Mnemonics to remember - what are yours?

[southendmd]

Jeff, you just reminded me of something:

"When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking, and it says its own name."

Deliver me from Catholic school.

[southendmd]

A lot of mnemonics are tunes.

Here's a bizarre one from French class:

This is to remember the verbs that take "etre" in the passe compose:

((To the tune of "Yankee Doodle", if you can believe it))

"aller, partir, sortir, venir,
devenir, retourner,
arriver, rester, entrer, monter,
tomber, naitre, mourir."

My French teacher was an actual Frenchman, not a nun.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Jeff, you just reminded me of something:

"When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking, and it says its own name."

Deliver me from Catholic school.

That reminds me of something, though it isn't exactly a mnemonic:

When the consonant is double, the preceding vowel is short. When the consonant is single, the preceding vowel is long.

[nakymaton]

I'll bake cookies for anyone who can figure out what this one is for:

Come over some day; maybe play poker. Three jacks cover two queens.

[southendmd]

Mel,

That would be the geologic time periods.

I like chocolate chip.

Paul

[nakymaton]

  pm me your address if you really want cookies, Paul.

[southendmd]

I'm glad you didn't ask me to recite them...

I'll take a cyber cookie as a reward!  They're less fattening.  Thanks, Mel

[Ellemeno]

"In 14[hundred and]92, Columbus sailed the ocean blue." 

My mother the joker came up with this one simply to ... what?  I don't know, "In 14[hundred and]93, Columbus sailed the deep blue sea."

[Ellemeno]

Here's one I actually use twice a year, when the clocks change:

Spring ahead, fall back.

hey Euro-Brokies, I'd love to hear some more non-English ones.

[serious crayons]

This one won't be helpful specifically, but might be useful in a more general way. The password on my hotmail account is a jumble of random letters and numbers. Used to be, if I wanted to access my email from another computer, I had to carry it around on a little scrap of paper in my my purse.

Then a friend suggested a mnemonic device based on i) the phone prefix of a community near me, 2) a little sentence that is nonsensical but memorable, incorporates the names of a couple of friends and uses the word "zeitgeist," 3) the last two digits of a significant year. Sounds confusing, maybe, but somehow it all makes just enough sense to stand out in my mind. I never forget my password anymore.

And this isn't exactly a mnemonic device, but does anybody remember those old cartoons that featured a ball that bounced along the words to a song? The lyrics to one song went, "M-i-S ... S-I-S ... S-I-P-P-I -- it used to be so hard to spell, it used to make me cry." Now, whenever I want to spell Mississippi, that song goes through my head.