It's Raining Meat
The newsletter for The Strangerous Channel
You’ve subscribed to The Strangerous newsletter! We’re going to recap this week and provide some other updates on books, shows, and projects.
Jason Murphy is a novelist, screenwriter, and content creator. Read this newsletter. I promise you might gag at least once this week.
This Week on The Strangerous Shorts
You can watch the latest The Strangerous Shorts on Instagram or YouTube every day.
A Vegan Horror Story?
Let’s be honest. My diet isn’t great. I eat a lot of fast food. An unreasonable amount. I may have a cardiac episode while I’m writing this. Who knows? I’ve eaten some weird things in my life. I’ve had chocolate-covered crickets in the Mayan jungle. I’ve eaten taquitos from the heated roller at a 7-11.
But I’ve never eaten sky-meat. On a quiet afternoon in 1876, the Crouch family had a strange, meteorological incident at their farm in Kentucky. Meat started raining from the sky. Let’s quickly dispel any ideas about Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs. I saw the movie. I read the book. It all looked palatable, like maybe God had prepared a fine meal before dumping it on earth.
That’s not what happened in Kentucky. This meat wasn’t prepared. It was raw. It was slimy. And it turns out, it was probably pre-digested.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/kentucky-meat-shower
https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/kentucky-meat-shower-1876-history
A mystery visited upon rural locals is great fuel for a story. A gross mystery involving vomit and strange meat from the heavens is even better. It reminds me of the raining frogs seen from Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia. When something falls from the sky, even modern people feel the tug of superstition. It’s not just weird. It’s providence. It’s not a random thing that dropped into the character’s lives. Meat from the sky has meaning. Did God provide the rotten meat? Was it judgement? A warning?
Or did a vulture have a bad bite of dead squirrel?
The Most Dangerous Children’s Toy of All Time?
I did some dumb things as a kid. If there was a strange chemical in the kitchen or garage? I’d mix it. Maybe it would explode. Maybe it would make a cool, colorful foam. Maybe it would paralyze me and send me and my brothers to an early grave. We jumped off of houses. We played with pellet guns. Kid stuff.
But we never had access to radioactive materials. This is a failure on our parents, if we’re being honest. What I wouldn’t have given for a toy that included uranium. As a bored kid growing up in the high desert of West Texas, the very first thing I would have done upon opening this on Christmas morning is find a spider. That spider would get heavily irradiated. I don’t care about the warnings on the box. That spider would get so irradiated that when it bit me - I would be bestowed with the proportionate strength and speed of said spider. Power and responsibility!
Somewhere, someone thought ‘Kid’s First Radiation Experiment’ was a good idea.
https://www.orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/toys/gilbert-u-238-atomic-energy-lab.html
https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/childrens-products/g22851411/most-dangerous-toys/?slide=2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_U-238_Atomic_Energy_Laboratory
Finding something horrible or magical in the mundane is something I often play with in my writing. I love the idea that the post office is actually a dimensional portal or that there’s a strange sort of sympathetic power in the things we cast aside - floss, medical masks, or a fast food receipt.
This particular toy is from a certain era. As a child of the 80s, artifacts and love for the 50s was something I grew up with. Up until the 80s, in the backs of comic books, there were all sorts of dubious toys and guides you could send off for. Manuals that would teach you how to kill a man with a single blow or give you a Charles Atlas regimen so you could turn into a speedo-wearing beach bro with all the muscles and girls.
I can imagine this toy hiding in those advertisements, next to the X-Ray glasses. Those ads seemed like a way to get something illicit, something from a bygone era that was probably garbage, but might … just might … grant you Spider-Man powers.
Phossy Jaw
The past is full of horrors. I know - the present is, too. But this one is gruesome. Phossy Jaw - or phosphorus necrosis of the jaw - afflicted scores of ‘matchstick girls’ throughout the 19th century. Whenever I find myself blessed with a ‘real job’, the biggest hazards are usually carpal tunnel or an overly chatty office drone in the cubicle next to me. But these are some next-level OSHA violations that would make Upton Sinclair blush.
When the exposed bone in your face wakes you up in the middle of the night because it’s glowing? Maybe update your resume.
