Getting Rid of Columbus Day

On a Yet to be Named Continent....1142 AD

I went to the bank this morning to take care of the debit card fraud only to learn that it was Columbus Day and the banks were closed. What a worthless holiday. Like it doesn’t matter that 80 million people got here first over the Siberian land bridge, eating hairy mammoths and battling saber tooth tigers. We just go ahead and celebrate good ole Chris who arrived somewhere in the Caribbean and enslaved the natives.

I decide to do something about it. First a trip to Wall Street to cash in 5 billion in credit default swaps. I’m glad I saw the credit crunch coming and bet heavily against AAA rated collateralized debt obligations made up of baskets of toxic sub prime mortgages. I wondered for awhile if AIG would cough up my winnings. With the cash bundles of cash I can buy the suppressed energy technology owned by Big Oil.

Adding the wormhole drive to the RV is no big deal. The cold fusion power plant slips in neatly in place of the big Ford V-10 and provides the power of a mini-sun. The really tricky part was generating a black hole the right size and then programming the laptop to send us to the right time and place.

Wrapping the whole thing around the RV made a lot of sense because we can use the RV generator to make turkey soup in the crock pot when we travel to the past and also because we need to keep the laptop powered up for the return trip. The navigational math is a little complicated, but I've been doing sudoku for the last few months to sharpen my wits.

We arrive on the beach of "San Salvador" on the morning of October 12, 1492 and set up our offensive positions. Mrs. Phred is checked out with the black market RPGs that are stuffed in the RV storage compartments. Mrs. Phred suggests adding orzos, celery, onions and carrots to the turkey soup while we wait. We grab a few coconuts, splash naked in the surf for an hour and eat the chicken sandwiches we packed for the time jaunt. We catch a few big spiny lobsters for the RV freezer. Eventually we hear voices cursing in primitive Spanish.

The crew was cursing because Chris had promised a fat lifetime pension in gold to the first man to see land. Chris claimed to have seen lights several nights before and put the promised reward in his own pocket. Considering the recent behavior of bankers, perhaps the "Columbus Day" bank holiday is understandable. His ethics were a model.

We let Chris and his boys pull their shitty little boats into range and then hole them at the waterline. The RPGs blow big holes in the hulls and we watch the crews swim to shore with no weapons. We figure they’ll have a good time learning to live with the natives this time around.

We hit the return button for the morning of October 12, 2009 and drive back to the bank. The building style has changed to Mediterranean and the bank’s name is now Banco Popular. A sign in Spanish says that the bank is closed to celebrate Vasco da Gama day. Da Gama now gets credit for discovering the new world. He landed near what was New York City on October 12, 1498.…the whole continent is a diseased and corrupt Spanish colony. It's called Gamaland, of course. The city that was New York is now the cesspool "Neuva Madrid".

Da Gama sailed the ocean great
In fourteen hundred and ninety-eight

This is not what we had in mind when we scuttled the Pinta, the Nina and the Santa Maria. We’re going back again. We’ll go back further this time. I’m determined to teach what were the Iroquois Nations of what was to have been New York State about advanced metallurgy, steam engines, central banking, medicine, agriculture, credit cards, ice cream, sliced bread, nuclear energy, Teflon, steel ships, velcro, gunpowder, Pink Floyd music, aquatic mines and radio.

The Iroquois also refer to themselves as the Haudenosaunee, which means "People of the Longhouse." Oral tradition indicates that the six-tribe nation was formed prior to 1142 AD. This estimate is based on a tribal stories about a solar eclipse. It's a shame that we'll miss The Great Peacemaker, Ayonwentah, but we need to get an earlier start to crush and subjugate Europe. It should take maybe 60 years. Sorry about that, Beowulf...Sorry Shakespeare...Sorry Mr. Hitler...Sorry Douglas Adams.

I'm making several trips back with a complete curriculum of home-schooling textbooks and advanced engineering and scientific textbooks. I've got firearms to show them from the simplest antiques to the best modern weapons I can buy on the black market. The Iroquois had a Nation going that rivaled Athens. I think they'll see the point of the AK-47 and night vision goggles and be motivated to study hard, especially when they read future history.

I'll show them Chief Joseph's surrender speech after his brilliant 1400 mile fighting retreat...I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking Glass is dead. Toohoolhoolzote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say, "Yes" or "No." He who led the young men [Olikut] is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are -- perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.

We're taking benign philosophy books like Santayana (no Germans, no Kafka) and geologic maps that show where the richest deposits of strategic materials are located. It may take us a lifetime, but we’ll just see who discovers which "new world" and if it is to be the Last of the Mohegans or the Last of the viciously inappropriate bank holidays.