A PERIGEE BOOK
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GEORGE WASHINGTON IS CASH MONEY
Copyright © 2015 by Cory O’Brien
Illustrations by Soren Melville
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ISBN: 978-0-698-18670-5
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First edition: May 2015
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Version_1
To my dad, and the rest of We Tell Stories,
for teaching me and thousands of other kids how stories are meant to be treated.
OMG, WHAT’S IN THIS BOOK?!
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Table of Contents: You’re already looking at it.
Introduction: Before the rest of the book, doofus.
STORIES
Two Stupid Jerks Invent Food (A Cherokee Creation Story)
They All Laughed at Christopher Columbus . . . Because He Was Dumb
The Roanoke Colonists Forget to Leave a Forwarding Address
I Wish I Could Have Crashed the First Thanksgiving
Salem Sets Ladies on Fire
Tea Is for Wankers
The Declaration of Independence, or: Much Ado About FREEDOM
George Washington Is Cash Money
Rip Van Winkle Sleeps His Way to the Top
Benjamin Franklin Is the God of Lightning
Alexander Hamilton Is a Straight-Up G
Thomas Jefferson Is a Radical Man, Buying Radical Land
Lewis and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman . . . No, Wait
Paul Bunyan Is Godzilla But with Thumbs
The Book of Mormon: Great Musical, Bad Book
The Trail of Tears Is Not the Name of a Linkin Park Album
I Am Too Drunk to Remember the Alamo
Bre’r Rabbit Is the Bugs Bunny of Folk Heroes
Harriet Tubman Has Seizures for Justice
Abraham Lincoln Is as Tall as He Is Tall
Sarah Emma Edmonds Might Actually Be Your Dad and You Would Never Know
John Henry Works Himself to Death
Custer’s Last Stand Is Highly Unnecessary
Billy the Kid Loves Bacon, Killing People
Pecos Bill Kicks Meteorology in the Face
Calamity Jane Has the Best Nickname
Johnny Appleseed Is the Delicious Kind of Crazy
H. H. Holmes: The Original Triple H
Susan B. Anthony Sells Out for Equality
Teddy Roosevelt. That Is All.
Al Capone Gets Everyone Hammered
Thomas Edison Is a Killing Machinist
The Great Depression Was Actually Not So Great
FDR Doesn’t Like Asians Very Much
Superman Is the Definition of an Illegal Alien
ELVIS LIVES!
J. Robert Oppenheimer Is the God of Guns
Of All the Places Aliens Could Have Visited, They Chose Roswell
If You Haven’t Slept with Marilyn Monroe, You Probably Aren’t Important
Martin Luther King Could Own You at Pool
Kennedy Tries to Nuke the Moon
Conclusion: A Myth in Progress
Acknowledgments
Further Reading
About the Author
INTRODUCTION
(Or: Emergency Toilet Paper)
’Sup, guys.
One of the things that happened while I was researching this book was that I started reading the introductions to a lot of other books, and I decided maybe my book should have a good introduction too. Introductions are important in books of history and mythology, because they’re where authors get a chance to tell you how biased they are.
Me? I’m hella biased. I think the story of the United States is one long, violent soap opera where the best people get killed young and the worst people get rich. But I’m one of the beneficiaries of that story, and the story’s not over yet.
See, the other thing I believe is that history and mythology are the same thing. They’re stories we dredge out of our pasts in order to make sense of the present, and those types of stories are always going to be necessary. But the stories themselves, and who the main characters are, are always gonna be changing.
Around the turn of the twentieth century, we started a big philosophical movement called the Enlightenment. Thomas Jefferson was a big fan of it, as were a whole grip of scientists and poets and philosophers. The idea was that we were smart enough, technologically advanced enough, to throw off old superstitions and look at the world through the lens of pure reason.
Though these guys were mostly too nervous to say it, Enlightenment philosophy was a pretty big diss to the old concept of religion. Rumor had it that Jefferson was an atheist, but atheism wasn’t cool in those days, so if he was, he kept it under his wig. More and more, though, people started to turn to science to answer their questions about the world. And suddenly, the old gods weren’t so attractive anymore. “Myth” became a bad word, as you’ve maybe noticed if you’ve ever been on Snopes or read a listicle about dumb wrong things people think you should eat.
