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i haven't been in the country for the last month, so i don't really know what's going on here. i'm sure nothing terribly new. gas prices shot up pretty seriously while i was gone. shocker.
i spent the last month throughout southeastern australia. while there are nine million things i could write about here, i'll try to keep it relevant to what has been the theme of this blog so far.

one thing i noticed is that there is what seems to be, at least compared to here, a pretty serious water shortage. everywhere you go, there are signs announcing the level of water restrictions, which vary from area to area, city to city, state to state. in melbourne, it was level 3a. in apollo bay, it was level 2. basically, the country is in a serious drought, the worst it's been in one hundred years. guess that's to be expected when you colonize a land that is largely desert, huh? yeah, they don't really have enough water to support twenty-one million people living in a land area essentially the size of the states. and especially not twenty-one million people living these fat fucking existences like americans, eating all types of irrigated produce and factory-farmed livestock.

so anyway, there are signs everywhere telling you not to drink from a lot of water sources, such as particular sinks, as well as most sprinklers and whatnot, as it is recycled water. there are also large (maybe six to eight feet tall by eight or ten feet in diameter) water tanks in a lot of places that are used to collect rainwater, which is then filtered for consumption. there are signs by lots of sinks and toilets reminding you of the water emergency and telling you that you should use as little water as possible.

toilets there generally have two buttons. they don't have levers, whether in public or private facilities. it's basically all the same. there is one button with a half filled circle for flushing pee down the toilet and another button with a completely filled circle for flushing ca ca down the drain. the latter uses more water than the former. and no, the water doesn't go the other way there. the coriolis effect is not really in effect cause toilets don't flush, they gush. really - water just fucking shoots down the drain, straight. their toilets use a lot less water than ours.

i felt like i was living life just a bit closer to industrial collapse. i mean, shit, just last year, the city of adelaide was in discussions to provide its residents with bottled water if things got much worse than they were. it simply doesn't rain very often in a lot of places.

that will come here at some point. it has to. it should be already, but it won't come until people are fucking pushed to do it. i'm sure using water however like, provided that you can pay for it, is essential to most americans' concepts of freedom.