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  who dresses like he’s cosplaying as a cowboy

  at a time when there are STILL REAL COWBOYS

  mostly because he is in love with these novels

  written by a guy named James Fenimore Cooper

  about a dude who REALLY identifies with Indians

  while simultaneously killing a ton of Indians.

  In real life, though

  Custer knows almost diddly-shit about Indians

  and makes up for this

  by employing a ton of Indian scouts.

  “INDIAN SCOUTS???” you say.

  “But I thought the Indians hated white people?”

  Well, there’s a lot of different Indians, dorkus

  and they agree with each other about as much

  as a flock of seagulls trying to share a bagel.

  Like, before the Europeans showed up

  all the Indians were happily killing each other

  for land or glory or buffalo or whatever else

  when all of a sudden America showed up

  with all its artillery and patriotism

  and they were like “Shit

  now we have to deal with this.”

  (This actually happened to me

  the first time I played Civilization.

  Abraham Lincoln just massacred me with rifles.

  I never played Civilization again.)

  Some tribes deal by fighting

  (like the Lakota)

  but some tribes deal by helping the U.S. Army

  (for example, the Crow)

  because they actually still hate the Lakota

  plus they like fighting whoever

  plus they figure if they help the U.S., they’ll get land

  to which I can only say

  LOL.

  Anyway, Custer does an excellent job

  of massacring a couple defenseless villages

  having sex with his captives

  and staging buffalo hunts for visiting Germans

  all of which has the effect

  of pushing more and more tribes north

  where they join this one huge village

  which is right near the Little Bighorn river

  and is led (sort of) by this dude named Sitting Bull.

  Not only is Sitting Bull a dope-ass warrior

  he’s also wise as shit

  like one day he goes up on a hill

  and does a bunch of horrible stuff to his body

  and then he passes out and wakes up

  and he’s like “Guys

  I had a dream:

  A bunch of soldiers are coming from the east

  we are going to totally own them

  don’t take their stuff, though

  that’s not cool.”

  Sitting Bull is totally right about the soldiers

  ’cause Custer has heard that there is a big village

  well within its treaty-defined borders

  existing in a peaceful Edenic paradise

  and he cannot abide by that shit

  so he heads out with a big-ass army

  and several other generals

  all of whom are slightly less shitty than he

  and when the time is right

  he leaves all the other guys behind

  refuses any reinforcements

  and gallops off to find the giant village

  BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT HEROES DO.

  So Custer’s Indian scouts get him to the village

  but they’re like “Dude, don’t attack this

  you will definitely die”

  and Custer is like “DIE?

  MORE LIKE . . . NOT DIE”

  and his translators and his soldiers are like “No bro

  pretty sure we will actually die if we do this”

  and Custer is like “I appreciate your concerns

  but I did not get this far by listening to people.

  LET’S SPLIT UP, GANG

  WE’LL COVER MORE GROUND THAT WAY.”

  So half the troops attack head-on and get slaughtered

  while Custer tries to sneak around back

  and also gets slaughtered

  on the same hill where Sitting Bull had his dream

  and all the Lakota are like “Yay!

  Let’s take everybody’s stuff!”

  and Sitting Bull is like “No wait, I said don’t do that.”

  But no one is listening

  they are too excited about not getting massacred.

  So the rest of America finds out about this

  and is just like “. . . What?”

  Like, they can’t believe that a bunch of savages

  who don’t even know about the Bible or trains

  managed to defeat Frontier Jesus

  (like American Jesus, but in buckskin!)

  so they’re like “I know!

  Custer must have died because he WANTED TO.

  SUCH NOBLE

  SO SACRIFICE

  WOW.”

  People make all these paintings about it

  and write all these poems

  and this dude called Buffalo Bill

  who is even better than Custer

  at lying about being a cowboy

  even puts on a massive theatrical production of it

  featuring actual Lakota battle veterans

  who are willing to participate in this stupid show

  because they really, really need the money.

  Because here’s the thing

  after Custer dies

  America is like “OH SHIT, PATRIOTISM”

  and they fund the hell out of the army

  which proceeds to wipe the floor with the Lakota

  by systematically denying them food

  so about half of them join reservations

  and the other half (led by Sitting Bull)

  move to Canada

  thus continuing the time-honored American tradition

  of moving to Canada every time something sucks.

  But Canada sucks too, so Sitting Bull moves back

  and alternates between touring with Buffalo Bill

  and refusing to become a capitalist

  much to the frustration of the Americans

  until he eventually gets shot for “resisting arrest.”

