George Washington Is Cash Money

by Cory O'Brien; Illustrated by Soren Melville

  a fiendishly brilliant plan:

  His plan is to sail WEST

  AWAY from where Asia is

  and then . . . be in Asia.

  Now, granted

  everyone has known the world is round since Greece

  but see the problem

  is that China is like twelve thousand miles to the west

  a problem that Christopher Columbus solves

  by doing his math wrong

  and deciding it’s about three thousand miles instead.

  ALL ABOARD THE SUCCESS TRAIN

  WOOO WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

  Armed with this ambitious and totally legit scheme

  Chris does what any modern gentleman would do:

  He starts looking for venture capital.

  He looks for it in pretty much every court in Europe

  which is unfortunate for him

  because Europe at this time

  seems to be ruled primarily by sane people.

  He finally ends up in Spain

  where King Ferdinand also says no

  and actually offers him big buxx to stay in Spain

  either as a court jester

  or as a solid to the other kings he would’ve bugged.

  But suddenly, after several years

  and a million more identical pitches from Chris

  King Ferdinand is like “YOU KNOW WHAT

  THIS SUDDENLY SOUNDS AMAZING.

  LET’S RIDE THIS FUCKIN’ SUCCESS TRAIN

  CHUGGA CHUGGA.”

  Here are the terms that Columbus demands:

  1. 10 percent of revenue from any place he discovers

  (which is a pretty standard agent rate)

  2. Governorship over same lands

  3. The title of GREAT ADMIRAL OF THE OCEAN.

  Meanwhile, Poseidon rolls in his watery grave.

  So Sea King Columbus sets out on his voyage.

  He ends up doing four of them

  and they go bizarrely fucking well for the guy

  like, it turns out there’s land

  pretty much right where he said it would be

  and it’s full of people

  who sort of look like the people he was looking for

  so naturally he calls them Indians

  because what else could they be

  and then he spends the next decade taxing them

  and mutilating the shit out of them when he’s bored.

  His sons help

  it’s a bonding experience.

  Word gets back to Spain about the mutilating

  and in what may be the only recorded instance

  of anyone in Europe being nice to natives

  they send an investigator to see if the rumors are true

  and duh, they are

  so they fire Columbus from being governor

  and throw him in jail.

  This is definitely a grand humanitarian gesture

  and not a way to get out of paying Chris his 10 percent

  that would be ridiculous.

  But Chris’s son Diego seems to think that’s what’s up

  so he files a bunch of lawsuits against Spain

  which is dumb

  because it’s hard as shit to sue the government.

  Chris does get a couple bucks out of the deal, though

  and he also gets to go down in history

  as the dude who discovered America

  and the dude who discovered that the world is round

  and both of those things are totally wrong

  but that’s okay

  because so was Christopher Columbus.

  So the moral of the story

  is you can get into history the hard way

  by being nice to people and right about things

  or you can just shoot the moon and be terrible

  which seems a hell of a lot easier.

  THE ROANOKE COLONISTS FORGET TO LEAVE A FORWARDING ADDRESS

  So Spain’s got all these dudes in America now

  and England

  whose main thing is HATING SPAIN

  is like “No way are we gonna sit idly by

  while those Spaniards ruin America all by themselves

  we gotta get in on this.

  First, we need someone as sucky as Chris Columbus.

  OH HELLO THERE SIR WALTER RALEIGH.”

  Sir Walter Raleigh is a government-sponsored pirate

  who Queen Elizabeth hires

  to SINGLEHANDEDLY COLONIZE AMERICA.

  She seriously gives him a permit

  that is like “This permit good for one America.

  Use it or lose it, buddy.”

  And use it he does.

  He packs a bunch of radical dudes on a boat

  and ships them off to an island called Roanoke

  off the coast of Virginia

  (named after the Queen

  whose name is not Virginia, but there you go)

  and leaves them there

  because he’s got better shit to do

  than what he was hired to do.

  Here’s the rub:

  There are already other people in Virginia

  and they’re not friendly!

  (Probably because immediately after arriving

  the colonists kill an entire tribe

  for allegedly stealing a silver cup.

  Savages, am I right?

  Always stealing cups.)

  So the colonists spend 100 percent of their time

  fighting off angry natives

  and when Raleigh drops by a couple years later

  like “Hey, dudes, want a ride home?”

  they are like “YES.”

