I Heart You, I Heart Me, Hiatus

It is almost 12 months since my last posting on Madbreak (well, 5mins if you include the three below). There is a good reason for this. On April 2 2009 I went into hospital, with a slight cold, where I stayed for about 8 months. Since then I haven't really been that interested in blogging, but I feel it is now time to unleash my medication fuelled insights on the media on an unsuspecting world.

I have just added some posts I put up on Posterous which I will include here for continuity. I watched a lot of television in hospital (at $4.50 a day that cost me over $1000 for a dicky CRT that only showed free to air analog channels, thank God for morphine based pain killers). The most notable development in the advertising world was the appearance and then sudden disappearance of the storyline Continental family. I miss them. I blame the networks. I blame the advertsers. But mostly I blame the drugs.

Continental Drift

You know who I miss? That family from the series of Continental ads from 2009. He was some sort of tradie/subcontractor and she was from the right side of the tracks. It was an Uptown Girl/Downtown Guy romance. There were two kids. Dad & son were always out playing cricket or footy. The girl, Emma, had "her (favourite tv) show" whose title we were never told, presumably because the ads were shown across different channels. I'm guessing it was Idol. In the end though things were falling apart, her mother "The Dragon" thought she had married beneath herself. Despite cooking her heart out with dishes like Continental Past Bake (just add water and bake) there was something wrong. Things were tight money-wise.The ads stopped suddenly and we weren't told why. And then we saw the father in Telstra ads over Xmas. In an even more upmarket house/family. No wonder he was broke supporting two families.


He'll only be happy though with a girl from his own socioeconomic class - maybe a barmaid from Rooty Hill RSL where I'm guessing he drinks after work. Or with me, I like 'em a bit chunky ;)

What does all this prove: Continental, you can't sell Cup-A-Soup to the middle classes (except when they're at Uni).

Side Effects Include Incredulity

Ads in Australia for pseudo medicine are rife. Three that spring to mind are an ad for lemon detox that claims to aid weight loss, another for a mattress containing magnets for back pain and a third claiming to “support” IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome). In all cases no medical information supporting the claims is given (apart from vaguely described “surveys” in the small print) and it’s fair to say there is none. The term “support” seems to have been invented when, in a rare moment of action, the AAS banned companies from unproven claims for their products as “cures”. There are also products claiming to “support” female and male fertility. A product either increases, decreases or has no effect on fertility, it does not support it. The only time you support your children is after they are born, not before they are conceived. Unless you have a fertility problem that needs addressing by a doctor then eating healthily is all you need to support your fertility. Supplements such as folic acid already address specific prenatal risks such as spina bifida. Similarly the liver and kidneys are superb detox organs that have evolved over 100s of millions of years. Liver and kidney failure are serious diseases that need to be addressed by a doctor, not a sippy, lemony drink.

In the US, frequently and unfairly derided for being a litigious society, no company would dare make such claims. Indeed in advertisements for anything vaguely medical they must list honestly and in detail any side effects noticed in studies or tests. This can sometimes have an unintended hilarious consequence where, for example, an anti-nausea medicine might possibly induce nausea or fat replaced chips lead to “anal leakage”.

Sadly in Australia no such requirements exist and while genuine medicines and treatments are exempted from full disclosure, let alone bogus ones, I can still lie in a magnetic bed sipping lemon detox. Who knows, the weight loss from sipping the latter may help reduce the back pain I seek relief from in buying the former. But I doubt it.

Disclosure: The author is a doctor. But not that sort of doctor.

A Tale of Two Books

Consider the opening lines of two books written a century apart about the Italian Renaissance. They vigorously demonstrate how the style of popular historians has changed from pseudo-academic lecturing to one that seeks to involve the reader with the sights, sounds and smells of an era, albeit one that is largely manufactured in the author's own imagination. The other difference between the two books is that only the former is available for the kindle, perhaps because it is an out of copywrite "classic". I know which one I want to read.

Jacob Burckhardt "The Civilisation of the Renaissance"
"This work bears the title of an essay in the strictest sense of the
the word. No one is more conscious than the writer with what limited
means and strength he has addressed himself to a task so arduous...zzzz"

JH.Plumb "The Italian Renaissance"
"The face of medieval Europe was scarred with the ruins of its past. In
Rome itself, the Colosseum housed the barbarous Frangipani and their
armed retainers, greedy, lawless, destructive; the Forum provided a
quarry for churches and rough pasture for the cattle market, and
beneath the broken columns of the temple of Castor and Pollux the
bullocks awaited their slaughter."