  And then he’s dead, and that sucks

  but at least some other Indians go to school

  and learn to read and write

  so that future generations can better comprehend

  exactly how badly they are fucked.

  Also, Custer gets a monument!

  So the moral of the story

  is that just because someone is dead

  doesn’t mean they don’t suck.

  BILLY THE KID LOVES BACON, KILLING PEOPLE

  So now that the Civil War is over

  where are people gonna be violent?

  I’ll tell you where:

  THE OLD WEST

  a gleaming, steaming repository

  of guns, guff, and gumption

  just waiting to be covered in dead bodies.

  Many people contribute to the Old West body count

  but few do it more effectively

  than this kid named Billy.

  Billy gets born in New York City

  to an Irish mom and an invisible dad.

  He’s a mischievous little bastard

  and by the time he’s like twelve

  he gets a little too mischievous

  and gets thrown in jail.

  But it’s okay

  because in addition to being a mischievous bastardr />
  he is also a little bastard, like I said

  so he escapes from prison

  by crawling out of the chimney

  and then he goes WEST

  where a mischievous little bastard like him

  is bound to fit right in.

  And FIT RIGHT IN HE DOES.

  First he shoots a blacksmith

  who’s trying to push him around

  then he runs off

  and becomes a cattle rustler/cheesemaker

  and then after doing that for a while

  he gets hired by this lawyer named McSween

  to GUARD some cattle

  because McSween doesn’t do background checks.

  But maybe he did do a background check

  because as a cattle guard

  Billy’s job description

  is to basically murder all the dudes

  who work for the OTHER cattle guys

  who, granted, are classic mustache-twirling villains

  who do things like shoot people

  and then shoot their horses

  and then cut off the heads of the horses

  and put them on the heads of the dudes.

  Messed up, I know.

  So yeah, bullets fly back and forth for a while

  between these two posses of bad dudes

  and both sides do things that are pretty messed up

  but the guys Billy is fighting against are way richer

  and know way more important government dudes

  and also Billy makes the mistake

  of shooting at some U.S. Cavalry

  so in the end, he gets indicted

  and has to make a plea bargain to get a pardon

  where he sells out some of his gangbros

  but when he comes in to testify

  THEY TOTALLY JUST ARREST HIM

  so he’s just like “Psh

  you clearly have not heard about me and chimneys.”

  Then he climbs out the chimney

  and rides away on a horse someone brought for him.

  So now Billy the Kid is widely known

  as a seriously bad dude

  and the governor of New Mexico

  starts offering a really sweet reward for his arrest:

  FIVE HUNDRED BUCKS.

  DUDE.

  Five hundred bucks?!

  That’s barely enough to buy five hours

  with a medium-classy prostitute . . .

  Wait, okay, I see how this could work.

  ENTER PAT GARRETT

  he’s a buffalo hunter

  but that doesn’t mean he cannot also hunt DUDES.

  Dudes are basically the same as buffalo

  except with less legs and more bullets.

  Some say that Pat and Billy used to be best pals

  but normally you do not form a posse

  to go arrest/kill your best pal

  for a measly five hundred bucks.

  Usually it takes like six hundred at LEAST.

  Anyway, Pat chases Billy around for a while

  while Billy is rustling cattle HARDCORE

  and also pranking dudes with his guns

  like this one time

  when he’s hanging out in a bar

  this drunk jerk is like

  “I AM TOTALLY GONNA KILL BILLY THE KID.”

  Totally unaware of the fact that Billy

  is RIGHT THERE IN THE BAR.

  So Billy walks up to him

  and he’s like “Nice gun. Mind if I take a look?”

  So the guy gives him the gun

  LIKE AN IDIOT

  and then instead of just shooting the dude with it

  like a normal badass

  Billy goes ahead and rotates the barrel

  so that the next chamber to fire will be empty

  and then gives it back to him

  and then he’s like “Oh, by the way

  I’m Billy the Kid.”

  And the guy is like “WHAAAAAAT”

  and starts shooting at him

  but no bullets come out of his gun, obviously

  so then Billy kills him

  and everyone is like “Well, that was unnecessary

  and therefore TOTALLY AWESOME.”

  But all awesome things must come to an end.

  One morning, Pat Garrett tracks Billy and his gang

  to a little house on the prairie

  and he barricades the door with a dead horse

  and then he starts cooking BACON.

