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.

***

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.]

Are You Ready to Ragnarok?

Remember back in Nov 2013, we alerted you to the Norse historical and mythology enthusiast in England who, per their calculations, predicted that Ragnarok was near, so they blew a ceremonial horn to mark the approaching end? No?

Then the Awful Fight Began
by George Wright, 1908

Oh well. It won't matter anyway because Feb 22 the fall of Asgard begins. That is, assuming the predicted date is correct. Hurry up and read about it. We haven't much time.

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Bonus Bigfoot News!

Since we're all doomed, let's take a moment and embrace the snake-oil charm of self-proclaimed Bigfoot hunter Rick Dyer's touring show. To sum up: Dyer claims he killed a Sasquatch two years ago. He preserved the body and is now touring the United States, charging a fee to those who want to take a peek at the beast.

We could be offended at Dyer's claim. There's no chance of it passing the typical baloney detecting questions. But if Dyer wants to revive the medicine show to make a few buck off of believers and non-believers alike, why waste the energy? The Typing Monkey would put good money on the possibility that Dyer's story becomes a musical in a couple years.

Your Dead Are Safe Until Winter

The corpse-eating fly, thought to be extinct, and possibly apocryphal, is alive ... and hungry.

Not the UFO Carnival We Wanted

... still, the very phrase "UFO Carnival" made our eyes turn into hearts and we salivated like dogs in Pavlov's paddock.

Parapolitical brought the news to our attention: A press release announcing that an organization called Paradigm Research Group will be presenting a forum called the "Citizen Hearing on Disclosure" at the National Press Club in Washington DC.

The "Citizen Hearing ..." earned the term "UFO Carnival" from Parapolitical because Paradigm Research Group is behind many of the "show us the proof we know you have!" type petitions that go up on the White House petition page. Proof, that is, of a vast government conspiracy to hide the alleged truth about visitors from other planets coming to Earth.

Weirder still, and rightly highlighted by the article, is that many of the speakers are retired U.S. congress members, some flat broke from bad investments, others simply kooky and ready to share their theories, or perhaps inside information.

Give it a close read and get lost on the Web, looking up the bios of some of the folks participating.


[A firm handshake to The Fortean Times for the info.]

Reading About Reading: Demoniacs and Things Under the Bed

Josephine Livingstone's "When Nuns Puked Nails" reviews the book The Devil Within by Brian Levack. The book examines the phenomenon of demonic possession, concentrating on the act's heyday in the 16th and 17th centuries. Her review was published on Prospect magazine's blog.

Livingstone manages to get in a little more literary critique into a book review than most of us are used to, thanks to Prospect allowing for more muscular writing than mainstream media makes room for these days.

Not having read Devil Within, we have no basis for debate with Livingstone, but it's clear she enjoyed the book and her review makes us want to read it. Especially this portion of her review:
"Popular apocalyptic thought—the strong suspicion that the final battle between good and evil was under way—made possession seem reasonable, even expected. The devil (or his attendant demons) taking control of your body was like the forces of evil saving seats at the cinema by putting coats on them."

And she points out that much of the Catholic procedure of exorcism at that time followed what amounted to a script, with even the possessed (usually a woman) knowing their role in the event.

On a similar topic, Peter Stanford reviewed Medusa's Gaze and Vampire's Bite: The Science of Monsters by Matt Kaplan, for The Telegraph. Stanford never uses the term "fortean" but he's nearly there regarding his admiration for Kaplan's approach to answering the question: Why do we want to believe in monsters?

Kaplan, at least per Stanford, doesn't pass judgment on any of the believers, nor does he insist that the psychological or scientific "answers" are the only truth. If that's not in the spirit of Charles Fort, then let's fold up the internets and go home.

Kaplan's book shot to number one with a silver bullet on The Typing Monkey's reading list.

Today in Vampire News

Let's get the sillier of these two news items out of the way first:

The movie-rating board of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has officially endorsed the film Twilight: Breaking Dawn 2 due to a strong family values message.

The board, which is officially called the Catholic Initiative for Enlightened Movie Appreciation, or CINEMA, says the film "brings into focus the value of marriage, the need to protect life in the womb and the importance of family."

We don't really have any comment on this. Catholic residents of the Philippines are free to watch this final installment of the Twilight series without guilt now, and that's cool.

The news doesn't affect anyone at TMI headquarters beyond the fact that we've now strung a piece of red twine between three pegs on our "conspiracy speculation board" -- the Catholic Church, Stephanie Meyer's Twilight books and the Mormons -- all connected now. We're keeping an eye on you all.

