed a drink after seeing that, and chugged it right down.
For this reason, ancient Greeks would tell dirty jokes and sing rude songs at their most solemn religious festivals. They also made statues to honour Baubo, which are just, from top to bottom: head, vagina, legs.
Speaking of gods, and vaginas…
How Goddesses Kill
Maui was the great hero of Polynesian mythology. To give an estimation of how powerful he was, when he noticed that the days are way too short to finish your work in, his response was to beat up the sun and make it promise to go slower. Thus, he became the patron god of engineers.
So how did such a hero meet his demise? Cherchez la femme, of course. Maui realized that the only way to become immortal was to crawl into the vagina of Hine-nui-te-po, the goddess of death. He tried to disguise himself as a worm to do so, because it is completely normal for worms to randomly crawl up vaginas, and no woman would ever find that suspicious.
However, his friends, who had gathered round to watch, found that it was so funny that they couldn’t help laughing. Unfortunately for Maui, that woke the goddess up, and still more unfortunately, her vagina was made of stone and had teeth. She promptly squished him.
Now, just imagine if Sigmund Freud had been Polynesian. Imagine what he would have come up with!
Ehhh, It Would Have Been About the Same
Actually, what Sigmund Freud came up with was just about that weird. But wait! You cry. He was a respected man of science, and not too long ago!
However, people will believe just about anything if a respectable-seeming person says it. Freud came up with all of the following ideas, which scientists back in the day thought were logical and innovative:
-Cocaine is awesome, and having sex while on cocaine is more awesome.
-Molestation does not exist. If a child says they have been molested, they are just imagining it.
-It is normal for boys to be sexually attracted to their mothers.
-Little girls are initially attracted to their mothers, but realize that they have no penis. This causes anxiety, and she blames her mother for punishing her and taking her penis. After that, girls become attracted to their fathers.
Whereupon our great-grandparents said: “Seems legit.”
And Now For A Public Service Announcement
Don’t do drugs, kids. If you must, do it sensibly, and not the way our ancestors did them.
For example, don’t drink reindeer pee (as I mentioned in an earlier column). Don’t have hallucinogenic enemas, like the Maya. Don’t eat the heads of sea bream, because fish heads are gross and smelly.
You want to know why witches ride broomsticks? Because if you make an ointment of toxic and hallucinogenic herbs, it will be taken up into the bloodstream very quickly if applied to a mucous membrane, like your nether regions. Broomsticks are a convenient, er, applicator.
If you must eat shrooms, don’t be like old-time Russians and chew them up, then spit them in your buddy’s mouth. Shrooms will also not cure your rheumatism if you set them on fire and burn holes through your skin with them.
So there we have it. If your grandparents tell you that things were better back in the day, you can laugh in their face.
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