Molotov Cocktail: The Official Drink of Summer!
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Jason Murphy is a novelist, screenwriter, and content creator. He wants you to know that the owls are not what they seem.
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The History of the Molotov Cocktail
You know what a Molotov cocktail is, right? It’s a simple firebomb, a glass bottle filled with some flammable fluid and a wick. It is the preferred “beverage” of civil disobedience. Variations on the Molotov cocktail have been around since we invented fire. We apes love throwing burny things at each other. But it didn’t get that popular sobriquet until the Russo-Finnish war in 1939.
A foreign minister of the Soviet Union, Vyacheslav Molotov authorized the illegal Soviet invasion of Finland in ‘39. Molotov, being adept in the art of propaganda, started referring to the cluster bombs dropped on Finland as “food parcels”. The Finns took that personally. The state-owned distillery started producing bottles filled with tar, ethanol, and gasoline - hundreds of thousands of them. As a response to calling the aerial bombardment “food parcels”, they branded the weapon the “Molotov cocktail”, a thumb in the eye to the Soviet foreign minister.
https://www.britannica.com/technology/Molotov-cocktail
https://www.livescience.com/molotov-cocktails-history
At its core, the story of the Molotov cocktail is one of an underdog standing up to an overwhelming opposing force, and that’s one of my favorite tropes. Remember the ending of Saving Private Ryan? A gang of doomed soldiers, standing up against the heavily armed German forces. That element is the foundation of so many classic tales - Star Wars. The Seven Samurai. Braveheart. The Molotov is the symbol of not only a David & Goliath dynamic, but it’s also shorthand for desperation.
Saint Bartholomew the Flayed
Take a look at that picture. Now take a closer look. Notice something weird? Yeah. My dude is skinless. The statue was carved in 1562 by by the Lombard sculptor, Marco d’Agrate. It represents the fisherman and apostle Saint Bartholomew. This guy made the mistake of converting the king of Armenia and twelve cities to the Christian Faith. The king’s brother got pissed and had Bart skinned and beheaded.
See the robe he’s draped in? Yeah. That’s not a robe…
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/saint-bartholomew-flayed
https://medievalmilanetc.wordpress.com/2012/08/25/st-bartholomew-flayed/
I often get called out by co-writers and collaborators for going a little overboard with my storytelling. Maybe the family drama wasn’t the best place for an alien invasion. Or maybe this overly-involved method of killing the bad guy was … absurdly gory. Restraint is usually a good thing to practice as a writer. Don’t go over-the-top. Don’t be silly.
Then I find out that they skinned a guy alive and made a statue of it. Just keep in mind that the human imagination has no bottom.
Why Haven’t We Met the Aliens Yet? Part XXIV
I’ll be honest, I spend a lot of time thinking about this. I’m ready. I need the aliens to show up like yesterday. I mean, I can understand why they wouldn’t. We’re probably the Waffle House of the universe. Don’t take that exit! You might break down in a human-inhabited area. All the more reason for them to intervene. You know how Superman doesn’t want to act like a god and meddle too much in the affairs of humans? Well, fuck that. We need some extraterrestrial intervention.
But it might never happen. The explanation is in the name of the theory, really - the Rare Earth hypothesis. Drawn from the 2000 book Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe, the authors set out a list of criteria that establishes just why we haven’t encountered aliens. There may not be any! The specific set of elements required that allowed us to crawl out of the primordial ooze was just too unique to ever happen ex nihil again.
https://mindmatters.ai/2020/10/maybe-there-are-just-very-few-aliens-out-there/
Now there’s a story. Since we as a species conceived of extraterrestrials, our fiction has been choked with ‘first contact’ stories. Maybe the aliens are malevolent, come to pillage earth’s resources. Or maybe they’re peaceful, coming to us with a stern warning to start behaving like wholesome and productive members of the galaxy.
Or maybe they’re hiding from us. You know all of those Bob Lazar/Ancient Aliens shows you see on extended cable? The ones that talk about how the government has been collaborating with aliens since Roswell? Wouldn’t it be funnier if instead of intense, pan-galactic negotiations, we had a group of aliens who just kept rejecting our invitations?