***

The second item concerns the frightened populace of the Serbian village Zarozje. News outlets are generally reporting the story as "news of the weird" or with an implied wink. That's to be expected.

The report concerns an dilapidated shack above the Rogacica river, long believed to have been the home of Sava Savanovic, a man also long believed to be a vampire who would attack and exsanguinate anyone bold enough to take their grain to the nearby mill.

Curious tourists have braved visits to the shack, but the family that owns the property and the shack have not kept the place up due to their fear of Savanovic. The shack recently collapsed, prompting the population of Zarozje to fear that the vampire is now on the loose, seeking a new home and a hot meal.

Whatever the truth of the story is -- and surely this vivid folk tale sprang up for some reason -- can you imagine living there? The mayor of Zarozje himself has recommended garlic rubbed and/or displayed on windows and doors, and crosses throughout the home to protect locals from Savanovic.

We visited the Sava page of Zarozje.com and found this haiku-like arrangement of text:

"Dobro dosli

Dragi posetioci,
ova stranica je u izradi.
Posetite nas opet."

Thanks to a Web translation engine, we now know that this simply says "Welcome. Dear visitors, this site is in the making. Please visit us again." Yes, we hoped it was some sort of poem or perhaps an incantation to keep Savanovic at bay. Alas.


[A deep bow to the Fortean Times for these.]

No. 1 Rule of a Hoax: Don't Die

A 44-year-old man from Kalispell, Montana died on August 27 when he was struck by two cars, allegedly while attempting to perpetrate a hoax. The man was wearing a ghillie suit, possibly to incite reports of Bigfoot sightings. Instead, he walked onto Highway 93, was hit by one car, and run over by another.

We like cryptozoology stories, hoax stories, and Fortean tales of the unexplained as much as the next little-read vanity blog, but you're not supposed to die while executing a hoax. The story reads as unfortunate, to say the least. And two teen drivers now have to live with this man's death hanging over them.

And anyone who buys one of these signs now is going to feel like a big, fat jerk:

Goblin Attack: A Snake With Shoes

"[S]ome neighbours confirmed that strange things were taking place at the Sithole homestead. Others went on to claim that snake-like creatures wearing sunglasses, a suit and a pair of shoes had been seen at the homestead."

A family from a village in Chipinge South, a costituency in southeastern Zimbabwe, belives they're being targeted by goblins. This was reported in the Zimbabwean news site Zimdiaspora on May 22, and brought to our attention by The Fortean Times.

Whatever is happening to this family, at least some of them believe it is supernatural in origin. In North America, would we blame the same series of events on ghosts or extra terrestrials? Demons?

Many Kinds of Close Encounters, Apparently

The sordid tale of former U.S. Senator and vice-presidential candidate John Edwards' affair with a videographer named Rielle Hunter has provided miles of column inches for newspapers, magazines, tabloids and Websites since the story broke.

Old and often repeated, the story of infidelity and apparent cracks in the moral character of a public official (gasp, faint, etc.) is far less interesting than a detail of the scandal brought to light via the court testimony.

That detail being that Rielle Hunter, the videographer with whom Edwards fathered a child out of wedlock, wanted to claim she had been abducted by aliens. This was part of an effort to deny that Hunter and Edwards had been romantically involved.

The Typing Monkey wants to make it clear to any politicians, celebrities, spin doctors, historical revisionists and public relations flacks that we think this is a marvelous idea.

Have a starlet who needs to lay low in rehab for a few weeks? Tell us she is taking time off to document sightings of the chupacabra.

Grassy knoll and second shooter theories are no more provable or easy to deny than, say, a coven of Satanists eager to assassinate the first Catholic president. See? You really can't handle the truth. [You're mixing up your Oliver Stone films. -- ed.]

We'd like to posit that William H. Seward got such a deal on Alaska when he purchased it from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million because Russia agreed to evacuate all of the Yetis residing there, hoping to bring them all back to Siberia so they could create an army of abominable snowmen. The U.S. got a gold rush untroubled by Yetis, Russia gained an army of cryptids.

The Loch Ness Monster attacked and sank Nazi U-Boats during the war? Why not?

Take any historical controversy or even minor event and make it more exciting by adding paranormal explanations and interference. Our tabloid political climate could use some actual tabloid fodder instead of this banal baby-mama drama.

