Keep a Lid on It, Pandora!

Keep a Lid on It, Pandora! — page 1 — from The Big Fat Book Total claptrap Zeus gave Pandora a box all right A box full of really nasty items But disease Pain Greed No way Those things were around long before Pandora showed up Zeus did give Pandora the gift of curiosity That much is true But the whole thing was just a setup so he could win a bet he’d made with me The old bunk-meister tricked me his trusting older brother into betting him that Pandora would never open the box Zeus put big money on her popping off the lid right away But she didn’t It drove him so nuts that he spent years trying to trick her into opening it

Keep a Lid on It, Pandora! — page 2

Keep a Lid on It, Pandora! — page 3 — We have to go back for this story Way back to the start of everything There was no Earth There was no sky no sun no day no night no winter no spring and for sure no summer vacation There was only Chaos great swirling masses of matter But inside that matter were the little sparks of all future life The first life to show up out of the Chaos was my granny Mother Earth otherwise known as Mama Gaia Then came Night Love Day and the Sea Finally my grandpa Uranus also known as Sky Daddy showed up He went bonkers over Mama Gaia and the two of them got married Then those sparks of life really started flying Together Mama Gaia and Sky Daddy had bunches of giant children the Cyclopes the Hundred Handed Ones and the Titans Cronus was the youngest Titan and Mama Gaia spoiled him rotten In time Cronus bullied his way to the top and took over the universe He married the Titaness Rhea and they became the parents of us gods Rhea was a great mom still is But Cronus was not exactly a candidate for Father of the Year For one thing he swallowed his kids No joke Only Zeus escaped that fate Finally Mom came to our rescue She fed Dad some

Keep a Lid on It, Pandora! — page 4 — herbs that made him burp us up After a time we gods rebelled against Dad That led to us fighting a huge battle with the Titans It was an awful destructive war And what war isn’t Trees were pulled up by their roots Hills were flattened like pancakes Most of the mortals living on earth at the time were wiped out Most of the creatures too But in the end we gods beat the Titans Then it was our turn to rule That’s when my little brother you-know-who lied swindled and cheated his way into becoming Ruler of the Universe I’m the oldest god It really should be me sitting on that throne up on Mount Olympus But hey I’m not bitter about it In fact I prefer ruling the Underworld After the war Cronus and some of his thug Titan buddies ended up doing time in the Underworld slammer But not all Titans fought with Cronus The ones who didn’t were still around Hyperion was the Titan in charge of all the light in the universe When we gods took over he was out of a job so he made a major career switch and became a cattle rancher in the Underworld The Titaness Metis stayed on earth Zeus had a major crush on her The Titan twins Prometheus and Epimetheus lived on earth too I guess you could say the story of Pandora starts with these two brothers Back then I hadn’t been ruler of the Underworld very long I didn’t have a TV So I had no Earth Channel or HB-Olympus I had no way of knowing what was going on in the realms above the Underworld except to go up and see for myself Going to earth on a regular basis was out of the question It was a nine-day trip I couldn’t astro-travel That’s a little thing we gods can do when we want to go instantly from one place to another We chant a spell and ZIP We’re there Sad to say the Underworld is one of the very few places in the whole universe where astro-traveling doesn’t work And this

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