Nebelwerfer.

I love when a couple of words bang together and stick and there’s this slow sizzle inside your brain that lights up like when they light the fuse at the beginning of an episode of Mission: Impossible.

Anyway, I’m reading some stuff online and watching this show about General Patton on the History Channel (did you know he’s from Pasadena?) and they started talking about a German towed-artilery rocket launcher. It was named the Nebelwerfer, but the Americans who had to endure it called it the “Screaming Mimi” because of the awful, high-pitched shriek it made.



What a great name! How the fuck is that not a punk band?!

I am totally going to write something that uses this term, this slang, this name.

There was a pulp novel with this title, and there is a vintage clothing store with this name, and a couple of sex acts on Urban Dictionary (one of which makes sense, the other is simply juvenile and was probably submitted by giggling fourteen-year-olds) with this name.

But just wait! Someday soon there will be my story called “Screaming Mimi”. It will be written in the tradition of “Gravity’s Rainbow”, but faster and … and … and it will be … narrated in a third-person omniscient fashion by the SETTING! Ha. This is a great idea!

And one whole chapter will be about the lead singer of a punk band who wears vintage clothing and likes to perform juvenile sex acts!

Thanks History Channel.

Oh! And here is what a Screaming Mimi sounds like. It is actually quite creepy.