An excerpt from "THE LETHAL EFFECTS OF EATING CHERRIES, CUCUMBERS AND ICED MILK ON A HOT DAY"

CHAPTER ONE

In which Lewis Cass is introduced, and many lies are told, but just as many truths, and the phrase "dough-face" is thrown in and explained badly

"Those fucks," said Lewis Cass, adding, after a moment of agitated reflection, "Those fucking fucks!"

"Why are you angry, Lewis?" asked Homer Bright, a Senator from Indiana who never existed. The author had written the wrong name for Jesse Bright. By the time the author noticed his mistake, he was too lazy to change it. "No one will notice except obsessive history nerds. Fuck 'em!" the author wrote on the manuscript.

"Those fucks are such fucking fucks!" repeated Lewis Cass, mostly to return to the narrative.

"Calm down, Lewis," said Senator Bright. "It's 1847," Bright continued in an expository tone. "You are the junior Senator from Michigan, but you've been Governor of Michigan Territory, Secretary of War and US Minister to France. You will probably be the Democratic candidate for President next year. Unless the opposition comes up with another real, live war hero to run for them, you will be the next candidate. What are you so angry about?"

"It's those damned Whigs," said Cass. "They're a bunch of fucks! Here we have a perfectly good war going on with Mexico, and we're in a position to annex the whole fucking isthmus - I like that word, isthmus - ALL of Mexico, and those bleeding-heart, pantywaist liberals in the Whig Party are all upset about the rights of the Mexicans! Boo-hoo-hoo! Who gives a shit about those beaners! Fuck Henry Clay and the horse he rode in on!"

Down on the street, a crowd gathered. "Dough-faces," they shouted. "You're a bunch of dough-faces! Like, you're faces are made of dough, and you can make cookies out of your faces. Because they're made of dough. Hahahaha!"

Cass, high on arsenic, became highly agitated, jumping to his feet, running to the window and making obscene gestures he had learned from the Piskiotomi Indians. "Lousy Free Soilers! Stick it up your anus! And fuck the Wilmot Proviso!"

After regaining his composure (somewhat), Cass looked at his colleague and asked, "What does 'dough-face' mean, anyway?"

"Well, I think it's a Northerner who is always perfectly willing to bend over to Southern bullying on the issue of slavery."

"I know that," snarled Cass. "I mean, where does it come from? What does slavery have to do with having dough on your face, or with having a face made of dough?"

Bright shrugged. "I don't know. We're quaint 19th-century politicians. We say a lot of things that don't really make any sense. Remember when the Democrats divided into Hunkers and Barnburners?"

Cass laughed uproariously. "Yes, you're right. Good point. It was only a few years ago, and I can't remember if I was a Hunker or a Barnburner."

Lewis Cass was a rather generic 18th-century American politician. He was of average height and exceedingly dumpy, with a most-dourishly dour and very seriously serious look on his face. He had warts and a mole. In old photographs, his hair looks weird because he always wore a wig; he had lost all his hair when he was afflicted with fever during the War of 1812. He never drank alcohol, but he was addicted to arsenic and Canadian pornography, which crossed the border at Detroit in disturbingly large amounts.

Publicly, he avoided controversy as much as possible. Except when the Limeys were involved. His colleagues would tease him with lines like, "Oh, I think we should just let the Brits do what they want in Central America." To which Cass would respond with a string of obscenities. At the end, he might pull off his bright red wig and point to his bald head as he shouted, " I didn't lose my hair in the service of my country so the fucking Limeys could take over the Yucatan and start building pubs! There will be no tea drinking or cricket playing in the Yucatan if I have anything to say about it! Fuck the Limeys!"

(Author's note: Lewis Cass probably never said anything this extreme. But he did hate the Limeys. The British, I mean.)