February Is The Cruellest Month

I don't read much fiction but I admit some of it is quite good. Italo Calvino, Richard Brautigan,..., some others. The shorter and more fantastical the better. Calvino's "Invisible Cities" is an old favourite. You've undoubtedly heard of Calvino but many, many years ago after meeting a literary nun in a small mining town over lunch who sent me Brautigan's "Trout Fishing in America" I was hooked. His other books: "The Abortion", "The Pill vs the Springhill Mine Disaster" and "A Confederate General from Big Sur" sealed my fast love for his brilliant fantastical novellas. Fast because they only took about 2 hours to read (and I am a slow reader). I moved on. G.K.Chesterton's "The Man Who Who Was Thursday" is another. There was a Man. His name was Thursday. Something like that.

Other fantastical books which I enjoyed but which were much longer were Marquez' "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and John Fowles' "The Magus".

But the book I enjoyed the most was Yann Martel's "Life of Pi" because it is one of the few novels whose message I, like, totally got: sometimes it is better to believe in something (God) even when you know it/He doesn't exist than to believe in nothing. Barack Obama has said of "Life of Pi" that it is one of the most compelling arguments for the existence of God he has read, but, apologies Mr President, you got it wrong. It just says you should believe in God, not that He really exists. Invite me to the White House sometime and I'll explain the difference.

Which brings me to Shane Jones' "Light Boxes". A new and short, fantastical novella about a town in the grip of wintery "February" where flight is banished and innocence is stolen under the very (fake bird-beaked) noses of the villagers who are suffering from a crisis of belief. We live in an age where we idolise and demonise politicians like Obama and yet always deny our role in their deification, and the power we give them to hurt us personally when they inevitably fail. This is not a trivial book, despite its short length and apparently fantastical subject.

It is about America of course. And maybe America currently in the grip of an endless economic winter of their own creation. But a lot of novels are about America. If it was about Europe there would be an old bearded guy in a toga sitting in the corner drinking vodka complaining how things were so much better in the old days. But there isn't, quite.

The "light boxes" of the title are used by the residents of the damned village to temporarily escape their dour, wintery prison for one where the seasons are more ameniable. They literally immerse their heads in the light boxes to see their world in Spring and Summer. As a beautiful and apt metaphor for books I am frankly surprised it hasn't been used before.

Well that's all I'll say. Its message is very similar to "Life of Pi" - the truth that's out there isn't as important as what we believe in, but we should be careful what we believe (here he diverges from Martel) lest we misjudge the forces over which we have more control than we realise because...

But I've said enough. Jones name checks Calvino, Brautigan and ee cummings on page 69%(Kindle edition). You could have read "Light Boxes" in the time you've taken to read this review and I hope you do.

Shop Where The Miilionaires Shop

Maybe it's just a coincidence but there has only been one brief sighting of Coles' Coq Au Vin, Feed Your Family For Under $10 (FYFFUTD) on the telly. And even then it was just mentioned in passing. They didn't go through the farcical process of pretending Curtis Stone was actually picking someone from a crowd who just happened to be (a) married, (b) to someone of the opposite sex (sorry, this is Australia that's an oxymoron), (c) have two children, and (d) live in the right sort of home (more on this shortly). Can I just say the scripting for these ads is beyond terrible - whoever writes the dialogue has a tin ear. "Good, I need a Dad" sounds like a line from a movie about a needy orphan. But I digress.

My point in the previous post was that Coles had brought in the budget for this particular dish under $10 by ignoring the price of 2/3 bottle vin rouge (red wine to those Australians reading this who haven't been to France, or even Le Patisserie). They did this by saying that this wine was to be found "in the pantry". Sure we all have a bottle or two of almost finished shiraz lying around for a splash of red wine in the bolognese sauce but 2/3 bottle? This implies you were up late with your friends drinking (again) and against the best advice of your partner (or cat, delete as applicable) opened that fourth bottle only to find that after five minutes you were so drunk you fell asleep in each others arms only to awaken the next morning with a look of embarrassment and then relief that you had gone no further #weveallbeentheredontworry. You then poured the undrunk glasses back into the bottle and set it aside as "cooking wine". Maybe this happens in Curtis Stone's house all the time but not mine. I drug my friends if I want to have non consensual sex with them. But I continue to digress.

