The people's Melbourne Cup Day

Each year, on the first Tuesday of November, is Melbourne Cup Day in Australia. Supposedly, it’s “the race that stops a nation” but in practical terms, this means:

• normally intelligent women wear hats that look like alien spacecraft (after a crash landing)
• people unable to tell a mare from a gelding (hint: look for the giant dong) become office bookmakers
• Australian workplace productivity is flattened into unrecognizable road-kill under the relentless wheels of cheap champagne and dodgy sweepstakes.
  

It’s all very Australian—except for the race entrants, those cocaine-snorting, multi-million-dollar wonder-ponies with gold-embroidered sphincters and pedigrees that fork off the Hapsburg family tree.

Elitist much?

That’s why we need a more egalitarian cup day, an event for the masses, the people’s race—Cane Toad Derby Day.

Here’s how Australia’s new national event will roll:

1. All derby steeds will be small, stout, warty and poo-brown.
2. Only steeds with a worthy name may enter, e.g. My Dom-rom-zom Novella, Bodacious Tatas (actually, sorry, that one’s already taken).
3. No silly hats allowed. Express your fashion sense through colour coordinating your tattoos or sporting a radical thong cut.
4. Rather than a starter’s gun, the event will begin with a three-way kiss between Hugh Jackman, Joe Manganiello and Alex Skarsgard (purrrrr) who will then lift the starter barrier.
5. No jockey whips allowed during the race. Those are reserved for the use of Hugh, Joe and Alex on one other during the post-race ‘celebrations’. Please bring a can of whipped cream to contribute to this event.
6. Anyone actually paying any attention to the race (instead of Hugh, Joe and Alex) should cheat as hard as they can (Jane Hood from A Sporting Chance recommends putting dog food on your shoes to lure your noble steed across the finish line).
7. After race day, entries can be recycled into souvenir purses and key rings so their greatness can live on.

I’m open to further ideas, bring ‘em on. And if you have a great name for a racing toad, let’s hear it.