What A Racket
Which country boasts the the largest number of venomous creatures?
- Mexico
- Brazil
- Australia
Brazil and Mexico, neither of which were ever part of the British Empire, do not factor into the matter, so, if you were being exiled to some godforsaken part of the World, back in the day, Australia … despite being the bronze medalist in terms of sheer numbers … despite being home to the ten most venomous creatures in the entire World … was your exile of choice rather than The Americas.
If you were exiled to Australia, it was for Life with no hope of early release — life meant life.
If you were exiled to The Americas, it was for one to five years and you were free to return home afterwards.
So, why given the choice … which, of course, you weren’t, but humour me … why on Earth would you choose Australia?
Why?
Because two or three years in The Americas were considered cruel and unusual punishment … a punishment you would be lucky to survive. Five years was an outright death sentence — you weren’t expected to live that long.
Now why should that be?
Australia was a harsh environment — leaving aside all the different ways to be bitten, stung or clawed to death, the landscape itself would kill you … and if the geography didn’t get you, the climate would.
Sure, there are some environmentally harsh parts of North America too but lots of it is comfortably habitable — Australia doesn’t have quite the same charm in that respect.
So, what was the problem?
The people.
if the indigenous inhabitants … who were understandably somewhat negatively inclined towards your kind … didn’t kill you, your own kind would — in fact the latter were infinitely more likely to.
And, so, the biggest, meanest, nastiest, most murderous psychopaths, sociopaths and other evildoers survived, whilst the otherwise relatively decent ‘common or garden’ criminals fared less well.
The end result, after generations of this, is the phenomenon known as Trick-or-Treating … almost all pre-1940 occurrences of which took place in the U.S.A. … according to which children are actively encouraged to wander from household to household in their neighbourhood, extorting money/gifts/whatever they can get with menaces.
If my copies of Deadline magazine weren’t in storage right now, I’d dig out the one with the Tank Girl calendar and scan it for you — it pictures TG on a motorcycle, with the bloodied body of a child crushed beneath the front wheel and her saying “Trick or treat, cunt!”
Yes, I am being curmudgeonly and spoiling what’s “only a bit of lighthearted fun for the little’uns” … if you’re sociopathic vermin that is — the rest of us regard it as indoctrinating the next generation of vicious criminals into the ways of The Mob.
Besides which …
You love it really 😜
