Mustafa’s Burning Love

I’ve got a personal theory that you can’t genuinely accept another person, gender, race, nationality or whatever until you feel comfortable humiliating them. No really, the rest - that rhetoric about diversity and inclusiveness - is pretty much nothing more than empty, cloying middle class courtesy or worse still, boring clichés drawn from that endless stream of tangled, incomprehensible PC psycho babble, learned from god knows where, parroted throughout 20 years of what’s loosely called education, and finally ending up in that most pointless of all pointless places, regurgitated like bloated seagulls bringing up half digested sardines in some leafy suburb Book Club. God save us.

I think we only truly accept one another when we take the piss, an expression that I’ve never understood since I’ve never got the link between having a lend of someone in a playful way and confiscating their urine or anyone else’s urine for that matter. It’s along there with the saying, piece of piss. How’d that presentation go Garry? No worries mate, piece of piss. Or worse still, piece of the proverbial. For starters, I’ve never understood the connection between something being easy and urine and furthermore have always thought that urine would be easily segmented in way that a birthday cake might be for example. And I don’t think you’re likely to see a reference in Proverbs. They’d be nothing like, blessed are they that taketh the piss but I can’t be sure.

Thou shalt take the piss – the thirteenth commandment. I’d personally explain it this way. Jesus was wandering around one day, in a decrepit park next to a TAB, in his Birkenstock sandals, going about his business, preaching about this and that, giving advice on removing stains, signing some autographs, with the disciples just hanging around as they do, and a bit of a crowd milling about, when suddenly he hears someone say, Jesus its hot, I could murder a coldie. Having heard that Jesus produces two cans of ice cold Victoria Bitter stubbies, and a couple of Benson & Hedges cigarettes fished out from the bottom of this rucksack. He then asks the disciples to hand these out to the crowd. After a bit, he instructs the disciples to collect the stubbies and the butts from the mob, and to their amazement they find that they’ve filled four jugs with the dregs and rolled a full packet of Benson & Hedges from the butts. So Jesus instructs the disciples to pass these out among the faithful. After some time, the disciples collected up the jugs of VB and the rollies, and were astounded to find that the dregs now filled ten jugs of VB and were able to roll four packs of cigarettes. So he tells the disciples to hand these to the ever growing and appreciative crowd. Having collected the dregs and butts, the disciples discovered they’d two kegs of VB, ten cartons of Benson & Hedges, five Cuban cigars, a bottle of McWilliams cream sherry, and a copy of Hustler. No, sorry, forget about that Hustler bit. If there had been a copy of Hustler it would have invariable been St. John's. He was the good looking disciple (ie probably had all his teeth). The Bible hints that he used moisteriser and therefore was either a man-whore or gay.

Anyway, around 11.00 the next day, one of the crowd looks up with a shocking hangover and asks his friend, what the fuck was that all about then, probably in an Irish accent ie. aye, what ta fook was that all aboot. To which the other relies, fooked if I knoo, something about taking ta piss. OK, perhaps they were Scottish. And no, it’s not a punch-line. It’s just a stupid parody on how a thirteenth commandment could have come about. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if there was a thirteenth commandment that the Vatican ‘conveniently’ dropped off, just like the Gnostic gospels. Just does to show, never trust blokes that wear dresses at work…unless of course they’re also wearing heels and have names like Candy or Bubbles Fontaine.

For some, that theory is characteristically Australian, something somehow related to irony which Australians apparently have in bucketfuls (in the same way that Americans have bucketfuls of Jesus or fried chicken or bile inducing hubris). There might be a bit in that. Perhaps most things genuinely Australian only actually existed a couple of generations ago in the black and white world of John O’Grady’s They’re A Weird Mob. The time when Menzies presided and country towns grew fat and cheery on wheat and wool. When jobs were everywhere and workers carried Gladstone bags. When one income and one family car were plenty and racehorses became legends. When men built their own houses and women drank in the Ladies Lounge. When kids wore hand knitted jumpers playing footy in the street and cracker night was a wondrous delight of perilous amateur pyrotechnics. When Rod Taylor and John Mellion were stars and Saturday night meant being bored shitless by Mary Hardy’s shrill, cackling co-hosting on The Penthouse Club [1]. You get the idea.