  So they all leave

  a couple days before their reinforcements arrive

  and the reinforcements are like “Screw this”

  and they go home

  but a couple of them have to stay

  because remember:

  Use it or lose it.

  Back in England, Walter Raleigh is like

  “I wonder how that colony is doing.

  Probably it’s doing great.

  I should send more dudes to start another colony!”

  So he sends another 115 people

  including women and children

  to this totally safe place.

  GUESS WHAT?

  NOT ACTUALLY SAFE.

  Everybody who stayed behind is now dead.

  There’s a spooky skeleton and everything

  so obviously these new colonists decide to stay

  despite the fact that they are super low on food

  and surrounded by enemies.

  The food thing starts to be a real bummer though

  so the governor of the colony

  (a dude named John White

  because fuck yeah, generic Anglo names)

  is like “Okay, guys, I’m gonna run back to England

  grab some food and be right back.”

  THREE YEARS LATER

  John White finally comes back with some food

  like “OMG, guys, I am so sorry I’m late.

  It was winter

  and then I got a ride with some pirates

  and got captured by the dudes we were trying to rob

  and then the Spanish Armada came

  and it’s just been a really stressful three years so

  oh shit where did everybody go?”

  Answer: NOBODY KNOWS.

  The colonists are all just gone

  no spooky skeletons

  no houses

  no charred remains of houses,
even

  it’s like everybody just packed up and left.

  Before John went to England, everybody agreed

  that if they got murdered or something

  they would carve a cross into a nearby tree

  and there is stuff carved into trees

  but it is not a cross

  it is the word “CROATOA”

  which is the name of a nearby island

  which John is unable to explore because of a storm

  so he just leaves

  because mysteries are for chumps.

  To this day, nobody agrees what happened

  maybe the colonists had sex with the natives

  maybe the natives ate the colonists

  maybe the colonists were trying to carve a cross

  but were just really bad at following directions.

  Maybe it was goblins.

  Who knows?

  Regardless, the moral of the story is the same:

  Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day.

  Abandon a man on a swampy island

  a thousand miles from help and home

  and he will fucking die.

  I WISH I COULD HAVE CRASHED THE FIRST THANKSGIVING

  Okay, so there’re some extremely Christian dudes.

  They’re in England and they hate it

  I don’t blame them

  England sucks.

  So then they leave in some boats

  and they go hit up Amsterdam

  because they hear that’s where you get the good weed

  but then their kids start to do really terrible shit

  like learn Dutch

  and maybe not be super Christian all the time?

  and no amount of good weed is worth that

  so they get on some MORE boats

  called the Mayflower and the Speedwell

  and they sail to AMERICA

  except the Speedwell is ironically named

  and is actually a slow-as-shit loserbarge

  so it has to go home early

  and miss the America party.

  But it turns out that America is a terrible party

  because step one of the party is wait on a boat

  forEVER

  getting hungry and perpetually seasick

  but at least someone poops out a baby

  which they name OCEANUS

  which is OBJECTIVELY RAD.

  But that’s the only objectively rad thing in this story

  because when they show up in America

  it is ULTRA WINTER

  like if winter were to take steroids

  and then craft for itself a robot ice suit

  and team up with Mr. Freeze

  to spew catchphrases and ice beams

  all over the damn country

  that would be about as bad as this winter

  AND make for a way better movie.

  See they were kind of hoping to find some like

  good wholesome Christian white folks

  in gated communities

  with supermarkets and bowling alleys

  but instead they get RUTHLESS WINTER

  ALL DAY

  ALL THE TIME

  ALSO ALL NIGHT

  and a ton of people die

  because that is the true meaning of winter.

  But some people survive the winter

  including BRAVE CAPTAIN MILES STANDISH

  and he goes out and finds him some Indians

  because everyone still sorta thinks they’re in India

  and one of the Indians is named Squanto

  and he’s part of the Patuxet tribe

  and not a Cherokee at all

  but he still somehow knows about corn

  so he teaches all the white dudes to plant it

  and the white dudes are like “Gee, thanks, Squanto

  we will definitely remember this solid you did us

  and pay you back in kind forever and ever.”

