One of my favorite images is of the Great Emu War.
Long story short: the australian military waged war with the local emus, and the emus won.
My image for an emu is an emo. So the image is simple. A horde of Steve Irwins armed with machine guns, fighting a number of emos and losing. Cracks me up for both the image and the meaning.
Not mnemonics per se, but some fun acronyms. I used to have a professor in behavioral studies who started each class with another acronym, each having something to do with the class at the time, which to this day still reminds me of his classes sometimes. Some of the english ones were:
SCHOOL - Seven Cruel Hours Of Our Life
used during the introduction, of course.
SMILE - Showing Miracles In Little Effort
Class in how even the most minor changes can influence how people behave. Ranging from the buttons you have fastened to the color of the walls in a building. Or of course a smile on ones face.
FINALS - F, I Never Actually Learned Sh^t
During the finals, in big, bold letters on the board.
IDGAF - I Don’t Give Away Food
Class where we got to think about if it is more benefitial to share, or to be selfish. Each time a group started to lean left or right, he would hop in with an argument or two that completely destroyed every thought we came up with.
WD-40 - Water Displacement, 40th Attempt
Apparently the real meaning behind the name as well. Shown to us during a class on positive and negative feedback and how each drive us to try again in different ways.
PICNIC - Problem In Chair Not In Computer
The way he made clear that we should not try to have any excuses when handing in our papers late, since the most heard excuses are computer problems. The IT department at work has the acronym on their troubleshooting checklist too!
MATH - Mental Abuse To Humans
Class in which we got to look at talents, and how they can be more abstract than we might think at first glance. In fact, this was one of my first introductions with mnemonics, as he took the student with the worst grades in his class and helped him memorize 50 digits of pi in a few minutes, by playing various pop culture characters at certain objects in the room. Basically a memory palace.
HTML - Hey That’s My Lunch
Class on mental evolution and how a lot of behaviours (especially those of modern day teenagers) can’t be explained without taking digital lives into account. He was nearing his retirement himself, and he mentioned that back when he grew up the important news was what had happened in his own city, and he often had to go out looking for it. Nowadays, news from the other side of the world is brought to us mere seconds after the event occured. Times change, and people change with it.
