The Richest House on Earth

One evening in my bedroom there was a pudgy cherub hovering over my head, then I look over and there's a mini, yet grown up Charlie Brown as if he's aged past his better days in the cartoons business. The two are binge drinking paint, and the audience is astonished causing Ace Ventura to grind his Mask-esque teeth. There's a quail belching on his shoulder from eating Ace's plate of guano. I pivot my legs off the bed and stand up. Clever Odysseus is standing next to Ace, approaches me for a handshake, and offers to bring me on a tour through the rest of the house. I see Obama's famous ruby and blue 'Hope' poster and think about how at one point he was inelectable. But I also understand that I have to follow Odysseus who wants to leave the room's harbor into a sea of carpet. I'm a room addict and it's a painful habit, but in order to get out Odysseus has to negotiate with the door man who thinks he's landlord of the tenement. His emotion is coming from the stress on his life as a door man, the boring reputation the position carries. Odysseus empathizes with him but I feel bad for him, so bad that I have to blaze past them out of the room to the bathroom, which is the first door on the right.

There I see Brett Favre and Peyton Manning having a tea party, telling jokes, and playing with one of toys with wooden balls, the one you play only while waiting for the doctor. Brett Favre has come up an epithet for his jokes, 'A-four-ism' he calls it as he points at his jersey. 'Get it?' Peyton calls him an old man and makes fun of counterpart's gray neard. They exchange more knowledge and deny each's credibility in their art until Manning makes a metaphor referencing the man behind the curtain. 'He'll know, he's the one with all the answers.' Manning grabs the shower curtain and opens it to find Cain and Abel in a tub of gold coins. You should've seen our faces, we were stunned to the point that our eyes pop out of their sockets. I couldn't see straight, we all thought we were being tricked or dreaming, but but then we hear a rooster coming from the cuckoo clock over the toilet. Then two WWII Russian comrades come to the bathroom door. One has carnival glasses attached to a chop stick and asks if there is any arm-and-hammer for his rash. I impulsively find some, give it to him, he obliges, and then tells us to come out because we're missing the party, they're calling it the 'Axiom of Evil' which will show that our spirits aren't down because of the war. 'What war?''Come, we'll help you remember.' There's another older comrade standing behind him holding many hammers and sickles, like a vendor, with the look of a deer-in-the-headlights. Next I follow them out of the bathroom to find several girls dressed as dalmatians in outfits receiving receipts from a fat and charming caterpillar as they enter my brother's room on the right. I reluctantly pass by and shout out 'Dang!' as I stub my toe on the wall.

Sure enough, there's the George Clooney from ER welcoming me to the living room as if I were his patient without and stamps my hand with a excerpt from the Bible, it's too small to read because the passage is quite long and the ink letters small. Anyways, I'm admitted into my own living room. The first person I see is the The Queen of England with a large coin for her date. Colin and Ryan are performing props the improv game. There is a large decrepit New Mexican tapestry, I may not like it but it's an antique. On the couch is a squash pressing the cushions, he has a briefcase which appears to be bleeding. Leaving the kitchen is a Lucky Charms mascot going downstairs. Waiting for him next to the side banister has polls painted as rainbows is a Wendy's mascot. Then coming out of the laundry room is a heavyset Miles Veater eating a burger with Towelie who's wearing a Towelie tee shirt under a robe.

The End - There's plenty of space left in this palace. My next task is steep, to follow the mascots descending the steps and attempt to take they're masks off.

buxom, churl, precocity, tinge, gnash, quell, insidious, opal, ineluctable, ardor, rheumatic, timorous, banal, mitigate, malaise,

promissory, amicable, samovar, abacus, aphorism, jeer, ingenuous, amiable, lucre, ruse, physiognomy, impetuous, lorgnette, venerable, derisive, soiree, axiom,

vaudeville, emanation, wheedle, pangs, homeopath, parenthetic, expatiate, recompense, apropos, casuistry, trepidation, quash, carrion, iridescent, balustrade, inveterate, frock, calico,

precipitous

The List

We'll talk about humor in the last part of the blog, but first I'm going to engage a point made in Frances Yates book: "[Albertus'] allusion to the melancholy temperament and memory. According to the normal theory of humours, melancholy, which is dry and cold, was held to produce good memories, because the melancholic received the impressions of images more firmly and retained them longer than persons of other temperaments." (69)

This gets me thinking about the idea of rational thinking because once someone told me that, and I'll paraphrase, people with depression think more truthfully and rationally than those who are happier. It's hard to confirm this point, but there's a character from a novel, a tragedy, whose argument against the existence of God is honest to bone-chilling core and irrefutably honest. So, you ask, how does this have to memory? Well, I don't know although this book fittingly came into my memory today in class. I remember that from about page 300 in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov I start to highlight words in the novel, there are simply too many words I don't know, so then I finish the book and write down the highlights in a notebook on a plane flight back home at the beginning of summer. Below you'll see the majority of what I've found in the notebook. The vocabulary is of two sorts, as in there is one of two reasons that I chose highlight a particular word: 1) It's completely unfamiliar and unknown. 2) It's recognizable, but its definition or concept isn't confidently understood.