  And he’s like “Hey, Billy

  how would you like to come eat some tasty bacon?”

  And Billy is like “Hey, Pat

  how would you like to GO TO HELL?”

  And Pat is like “Well, I’m sorry you feel that way

  I guess you can just starve to death inside that house.”

  But no one can withstand the smell of bacon for long

  so eventually Billy and his gang surrender

  so they can get some breakfast.

  Then Billy gets convicted, of course

  for a whole bunch of murders

  some of which he probably didn’t even commit

  but that’s okay

  because the number of murders he’s accused of

  makes him a TOTAL CELEBRITY.

  He gets to go to Las Vegas and do interviews!

  Granted, he spends a good portion of the interviews

  denying a lot of those very same murders

  but whatever, he’s famous!

  Less fortunately

  it also means that he gets sentenced to death

  and the prison where he’s being kept in the meantime

  DOESN’T EVEN HAVE A CHIMNEY.

  So I guess he’s just boned, right?

  WRONG.

  Because this is when Billy the Kid

  pulls some straight-up action hero shit

  like, his guards are walking him over to get executed

  and he KNOCKS ONE OUT

  WITH HIS MANACLES

  then he steals that dude’s gun

  and shoots the other one in the face

  after addressing him with a catchy one-liner

  BY NAME.

  He then has to put off his escape for an hour

  while he chews through his leg irons.

  But there is a natural law in the Old West.

  It is called the Conservation of Gumption.

  It states that one man

  cannot hog all of the gumption for too long

  before he has to die and let other people have a turn

  and that’s why

  three months later

  Pat Garrett finally catches up with Billy

  in some random house one night

  and Billy goes down like a clown

  from a bullet to the stomach

  while yelling “Who’s there?” in Spanish.

  At the time of his death

  Billy is just shy of twenty-one years old

  and according to some (wildly inaccurate) estimates

  he has killed TWENTY-ONE MEN.

  Dude

  21:1 is a pretty good kill–death ratio

  and even if he only killed like five guys

  dude has some serious work ethic.

  I mean, I’ve already lived longer than he did

  and I have yet to kill anything

  other than a spider and a couple goldfish.

  Oh well

  to each his own.

  The moral of the story

  is that if you’re considering a career in murder

 
probably just drop it.

  You’re already way behind

  and it’d be hell to catch up.

  PECOS BILL KICKS METEOROLOGY IN THE FACE

  So there are all these real cowboys in the Wild West

  and they are all idolizing this fictional cowboy

  called Pecos Bill

  which is a problem

  because Pecos Bill is an idiot.

  Let’s gloss right over his troubled childhood

  in which he fell out of a wagon

  got adopted by coyotes

  and failed to realize he was not one of them

  until his brother came along and told him so.

  Instead, let’s fast-forward to him at twentysomething

  when he is acutely aware that he is not a coyote

  but also acutely unaware

  of certain basic facts of physics.

  Like for example:

  YOU CAN’T RIDE A TORNADO LIKE A HORSE.

  TORNADOES DIFFER FROM HORSES

  IN MANY DISTINCT WAYS.

  SCIENCE HAS SHOWN THIS.

  So Pecos Bill is up in Kansas for some reason

  and he is like “Hey

  you know what would be great to ride right now?

  A FUCKING TORNADO.”

  So he hangs out in tornado country for a while

  checkin’ out the tornadoes.

  He even lets a couple pass by unmolested

  because they are simply not dangerous enough

  but finally he sees this one tornado

  tearing the bajeezus out of EVERYTHING

  EVERYWHERE

  turning the sky black and green

  and he is like “Phew

  I was worried

  that I wasn’t going to get to do a dumb thing today.”

  So Pecos Bill jumps on that tornado

  pushes it to the ground

  jumps on its . . . back?

  and is like “Giddy up, you son of a bitch.”

  So the tornado

  obviously

  is like “FIGGITY FUCK NO.”

  This is not just me injecting swears into mythology

  (for once)

  the tornado seriously starts cursing.

  Bill has pissed off this force of nature SO MUCH

  it has miraculously gained the power of speech

  and it is using it to say “fuck” a lot.

  So the tornado flips out

  (like, more than normal)

  and starts tearing even more bajeezus out of things

  tying rivers in knots and skull-fucking forests

  killing thousands of animals

  destroying vast swaths of land.

  Then they get to Texas

  which is pretty destroyed already because Texans

  and Pecos Bill is still chilling out on this tornado