  Later, all the crops sprout

  and the white dudes go into the forest

  and shoot like A THOUSAND turkeys

  (see, I TOLD you turkeys were important)

  also some deers

  (them too!)

  and then they cut them all open

  and invite EVERYBODY

  and all the Indians show up

  and bring crazy foreign shit to eat

  like potatoes and squash and tomatoes

  and everyone is so super jazzed about all this food

  that they do not stop partying for THREE DAYS

  and there are NINETY DUDES

  and HOLY CRAP THAT IS A PARTY

  and then the party is over

  and the white dudes are like

  “Okay, guys, that was great

  but we’re totally killing you now

  you know

  for your land.”

  And the Indians are like “Haha, joke’s on you

  you can’t kill us if we DIE OF SMALLPOX FIRST.”

  And then everyone decides to relive this occasion

  every year

  on an arbitrary Thursday

  by producing more food

  than they can safely consume

  and then goading each other into eating it.

  Also: families!

  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

  You see, the real moral of the story

  is next time you wanna have a party

  but you don’t have a good enough reason

  maybe just have a party.

  Seriously

  your reasoning can’t be any worse than these dudes’.

  (I actually really like Thanksgiving though.)

  SALEM SETS LADIES ON FIRE

  If I had to use just one sentence to sum up history

  it would be:

  “People in the past were pretty dumb.”

  If I had to give an example

  it would be the Salem Witch Trials.

  Check it out:

  All these Puritans are chilling in the New World

  with their religious governments

  and their no-nonsense clothes

  and their chastity and whatever

  when all of a sudden this girl starts having seizures

  and blaming the woman who does her laundry

  and everyone is like “OH NO, WITCHES.”

  You have to understand that at this time in history

  batshit loco was the thing to be

  people had been believing in magic since forever

  and they weren’t about to stop

  but they HAD all decided that magic was evil

  so they were definitely willing to kill any damn lady

  who was acting sort of witchy.

  Luckily for the washer lady

  there’s this dude named Cotton Mather

  who decides to cure this twitching child

  by bringing her over to his house

  and praying at her until she stops spazzing

  and I guess Cotton Mather’s house is so crazy boring

  that the chick sobers up real fast

  and that’s the end of that problem.

  NOT.

  Because now children all over Massachusetts

  know that seizures are a great way to get attention

  so these two girls over in Salem Village

  (not to be confused with Salem Town

  which is right next door

  and also part of this story

  just to confuse you)

  start flipping the literal hell out

 
; all screaming, yelling, crawling under furniture

  you know

  THE KIND OF DUMB SHIT KIDS DO

  and when everyone is like “Stop being shitty!”

  They’re like “We can’t because witches.”

  So in an effort to get their children to shut up

  the people of Salem arrest a homeless lady

  an independent woman

  and a slave named Tituba

  who is too foreign and interesting to live

  and this would all be fine

  except that when you get arrested for witchcraft

  the first thing they ask you is

  “Hey, do you know any other witches?

  Maybe we will go easy on you if you tell us.”

  SO WHAT DO YOU THINK HAPPENS?

  I’ll tell you.

  What started out as a childish prank

  rapidly becomes an unstoppable snowball of murder.

  The more witches they arrest

  the more witches those witches tell them about

  and the more children start having freaky seizures

  and blaming random people they don’t like.

  And instead of being like “Oh damn

  so many hangings

  maybe we should slow down and do less hanging”

  the people of Salem are like “OH DAMN

  SO MANY WITCHES

  BETTER RELAX OUR JUDICIAL STANDARDS.”

  At this point it becomes legal to convict a person

  based solely on what is called “spectral evidence.”

  Here is what spectral evidence is:

  Let’s say I don’t like you

  because you cut in front of me at the Burger Barn

  so I go to the Court of Oyer and Terminer in Salem

  and I say, “Hey, last night I was in bed

  and the spirit of Asshole McGee over there

  [we’re assuming that’s your name

  just for the sake of example]

  flies into my room and starts punching my dick

  OBVIOUSLY A WITCH.”

  YOU WOULD BE CONVICTED FOR THAT.

  So now people are dying like flies in a blender

  like, they kill a dude named Giles Cory

  by stacking rocks on top of him until he dies

  because he WON’T ADMIT TO BEING A WITCH

  and they hang this lady Mary Easty

  who is like SUPER pious

  and keeps being like “Guys, I actually didn’t do this!”

  (although later the government feels bad

  and pays her family like two thousand bucks

  so all is forgiven)

  and Cotton Mather is like “Hey, guys?

  You know, witches are real bad and all

  but maybe chill out a bit?”