These Are Not the Hell Your Whales!
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. This week’s newsletter is short and you’ve got the time. Because time is an artificial construct. Ignore it. Transcend. Stop being the whipping boy of primitive, linear thinking.
This Week on The Strangerous Shorts
You can watch the latest The Strangerous Shorts on Instagram or YouTube every day.
The Man Who Survived TWO Atomic Blasts
On the morning of August 6th, 1945, Tsutomu Yamaguchi was walking along the road when he spotted the Enola Gay overhead, an American bomber. It’s payload - the first of the atomic weapons deployed by the United States - would kill tens of thousands of people and aid in bringing an end to the war.
For Tsutomu’s part, he dove into a ditch, suffering ruptured ear drums and burns on his arms and face. He staggered to a fallout shelter, spent the night, then hopped a train to Nagasaki the next morning.
(You can tell where this is going…)
The day after he made it to Nagasaki, he was dragged into the Mitsubishi offices where he worked. His bosses demanded he tell them just what had happened in Hiroshima. They were incredulous. They couldn’t believe that one bomb had done all that damage.
Then there was a flash of light outside. The second bomb was dropped over Nagasaki. The Mitsubishi building provided adequate shelter, fortunately, allowing Tsutomu to survive another blast. After that, you’ve got to think he asked himself, “Wait, is Truman pissed at me personally?”
https://www.history.com/news/the-man-who-survived-two-atomic-bombs
https://www.theministryofhistory.co.uk/historical-biographies/tsutomu-yamaguchi-atomic-bomb
It’s easy to diminish something that happened decades ago on the other side of the world. Something so far removed from our own lives can seem like an abstraction, not a real historical event, but an idea. A cartoon. But the grim realities of an event like Fat Man/Little Boy is foundational to the lives of your characters. Let’s say you’ve got Tsutomu in a story. Is there any way that surviving those two blasts didn’t fundamentally change him? It’s literally and figuratively a seismic event, one that reshapes everything it touches. There’s the Tsutomu before the blast and the Tsutomu after.
Can We Use AI to Talk to Whales?
I’m trying not to be that guy. I’m trying not to be the ‘crypto-bro’, but for AI. You know the ones I’m talking about?
“Bro. Bro. You really should be looking at Doge Coin right now. Decentralized banking is the only way atpoahsdfk;lnasdf;klasdf;lkasfdlkasdf”
But I am. I’m wholly that guy, but about Artificial Intelligence. I have lots of thoughts on this. Lots. So many that I have to restrain myself a bit and not make every Strangerous post about how AI is going to reshape the fabric of our society.
This isn’t one of the new developments with AI, though. Scientists have been working on this one for a very long time. They’ve recorded hours upon hours of whale calls. While marine biologists have been puzzling over these sounds and trying to interpret them for decades, AI may in fact be able to clear that hurdle.
And that’s. Just. Bonkers.
If we can interpret what they’re saying, we can mimic those sounds, right? I’m just afraid that whatever they have to say will be super depressing.
https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/talking-to-animals-with-ai-decoding-whale-language
One of the cornerstones of science fiction is humanity trying to communicate with non-human entities. The most obvious recent example of this would be Arrival. I think people often make the mistake of thinking that there will be some slight obstacles in communicating with another species, but it’s so much more than that. We tend to anthropomorphize anything and try to view it through the lens of humanity. What else could we do? But the complexities are probably too nuanced and tangled to really understand how another species even thinks, much less if we can understand their language. Their method of communication may not even be language.
Yes, AI will help us get there, but one of our main tools thus far has been art. It’s art that’s been asking questions and projecting possibilities. Art enables us to visualize what it might be like before we’re actually faced with it.
For further reading, check out Day of the Dolphin and the research of John C Lily.
The Nain Rouge of Detroit
I don’t know much about Detroit, but they seem to have a lot of devil imagery going on and I am into it. They’ve got Devil’s Night, which I first learned about from watching The Crow. They’ve got the Murder City Devils, which is a band I love. And now I learn that they’ve even got some sort of demonic mascot? The Nain Rouge!
According to legend, this crimson goblin appears before times of upheaval and strife, not unlike the Mothman of Point Pleasant. This red-skinned little bastard first appeared in 1701, when Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founded Detroit. The devil appeared to Cadillac, who smacked the monster with his cane.
Bad move. The Nain Rouge dropped a curse on him. Like many spirits bound to an area, you’re supposed to appease them with snacks or gold or maybe a non-sexual backrub. In recent years, Detroit has gotten on board. There are Nain Rouge carnivals and parades. Have you been? I really want to go. I’ll be nice to Nain Rouge, provide some Pop Tarts or something delicious, and promise not to hit him with my cane unless he gets all grabby.
https://www.metrotimes.com/arts/the-legend-of-the-legend-of-detroits-nain-rouge-2404384
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nain_Rouge
Few things can be as revealing about a people as their hyper-local myths. How the myths change reflect how the city changes. Myths are malleable. Their true meanings shift over time, adapting to the culture that needs them. The story above is simplified, of course. The real origins of the creature are much more complicated, likely dating back to Algonquin folklore.