Many believe the famous Patterson-Gimlin footage, taken in 1967, is definitive proof of the existence of Sasquatch. What they fail to realize is that Bigfoot is, in fact, a courier on his way to pick up The Pentagon Papers from then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

The Inscrutable Charm of "Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files"

In 2010, the Syfy network premiered a reality program that combined the nerds-blowing-stuff-up charm of Discovery's Mythbusters with the ludicrous phantom chasing of the network's own Ghosthunters.

Fact of Faked: Paranormal Files is reality television at it's best and worst -- both illuminating and frustratingly stagy and convinced of it's own authenticity. It's also supremely addictive to viewers willing to let go and enjoy the show's Law & Order-esque predictability.

The premise of Fact of Faked is simple: Six experts in disparate fields team up to investigate allegedly supernatural events caught on film, with the goal of trying to recreate those events and thus expose them as hoaxes.

That's where the Mythbusters angle plays in. In each episode, the cast members/investigators split into two teams, with each taking apart the details of footage they've screened, and attempting to reverse engineer what they've seen.

Many viewers probably disregard the major message of Fact or Faked. That is: Just about every alleged sighting of a cryptid, UFO or supernatural apparition is either an accidental misidentification of something horribly mundane, or a big fat fake. And those fakes look surprisingly easy to construct based on what the stars of the show manage to pull off with average resources.

To sate those viewers, and because this is a product of the Syfy network, the showrunners frequently add a third act to each segment in which the teams consider the possibility that the footage or pictures they're scrutinizing depict actual supernatural occurrences.

That portion of the investigation is posited as a control aspect to their experiments, but really it's a way to fill a few minutes with unnecessarily amped-up tension that rarely results in anything notable.

As soon as they switch to night-vision -- Fact or Faked's shorthand for spooky time -- is when any sliver of legitimacy disappears. All they ever get out of the control test is an agreement that those who recorded the video believe they saw something extraordinary.

Fact or Faked does much better when, in those instances where they've made clear that the footage was a hoax, they confront those responsible and try to get them to admit the hornswoggling. It's never mean spirited or hammy. These "c'mon dude" moments instead come off like a school teacher trying to elicit a confession from the kid who made fart noises during a math test.

That the six people cast in this show do it all with such conviction is enough of a hook. Theirs is a universe where irony doesn't exist and the kooks get as much airtime as the sane. Why not?

The first episode of season three airs April 17, 2012. Older episodes are online via Syfy.com.

500 "Lost" Fairytales Discovered -- Countless New Band Names to Come

A volume of notes and writings by Bavarian historian Franz Xaver von Schönwerth has revealed a bounty of forgotten or otherwise unknown fairytales from Europe.

Schönwerth, a contemporary of the Grimm brothers, collected numerous tales that are either distinct variants on existing stories, or entirely new stories with titles such as "King Golden Hair" and "The Turnip Princess." And perhaps this description of what might be our favorite: "the tale of a maiden who escapes a witch by transforming herself into a pond."

Psychedelic, metal and hip-hop musicians: Please start scooping these up for band names, album/song titles, MC monikers, and rich source material for lyrics and concept records. It's imperative you do this soon before the next generation of Decembrists knock-offs gets a hold of it.

The Guardian has more details about this incredible find.


[tip o' the wizard cap to The Fortean Times]

From the Fortean News Desk: Science Gives Middle Finger to Yeti Finger

"The finger was taken from the monastery by Bigfoot researcher Peter Byrne and was smuggled out of the country, so the story goes, by beloved Hollywood actor Jimmy Stewart, who hid it amid his wife's lingerie."

Oggity-oggity-oggity! Though the finger was not a lopped-off digit from a snomwan, abominable or otherwise, the story still titilates and fascinates.

Read it all.

From the Fortean News Desk

Maybe not so much Fortean as much as the "Possible Con Artist, Tax Dodger or Guy Who Owes the Mob a Bunch of Money Desk" but no matter. The point is, there's a man in jail in Utah who doesn't really exist. Which is to say, he has no traditional identification, won't identify himself, and no one else has come forward to claim him.

Read all about it.

From the Fortean News Desk: In the Dead of Night

Sometime before midnight on Dec 31, 2010, thousands of dead blackbirds fell from the sky above Beebe, Arkansas. As of Jan 3, 2011 workers were still collecting bodies to send for testing. Though preliminary tests show no signs of poisoning, and it appears the birds suffered some sort of physical trauma, it's easy to let the mind wander into conspiracy territory.

Especially because early in the week, some 125 miles north of the site of the blackbird deaths, thousands of dead drum fish washed ashore for a 20-mile stretch along the banks of the Arkansas River. Surely Charles Fort would have loved these news stories.

These people probably have a theory too.