Rocking away
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On the Pulse was weeping purple tears onto a bedazzled and subtly fallic custom guitar last week when the sad news broke that Prince had gone to the great stage in the sky.
It was wrenching to know the world will be galactically less fabulous with the passing of the pop music icon, and we followed the breaking reports in hushed reverence. It’s a story we have heard too often this year. It seems too many greats are slowly departing and leaving world less bedazzled. But it seems even the great icons of rock star excess can’t escape the mundane. As we watched on, sobbing into diamond encrusted tissues, we were yanked out of our mourning by early reports that pop royal died of the flu. The flu? This is the man that shook his gender bender in awfully tight knickers and a tanktop for the world, and propped up his fabulous performances with the extremes of suggestibility. And he went out with the flu? And now our own Aussie rock legend Brian Johnson has left ACDC because of (wait for it) the possibility of permanent hearing damage? Where, thinks Pulse (that eternal shower singer), have all the rock stars gone?
Playing cards
As On the Pulse searched for loose change under the lounge cushions this week, it unexpectedly ran across the latest ABS figures on card fraud in Australia.
How it got under there On the Pulse has no idea, but the fact that just about everyone has some sort of card from their financial institution had On the Pulse reading on intensely.
One million Australians experienced card fraud totalling $2.1 billion during 2014-15.
That’s double the $1 billion ripped off 662,300 Aussies in 2010-11, and the largest numbers since the survey was started in 2007.
If there is any bright side to this at all, then it has to be that after reimbursements from financial institutions, total out of pocket losses at the time of the survey only added up to $84.8 million.
So the banks seem to be the ones losing out here.
And that, dear reader, probably goes some of the way in explaining why On the Pulse’s bank fees have increased lately; and why On the Pulse is reduced to regularly searching for lose change.