So I contacted Coles and the FBI (known as the Consumer Complaints Council in Victoria) about the ad pointing out that claiming 2/3 bottle wine as being free was deceptive and they should withdraw their ad. My reply from the CCC thanked me for my communication and pretty much pointed out they were legally obliged to ignore it. Coles said nothing directly. But, like I stated up front, they have only mentioned the Coq Au Vin FYFFUTD in passing and it didn't form the centre of an ad where they go through the ingredients and all the kids at the end go "tarf, arf" making vomiting noises, least that's what I do when I see these inane ads. The digression is about to end, bear with me.

So perhaps Coles read my email and realised the cat was out of the bag (Cat in a Bag - there's one for Continental) and pulled the ads. But here is my point. All those families in these ads have youngish parents in their late twenties or early thirties and they all live in houses with enormous country kitchens that open onto enormous lawns. And, according to Coles, they have pantries. Pantries! Houses like this cost well in excess of $1m in places like Melbourne and Sydney.

So here's my question: why the fudge are they trying to budget a family of four meal for under $10?

Coles Coq Up on the Price Fixee Menu

The Masterchef juggernaut lumbers on and in an attempt to milk the franchise for all it is worth Masterchef Inc. cross promotes every dish with Coles (the place you "shop where a Masterchef shops") frequently using Curtis Stone who appears both on the program as an occasional judge and fronting Coles' "Feed Your Family For Under $10" ads.

Last week two of the contestants on Masterchef were in a "fix the dish" competition using "Coq Au Vin". This week (Herald-Sun pg 8, July 8) there is, not suprisingly, a FYFFU$10 promotion using a recipe for "Coq Au Vin". To demonstrate that it indeed costs no more than $10 they list the ingredients (eg. 1 medium red onion, diced - $0.26). Included is "500mL dry red wine (from the pantry)" with nothing added to the total cost for this ingredient. 500mL is hardly a dash, it is 2/3 bottle wine FFS. Even a bottle of cheap cooking wine would cost $7-8. If anyone knows a restaurant that considers 2/3 bottle of wine to be not worth adding to the bill please let me know.

Why do this? Well without including the wine the cost of the dish is estimated at $7.59. With the wine included it would be at least $12. So to keep it under $10 they just ignore the cost of one of the two main ingredients (chicken & wine, the clue is in the name). Is this a deliberately misleading ad? It sure is, and it also shows how desperate the Masterchef franchise is to wring every last $ out of its viewers in increasingly dubious cross promotions. Fix the Dish? More like Fix the Price.

Update Oct 26 2010: Choice Magazine have just announced their annual "Shonkys" for deceptive advertising and guess who topped the list? Yes, Coles for their FYFFU10 campaign that's who. And the example they used was the Coq au Vin. Yay for the truth! Sadly the response of Coles was to deny there was a problem (the first mistake when you get caught out - always admit you were wrong and seek forgiveness).

They're Back!!!

Who's back you say? Caught up in the frenzied excitement of me running around the room screaming "They're back!!!", as if I could run, which I can't.

"They're back!!!" I scream again like a middle aged gay man at the reunion concert for Spandau Ballet.

"They're back!!!" I scream like a Sydney Swans supporter surprised by my team's sudden ranking #1 at the top of the AFL.

"They're back!!!" I scream like an ageing Olivia Newton-John fan retrieving her leggings from a box at the back of the garage marked "80s exercise gear DNR"

Who's back? I hear your exasperated (is that even a word?) pleading.

Well only the Continental ad family. That's who. Not that I ever gave up hope. Though to be fair they've lost their old sparkle. It's like they're just going through the motions in front of the cameras. Maybe it's a contractual obligation. Or maybe the father's straying to the Telstra family Xmas ads has lead him to tone down the paternal bonhomie. But I hope he's just bowed and not broken.

Roast Chicken in a Bag. Genius. They're back!!!

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.