So here you have it, 51 vocab words:

-Precocity, tinge, churl, gnash, insidious, free mason, magnanimous, amiable, ineluctable, ardent, ardor, rheumatic, timorous, mitigate, samovar, banal, amicable, abacus, promissory, troika, aphorism, ingenuous, lucre, physiognomy, lorgnette, impetuous, soiree, derisive, venerable, wheedle, talisman, apropos, homeopath, marquis, expatiate, parenthetic, inscrutable, arbiter, casuistry, buxom, trepidation, carrion, commiseration, partition, calico, inveterate, impudent, hetaera, iridescent, frock, balustrade

*Here you have the rest it, another 26:

-foisting, iota, promissory, titular, inexorable, appellation, pettifoggery, admonish, prattle, denouement, tumbler, rostrum, palatial, diocesan, besmirched, tatter, extenuation, repudiate, pensive, quash, emaciate, perspicacity, immolation, peony, liturgy, rending

On a different note, a while back in one of the first several classes Professor Sexson brought up the idea of an inside joke. Not everyone "gets it" because the joke is not an inside joke the first time or in other words "there are no inside jokes told once." This struck me and immediately this got me thinking about one of the most memorable vocabulary words I've ever been taught. From what I've already learned, an "enthymeme" is another way to say "inside joke," and it's only possible to understand an enthymeme the second time around. I remember it this way, even if what I've read online indicates otherwise, because my best friend introduced me to the word in high school. You know how it is with a best friend, you go through much together, many experiences, many stories, and many rememberings of those times which you laugh about later. These are the source your inside jokes, enthymemes of our memories which we are only able laugh at after the fact. So I'll conclude with a joke we'll get in the form of an Ong one-liner: "Memory is mother to amusement."

A running Walkthrough the Palace

In italics are cues or clues. Answers are at the bottom, but I'm going to attempt excluding the exact items and put into words, describing character's images and actions, merely what I see by creating a fantasy-based coming-home story and combining it with the real home I've come to know. All while roughly keeping within the confines of the palace's layout.

I'm in the front driveway. One muse has scored a touchdown. Claudia Schiffer is cheering for the winner from the dug-out gravel pit which has been replaced a large bowl of curds. She's trying to tug at the winner's dancing feet. Also on the opposite end of the yard is a teary muse showing signs of melancholy after that TD (Terpsichore Dance..fyi). It's tragic so her mother comes down from the front stairs wrapping around the southside of the yellow house to console her tearful daughter and welcome me. I hear two dogs barking nonstop from the large second-story window before the elevated porch conceals them. There is an crying fan sympathizing with the muse from the second-story porch. The dogs are going wild, I assume the dogs want the football until there's an abrupt silence then a faint whimper. Megan says, "Don't worry that's just Ashley. Now come on up, I'll introduce you to everyone." We see Simeon Rice in a Lexus eating a sandwich from Schlotzsky's deli. There's a large jar car parked right behind Simeon, who says there are more inside through the open garage, so we go that way and see two brothers grabbing orange juice, they tell us to make sure not to let the dogs or the ADHD kid out, that's Dan, Odie, and Flash. Graham is in the basement jamming on his guitar and to no surprise a pissed Chris is reading poetry on the couch in the corner, the television is static on channel 3. Surprisingly Cedric Daniels is playing pool and he's aggravated and trying to not think too hard about his next shot. I know how he feels. From there we go into my room to get, well, situated, then I see my maroon bible on the bookshelf knowing I've never read it. McNulty bursts through the my curtain 'door' wearing a tie shaped made of a confederate flag, also he's always drunk but he's recovering from a failed marriage and has to cope how he knows. I can't change him because I appreciate his character's structure and the world he comes from. Then I think that I should get an actual door in this place for once, make it a true bunker. I tell McNulty to get out because it would be a good move to go play pool with his boss, he frowns and leaves pouting. Then as the curtain closes and a bursts through the door and tells me, "Just wait, because like totally you know just what's up kind of cool." I say "Epic fail."