What kind of myths do your characters believe? Those myths shape them and the world they inhabit. How does the specter of something like the Nain Rouge inform your characters’ decisions?
Lemmings!
TW: Animal Cruelty
When I was a kid, Disney would have a special showcase on Sunday nights. There was no streaming then. Hell, most things weren’t even available on VHS, so appointment television was often your only option. And when Disney came on broadcast TV in the 80s, it was kind of special. They often aired things from the halcyon days of the 50s and 60s, when Disney was known as a purveyor of wonder. Maybe they still are, but it all had that nostalgic patina of a bygone era. One of those programs was their nature documentary series, True Life Adventures.
These were so charming. “And there’s Mr. Otter, having a good ol’ time with the boys before he makes his way home and continues on with his cute otter life.”
And then came White Wilderness.
You’ve heard about lemmings, right? How they just dash en masse into the sea, jumping from cliffs into a watery grave? “Lemming” is short hand for unthinking follower now. If you’re going along with the group, that means you’re just walking blindly into your grave.
It’s a common cultural staple. There was even a video game about it!
But it was a lie. There’s no sort of biological imperative for lemmings to rush into the sea. It turns out that White Wilderness, the episode of True Life Adventures about the horrible mass suicides of these adorable rodents, made it all up.
And they killed a bunch of lemmings while filming it. Here’s a picture of a lemming.
Yeah. For the episode, DIsney allegedly threw dozens of these guys off of a cliff so they could drown in the sea below.
https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=wildlifenews.view_article&articles_id=56
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Wilderness_(film)
While working on a screenplay, I once had 2 producers insist that I refer to the “factoid” that we only use 10% of our brains.
“But that’s not true,” I said.
They didn’t believe me. Fortunately, we have the width and breadth of human knowledge at our fingertips, so I was able to bring up proof that it was in fact nonsense.
BUT…
They made me keep it in the script. I was outvoted, but only after I couldn’t really articulate why it didn’t sit right with me. They argued that even though this well-known fact was completely false, it was so deeply entrenched in our shared belief system that it had to be included. It was a shorthand that would immediately get the audience on board. Sure, we knew it was false, but the audience didn’t.
(That’s called talking down to your audience, btw. I understand that now.)
The more interesting take would be to explain in the script how that myth was just that … a myth. But at least we didn’t kill any cute critters.
Formaldehyde Hunger
Could dissecting a corpse actually make you hungry? There’s no shortage of anecdotal evidence that cutting open a body preserved with formaldehyde will trigger a hunger response. The links below will guide you to some medical residents who swear that while they were working on carving up some poor, deceased volunteer, that they were overcome with hunger.
I call shenanigans on this one. Maybe I’m missing the ‘dead bodies make me hungry’ gene, but having been around formaldehyde in high school while dissecting fetal pigs, I can say with certainty that my tummy was not growling.
https://www.mashed.com/447137/the-disturbing-truth-about-formaldehyde-hunger/
Have you ever noticed that when there’s a coroner on screen in a movie or TV show, they’re often glibly eating something around an autopsy? You see it all the time. Some weird loser, tucked away in the mortuary with all the dead things, just munching on a sandwich. It’s so prevalent that I cringe when I see it. It’s every bit as disruptive as the Wilhelm Scream.
But it might be real! There might be a really gross scientific reason behind the trope.
The Strangerous Channel Updates
We’re almost done with the set for the Strangerous! It’s a simple design that’s coming along really well. I can’t wait to share it with you.
Along with the in-production long-form videos we’re working on, there’s also a podcast on the way! I’m lining up some guests, experts in their field, to talk about all sorts of wholesome topics, like vampires, infosec, the devil, and lockpicking!
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:
I love talking about historical oddities, but The History Guy? He’s the real deal. He actually must read books or go to school for history or something.
Do you ever say something and then ask yourself, “Wait. Is that old saying racist?” The answer is often ‘yes’. So many of our old aphorisms are rooted in something appalling. That brings us to the terms ‘cakewalk’ and ‘takes the cake’. I’ll let you read it. I had no idea.
https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/who-takes-cake-history-cakewalk
And finally, check out this incredible guide to American Urban Legends (credits below). I’m definitely going to be diving into some of these for the show. See any you’d like for me to cover first? Let me know in the comments!
Great stuff as always!
I mean walking sam is the closest to Slender man, i realy would like a video explaining him. then again i wouldnt mind seeing a video or short explaining any of these cryptids