Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: quixotic
  • Music: Pink, "Ave Mary A."

Happy Australia Makes You Die Day!

Once again, my big list o' holidays* says that today is a holiday that is very important to me, and makes a big impact on my life. Maybe not as big an impact as Virus Appreciation Day (October 3rd), which I celebrate every year by not unleashing the pandemic, or Cuckoo Warning Day (June 21st), which is best celebrated by evolving parasitic wasps into telepathic humanoids, but still, it's important to me.

Today is Australia Day.

So today we celebrate the existence of Australia, the continent which proves that evolution did a lot of drugs when it was young. Today we celebrate the fact that Australia is full of things that want to make us all die, the fact that Australia is frequently on fire, and the fact that Australia essentially hates humanity. Specific things to celebrate about Australia include venomous snakes, spiders the size of dinner plates, marsupials, really interesting money, the koala (which will totally rip your face off if you poke it), and the cone snail, which is the size of a man's thumb and can kill you extremely dead. This is why you do not fuck around with the native wildlife of Australia.

Tonight I will celebrate by going to Kate's house to eat tasty Indian food and tell her things she never wanted to know about the many ways in which Australia can render you extremely deceased. There will be expository hand-gestures, and possibly even diagrams. Kate puts up with a lot from me, really. And later this year, I'll belatedly celebrate Australia Day by actually going to Melbourne, Australia, for the glory of WorldCon.

Thank you for existing, Australia! Today is your day. Your venomous, deadly, kicking-your-ass, being eaten by koalas day.

Hooray Australia!

(*I have a list containing a holiday for every single day of the year. Some days have more than one holiday listed. The world needs more excuses for a party.)
Tags: animals rock, australia makes you die, good things, in the wild, kate, silliness
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  • 131 comments

hasufin

January 26 2010, 16:02:17 UTC 7 years ago

Let's not forget to celebrate Australia for doing all sorts of stupid things to their environment back in the colonial days, so that we could ignore the results and allow the invasion of alien species into our ecosystem anyway!

grey_lady

January 26 2010, 16:52:07 UTC 7 years ago

Such as the delightful cane toad? Also quite poisonous.

hasufin

January 26 2010, 17:11:23 UTC 7 years ago

Just so. But also such mundane creatures as goats and rabbits.

sheistheweather

January 26 2010, 17:47:55 UTC 7 years ago Edited:  January 26 2010, 17:48:21 UTC

Australia has fantastic wildlife, yes.

A friend of mine who lives in Australia recently addressed this holiday:
"I have mixed feelings about Australia Day (which can be interpreted as, I really don't like Australia Day). Firstly, it's not technically celebrating anything more than the 'destruction of Aboriginals by White Settlement,' a move which saw the extinction of several different groups of people (including the Tasmanian Indigenous), and the destruction of important linguistic pathways and mythologies. Whole ancestries that had been around for thousands of years, maybe tens of thousands, wiped out by Settlers. Woot. Go Us. Let's party!

I have Indigenous members in my family (Koori and others), I have Aboriginal cousins and an Aunt (who I'm seeing tomorrow night, actually), and we're very aware of the connotations held by 'Invasion Day' thanks. We generally choose not to celebrate.

...

I love Australia. But I don't love the day chosen to celebrate Australia, and what it represents to me and my family members. Every day to me, is a day I love and celebrate my country. But today is a day I choose to uphold the wishes of the first Australians.

I'll not be celebrating Invasion Day."

So, hooray for excellent flora/fauna! Boo for crappy colonialism!

hasufin

January 26 2010, 18:12:52 UTC 7 years ago

I really wasn't going meaning to suggest anything about that. I think Australia has some wonderful and fascinating flora and fauna. In fact, the whole damned ecosystem is pretty cool in my opinion.

I haven't lived in Australia, not even visited. I'm aware that colonialism caused major issues and worse for the people who were already living there, but on that front I'm completely uneducated and don't want to muddy those waters. America has enough issues regarding our own history of colonialism and treatment of native people; we don't need to borrow anyone else's issues.

sheistheweather

January 26 2010, 18:37:03 UTC 7 years ago

I agree with you; our country has some SERIOUS issues along those lines as well.

seanan_mcguire

January 26 2010, 19:03:35 UTC 7 years ago

Could we not have a big discussion of colonialism in my happy Australian wildlife is awesome post? Please? Because seriously, I was a lot happier with the spiders.

sheistheweather

January 26 2010, 19:37:54 UTC 7 years ago

Ack. Gah. Yes. Stopping now.

http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2006/03/28/spider_wideweb__470x356,0.jpg

Here, have a nifty spider picture link as an apology. *chagrin*

vixyish

January 26 2010, 20:18:00 UTC 7 years ago

It's waving at me!

seanan_mcguire

January 26 2010, 20:23:09 UTC 7 years ago

Australia vs. the cane toad is a fight that no one wins.

silvertwi

January 27 2010, 00:06:32 UTC 7 years ago

You know, I watched a disturbing documentary on those. I think it was something like "Monty Python does a documentary" or that's how it was explained to us. I think I'd rather have watched a normal documentary.