More to come...

(Running list: Terpsichore, Melpomene, cottage cheese, Megan the Mother of the Muses, Tearful Tristan, Ashley the Kicker of Puppies, Justice, Simeon, Reuben, Levi, pickled garlic, Judah, Joseph, Zebulun, Issachore, Dan, Cookie, Benjamin, Gad, Grump, Asher, homeostatic, additive not subordinate, aggregative not analytic, empathetic, situated, agonistic, participatory, redundant, conservative, copious, conceptualized, relative to real world, fortitude, prudence, temperance, Patient Parker, the forbidden words...

You can't think like that...

Regarding the prudent reprehensibility of artificial memory:

"To move, to excite the imagination and the emotions with metaphorica seems suggestion utterly contrary to the scholastic puritanism with its attention severely fixed on the next world, on Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven." (Yates, 66)

It sounds like the church and state back in the olden day were quite tighter than nowadays. The church has an apparently large historical impact within the structuring of scholastic pedagogy in that they didn't want the practice of artificial memorization to imprint images which would be "highly reprehensible morally." We all know by now that very easier to recall a memory image if it's vivid, colorful, and dramatic rather than simple, gray, and boring. Imagine if our memories were censored, if hyperbolic imaginations were considered heresy and condemnable, like early Hollywood films and the MPPC (Motion Picture Production Code). In time the filmmakers challenged regulations by spicing up their movies with sex, drugs, and expletive infested scripting. These metaphorical ingredients are key for keeping memories, being highly involved in successful artificial memory making. Mnemonic methods promoting images "beautiful and hideous, dressed in crowns and purple garments, deformed or disfigured with blood or mud, smeared with red paint, comic or ridiculous" are questionable and problematic as if they will corrupt the youth, but they're useful when something is to, as Yates puts it, "adhere to the soul." (67)

There's an argument here, but Yates continues to explain along with Tullius' case that this methodology of "artificial memory achieves a moral triumph" because the memories which are put into image incorporate corporeal matters which only may be obtained or recollected by experiencing this world, not the next one. However exaggerated these images are, they are still derived from this life in one way or another. Therefore this notion of prudence maintains its morality and virtue.

The Anchorage Emporium: A Blueprint of the Memory Theatre

I don't know exactly in which direction to go, but I have a starting point in my front yard so here's where we begin to storyboard plot turns and foot prints.

The List

-2 items from MWE (cottage cheese, pickled garlic)

-2 muses (Terpsichore and Melpomene)

-4 epithets (MMM, AKP, TT, PP)

-12 tribes of Jacob (Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Zebulun, Issachor, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Joseph, Benjamin)

-Ong's 9 attributes of oral traditions (additive not subordinate, aggregative not analytic, empathetic, homeostatic, situated, agonistic, participatory, redundant, copious, conservative, conceptualized, with relativity to real world situations)

-Brother's epithets (Cookie and Grump)

---13 New Testament books after the Gospels (Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon)

-4 virtues (Prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance)

-5 challenging vocabulary words, putting a face to an abstract idea (TBD: possibilities--assiduous, magnanimity & pusillanimity, etc.)

-Rough Running Total: 51 (Cap: 75)

Maybe some, but not all

-15/17 items from MWE (salmon, 6 white wines, 3 pairs socks, 3 hula hoops, snorkel, elk sausage, dry ice machine, email, Sophia, Paul Newman film, megaphone, director's chair, harness, rope, barometer)

-Classes' epithets (TBD)

*extra credit? - forbidden words and phrases not allowed

(fail, epic, just, like, you know, awesome, cool, kind of, what's up, whatever)

YOUKNOWWHATI'MSAYING

INCHAPTERSEVENOFFOER'SBOOKHEOFFERSSOMEINSIGHTOFHOWTHINGSUSEDTOWORKBACKINANCIENTTIMESTHEYWOULDN'TEVENHAVEPERIODSCOMMASORANYTYPEOFPUNCTUATIONWITHINTHEIRSENTENCESANDSCRAWLSLETALONEHAVEAPOSTROPHESIBELIEVEWHICHI'VEMANAGEDNOTTOKEEPOUTOFTHISHERE

