December 30, 2003
BUY A CALENDAR, DOUG
Midway through his preview of The Dukes of Hazzard Reunion in this week’s Sydney Morning Herald TV guide (no link) SMH television writer Doug Anderson yields to one of the darker personalities shrieking inside his head:
All around us is abundant evidence of poisoned minds. The people who design landmines, those who concoct children’s cartoons, who sully the blue sky with corporate messages. The sickos who invent step ads and illuminated signs on taxis; freaks who put promotional messages on train tickets, postmarks, petrol pump nozzles and deface the grass at football stadiums; the stroppy little entrepreneurs who spray-paint the name of their fledgling dot-com outfits on the footpath; the spammers and mobile-phone spruikers clogging public space with their wares, jamming our mailboxes with fibs, drivel and flannel from the government ...
They will rot in hell, of course ...
I kind of get the feeling Doug doesn’t much like advertising. Funny, then, that on the facing page to this rant is an advertisement for, among other things, mobile phones. Those poisoned minds pay your wages, Doug!
Doug’s mind is worse than poisoned, by the way. He literally doesn’t know what day it is. The Dukes reunion airs on January 1, a date most of us know as “New Year’s Day.” Here’s another extract from Crazy Doug’s preview, published on the January 1 listings page:
Boxing Day is, after all, a day when the effects of massive self-indulgence are being felt and when many people are prepared to suspend all critical faculties and surrender to total passivity. What could be more appropriate for a such a day than The Dukes of Hazzard Reunion.
Boxing Day falls on December 26.
UPDATE. Iowahawk has a cure for Doug, in comments.
Posted by Tim Blair at December 30, 2003 12:59 PM*** rubs eyes, checks top of page for blogger's name ***
***considers Tim's reputation for honesty***
Man, you got some gonzo columnists Down Under, but he's much more interesting than Frazier Moore of the Associated Press.
Posted by: Bill Peschel at December 30, 2003 at 01:06 PM'Those poisoned minds pay your wages, Doug!'
What! They pay people to type, er, write, for the Sydney Morning Herald?
Posted by: ilibcc at December 30, 2003 at 01:11 PMThe usual psychologically projective/mis-directive crap from leftists. What unbelievable hypocrites. The worst vulgarities of commercial advertising are zip, zero, nada, in comparison in terms of energy, effort, distractingness, tiresomeness, oppressiveness, to the endless cults of personality, the gigantic posters, the parades, mandatory attendance, mandatory participation, the punch in the jaw from your brother if you fail to applaud Tito at the stadium, the tyrannical advertisements, of the communists.
Posted by: ForNow at December 30, 2003 at 01:52 PMLandmines = children's cartoons = bad advertising? Uh. Ooo-kay.
Posted by: nvdoyle at December 30, 2003 at 01:57 PMWell, at least he didn't have a giant papermache head of Bush or Cheney in his column.
Posted by: JorgXMcKie at December 30, 2003 at 02:30 PMDOUG: Darn!
TIM: What's the matter, Doug?
DOUG: I ruined the point of an entire scathing TV review column by messing up the date... again!
TIM: Hmmm... it sounds like you might suffer from CHRONOLOGICAL DYSFUNCTION!
DOUG: Sounds serious! Can you tell me more?
TIM: Chronological dysfunction is caused by lack of advertising in the bloodstream. It attacks your sense of time, like the little hammers and sickles in this picture, blocking the "T" zone.
DOUG: Yow! Is there anything I can do?
TIM: Glad you asked, Doug! Buy the new improved 2004 Advertising Calendars! Not only will you know what day Boxing Day is, you will get the all the rich advertising your system needs to clear your "T" zone!
DOUG: Wow, thanks Tim! No more commie Chronological Dysfunction for me... I'm keeping my dates straight with ADVERTISING CALENDARS!
Posted by: iowahawk at December 30, 2003 at 02:47 PMi like how DUG (the tv show reviewer) can equate ANY tv show with the evils of the bush administration and the creeping menace of western imperialism. he's a gem! i still think he's pissed off that they didnt give him an IMPORTANT job tho ...
Posted by: roscoe.p.coltrane at December 30, 2003 at 04:19 PMp.p.s. the show that Dugald was trying to review isnt that bad... i saw it last year and it has everything that a good movie needs. ie, it has several car chases, chicks in tight clothes and a happy ending... plus it stars an orange DODGE charger with a 440 cube chrysler donk and a slapstick auto. what more do you want?
Posted by: roscoe.p.coltrane at December 30, 2003 at 06:58 PMTV listings are flexible at the best of times, and at this time of year they're more likely to change at short notice than any other. Perhaps, then, the error was the editor's and not Doug's -- he may have written the piece for a Boxing Day screening, and when it was moved the editor didn't change the text.
Posted by: Robert at December 30, 2003 at 07:03 PM
Well, it looks like them Duke boys got under Cooter Anderson's skin somethin' fierce. Folks in Hazzard County still talk about the day ol' Bo 'n' Luke took the General Lee down under and ran 'er so fast through Sydney that they hit the gas on January 1st and stomped on the brakes six days earlier. I don't know about that, but they say ol' Anderson blew a head gasket when he saw 'em and he ain't been right since.
"flannel from the government ..."
What th--? I never got any flannel! Were we supposed to be on a mailing list or something?
Posted by: ushie at December 30, 2003 at 09:57 PM"Spruikers"? How do you Aussies even know how to pronounce these awesome words you're always making up?
I'd like to look it up in the Macquarie Dictionary, the recognized authority on Australian English, but those low-down dirty spruikers want me to get a subscription to their site, so I just looked around on Australian Web pages and figured out from context that it means something like scammers or shady businessmen, right?
(By the way, props to Dave S. for the Waylon narration imitation.)
Posted by: Combustible Boy at December 30, 2003 at 10:21 PMYep, CB, definite overtones of "scammers or shady businessmen".
More particularly, it is someone whose "job" it is to talk about how damn good some dubious product or service is - overstate its merits, make outlandish promises about it etc etc etc. At least that's the way I use it. There is a verb "to spruik" too.
Posted by: Bob Bunnett at December 30, 2003 at 10:37 PMErnie, you're right. I hear they're both lovers of flannel.
Posted by: joe at December 31, 2003 at 12:37 AMThe people who design landmines and those who concoct children’s cartoons are in the same class of villan??
What about people who design brightly-colored junior-sized landmines for children? Like the Funmine(tm) and the Kiddy Blaster 2000 (ages 8 to 12)?
Posted by: Amos at December 31, 2003 at 08:00 AM"Landmines = children's cartoons = bad advertising? Uh. Ooo-kay."
Yes, NVDoyle, true. The late Princess Diana was known to campaign against land mines and, had she lived, planned to work vigorously against Scooby-Doo and in opposition to those TV ads with the jingles that stay in your head all day.
Andrew Morton reports in his bio of her that she used to shoot out the picture tubes of her tellies at her royal castle at Graceland.
Lemme see if I can find the page...
Doug Anderson has been known to recycle his own movie reviews for films like the Blues Brothers and Pulp Fiction. At least this time he's writing something fresh.
Posted by: Peter Ness at January 1, 2004 at 04:00 PM