Pillow-tax.

PM Duck (left) and Tony Rabbit (right) - CNN World News

   I should probably be paying more attention to Australian politics -- I no longer know who is running the country. Last I heard it was dependent on three random fucks who aren't part of the two leading parties, the ALP (Australian Labour Party) or the Liberal Democrats, led by Prime Minister Gillard and Tony Abbott (as pictured above respectively).

   Frankly, both are retarded. Labour wants the NBN, National Broadband Network, to go ahead. Conservatives wanting billions of dollars of spending? wut. The Lib Dems., on the other hand, do not want the network. What they both do want, however, is an internet filter. Fuck. That. Shit. I want my 4chan.

  To be honest, I want neither to win, but I dislike the Labour's use of spending in other sectors (read: shitty schooling plans that never work) whilst I would enjoy cable NBN framework in my area. Lib Dems. wouldn't support that, but they know how the infrastructure would benefit from their expenditure. That being said, the ALP would probably just end up laying some shitty cable networks to the middle of fucking nowhere with only 10 Mbps capabilities. Melbourne is the only city in Australia to currently supply cable to over 70% of it's residents. Did I mention they can get 100 Mbps cable down there? Yeah, they can. Sydney has <10% cable access by area, and then it's only 20 Mbps. Why doesn't the wealthiest and most populated city in the country have better internet infrastructure? This is Australian logic right here.

Or rather, a lack thereof.

And that's the shit I have to deal with.

   So yeah, I'm living in this little, nobody-ville called Sydney. Jesus Christ, people, who's bright idea was it to take a bunch of convicts and give them their own fucking continent? Give them Denmark or something; all they're good for is free drugs (read: marijuana, et cetera) and the occasional pastry.

   Where to start, where to start. Hmmm, perhaps with the kids? The "future of the world" and all the jazz (yeah, because entrusting  insurance industries to scores of people with degrading academics is fucking GENIUS) Every damned school here is a fucking mess -- I'm helping out with an economics class at an inner Sydney school, as they need some experience in a new program they're doing -- and these people are so disgustingly pathetic. Every second day you hear of a new staff member going on leave and then taking an extended stay at their hotel (some of them are pretty good at acting depressed/sick/whatever to maintain their facade).

   Now a growing trend in Australia which they're attempting to siphon off of New Zealand (the lesser, sheepier Australia) is a dependency on the growing film schools and the film industry. How do you expect to keep an economy afloat on the entertainment industries? Sure, digital technology and software is a lucrative market, but look at Japan --  the massive service industry has taken hits during economic recessions and troughs. The Australian dollar isn't the most capable of currencies; it's strong (0.91 US dollars per AUS$ or some such), but the PPP (purchasing power of parity) in Australia is terrible, everything is extremely overpriced in comparison to the United States.

   I lived in the United Arab Emirates for over half my life. I could buy a Coca Cola (or any canned beverage, for that matter) for a 1AED, or one dirham. That's equivalent to US$0.30, or about AUS$0.35. It costs around $3.00 here for a fucking can of coke. That's almost ten-fold. In order to travel here to Sydney, I gave up fucking FINANCIAL SECURITY in exchange foooorrr... what? I do not know. Rent here is ridiculous, taking up a mortgage leaves you in the red for three times the duration the average American will be repaying their loans. I've long work for insurance companies (or at least had dealings with them considering my parents were health insurance industry underwriters) - auto insurance, travel insurance, health insurance, home insurance, you name it. The amount of utter CRAP they get from Australian citizens is just mind-blowing, as if the most retarded occurrences require detail and precision beyond human capability. File a claim. Wait a while. DO NOT CALL SEVENTEEN DAMN TIMES A DAY FOR INQUIRIES. "Derp refinance my mortgage so I can buy a new car please derp". I'm sorry, what the hell is wrong with you? They come up with this crap and yet they want insurance for everything, all the time, focused on them as if nothing else is going on.  Ironically, flights are pretty cheap, and we all know the survival rate of Qantas passengers, don't we? (That was a joke, people.)

   It's a wonder the credit of some of these people can be considered in the black sometimes; if only negligence in spending was taken into account to a higher standard. Why spend money on editing the looks of your car with spoilers are crap like that when your housing price is plummeting due to lack of maintenance and your growing interest on the constantly refinanced mortgage? This is Australian logic right here.

Or rather, a lack thereof.