But if there was any truth in that it’s pretty much long gone. It’s hard to see what’s left that’s distinctly Australian in this fading, failing, jerry-built, A V Jennings pre-fabricated suburban wasteland. There’s little to suggest from the population of nervous, snivelling, self-obsessed, second rate middle managers, sales reps and franchisees. Go ahead and pretend all you like but the fact is that we’re all just getting as fat arsed and stupid as your average American. It’s a new Krispy Crème version of Australia, where the only things that count are the brand, the sugar, and the fat, and where substituting that sweet fried turd for food and misspelling ‘Crispy’ and ‘Cream’ clearly amount to a clever corporate strategy for a nation of white wobbly morons.

I’ve got a particular thing about MacDonald’s. I used to say that their food was nothing. That it has no history. No cultural meaning. No origins. It belonged to no-one and no-where and meant nothing, unlike cacciatore for example, or the humble onion frittata. But it’s a bad argument. The quarter pounder actually represents a lot about America, about post war corporate mechanisation of agriculture into agribusiness, about standardisation in the retail food sector, about exploitative labour practices, and sophisticated mass social psychological manipulation that allows that freakish, perverse, dribbling, grinning pscho Clown give it to us up the McArse. None of what it says is much good. Anyway, don’t get me started.

Now we’ve all seen the growing numbers of skinny ribbed, sun-burned teenagers and twenty-some things wandering around draped in the Australian flag. Surely, here’s true Australianism. But just wait till one of them opens their mouth and you quickly realise that their braying patriotism is as superficial and empty and manufactured a sentiment as whatever you periodically scrawl in those oversized novelty cards that do the rounds at work when someone manages to retire, find another job or is quietly admitted to a mental institutional. Dear Janine, Terrible to see you go. Just terrible. While we’ve not had the opportunity to work together or the fact that we’ve probably actually never spoken to each other in the seven years that you’ve been here. I’m going to miss you terribly, and it’s a terrible loss to the organisation. Good Luck. Keep up the mediation. Save a spot in your ward for me. Ha. Ha. Mindless, hysterical patriotism. Imported from America, exploited by the fear-driven, ugly, squawking dickheads who call themselves our leaders. Give them a tour of the Middle East.

Speaking of which, I have to confess that there’s one cultural import that’s personally seduced me. Few freely admit to doing it. Yet millions do. There are countless websites devoted to it and some souls are hopelessly addicted to it. Reality TV. Still, there’s no great surprise in that. Spirelli’s have always been engrossed by misery and humiliation, especially when it’s served up gladiatorial style in prime time. There are almost no downsides to reality TV. True, your expectations start low. You don’t want to be informed. You don’t want to be impressed. You don’t want to be inspired. You don’t want plot or story. You’re not even that interested in being entertained. It’s TV that you happily switch on after you’ve spent the day having your hard work disassembled into complete shit by some skew-eyed nuff-nuff manager who owes their position of authority over you to the cruel but simple and unavoidable fact that their obvious myriad personal and professional deficiencies actually makes their manager look less incompetent and therefore more powerful. No, it’s pretty much TV for no reason, which is where TV is at its best. The allure is the deep voyeuristic satisfaction of watching ordinary folk in some sort of genuine pain. The quiet tears of the medical intern who discovers her fiancé has porked some fake titted Los Vegas croupier on Temptation Island. Or the thrashing indignation of the management consultant whose demise has been coldly engineered by his smiling best friend on Survivor.

One of my personal favourites was My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss, one in series of clever parodies of genuine reality shows – in this case, Trump’s The Apprentice. There was another called My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé which was a take off of The Bachelor. They ran the same formula but pushed it to extreme and bizarre limits, just to show just how stupid and gullible the participants could be, since they believed they were part of a real deal. Each week he would give them a challenge. Where Trump had his people devise marketing strategies for new movies or fast food, the Big Fat Obnoxious Boss had teams develop their own cute furry corporate character and marketing jingle for a known carcinogenic product and then make a story book presentation to school kids who then voted on the best character and song. Where Trump had his guys designing brochures for luxury cars, Todd has his on the streets of New York trying to sell re-usable toilet paper, eco-tampons made from sticks and bark, and an aerosol spray that purported to take carbohydrates out of food. In another, contestants had to navigate a fake office obstacle course in a field, dressed in a suit, while being attacked by Mr Todd with a rapid fire paint ball gun, the only protection being a briefcase.

