FuNkOmaTiC Typewriter in Dum Dumville

Once the pandemic is completely under control – at least in this part of the world – I’m looking forward to receiving word that New Zealand screenwriter and film director Taika Watiti is planning a Covid-19 craziness movie, based in Dum Dum. Yes, there IS such a place, woven into the Tweed of New South Wales and appropriately situated between Mount Warning and Stokers Siding. More to the point, one passes through Dum Dum on the road from Nimbin, the dope capital of Australia. What’s more, it could be said (as I once found to my cost) to be on a steep downward slope to Mullumbimby, where some years ago the infamous FuNkOMaTiC portable typewriter ended up. Mullumbimby is nowadays the heartland of our counterculture and 5G conspiracy theorists. So all in all, Dum Dum is just the spot to set a Watiti movie, one with the working title of How the FuNkOMaTiC Spread 5G and Killed the World. It’ll be a must-see.

Taika Watiti is, of course, ideally suited to the task of making a Coronavirus-conspiracy theories spoof movie, if he can fit it in around The Mandalorian and plans for a live action film adaptation of the post-apocalyptic cyberpunk Akira. Watiti has already produced such great works as the Zombie flick What We Do in the Shadows (with Watiti, above, as Viago Von Dorna Schmarten Scheden Heimburg [né von Blitzenberg], aged 379, above), Jojo Rabbit and that masterpiece, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, based on a novel by Barry Crumb (below). Equally, Watiti’s co-Kiwi Rhys Darby, of Flight of the Conchords fame, would be a must for a starring role, having appeared in both What We Do in the Shadows (as a werewolf) and Hunt for the Wilderpeople. In particular, we would have to have Darby reprise his role as Psycho Sam in the Wilderpeople movie, complete with his aluminium colander hat to keep what’s left of his brain free from infiltration, and his belief the Earth beyond the bush to be a globe full of “form-fillers”. Darby, don’t forget, also proved his credentials for extreme creepiness as Guy Mann the lizard-man in the X-Files season 10 third episode Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster. And oh, Darby will play the FuNkOMaTiC typist, given his real-life background as an army Morse-code operator. I think you’ll agree this whole project will fit together perfectly.

Above, Barry Crumb typing one of his novels on an Olivetti Lettera 32, and below, Sam Neill and Julian Dennison in colander protection hats provided by Psycho Sam in Wilderpeople, and Rhys Darby as the lizard-man in the X-Files.

Watiti’s starting point for his script should be my April 2013 blog post “Kinky Friedman and the FuNkOMaTiC Typewriter”, which was in a way an explanation for the mysterious disappearance of the FuNkOMaTiC in Mullumbimby, based on Friedman’s book Kill Two Birds & Get Stoned (a title in part borrowed from that fabulously weird Irish writer Flann O’Brien). Kill Two Birds is about Walter Snow, the author of The Rise and Fall of Nothing At All and like O’Brien an alcoholic. Snow is snowed under with writer’s block while trying to finish the “Great Armenian Novel” on a typewriter. His creativity is numbed by “wacky tobaccy known as Malabimbi Madness”. For Malabimbi, read, obviously, Mullumbimby. If you think this is all getting a bit far-fetched, bear in mind the “rumors about US-funded bioresearch laboratories in Armenia being part of a Coronavirus disinformation campaign launched by Russian media”. And that Armenia is going to take its 5G from Huawei. Everything fits, right?

Mullumbimby plays a vital part in the movie, and not just because of the FuNkOMaTiC mystery. Already, much to its eternal shame, dubbed the “anti-vaccine capital” of Australia, Mullumbimby seriously bumps the figures in the staggering estimate that one in eight Australians are stupid enough to think 5G spreads Coronavirus. The idiots also think 5G causes cancer and affects the immune system, and that we’re in danger of a “soup of electrosmog”. Psycho Sam, how are you with your aluminium colander? But where does the FuNkOMaTiC fit in? Well, it turns out that conspiracy theorists believe the irrational fears of the people of Mullumbimby began just after August 2012, at about the time the FuNkOMaTiC arrived there. Which might explain why, seven months later, I could find neither hide nor hair of it in the town.  And why, just a few months ago, when Covid-19 was exacerbating unfounded fears about 5G in Mullumbimby, I received a very strange (unpublished) comment on my blog about the whereabouts of the FuNkOMaTiC.

No doubt there are some readers out there who don’t know about the FuNkOMaTiC, or of its peculiar powers. So let me just repeat some of its claims when sold on eBay. “FuNkY, Atomic, Retro. The funkiest, most atomic typewriter ever made! … Earthy, Original and Modish; Unconventional and Bizarre. It’s Outlandishly Vulgar and Eccentric … And Atomic in this context?: EXTREMELY cool, one step up from tubular … And retro? Folks, this is retro with an “r”, an “e”, a “t”, another “r” and an “o”: Yes, that’s right: R – e – t – r – o! This is a one-of-a-kind FuNkY atomic typewriter … Just look at those colours – Geiger counter Green! Violent Violet! Mushroom Cloud Orange! Wow!!! These are such FuNkiLY strong colours they could blow a hole in the Ozone Layer. These FuNkY atomic colours are so strong they could withstand an A-Bomb blast! Now that's Atomic! Wow upon wow! It’s a unique, one-of-a-kind FuNkOMaTiC!”

       Not convinced about any of this? Just remember Nakajima ALL sold the rights of the FuNkOMaTiC to China. Yes, now it all makes sense. No?