TL;DR -- Triggers Everywhere and Mystic, Mythic Percussion

We offer two wildly different articles to read and discuss at cocktail parties. Understand that if bringing up either of these things gets you crossed of the list for future invitations to social gatherings, your friends were probably horrible people.

First comes the heavy lifting via Jenny Jarvie's thoughtful piece "Trigger Happy" from New Republic. Jarvie discusses the increasing use of "trigger warnings" not just in journalism, editorial and other writing (especially on the Web), but in casual language as well, especially on college campuses.

The Typing Monkey agrees with Jarvie that the over-use and often incorrect application of the idea of trigger warnings, is and will have the opposite intended effect.

Trigger warnings are fast becoming the new frontier of political correctness in the worst possible way. We call it the tumblrizing of pop media -- a world where, if we were to retrofit everything for trigger warnings, a sitcom such as All In the Family would come with a one because there's a blowhard racist white guy in it and he might shout at some point or use hurtful language.

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To soften that get-off-my-lawn anger check out "Was Stonehenge a Giant XYLOPHONE?" [caps theirs] from the UK's Express. Jane Wharton's writing doesn't match the hyperbole of the headline, thankfully. The whole thing is speculation based on one detail regarding the properties of the stones used to create the prehistoric monument. But it's fun to think about.


[Dan Savage alerted us to the trigger warning article. The Fortean Times led us to the Stonehenge bit.]

Nyuk Nyuk

Do a little time travelling with us via the United States Library of Congress.

It's easy to fall down any number of information rabbit-holes there, so allow us to point you in the direction of "The American Variety Stage, 1870 - 1920" collection , then creep a little further into the audio archives and enjoy wax cylinder recordings of some vaudeville routines and songs from the era.

Given these were recorded both for posterity and mass consumption, we can't help but wonder how many blue routines were deemed unfit for preservation. That's our loss.

Sampling Ouroboros

The Typing Monkey un-ironically, well, and sometime fully ironically, grouses about the Web/internet all the time. But as a communication medium, it does many wonderful things.

Case in point: We listened to the song "Loose Booty" by Sly & the Family Stone this morning. Not because we're awesome, but because it was the subject of the most recent Hear This column at the AV Club.

Hear This can be a real treat when it does something like it did with the entry concerning "Loose Booty" -- that being, make the reader aware of a lesser-known song from an otherwise well-known artist. And in this case, it was in service of showing off something else that modern technology has enabled: Finding great music by sample-sourcing.

"Loose Booty" was used as the basis for The Beastie Boys' tune "Shadrach" from their sophomore album, Paul's Boutique, a real piñata of an album for sample-geeks. One read of the liner notes to that could start an expensive crate-digging habit.

We've always called that game "Spot the Sample" but the point is the same: You hear hip-hop music with samples, and you see if you can figure out what the source material for the sample is. Alternately you read the liner notes (or cheat via Who Sampled Who) and go find that music.

The result is, you pride yourself on your vast knowledge, and equally vast music collection, or you discover something new, and enjoy that new find. So shake your cane at those damn kids all you want, a portion of the hip-hop audience will always care enough to seek out the music that inspired or contributed to what they're listening to.

Which brings us to this:


If you haven't already seen this, or haven't already pressed play, it's a terrific and infectiously fun breakdown of another Paul's Boutique cut, "Shake Your Rump." One song, many samples, all of them neatly pointed out for you by a man who took the time to make this because he wants to turn you on to more good music.

And we wouldn't have seen this without a quick scan of the comments on the Hear This column, where a link to this video was posted by both Quirinus and D_Boons_Ghost, two people we'll likely never meet.

Let's crowd-source world peace, man.

Three Words: Black Death Pit

Just in case the news item didn't make it across your desk -- and really, if you're coming to The Typing Monkey for news, we're sorry -- an excavation crew working on a Crossrail project in Londond, unearthed a mass grave believed to date back to the early days of the Black Death plauge.

The BBC has all the details. It's another incredible find in an area that's seen a fair amount of archaelogical surprises in recent years. Read about it at the BBC site. Then register your Bandcamp, Facebook and domain name "Black Death Pit" right now and get started on that doom-metal band you've been fantasizing about starting.

A Bedside Grimoire

As you've no doubt read, heard or seen by now, a historian of early Christianity at the Harvard Divinity School has gone public with the story of an aged piece of papyrus with Coptic script referencing Jesus and his wife.

It's an interesting item, a good story and, if legitimate, something that might force many Christian churches to rethink some of the tenets they've been following for about 1,500 years.

However we're going to use that tale of a lost text as a launching point to talk about another lost text recently resurfaced, The Long Lost Friend. It's a new translation of John George Hohman's Der lange verborgene Freund ('The Long-Hidden Friend') -- a book of practical magic originally published in 1820.

Hohman was an immigrant and published his book in America, with translations making the rounds quickly, as many in and out of the frontier took quickly to the book's German folk medicine and Native American herbal remedies, as well as the easily recited/copied incantations to keep witchcraft and evil at bay.

Friend is practical magic, don't forget. It's not some spell book with oogy verses in dead languages that will bring monsters forth from the bowels of Hell. The spells all apply directly to the things that any reasonable person in the still-wild United States would want to protect.

Friend was so popular for a time that both the medical establishment and clergy in the United States worked hard to discredit Hohman and his text. A major reason for their disdain was not just the medicinal recipies and magic that cut into their respective businesses, the doctors and preachers were defending themselves, as Hohman often derides both in the book.

Read Stefany Anne Golberg's review of Daniel Harms' translation of The Long Lost Friend. Her take casts Hohman's work as America's first (and finest?) self-help book. She might be right.

Remnants of Revenants

An archaeological dig in Kilteasheen, Ireland unearthed two bodies buried in a ritualistic manner that suggests the locals were worried the two men might rise from their graves.

What's remarkable about the find is that the circa 700 A.D. preparation of the bodies predates records of when Europeans started documenting how to keep a questionable corpse in the ground. Read all the details about it here.

From the Vice Desk: Pop Open an Old One

The August issue of Smithsonian contains an interesting article about "experimental archaeologists" who work with local breweries in an attempt to recreate ancient alcohol recipes. The efforst are at least interesting, if not always appealing to our modern/Western sensibilities.


[A tipple to Arts & Letters Daily, once again.]

How to Keep the Dead from Rising and Eating the Living

National Geographic has a short piece on a recently discovered manuscript from 1679 A.D. The latin title of that text translates as: On the Chewing Dead. It's a handbook by Philip Rohr on how to prevent vampires/zombies, which seem to be roughly interchangeable based on how they behave in Rohr's text.

Paper Zombies

Our friends at Utne Reader have started a club. The Dead Magazine Club.

It's a Tumblr blog with a wiki-ethic. The goal? To help Utne Reader "gather the hidden histories of the independent press! Or just browse some amazing covers."

The Typing Monkey thinks that's a fine idea. You know what to do.

From the Vice Desk

From our friends at Arts & Letters Daily come two entertaining stories:

Der Spiegel Online recently published an article about Patrick McGovern, an archaeologist from the United States who theorizes that our neolithic ancestors didn't start planting grain crops for bread -- the current accepted theory -- but rather for beer. Kind of changes the notion of the forbidden fruit, no? Read it here.

History Today has Lucie Skeaping's excellent explanation of the "jig" as it relates to Elizabethan theatre. What's a jig? At the turn of the 16th century it was a bawdy performance that went on after the more respectable stage show had ended.

Like network television and basic cable after prime time, Elizabethan theaters offered filthy songs and ribald dances for the giggling masses who knew to hang around for the second show. Get all the dirty details here.