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.]

Freedom, and Then What?

Slate published Linda Rodriguez McRobbie's piece "The Real Victims of Satanic Ritual Abuse" on Jan 7. It's the story of Frances and Dan Keller's release from prison in Texas. They were convicted of child abuse in 1992 -- symbolically, there were jailed for taking part in Satanic ritual abuse.

Never share a seat on the bus again

They're free because the charges, the trial and most of the media coverage, were entirely lies. The endless pursuit of the truth from a local news reporter, and some patient lawyers, finally helped get the Kellers, now divorced, released from prison after a successful appeal.

The Typing Monkey recommends the book Satanic Panic: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend by Jeffrey S. Victor if you'd like to read about the religious fervor/group think nightmare in the United States that began in the 1970s and reached a fever pitch by the late '80s and early '90s.

As McRobbie says in her Slate article: The real victims were those accused. We'd add to that the poor kids that were coached, cajoled and probably psychologically damaged by being forced to repeat (and imagine) what adults wanted to believe was happening. And what they believed is, frankly, unbelievable.

We sincerely hope both of the Kellers can find some peace and a path to resuming something resembling a normal life.

TL;DR -- More Typing, Less Monkey

In scouring the unpaved service roads, blind alleys and drainage ditches of the information superhighway to put together this year's Halloween Frenzy, we accumulated a few items that, while strange or even a little scary, didn't fit within the tasteful orange and black boundaries we try to maintain.

That doesn't mean we don't want to share them. So welcome to our clearance sale.

First up is an ultimately sad tale all the way back from January of this year, so if it's a rerun to you, we apologize. But this tale of vorarephilia is fascinating. Canada's National Post reports of a man who sought help at a Toronto psychiatric hospital in 2012.

The man expressed a desire to be consumed by a "large, dominant woman." He wanted to be eaten. Most cases of vorarephilia involve the diagnosed party as wanting to eat others. So this man's case proved unusual and worth further study. There's so much more to this story, including a puzzling end.

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From strange consumption to mass consumption: On October 10, Truth Dig reported on a horrible prediction from this year's Chocolate Industry Network Conference in London. The forecast for chocolate does not look good friends. Evidence mounts.

One day, future generations will only know of the confection through a few perverted tales and perhaps a candy wrapper on display in a temple somewhere. We try to make light of this situation because as the adage goes, sometimes laughing is the only alternative to tears.

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All mythologies have end-of-days stories. Norse mythology tells of Ragnarok, the ultimate battle of the gods against the giants that will result in the death of Odin, the all-father, and the plunging of Midgard [that's Earth, y'all -- ed.] into endless dark, cold winter.

As it turns out, some Norse scholars in England think Ragnarok is about to commence, and they blew a symbolic horn to mark the beginning of the end, which should arrive 100 days from Nov 15. Thanks, guys!

Read all about it on the Daily Mail site, which features a ton of video ads, so adjust your volume accordingly. [And a tip of the antlered helmet to the supremely wonderful Walt Simonson for the late-breaking news lead.]

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We end this three-course feast of strange with a chewy dessert called The Bus. It's been making the rounds at comics, writing and art blogs for the past couple months, and with good reason. It's a series of short comic strips by Paul Kirchner. We know nothing more about it or him. We could look him up and find out, but frankly, the mystery just adds to the charm of The Bus.

Yeah, But Have You Listened to Bach on Acid?

The Typing Monkey recently peered through the magic keyhole of On An Overgrown Path, a blog that holds a flickering candle into the odd corners of the world of classical music. Cancel your meetings and forward the phones, 'cause you're going to be doing some reading.

Overgrown Path's (sole?) contributor goes by the hand Pliable, and whoever that is, he or she is about to go away for a while and put the blog on hold. No matter. That will give you time to catch up.

To get you started, here are a few links to stories from Overgrown Path that will keep your attention:

From "JSB on LSD" -- "'Let me advise you, if you ever use mescaline or LSD in therapy, to try the effect of [Johann Sebastian Bach's] B-minor suite.'" That's an excerpt from a letter Aldous Huxley wrote to psychiatrist Humphry Osmond. The B-minor suite will always trump Pink Floyd.

And do make sure to read the one-two punch about Edward Elgar, who has a gossamer connection to early LSD experiments, and a clear connection to the Order of the Golden Dawn. Who knew?

There's much more to On An Overgrown Path -- listening and reading recommendations galore -- so have fun.