But when we told the old gods to fuck off, we found ourselves in need of new ones. And no place felt this more than the United States of America. The country is way young, like barely legal, plus the separation of church and state makes it almost impossible to have an official mythology. People need to believe in something, though, so the U.S. has slapped together its own myths, centered around the Founding Fathers, around Science, around The Invisible Hand of the Market. Presidents, gangsters, serial killers, and rock stars are our new pantheon. Politicians invoke the names of Reagan and the Roosevelts. Pop stars are avatars of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley. We put their faces on our money, name our streets after them, erect big stone dicks over their graves. (That last part never changes.)
I’ve done my best to make the stories in this book as “historically accurate” as possible, but I’ve also kept a lot of the juicy rumors in, because those are part of history too. Part of the mythology. I’ve also used some terminol
ogy that isn’t exactly “politically correct,” so let me throw in a quick disclaimer: I know there are other Americas besides the United States of America, and I know the people who originally inhabited the United States part of America were not in fact Indians from India. I’m using these common—if outdated—terms because they fit on the short lines I use, and because sometimes it actually serves to point out the ridiculousness of the terms, and because the language I use is a casual, rough, technically incorrect version of English.
Which brings me to why I’m here. I’m here to educate you about the mythology of the United States, the same way we get educated about the mythology of the Greeks and the Romans. Well, not exactly the same way. I’ve stripped off a lot of the pomp and circumstance. I’ve added a lot of dick jokes and pop culture references. My friend Soren drew some sweet pictures for you to look at. I guess what I’m saying is that this book is here to educate you about the mythology of the United States the way the Greeks and Romans were educated about theirs, back when their shit was new.
TWO STUPID JERKS INVENT FOOD (A CHEROKEE CREATION STORY)
So a long long long long long long long time ago
there was absolutely fuck-all in the entire universe.
Then a little while later, there was some stuff
either because gods made it out of clay and boredom
or just because.
At first all the stuff is underwater
(at least, according to most dudes)
but Waterworld is a terrible movie
so all the gods and sassy animals finally wise up
and decide to have land
and some of this land
is a lame-sounding place called Turtle Island.
Wait I mean NORTH AMERICA.
YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAA.
But so now there’s all this sweet land
and nobody to ruin it.
ENTER: HUMANS.
There are a few theories about how humans entered
like out of the underworld
or from the east
or space
or maybe the gods just had some extra dirt to burn
but WHATEVER
everyone agrees dudes started existing at some point
and that it was a generally bad idea.
Great, so, the universe exists
and there are dudes in it
but riddle me this:
What are these dudes gonna eat?
Don’t worry, friends
the Cherokee people got this one covered.
See, shortly after all this world-creating stuff
there’s this guy named Kanati.
Kanati has a wife named Selu
and a son named Good Boy
because this is olden times and names are scarce.
Good Boy has a special friend
who hangs out with him by the river
when his parents aren’t around.
Good Boy, being a good boy, tells his parents
who are like STRANGER DANGER
and hatch a plan to catch this man.
This is the plan:
The next time Good Boy sees his friend
(whose name is Wild Boy)
he’s supposed to “wrestle” him to the ground
and then call his parents
never stopping to consider
that this may be exactly what Wild Boy wants.
Anyway, it happens
and instead of getting registered as a sex offender
Wild Boy gets to live with the rest of the family
as their adopted son
which would be fine
except that Wild Boy is a garbage person.
Let me explain.
Every day, Kanati goes out hunting
and every day he comes home with a ton of meat
and Wild Boy is like “HMM
I WONDER IF I CAN RUIN THIS”
so he takes Good Boy and they go spy on their dad
and it turns out he has this cave
covered with a rock
and when he moves the rock, a deer comes out
like a delicious Easter-time Jesus
and then he shoots that Jesus deer with an arrow
and puts back the rock
and everyone gets deerburgers.
