Unquotable:Mnemonics

“The internet has made the bad guys smarter, the smart guys badder, and the good guys unpopular. That's more easily remembered as "BGSSGBGGU," of course.”

~ Some user on mnemonic devices

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Famous movie character Johnny Mnemonic, using some sort of device

A "mnemonic device" is a highly-sophisticated instrument developed by NASA for detecting mnemonics. Why anyone would wish to do this remains a complete mystery, as does the definition of the word "mnemonics" itself, thought by some to be a bizarre linguistic revenant from an ancient race of Elder Gods and astral super-beings who inhabited ancient Earth long before the appearance of Mankind — beings who spoke an obscene, guttural language whose words can barely be formed by human tongues. (Fortunately, human tongues have much better uses.)

Indeed, this word, and the entire mythos that has grown around it, is so completely incomprehensible that we're simply going to ignore it for the purposes of this article, and instead make a lengthy (and perhaps somewhat tedious) list of phrases which, when the first letter of each word in each phrase is used to form a word (or simply a "string" of characters) in itself, provides a means of easily remembering the phrase, which, in turn, is assumed to be useful in some way, for certain people, if remembered. As far as we can determine, no word has been invented yet to describe this activity.

Practical Examples

Guitar Strings

One simple example of this might be the standard tuning of guitar strings: EADGBE, from lowest to highest. A good way of remembering this is the phrase Everyone Ate Disgusting Gall Bladder Effluvia, which has the added benefit of providing the novice guitarist with an appropriate mental image to reflect upon while adjusting his or her tuning pegs. Bass guitar players, meanwhile, need only remember the first four letters, EADG — easily remembered as Everyone Ain't David Gerard.

Grues

Another use for these handy memory-assisting devices is to produce an easily-remembered "mantra" phrase, which you can constantly repeat to yourself in order to remember supposedly important things, such as where you left your car keys. Such phrases don't have to include real words, though that usually helps. For example, to remember the fact that Grues will eat you if you encounter one or more of them in a darkened place where escape is difficult, you might simply repeat the words RA RA RAG HAT, which would "expand" to "Run Away! Run Away! Run Away! GRUES! Haul ASS, Ted!"

In this case, of course, it helps enormously if your name is already "Ted."

Gender Identification

"LGBT" is often used as a handy acronym to remember the four major types of sexual-identity differences among non-heterosexuals and/or people who have somehow managed to retain their original genitalia throughout their entire lives (a significant achievement, in many cases). While short acronyms like these aren't hard to remember, the problem here is that there are far more gender identifications than these, particularly if the two major forms of heterosexuality are included ("Straight" and "Emerging"). In addition, political correctness demands the inclusion of Hermaphrodites, Eunuchs, and Ann Coulter. The complete acronym now becomes LGBTSEHEAC, which can be rearranged to form the phrase STAGE BELCH. However, the problem with this phrase is that Coulter's initials must remain in their original order for the acronym by itself to be useful. The best result based on this limitation is probably BACH LEG SET, which simply isn't humorous enough for most people to remember. To solve this problem, we must add a new item to the list of gender identity groups which might otherwise not be included, due to its lack of traditional association with gender-identity: Furries! With the addition of the extra "F", we can now use either BEG FLESH ACT or SELF-BAG TECH as our memory aid. (Or, if you prefer to use unsavory epithets directed at multinational corporations, you can even use BECHTEL FAGS.) Perfect!

Seven Dirty Words

The "seven dirty words," traditionally frowned upon (in varying degrees) by the US Federal Communications Commission (and popularized by comedian George Carlin) are, as everyone knows, shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. The first letters of these words form the non-word SPFCCMT - completely useless due to lack of vowels. However, it's easy to remember the Big Seven using any one of these handy memory aids:

• Stupid pricks facing censorship could make trouble!
• Severe problems for caustic comedians' meal tickets?
• Spare people from clever Communist Manifesto tricks!

Ethnic Slurs

Many people often forget the most common ethnic slurs in the English language, which are Honkey, Nigger, Spic, Kike, Slant, Pollock, Wetback, and Canadian. These form the acronym HNSKSPWC, another useless non-word. So in case you should forget them, try one of these "re-factored" phrases:

• Hungry Noobs Stole Kevin Spacey's Plush White Cadillac.
• Hellish Nasty Serial Killers Suck Phallic Whipped Cream!
• Has Nobody Seen Kids Since Popping Whitey's Crack?

Impractical Examples

Uncyclopedia

High-school cheerleaders using sophisticated memory AIDS to help educate teens about the dangers of premarital sex with football players

Behavior likely to result in a ban by an Uncyclopedia administrator generally include Porn-Uploading, Slandanity, Spamming, YELLING/Disruption, Insubordination, Removing Tags, Blanking, Admin-Reverting, and Stalking. This can easily be remembered using the acronym PUSSY DIRT BARS, but another way to remember it might be to replace the word "stalking" with "Cyberstalking," and rearrange the words as "AR D PU B TR C I S S," which can be remembered as Admins really detest "problem users," but they react calmly in some situations. While the latter part of this statement is untrue, remembering it this way is less likely to get you banned for another form of misbehavior, "thoughtcrime."

Seemingly ban-worthy behaviors that rarely result in bans, either because they're not noticed or because of sheer apathy, include Sock-Puppeteering, Edit-Warring, Plagiarism, Hatemongering, Approval-Templating, and Sporking. This might be remembered as SPEW PHATS, but obviously this acronym is also inadequate. However, since these behaviors are less likely to result in bans, you could just as easily ignore this one.

Wikipedia

The so-called "Five Pillars" of Wikipedia are, in short, Encyclopedia, Neutrality, Free Content, Civility, and Baldness Boldness. This forms the non-word "ENFCCaB," which is obviously useless as a memory aid in itself. However, it can still be easily recalled, since it also stands for Egotistical Nerds Face Criminal Charges and Buggery. (You know, like, in prison.)

Meanwhile, the Wikipedia "Code of Conduct" contains a whopping twelve (12!) numbered items, which (again, in short) can be summarized as Boldness, Civility, Ignore All Rules, Talk, Summarize Edits, Assume Good Faith, Don't Revert, Gracefulness, Signing, Preview, Foundation Issues, and Respect Copyright. This forms yet another useless non-word, BCIARTSEAGFDRGSPFIaRC - a real whopper if there ever was one! Anagrams such as "Bigger Stiff Crap Cards" don't help, since there are too many "sub-phrases" whose first letters must be kept together, in order (just as in the Ann Coulter scenario above). Yet this, too, can be easily remembered — since it also stands for Bush-Cheney Is A Reactionary, Tyrannical, Scheming, Evil, Anti-God, Fearmongering, Demagogue-Ridden, Gay, Sociopathic Political Farce In a Republican Costume.

See how easy it is? Now try it yourself!

See also

• Sir Alec Dow, Anagrammatist
• UnNews:Mnemonic device wreaks havoc on Creationist strategy
• Johnny Mnemonic