How Long the Teenage?

Alison Gopnik's Wall Street Journal article "What's Wrong With the Teenage Mind?" was published a month ago, but you should still read it.

The piece touches on numerous recent research in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and other cognitive studies that indicate an increase in the length of human adolescence. That is, puberty starts earlier and adulthood arrives slower than your bus.

Gopnik's piece isn't a unified theory of why 30-year-olds still live with their parents, but she makes an interesting case for a gradual shift in our culture that has triggered a shift in our brains.

[A sincere shrug and heartfelt "whatever" to Arts & Letters Daily]

Of Donuts and Mushrooms

Today is October 1, 2011. Have you eaten a donut yet?

Once again, The Typing Monkey performs our civic duty by reminding our readers that October is national donut month.

We shall observe the commencement of this sacred time by enjoying a couple selections from Seattle's premiere vegan donut shop, Mighty-O Donuts. Vegan donuts, we said it. And we're proud. They're free of dairy, eggs and lard, but they'll still kill you if you eat too many -- a tasty death.

Before things get all spooky up in here with the commencement of the 4th Annual Typing Monkey Halloween Frenzy, we wanted to draw your attention to a recent study conducted by Johns Hopkins University of Medicine in Baltimore.

Researchers at the school gave human subjects psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound found in so-called magic mushrooms.

The study found that even a small dose increased the subjects' level of "openness" -- a personality trait that's crucial to creativity and curiosity.

Further, a single dose increased those tendencies for nearly a year. The test group was small, but continues to bolster previous positive research by the school on the hallucinogen's affect on the human mind.

This is not an endorsement of the drug. However we found it interesting that academics in the United States are conducting this sort of research. Read the report here.


[Image culled from Chris A.'s deviantART gallery]

The Lie of Diminishing Returns

We can't accuse Slate of biting our style because there are only a few original thoughts left in the ether, and "Forgot to Remember" wasn't necessarily one of them.

But Matthew J.X. Malady's "Eureka Lost" does explore similar territory regarding technology's ability to deliver even obscure information with alarming speed, and thus, reduces the thrill of the hunt and the allure of a mystery to solve.

Even if the chewing only lasts for the duration of Malady's article, it's worth a read.

Crosseyed & Painless

"Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds."

Wait, what? Those are writer Joe Keohane's words, from his article "How Facts Backfire" which is worth a read.

And on a completely unrelated note, steampunk -- which has been chugging along just fine for a few decades now -- may have finally reached critical mass. The literary/fashion/cultural/art movement is explained in full via The Economist. Dude, your grandpa reads The Economist.

Does coverage in mainstream media signal the death of a subculture? Or is that question as dated as the idea of broad exposure ruining such things?


[Tip of the dunce cap to Arts & Letters Daily]

Forgot to Remember

Our brains collect pop-culture trivia. Some of it is neatly organized in our memory, some ends up in the cerebral equivalent of a junk drawer. For every poem or sit-com episode recalled in loving detail long after the fact, there are songs and films that left impressions but, due to a lack of re-exposure and the passing of time, swirl in the subconscious like torn pages from old magazines with smudged ink and yellowed pages.

These half-remembered items sometimes gain an inflated significance. The mere fact that you remember only part of a particular story or song, and not the name of the artist responsible for its creation, let alone the name of the work itself, puts a little shine on that memory.

That afternoon when you were little and your mother brought you with her to run errands -- was that song you heard on her car radio really so special? No, it was just “Fancy Pants” by Al Hirt. And though the song is plenty entertaining on its own merits, your desire to find it again, to learn if it would captivate you with the same intensity, owes more to the situation in which you first experienced it than the song itself.

Still, these things matter: the songs, books, movies, and other entertainments. They matter precisely because of our tenuous ability to hold all of them in our heads. We may not retain all the relevant data, but what little we do remember keeps the associated sensations alive, and that’s the vital part.

In our age of “all information, all the time, anytime, whenever you want it, wherever you need it” it’s easier than ever to complete any puzzle our memories present. That’s a curse, of course, because without those knots to untie we lose some of the tiny challenges that our minds crave. Novelty and discovery weaken as the work involved in the latter becomes too easy, and the frequency of the former decreases.

The next time a pop-culture phantom haunts your memory -- some half-remembered scene from a mostly forgotten movie, or the loose melody of a long-ago hit song -- let it rattle around a while before searching for an answer. It’s a tiny little mystery, but most of us need all we can get.