I think we would all do well to remember that if they could get away with it, they would do it to us, too.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/phossy-jaw
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0278239107020332
As the vanguards of uncertain times, we are no strangers to mysterious illnesses. That’s how all epidemics start, I guess. A sniffle. A cough. Then a cascade of random symptoms. Your jaw hurts. It starts to rot. The attacker is invisible and no one will listen. But there are holes in your face now, holes that begin to glow in the dark …
That’s pure nightmare.
Is Privacy Now an Illusion?
I try to keep up with tech, to some degree, but it’s a very specific slice of that world. Sure, I love reading about advancements in nuclear fusion or CRISPR technology, but what really gets my attention is the nefarious stuff. New ways to spoof key fobs in order to steal cars. Card skimmers. The latest in spy drones. It’s not like I would ever actually use this stuff, but … I like toys. Don’t you?
Of course, the United States government has the best toys. They have the best toys that they pay a lot of money for and they don’t like to share. Devices like Stingray towers and DRT boxes have been around almost as long as cell phones. They essentially grab large swathes of data from a surveilled area - like a protest! - and can even direct the phones to download malware giving them even more access. They do this by pretending to be a cell phone tower. Your phone interacts with their faux tower and … you’re compromised.
These devices are super expensive. I wouldn’t worry too much about your neighbor listening in. But if you guys want to go in and buy one of these, maybe we could start a GoFundMe?
https://theintercept.com/2020/07/31/protests-surveillance-stingrays-dirtboxes-phone-tracking/
I’ve got some spy/crime fiction books I work on from time to time. It helps me put all of my Modern Rogue research to good use. Some of the things they are capable of might sound like science fiction. Omniscient surveillance turns up in every spy thriller of the last 30 years, and many of these ideas are rooted in truth. That’s the self-perpetuating nature of science fiction, right? Artists dream it. Engineers create it. Repeat.
Ogopogo - the Canadian Sea Monster
Member of the Strangerous community @jernfurdle recommended we talk about this one. Ogopogo! It sounds like a strange children’s cartoon or maybe a tropical disease. It’s fun to say! In 1968, a man named Arthur Folden noticed something large and lifelike out on the otherwise calm waters of Lake Okanagan in British Columbia. He captured the best known footage of the beast.
But the Ogopogo is one of the most “well documented” lake monsters in all the world! In spite of all that evidence, most experts agree that the floating anomalies often spotted in the lake are … well, just logs.
I’ve never seen anything particularly convincing when it comes to lake monsters, and I’ve watched a lot of TV shows with very professional sounding “experts” tooling around a lake and saying science-y stuff like they know what they’re talking about. Have you ever encountered some bizarre aquatic beast? Hit me up in the comments!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogopogo
https://globalnews.ca/video/9211789/possible-ogopogo-sighting-on-okanagan-lake/
https://www.livescience.com/42399-ogopogo.html
I’m sure there are people who live near Lake Okanagan who believe in the monster. Maybe they’ve seen it. Can you imagine how that colors every aspect of your life? There’s a monster that lives in the body of water nearby. Is it hungry? Is it hostile? Does a sighting whip the locals into a frenzy, like the scene in Jaws? Something as big as the appearance of a legitimate monster is a fun wildcard to throw at your characters. Even the possibility of it being true will ripple throughout the world you’ve created.
The Strangerous Channel Updates
We’re closing in on launching the longer form episodes. I know. I know. I’ve been saying that for a while, but the set is almost done!
I’m lining up some guests to appear on the show. Anyone in particular you’d recommend? Any topics you’d like for us to cover?
Support The Strangerous
Want to help support the channel and see us grow?
Follow! Share! Comment! Link! Save! Subscribe! Get Notifications! It really helps and we appreciate it so, so much.
You can share our posts and reels on Instagram, share our YouTube videos and playlists, and share this newsletter.
Even More Strange and Dangerous!
Thanks for reading our online newsletter! Here’s just a bit of our favorite things we’ve found lately. See ya next week!
Our favorites from the week:
Check out Hightailing Through History for more irreverent looks at some of the more offbeat stories from history.
Need lols? There are lols to be found at the International News Service podcast. It’s often bizarre and always hilarious.
Check out Matt Wolfe on YouTube for his clear and concise reporting on the latest in AI. I’m following all of this very closely.
We’re currently making our way through Killing Eve. It’s a sexy and strange spy thriller that’s oddly both more grounded than James Bond and yet more unhinged. And it’s soundtrack is spectacular: