The Great Emu Wars
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Cold Open: The Great Emu [ ee-myoo ] War! Not EE-MOOOO War - Eee MYOO War. I hear you Aussie Suckers. As World War I came to an end, Australia - whose economy was tanking, tried to figure out what to do with their returning veterans. They decided to give many of them parcels of land in Western Australia where they could grow wheat. And then the Great Depression hit. It hit countries all over the world, and few harder than Australia, and hit few Australians harder than many of those veteran farmers. They now struggled to sell their wheat. AND THEN - to make things EVEN WORSE - Emus [ ee-myoo ] started showing up. Lots of them. Around 20,000. And they were real hungry. And they figured out that wheat…. is PRETTY tasty. No gluten free diet for them. They wanted ALL the gluten. These new farmers were now being financially terrorized by a massive mob of Emus [ ee-myoos ]. And yes, a mob is the “technical” term for a group of Emus [ ee-myoo ]. These large flightless, strange-looking bumbling dinosaur birds tore through fences, ate crops, and sometimes, even attacked farmers - especially if they spotted a shiny object on them, like a coin or belt buckle. Australia’s national bird became a national pest. The “Emu [ ee-myoo ] infestation” got so bad that these desperate farmers reached out to the Australian government for help. In their quest for solutions, they skipped over the Agricultural or Ecology folks and even the Animal Management folks and went straight…… to the Ministry of WAR. The government would soon send three soldiers, armed with two machine guns and a film crew. Probably should’ve sent in a lot more troops and a lot more guns. A war was waged. Man versus beast. A pretty one-sided war since the beasts didn’t have guns - but a war nonetheless. And it appears as if the Emus [ ee-myoo ] ………may have won? How is that possible!?! We return to the land down under today to suck Australia’s Great Emu [ ee-myoo ] War — - on this bird-brained, machine gun, invasive creature edition…. of Timesuck. PAUSE TIMESUCK INTRO I. Welcome! I.A.Happy Monday: Happy Monday, everyone! Hail Nimrod, Hail Lucifina, Praise Bojangles, and glory be to Triple M. I’m Dan Cummins, the Suck Master - just one nickname today - and you are listening to Timesuck. B.Charity: Quick reminder that the Bad Magic Productions charity of the month was No Kid Hungry dot org. Thanks to the Space Lizards who helped us donate $12,200. To find out more, or to donate more than you have already, go to https://www.nokidhungry.org/ Link in the episode description. C.Merch: Got another Hell Yearbook tee in the store at badmagicmerch.com The Truck Stop Killer. Robert Ben Rhoades. Voted most likely to forget the safe word. (SAW VOICE) “You cannot attain sexual ascension without it, slave! Incubus commands you to wear it over some nipple rings connected to a car battery.” D.Additional Announcements: Also - a great comic and friend of mine, the fantastic Kelsey Cook has a new standup special coming out! Kelsey Cook’s Epix special airs on Friday Feb. 26th. It’ll air Friday night, Feb. 26th at either midnight or 12:30am ET. It's a 30 min special that's part of Epix's series called "Unprotected Sets, and it can fluctuate each week so they don't know for sure until the week of. Hope you get lots of new laughs with Kelsey Cook and her new Epix Unprotected Sets special ! E.Segue to Topic: And now onto the Great Emu [ ee-myoo ] War. Some people call it the Great Emu [ ee-myoo ] War because there were a couple distinct phases of it, with a first assignment and a second after they had reevaluated the methods of the first. In a way, the Emu [ ee-myoo ] War/War would continue through the 50s with farmers continually asking for assistance, though they didn’t get much. In the end it would be the advent of better and cheaper fences that would finally put an end to the biggest hostilities between humans and Emu [ ee-myoo ]. Today’s suck is fucking ridiculous on so many levels, but perhaps it’s the right kind of palette cleanser after last week’s trip through Dante’s nightmarish vision of the Christian hell, which of course came after an actual hell on Earth in the Armenian Genocide the week before. Let’s get into it. PAUSE TIMESUCK INTERLUDE II. Intro/Establish Premiss: Australia. The Land Down Under as popularized by Men at Work. THANK you Colin Hay. Great Aussie band! If you haven’t Colin’s acoustic version of Overkill, are you even alive? The Land Down Under is where we will be spending the majority of our time today covering this delightfully odd little slice of history. And, although I haven’t been, I’ve heard from many it’s a very good land. In the 2020 US News and World Report Countries with the Highest Quality of Life rankings, Australia placed 5th out of the 73 nations ranked. The Quality of Life sub-ranking is based on an equally weighted average of scores from nine country attributes that relate to quality of life in a country: affordable, a good job market, economically stable, family friendly, income equality, how many people are down to fuck, how politically stable is it, how safe, how well-developed is the public education system, how much ice cream is both tasty and affordable, and how well-developed is the public health system? I may have added the down to fuck part and the ice cream - but they SHOULD be included. More ice cream and more sex certainly leads to more happiness, doesn’t it? Hail Lucifina! The Quality of Life sub-ranking score had a 17% weight in the overall Best Countries ranking, where Australia also took 5th place. My neighbor to the North, sweet Canada, took #1 in quality in life. The other top five were Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Switzerland was ranked the best overall nation. The USA? 15th in quality of life. 7th best nation overall. I say all this to point out that Australia is one of the most successful nations in the world. Wealthy, healthy, modern and one of the most desirable places on earth to put down some meat-sack-roots…. … which is all-the-more impressive when you take into account how the majority of the country slash continent is a barren, unforgiving, snake-filled nightmare. The COASTS…. the coast are INCREDIBLE. But the giant majority of the land in the middle? Nope. Fuuuuuuuuuuck that. Not for me. Not for many, actually. The Outback. Seems to be a crazy place. It’s as massive as it is horrible for human habitation. And it covers more than 70% of the continent slash country. And less than 5% of Australia’s population lives there. And almost all of them live in the Outback’s coastal areas. Over 1.8 million square miles of the Outback are desert and very, VERY few people live there. Temperatures in the Outback’s deserts can reach over 120 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s a wild land - one of the least inhabited places on Earth - full of extreme weather and extreme wildlife. Plenty of bugs and critters - critters like Emus [ ee-myoos ] The Great Emu [ ee-myoo ] War took place on the edge of this desert. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/reports/2014/10/ the-modern-outback Really looking forward to exploring these strange “war” today - such a a unique piece of history. And looking forward to exploring a strange and fascinating continent as well. Australia has always seemed especially magical to me. I really, really hope I make it there for a vacation…. or for shows - who knows? - in the next few years. Australia’s biggest city is Sydney, followed by Melbourne and Brisbane [briz bun] . Since over 85 percent of the population live in cities, Australia is among the countries with the highest degree of urbanization. Australia, however, is known here in the states for its outdoors. It has the reputation of being unsettled - being home to a massive numbers of species of every kind of animal out there that can and will fuck you up. A land full of plenty of bugs, snakes, crocodiles, and other beasts that can and will kill you. But is it really that dangerous? Maybe not as dangerous as it’s been portrayed in a lot of films and tv shows. Much of the continent IS pretty rugged though. The small portion of Australians actually living in or near the Outback - away from urban areas - the overwhelming majority of the nation’s geography - face unique challenges due to their geographic isolation, and they often have poorer health and welfare outcomes than their urban counterparts. While it seems most people picture the entire Outback being arid and desert-like, the Outback regions extend from the northern to southern Australian coastlines and actually encompass various types of biomes, including tropical and monsoonal climates in northern areas, arid areas and semi-arid areas. And people who live in the Outback - desert and non-desert - DO continually deal with wildlife - including feral-but-usually domesticated animals like camels that thrive in central Australia, like wild horses known as ‘brumbies,’ feral pigs, foxes, cats - SO MANY FUCKING CATS - goats, rabbits, and more. And many of these animals - like emus [ee myus] - have left destructive marks on the environment, and a lot of time and money has been spent eradicating or “culling” them in an attempt to help protect the Outback’s fragile rangelands.