Princess DI, 501st kings daughter indeed. So, along with finishing the ZYXary, I need to get IVXLCDM in my head again, if I want to fill in the crossword gap I fall into every damn time. I'm ok shaky on sports names, as I can get Ott and Orr most of the time without knowing. Too big a field, too subject to change, various team balls sports as easy to look up as tennis or golf. But surely, surely, I can get seven silly symbols pocketed somewhere in my head.
The other set is Jewish month names. Crossword compilers love those. But they've also been known to cheat on the spelling(var.), the bastards.
I as one, 1, sure, pretty obvious, never a problem. Singles, even doubled or trebled, or quadrupled.
V as five, since five has a V. fiVe.
X as ten was always as far as I could go. Imagining four hashes, with the cross for five, one going one way, one the other, then removing the singles.
llll /. llll \. /+\ = X. Ten. So far, so good.
L as fifty. A Load to carry. I could carry 50 lbs, not very far. Easier if it was a kid clinging to me, as long as they don't squirm. I'd Like 50£, although not sure what I'd do with it.
C as 100, a century, a cent.
Yes, yes, it's all coming back to me now like the hot kiss at the end of a wet fist. I DID used to know this.
D five hundred. Um. L filled in, would be D. 500. An L and a C, would look like D, which doesn't work mathematically, but would give me a hint.
M as in milli-ped, Millicent? A thousand that isn't a million. Still have to figure out how it works to convey totals, the weakness of the system. Ah, decimals.
Listening to Nick Danger reminds me of the first time I heard it. My brother, a dozen years older, tried to interest me in Firesign Theater when I was ten. Pushing the cruder references he thought especially hilarious. On his stereo, the records sounded so bad I couldn't make out the rapid fire words, nevermind the myriad references. At that age, I hated absurdity anyway, feeling angry frustration at one more thing that made no bloody sense. Sounded only like more of my father's nonsensical ranting. With dirty allusions that repulsed this good girl, at that age. Never one to snicker at sexual or scatological allusions, only with a scientific interest, I drew away from nasty children who lost their composure. An adult acting that way was frightening, not funny.
By the time I got to high school, absurdity began to work on me, I don't know why then, exactly. My friend Steve, who I thought an utter ass to me in grade 8, in grade 9, got through to my wit and proved he really was just being funny. I read Alice in Wonderland on my own, and laughed. The only poem I enjoyed memorizing, Jabberwocky. Hitchhiker's Guide found me in college. So when dear D discovered Firesign, in turn helping me hear it clearly, I got it. Needed a bit more life, knowledge base, better recordings and clearer sound. My brother likely had the bass all the way up, which wouldn't have helped. Humor is so contextual, time and temperature sensitive.
When in nursing school, I had a touch for coming up with the filthiest mnemonics, perhaps because of being so sensitive to them young, collecting them like coprolites later, finally acquiring amusement. By the time I was dealing with biology, it all came in handy.
1 comment:
I've never been particularly good at crosswords. My brain doesn't store the trivia that often these things are based on.
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