random stuff you have memorized

[DirectSplit]

At considerable risk I commence---

I know "I Am The Very Model of a Modern Major General" from Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance, and can sing it at the speed as written-- this is extremely difficult.

e.g.
" I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus,
In conics I can floor peculiarities parabolous;
I can tell undoubted Raphaels from Gerard Dows and Zoffanies..." very fast, and in tune.

Also, he names, functions, and embryological derivations of all the cranial nerves, with attention to the innervations of derivatives of the branchial arches.

very useful stuff.

[suzzer99]

The streets in my neighborhood when I was in 2nd-3rd grade:

Alhambra
Buena Vista
Catalina
Delmar
El Monte
Fontana
Granada

I was laying in bed one night when it dawned on me they were alphabetical. Also if you combine the D and E you get Del Monte, the canned foods co. And my grandpa who lived with us drove a Granada. Pretty cool stuff to an 8 year old.

[DaffyDuck]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
i can recite all 50 states in alphabetical order

[/ QUOTE ]

From the song, "Fifty nifty United States"? That's how I know it.

[/ QUOTE ]

FIrst my answer got taken. Then my question. Lol. How many of us learned 50 nifty United states? I'm 47 and I still remember it.

Bob

[protocol]

The first time I saw this, I thought it was so funny that I kept replaying it until I memorized the whole thing. Pretty stupid thing to memorize, but I bet a lot of you recognize it though:


I don't want to go on a rant here, but America's foreign policy makes about as much sense as Beowulf having sex with Robert Fulton at the first battle of Antietam. I mean, when a neo-conservative defenestrates, it's like Raskalnikoff filibuster deoxymonohydroxonil.

[DaffyDuck]

[ QUOTE ]
All of the exceptions to the "i before e except after c" rule:

neither
foreign
sovereign
seize(d the)
counterfeit (and)
forfeited
leisure

either
weird
heifer

[/ QUOTE ]

reveille

This I know because I came in second in 7th grade spelling bee becuase I got this word and did "i before e".

Bob

[ilya]

bellum
bellum
belli
bello
bello

bella
bella
bellorum
bellis
bellis

[DaffyDuck]

Eight Hundred Five Eight Eight Two Three Hundred - EMPIRE

and yet I have never called them to buy carpet :-)

[ilya]

[ QUOTE ]
from 11th grade English, the first 8 lines of the Prologue to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. so basically, I know how to say this in (butchered) Old English:

[/ QUOTE ]

Old English != Middle English. Beowulf = OE. Canterbury Tales = ME. OE is, like, totally incomprehensible. First 8 lines of Beowulf:

"Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,

5
monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð
feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah"

[suzzer99]

"under" and "he" must be two of the oldest words in the English language. I can see why they [censored]-canned the rest of it. What a mess.

[amplify]

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.