ITGETSMETHINKINGTHATMAYBETHISSTYLEOFWRITING(WITHOUTBREAKSORRATHERPAUSESSPACESORWHATHAVEYOU)PROMOTESTHEUSAGEOFCONJUNCTIVETERMS[SUCHASANDORANDBUT]WHICHARETYPICALWITHINTHEORALTRADITIONSTYLEOFSTORYTELLINGIWOULDIMAGINETHATTODAY'STRANSLATORSMAYHAVEHADQUITEADIFFICULTTIMEWITHTHECLUMPYLANGUAGE

THECOMPUTERISN'TLIKINGTHELACKOFSPACINGBUTIMAGINEWHATTECHNOLOGYWOULDBELIKEIFOURLANGUAGENOWADAYSWASSTRUCTUREDINTHISMANNERWE'DBEWRITINGWITHANDEVENMORESOPHISTICATEDCODE

ATFER RADENIG CAPTEHR SVEEN ONE OF MY BDUDEIS SOWEHD ME AOHETNR GCIIMMK WIHCH OUR BARNIS TNED TO SLEF CROCRET. HREE WE HVAE SAPECS IN OUR SENNETECS BUT TEHRE ARE A CUPLOE DFIRFECENES AS YOU OF CRUOSE MAY HVAE ADRLAEY DCPIHEEERD. I'TS ITRETSNENIG TO SEE HOW LGNUAGAE FTCNUONIS IN OUR HADES EEVN IF THE FRSIT AND LSAT LTTERES MSUT KEEP FXEID.

Speech

The State of the Union address has just concluded and it "will always be strong." Obama didn't make this decision on the spot. It's taken many meticulous years for him and his cabinet to feel so confident for a bright future, but it's like we as US citizens knew it was coming all along. You can't take politics seriously anymore because of the headline nature of the media unless you actually watch and listen, attend and witness, tune in and experience the entirety of what's being said by the Man of our country because, I'll tell ya, it's a lot. 'Change' was so four years ago, but it's all changing now and it has nothing to do with this years impending election. Now, enough with politics!

What I'm more interested in here is the presidents' method of memorizing and delivering an hour long speech. I could've told you the state of our union is strong, but I couldn't have explained it quite as clearly in-depth or as nearly informative as Mr. President. For lengthy, important, and widely distributed expositions there are many issues which one with such power and influence may choose to address, and how does he elaborate on the issues with such detail while upholding the strength of his poise? He doesn't just speak or write; it's a combination of both, something Walter Ong might call rhetoric. As people we first learned to speak, then we discovered and developed writing, and there are those who furthermore use the innovative technique of rhetoric. If writing is a perfection of spoken word then rhetoric is a perfection of writing. Although he, the prez, might have stuttered from time to time but he doesn't forget where he's going, which is always forward. The president doesn't just get up there and ad lib (although he probably could in an more informal setting) because it's easy to lose your way. He walks through his creation, his vision, his memory theatre and expounds upon the imprint that he sees. People aren't flawless speakers, but on a political stage you better make your words count. Understanding ideas vividly needs imaginative ideas along with an accessible channel to illuminate and recreate these thoughts later to be articulated. Anytime you turn on the television to a random channel there's always a story happening or a point being made, from re-runs to soaps to movies to commercials. That's what memory theatre is, a vivid story conjured by the mind which thrives on nonsense and fantasy and hyperbole.

The Class Task: Create a speech which will correspond and recall one-hundred items.

We've been giving a running list of random things which will eventually accumulate to one-hundred.

My list thus far: Who (How many)

People in class (25?)

MWE p. 93 list (15)

Jacob's brothers and 'tribes' (12?)

Muses (9)

Ong Ch. 3 (9)

Sibling with epithet (1)

something useful (1) Rough running total (72)

Below will be a running, rough script for my final speech. It will be copied into further blogs:

For my memory palace I've chosen my old Anchorage house. I haven't decided loci-wise where to start the story and speech, but it will probably have to be in the front yard where Terpsichore is doing a touchdown dance after having scored a touchdown. Boom! Claudia Shiffer is cheering on the winner from the dug-out gravel pit which has been replaced a large bowl of cottage cheese. She's trying to tug at the winner's dancing feet. Also on the polar opposite yard is Melpomene who is showing signs of melancholy after that TD (Terpsichore Dance). It's tragic so her mother (Megan tMotM) comes down from the front stairs wrapping around the southside of the yellow house to console her tearful daughter and welcome me. I hear two dogs barking nonstop from the large second-story window before the elevated porch conceals them. I assume the dogs want the football until there's an abrupt silence then a faint whimper. Megan says, "Don't worry that was just Ashley. Now come on up, I'll introduce you to everyone."