Of course the two boys decide to try this themselves.
This would not be a myth if people didn’t suck.
So they go to the cave and move the rock
but they forget to put it back
unleashing a gushing fire hose of woodland fauna
a delicious stampede of totally un-shootable game.
Raccoons and badgers and land-squids and gerbils
and turkeys. Turkeys are VERY IMPORTANT.
But all anyone manages to shoot is one deer’s tail
which curls up and that’s why deer are all that way.
Anyway, then Kanati shows up like “Aw hell no.
You know what happens when you free the animals?
I’ll tell you what happens:
BEEEEEEEES.”
So he goes into the back of the cave
and opens up several cans
which might’ve contained whupass in a different time
but instead contain EVERY KIND OF INSECT
and they’re stinging the shit out of these boys
until Kanati decides they’ve had enough.
Then he’s like “Great job, assholes.
Now we have to learn how to actually hunt.”
But the boys aren’t about to be doing real work
so they go home and ask their mom, Selu, for food
and she’s like “We have no food. Because of you.
Assholes.”
But they’re still her kids, even though they suck
so she goes up to the storeroom to get some grain
and they follow her because they still suck
and they watch her conjure beans and corn
by laying out a bowl and rubbing herself a lot.
So they’re like “Holy shit, Mom
are you a witch?”
and she’s like “Oh, you think I’m a witch, huh?
Well, how about this:
When I die, drag my clothes around a field seven times
and corn and beans will grow there overnight.
Now who’s the witch, huh?”
And the boys are like “Uh, still you.”
So Selu dies to spite them
and they half-assedly follow her instructions
like, they only clear a little bit of land
and they only drag her clothes around twice
but they still get corn and beans, so whatever
and then Kanati gets home
from trying to find all the animals
and he’s like “Where’s my wife?”
and they’re like “Oh, you mean Selu?
She turned into a witch and then died”
and Kenati is like “Oh my god, fuck you guys
I’m gonna go live with the wolves.”
So he does, and he sends the wolves to kill the boys
but they trap them with magic
and almost drive wolves to extinction
and then they teach everyone how to plant corn
and get reunited with their mom and dad
in the land of the rising sun
but their parents still hate their guts
for many good reasons
so they have to go live on the other side of town
in the bad neighborhood, where the sun sets
but at least they have corn.
All of whi
ch just goes to show
that agriculture is for jerks.
THEY ALL LAUGHED AT CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS . . . BECAUSE HE WAS DUMB
But what’s the point of all this sweet land and corn
if it never gets found by any white people?
I’m glad you asked, ethnocentric reader
because it’s time for me to tell you the story
of history’s number one entrepreneurial sea-jerk.
I refer, of course
to CHRISTOFAR COLOMBO.
Wait shit, that isn’t his name.
Well, that’s cool
Christopher Columbus isn’t his name either.
His real name is something like Crystalballs Colon
and with a name like that
it is shocking to me that he did not end up headlining
at the fourteenth-century equivalent of Chippendales.
Let’s just call him Chris.
So Chris is a cheese-merchant’s son
who works at his dad’s cheese shop
but unlike most sons of cheese merchants at this time
Christopher Columbus has an EXCELLENT PLAN
to make MAD BUXX.
You see Chris lives in Western Europe
and Western Europe is fucking CRAZY about opium
and also whatever else China and Japan sell
like tea and silk and nyan cats
and so far this has not been an issue
because dudes can just walk to China via Russia
buy some shit
and walk back
(it takes kind of a long time but whatever)
but then a bunch of dudes start killing each other
right in the middle of the walking trail
and everyone from Europe is like “Fuck this
I like getting high
but I also like having my organs in my body
but I still REALLY LIKE getting high
we have to find another way into Asia
LET’S USE BOATS.”
Most of these people
try to get to Asia by sailing south
around the bottom of Africa
(which is called the horn, mostly for the lols)
and then east
to where Asia is
but Christopher Columbus has a different plan
a fiendishly brilliant plan:
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