Dylan's Rants. A Banana Report Special Feature, February 2001.

(aka my pathetic attempt at a Herald Heckler column)

What's happening with the coffee business in this town? Starbucks is opening up stores in the inner city faster than you can say "Five Dollars for a coffee?!?!!?". And at the other end of the retail spectrum, German supermarket chain Aldi is opening up stores faster than you can say "Where are the Freddo frogs?". No seriously, Aldi has said they keep their prices low by only selling a limited range of products, sawdust and Chocolate Hob Nobs. An Aldi spokesperson has been quoted as saying, "since we opened last month, our sales of sawdust and Chocolate Hob Nobs have reached an all time high! We hope to have another 100,000 stores open in Australia by the end of next month".

And who spends Five dollars on a cup of coffee anyways? When the GST came in, faced with the prospects of paying almost $3 at my local (cafe), I did what any honest man does: went to the markets and bought a $20 espresso machine. It almost works. The milk turns poo brown whenever you try to froth it and in summer it increases the temperature in the kitchen by ten degrees. But look at all the money I've saved!!!

I just worked out who spends five dollars on a cup of coffee: Americans. What's $5 Australian converted to American money? A quarter? A dime? When I was in New York at the end of 1999 my weekend ritual of a big coffee and an even bigger newspaper set me back AUD$10.25, and the dollar was at 65 cents then. No wonder they're all out here lapping up the inexpensive luxury of watered down bathwater coffee. I think the reason it was so expensive in New York was because I literally needed a forklift to carry the newspaper and the drink back to the youth hostel. You sure can tell Americans invented the word "super-size". The aforementioned bathwater, errr coffee, was so big it became an iced coffee towards the end, and personally, I don't know how any one is expected to read the Sunday New York Times in under a calendar month, because I sure couldn't.

Also in the news last week, it comes out that American kids are over-medicated on drugs to treat Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). I think medicating your children is a very serious issue that should be dealt with in a mature way by both of the childrenŐs parents. Personally, if I was the parent of an American child with ADHD, I think I should be the one entitled to the free drugs. Preferably one that tastes like pizza. I mean, this is the country where you can't get paracetamol without a prescription, but yummy delicious Ridalin and Prozac are dished out in a way not at all dissimilar to the way Seinfeld's Soup Nazi serves soup: in big portions for everybody! "No Ridalin for you... one month!"

Meanwhile at home, Johnny Howard is still of the firm political belief that the way to get re-elected is to keep increasing petrol prices, and re-affirm his belief in the full sale of Telstra. If California running without electricity and Melbourne having a leaky road tunnel didn't effectively let us all know how good privatising public assets is, nothing will. Telstra's latest multi-million dollar public relations campaign, quite oddly, features comedian Garry Who selling ice creams from a Mister Whippy-esque van. We all know that if Telstra was an ice cream van, they would charge us monthly cup and spoon rental, and the recording of "Green Sleeves" played over the PA system would constantly be interrupted by the words "Your order has been placed in a queue and will be served by the next available Ice Cream Customer Service Assistant. Please be patient, your Ice Cream is important to us". The ice cream truck metaphor is particularly apt when discussing Telstra's service commitment to rural Australia. When was the last time you saw an ice cream truck going up a dirt road to a northern territory cattle station or a western New South Wales wheat farm? If Telstra is going to be fully privatised, here's a tip, don't by more of those worthless Telstra shares, I think Semaphore is going to take off in a very big way, so buy shares in a Semaphore company, and failing that, carrier pigeons. It's the future of Australian communications, I tells you!

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