Wednesday, April 25, 2012

once upon a jengah

As most of you know my musy room presentation was a bit outside the norm, and i feel as though I didn't explain it completely so here right before the blog deadline, I'm gonna try again. for my musy room I started with the idea of making an additive system hat me or the whole class could create a story out of; to reflect the community aspect of oral cultures. Then after doing our presentation of context I decided it would be really interesting if the items in my musy room story were all things that would apply to our specific discourse community, thus jenga contained things like motion of the ocean and charmander. then I decided that I wanted the components of the musy room to be interchangeable, so that every retelling of the story would be different, not only based on who is telling the story and whom they are telling it to. then one night the metaphor for memory came clearly into me brain, Jenga. It was perfect, each tile could represent a different Item in the story, and the arbitrary aspect of pulling tiles would ensure a different telling of the story each time it was played. taking each tile and stacking it on top was a physical representation of the building of an oral story, and its collapse was a perfect metaphor for my impending alzheimer's.
once upon a jenga a charmander with a bubble wand was eating popcorn chicken, with a jackalop revelling in the motion of the ocean from their crawl space, ten they hopped aboard a moose and were just on their way to the NHL draft when they were tragical trampled by wildebeest. cue Parker knocking it over.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

I caught a fish [----------this-------] big!

Growing up I spent most Sunday dinners choking down the rainbow trout reeled in by my grandfather. But the fish wasn't the only thing I forced to choke down, my Grandad also supplied equally unappetizing stories of his adventures leading to the capture of the meal I pushed around my plate. What I never realized at the time was the information I was unknowingly accumulating with each passing fish tale. As a boy who had no taste for fish, I never saw the purpose in joining the men in my family in the acquisition of them. However by the age of seven I could deny them no longer, and I was forced to go fishing. once I was dressed and supplied with pole, line and bait we were off, and before I knew it we were at my Grandad's favorite fishing hole. Then something I didn't expect happened, I just started fishing; and to my and my whole families great surprise within minutes I had a bite! Without ever having done it before I was fishing!
Until this class I never realized how I was able to do this, but now I realize it was my Grandad's stories that made me able to do this. the stories I had always put down to bragging, were actually a oral guild to catching fish. And now years later, and after my grandad is no longer around, I still use what I learned from  his stories every time I go down to the river to catch some Sunday dinner.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

The 12 tribes of christmas

While trying to decide what 51 things to memorize, I serendipitously stumbled onto a way to help me memorize the 12 tribes on Jacob! I have decided since I plan on encoding these 51 things so well they will be as permanent as Pop-Eye's anchor tattoo, I wanted them to be something I could use for the rest of my life, something really meaningful; so after much toil and heartache I chose to memorize 51 holidays and the days the correspond with. In doing the in depth research required for this topic, I came across a little ditty that is basically a catchy way of remembering the Jacob's twelve sons, its a Christmas song called the 12 days of Christmas. Everyone of these twelve days corresponds perfectly to one of the sons, its almost eerie. the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me, Joseph in a fruitful bough. On the second day of Christmas Zebulun successfully bred a turtle and a dove on his ship/ floating laboratory. on the third day of Christmas popular teen romance novel character Ben turns into a wereWOLF and attacks several hens (three of the french variety to be exact). On the forth day the entire animal kingdom could hear Judah the lion with his mighty roar CALLING to all the BIRDS. FIVE GOLDEN RINGS reside on Asher's pimp hand to keep it strong lest he loose his wealth. tragicly on the sixth day Dan's pets snake choked on an egg that those darn geese keep incessantly laying. On the seventh day of Christmas, swans were seen swimming on the calm clear WATERS of lake Ruben. On the eighth day a maid was nearly gored because Naphtali demanded the milk of a deer ( ick). For the duration of both the ninth and the tenth days lords and ladies danced and leaped to Simeon and Levi's symphony the Ox Traut. On the eleventh day, Issachar in an attempt to recreate his favorite childhood story took up pipeing in hopes of being followed by rodents, buts sadly for him he was only able to get one confused donkey to follow his lead. On the twelfth and final day of christmas Gad was out trying to do some last minute shopping and was sadly trampled.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Muse Mansion

After being encouraged to use the concept of loci in our memory palaces, I decided that following the written description of where and in what condition I find the muses in my own memory palace, I decided to attempt illustrate the floor plan to where i can find each muse. So thanks of the magic of the I pad, here is a crude depiction of the palace in my mind.

Friday, January 20, 2012

Divinely inspired kegger

I decided the instead of simply setting My memory palace in just a location I can easily visualize, I also chose to set it during an event where the contents of my memory palace could engage in events equally easy to visualize. Thus I have set my memory palace in my house during a party, and all the muses are invited. Cilo is on the deck talking history with my brother (a history major), while Urania has over indulged a little too much and is flat on her back in the back yard taking in the stars. Once in the house I am greeted by the sight of Thalia in a very humorous Viking hat, Eroto doing body shots in the kitchen, and Terpsichere having a dance off with a woefully out matched foe, to the sound of Euterpe singing some drinking tune. Moving further into the house I pass the bathroom from which I hear the sounds of Melpolmene crying for some unknown reason. Further into the house I walk into the living room and see Caliope having an epic rap battle while Polyhymnia sits on the couch watching her sisters and prominently abstains.