“No. You earthlings kinda freak us out. Get your shit together first. Then we’ll talk.”
The Killer Mermaids of ZImbabwe
“A black mermaid!?! Zimbabwe’s going woke!!!”
As I write this, easily confounded racists are upset that Ariel is black in the new Disney movie. And yet Africa has a long history of mermaids, much more so than America. In fact, it’s not even history. In Zimbabwe, they’re worried about mermaids right now.
The Gwehava dam in Gokwe Town, Zimbabwe has mermaid problems. There are technical issues with the dam preventing them from drawing water. They blame evil spirits that take the shape of mermaids. These mermaids also murdered two children who came too close. This isn’t a new thing, though. These mermaids have been harassing people at the dam since its construction. In 2012, they called in Pastor Togare Mapingure of the Apostolic Faith Mission to conduct some rituals and exorcise the fishy monsters so that construction could continue. They did finish building the dam, but the mermaids are still being jerks about it.
https://historyofmermaids.com/mermaid/african-myth/
https://www.inquisitr.com/4128988/killer-mermaids-of-zimbabwe-real-or-not-its-a-story-worth-noting
Let’s be honest - Disney took the folkloric nightmares of the past and made them shiny and cute. Myths like the Little Mermaid exist all over the world, and they’re often not just stories of love and finding your place. Those tales are full of murder, cannibalism, and revenge. They read more like old horror comics than they do Disney movies and that is something you can easily mine for stories.
I’ve noticed something in horror movies lately. There’s been a spate of ‘the earth strikes back’ movies. Ancient spirits (often detailed in old folk tales) rise up to wreak havoc on mortals because of how they've treated the world. Conscious or not, that percolating fear of climate change is rearing its head in our fiction.
The Strangerous Channel Updates
We’ve got a number of new projects on the way for you to enjoy.
Right now, I’m deep into rewriting the third Occultex book. That’s my horror comedy series about a bunch of inept ghost hunters who are in way over their head. I hope to have book 3, tentatively titled How to Rob a Haunted House, out this fall. You can catch up on the other books here.
The film scripts are coming along well. The Writer’s Strike does cast a shroud of uncertainty over everything, of course, but my co-writers and I already have several finished scripts out there floating around. Some have been optioned. Some haven’t. Are you a producer looking for something weird and terrifying? Hit me up. :)
I’m working on another fun little project I can’t share with you yet. I’ll send it out on this newsletter once its ready. I really hope it doesn’t cause you to unsubscribe. And I hope you’re into Satan. You don’t have to worship him or anything. That would be silly. Just … be cool, okay?
The Strangerous set is coming along here at the studio. I’m *almost* ready to show you. I promise.
One of our first long form videos is almost done! I think. We’ve been grappling with this one for months now as we searched for ‘the Strangerous formula’. Closer and closer …
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Thanks for reading our online newsletter! Here’s just a bit of our favorite things we’ve found lately. See ya next week!
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cs1eoMQpZ3B/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
This one refers to our short about law enforcement Hoovering up data from phones at protests:
Strangerous community member @cooperd_2319 offers a solution: They sell those faraday bags on Amazon that you can put your phone in to block all signal going to and from it, so you can still have it in case of emergencies while not endangering OPSEC
Now I know someone who has consumed as many recreational drugs as the guy who wrote “I Am the Walrus” might not be a reliable witness, but here’s John Lennon talking about the night he spotted a UFO.
None of us are prepared for AI, not even the people designing them. They’ve released a brief statement about the challenges of dealing with an ASI.
https://openai.com/blog/governance-of-superintelligence
The next few years are going to be full of massive upheaval and unimaginable changes. Is something like Neuromancer out of the question?
I’ll put this at the bottom, as I’ve been called a hyperbolic weirdo for saying it, but this isn’t a race to develop and manage a groundbreaking new technology. It’s an arms race to create a god.
What do you think?