Winged Migration is on pbs during a pledge drive, so I keep watching bits of it.
The swans triggered my memory of the swans at Podebrady in CzR. They hung out on the frozen river behind the castlish building we had classes in and ate at. We'd sneak tons of bread crusts out to feed them. They were pushy HUGE buggers. If we weren't careful, we'd get totally mobbed. As in, stuck out on the ice until they gave up. They'd dive into your pockets, try to steal your gloves off your hands (in case they were edible,) etc. I learned to pull my hat down low and my scarf up high or they'd go for my earrings. They'd really yank on your hair, too.
But it was so cool to be that up close to them. They were fascinating.
I think the political import of Catholicism has more weight in a country like Italy. I doubt the Pope could point a finger at a politician and force the pol to do his bidding. But I think Vatican condmenation could put pressure on some politicians. Much moreso than here.
Oh, that, sure.
Let's go back to how Newt Gingrich was involved in an adulterous affair at the same time he was condemning Clinton over Monica Lewinsky.
I just updated my anti-virus, and that shit could not have taken longer. I had to restart twice! And wait 100 years.
I am such a dork. Owlets! Which made me google the Farley Mowat story. Owls in the Family, ftr.
Funny to see talk of memorization tricks today.
I had to memorize twenty pages of wordy dialog with heavy speeches for my character for a parody I did last Sunday night.
I had to memorize it in about 48 hours.
Mostly it was just tough finding the time to fit in my memorization. Typically what I do for memorizing my lines is to just recite them over and over, and when I screw up (this requires somebody to be on book for me), I start over and keep going until I get it right in my recitation.
As each page gets memorized, I worry less and less, as the longer I work at it, the more solid I get on the beginning parts.
It's always the last few pages that are the toughest, as they get the least amount of time, but it works for me.
While I am here.
Rice-a-roni people? Naked people harvesting, delivering and preparing your Pasta-roni product does NOT make me want to buy your product. In fact, it kinda freaks me out.
Rice-a-roni people? Naked people harvesting, delivering and preparing your Pasta-roni product does NOT make me want to buy your product. In fact, it kinda freaks me out.
Because that just can't be sanitary.
I memorize things like stories, songs, and dialog by saying/singing them over and over until they wear a special groove in my neurons. All I need then is a mnemonic device to start me off. I've tried the walk-through-a-house thing and it doesn't work. I forget where all the shit is, or what I put where, and sometimes I find something I don't know what the hell it is. It's kinda like my actual house, that way.
It's kinda like my actual house, that way.
Zenkitty is me there. Anybody whose ever seen one of my apartments, or my current office, knows that a memory house would be next to useless for me.
Back when I was acting in high school, I had the hardest time learning my lines -- I spent hours and hours for each scene, becasue the only way I could learn them was to learn every line in the scene, not just mine!
I've also never had a great memory for numbers, but I've hit upon a fairly foolproof (for me) method. When I get a significant string of numbers I must retain for a while, like a telephone number that I can't write down, I draw it out in the air with my finger, or "write" it on my thigh under the table or whatever -- so long as I actually have to translate the number into a different form using my body rather that just repeating the numbers in my head. It actually seems to work -- except of course, if I don't think that a number is going to be significant, so I don't try to remember it in the first place.