All the while, Mr Todd peppers the young greedy aspirants with a series of managerial insights into corporate success, each one more mangled, improbable and incomprehensible than the other. They listen. They try to understand. They clearly don’t. Yet they say nothing. Worse still, one of Mr Todd’s helpers, a handsome senior executive, starts to take a shine to some of the men, and his affections become increasingly obvious. They catch on. They don’t like it. Yet they do nothing. Then Mr Todd starts inventing activities where the females end up having to wear skimpy clothing and bikinis and he starts to generally favour them for no apparent reasons part from the fact that they’re good sorts. They understand. Some of the women hate it. Some play up to it. The men hate it. Yet they do nothing.

Each week, losing teams would isolate their worst two competitors, and Mr Todd would then consult a mysterious head boss in another room for an elimination decision. You only ever saw the back of the head boss’ chair. Finally, when only two contestants had survived the implausible challenges Mr Todd goes to consult the big boss, and the chair swings around to reveal a chimpanzee in a suit that spins a wheel to decide the winner of the $250,000 prize. It works on so many levels. Just so brilliant.

But they’re all getting a bit predictable those shows. We need a new, fresh angle. I personally propose a new show, called, My Fourth Wife where women compete to become the fourth wife of a well to do man, with a surprise twist at the end. It’s an Islamic Bachelor.

Scene One. The Introductions. A large black limo pulls up to a mansion, with Jeff the host and Mustafa standing out front. Out comes the first woman in full burkha, with that little see through window, walks up to Mustafa. Out comes the second – also in full burkha, same deal. Then the third and so on. All in full burkha. As each contestant is introduced Mustafa is increasingly animated, his eyes getting wider and wider, until after the seventh where he’s almost overcome. Jeff: Well Mustafa you seem to have particularly liked Fatima. Mustafa: O, yes, Jeff, yes, I’ve always loved redheads!

Scene Two. The Group Date. Mustafa invites a group of select contestants for an intimate dinner. They arrive and are ordered out back to cook kid goat and cous cous. Mustafa and seventy five of his cousins arrive and eat the food. The women are never seen. They’re sent back to do laundry. Mustafa to Jeff…Jeff, I think that went quite well.

Scene Three. The individual date. Mustafa invites Fatima to a date. Fatima is looking in a mirror, straightening out the creases in her dress, turns to the others in the room and asks…does my bomb look big in this? The limo pulls up with Mustafa in a dinner suit and carefully waxed moustache. In comes Fatima (in full burkha). Then old crone chaperone one in. And then another old crone. And then another. Until the limo is impossibly crowded with twenty two chaperones a la Marx Brothers in Duck Soup.

Scene Four. The Individual Date (continued). The party arrives for their date. Mustafa picks up a glass of champagne, Fatima picks up a glass of pomegranate juice (and straw), and they slowly walk in glowing evening sunset up to a firing range, where they don AK47s and simultaneously fire indiscriminately in target cut outs of George Bush and Christian crusaders. Mustafa turns and looks at Fatima expertly emptying her automatic clearly impressed. An old crone comments…and she can do rocket launcher too. Mustafa gets an instant erection.

Scene Five. Elimination ceremony. The women are lined up; Mustafa reaches for a grenade, calls out, Fatima. Fatima walks over, kneels. Mustafa, explains – Fatima, you will accept this and continue this journey with me Inshallah! Towards the end, Jeff strolls up and says, ladies, this is the last grenade. Each of the picked contestants then do that tongue rolling cheer in delight. The loser is walked off. You hear a short burst of automatic fire somewhere.

Scene Six. Grand Finale. Mustafa waits in the Rose Garden as the winner Fatima arrives in wedding burkha via camel. He orders her into a white van, and we watch as they drive off at great speed and slam into a white washed UN compound, exploding in a violent fire ball. They play Lionel Ritchie’s Three Times a Lady as the scene of smouldering buildings and strewn body parts is framed by a giant red love heart and slowly fades from the screen.

You’d have to watch it.


[1] The Penthouse Club was Melbourne’s idea of sophisticated evening TV. Mary always wore a gaudy scarf tied at a strange place high on her neck. Popular option was that she used it to cover a failed suicide scar. She had that look of someone that had drank too much, smoked too much and had generally done it hard.