Sometimes it's the little things that stick out most in our memories.
A 15-second scene in a sixth season episode of The Simpsons has inspired one Australian man to launch a petition that he hopes will increase the value of the Australian dollar. Let's break it down.
In the Simpsons episode "Bart vs. Australia," Bart makes a six-hour collect phone call to a house in the Australian Outback, trying to determine if the urban legend about water winding down a drain in the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere is true. Bart is indicted on charges of fraud, so the American government sends the family to Australia so that Bart can formally apologize for his actions.
Of course, this being The Simpsons, things escalate to ever more ridiculous proportions from there, but one of the most memorable bits of the episode comes in this short scene where the little boy who took the collect call is confronted by his father for the outrageous phone bill. The amount owed? "900 dollarydoos."
It was just one of several gags in the episode to poke fun at Australia, but it still sticks out in fans' minds. One such fan, a Mr. Thomas Probst, has created a petition on Change.org to have the name of the Australian Dollar formally changed to the "Dollarydoo."
Yeah, it's silly, and Probst knows it. But that's kind of the point.
Probst says on the petition's page that he's worried about the struggling Australian economy. He wants to stimulate it by drawing attention to it, making it a more desirable currency internationally. Renaming it the "Dollarydoo" would "make millions of people around the world want to get their hands on some Australian currency," he says, in turn driving up its value.
At press time, the petition had been signed by almost 36,000 individuals.
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