Scott Meyer

How to Better Yourself

Added 2023-09-25 07:00:02 +0000 UTC

Missy looks my comics over before I publish them. Usually, she just finds spelling and punctuation errors.

Notice, I didn’t say, “she usually looks for,” them, I said, “she usually finds them.”

Also, notice that I didn’t say she finds spelling “or” punctuation errors. I used the word, “and.”

The English language can be surprisingly precise.

Anyhoo, when she saw this comic, she didn’t like the Columbus mnemonic, and tried to come up with a better one. In the end she decided to leave it as is, but that was after spending quite a while on her alternative, remembering the mathematical order of operations by saying, “Please Excuse My Dumb-Ass, Scott.”

She gets me … maybe too well.

I have, in fact, been reading up on memory techniques. I started after watching this video, in which a person who describes their own memory problems (which seem similar to my own) uses the memory palace technique to great effect.

So far, I’m having pretty good results.

This isn’t my first attempt at this kind of thing, though. About a year ago, I tried I to remember all the uses of the comma by creating a complex mnemonic device around the order of the James Bond films. I still have it written down somewhere, and would share it with you now, but the fact that I can’t remember it off the top of my head sort of suggests that it’s not worth bothering.

Oh, just so you know, there will be no comics next week. I will be back the week after that. Thanks for your patience.