George Washington Is Cash Money Read online

  A PERIGEE BOOK

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  GEORGE WASHINGTON IS CASH MONEY

  Copyright © 2015 by Cory O’Brien

  Illustrations by Soren Melville

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

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  ISBN: 978-0-698-18670-5

  This book has been registered with the Library of Congress.

  First edition: May 2015

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  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: