Magic and Mentalism Tips

...and I have to say- this shit is awesome! Sure, on the surface it's closer to Law and Order than it is to The Mentalist, but you guys shouldn't look on the surface like that!

This show delves deep into various parts of psychology and provides a lot of fascinating insights that a mentalist could use.

For a lot of you, it's going to be Finals Week soon. There's probably a ton of stuff you'll have to remember for your tests. I have a post or two on this blog (can't remember if it was just the one) about memorization techniques. I hope some of you try (and succeed!) in applying the techniques to your school work. I myself have been attempting (but not succeeding XD) to use these techniques for school.

I had a quiz in my Italian class the other day. I had to memorize about 20 objects in Italian (caffettiera, occhiali da sole, etc.) Yeah, it was not the easiest thing for me. I have very average memory. But I sat in the kitchen and stared at things like the fridge, the stove, the counter- and I tried to picture myself walking around the kitchen and associating each object with a new task I was doing in the kitchen. I ended up only remembering about 10 of the objects, but hey... At least I got some of them!

This technique is useful for remembering lists. For example, you can use the link system to remember your grocery shopping list or your daily to-do list. There are also less mundane uses for the link system that mentalists are fond of. Famous mentalists like Simon Winthrop enjoy using the link system to mystify and baffle their audiences with amazing memory feats. They can ask the audience to randomly call out words, and then recite the words back to them in order. So, are you interested in learning about this link system?

Let’s start out with a list of items we want to remember. Say that you want to buy these items at the grocery store: Eggs, Milk, Bread, Cheese, Bacon, Broccoli.

First, you have to remember the first item on the list. That’s all. Just remember that you need to buy eggs. Now, visualize the eggs in your mind. Visualize the next item on the list, milk. Connect the two items in an image in your mind, making it as ridiculous and outlandish as possible. Things that stand out are more memorable than ordinary things; we all know this.

In my mind, I am picturing the egg and the milk having an argument with each other. Milk is accusing the egg of not being a true dairy product. They’re getting into a fight- and the egg just rolled over onto the milk carton, crushing it and spilling the milk. However, the egg has cracked itself in the process. These two items are now linked in your mind. Once you think of eggs, you’ll think of milk too.

Next, you have to match up milk with bread. You could picture a piece of bread ambling up to the spilled milk carton and asking worriedly if the milk is okay. “I’ll wipe you up, dear,” the bread offers. The bread then proceeds to faceplant itself onto the floor to absorb the milk. You have now linked milk with bread.

Bread now has to link with cheese. The bread is still flattened on the floor in a puddle of milk. A slice of cheddar cheese is soaring through the air, drifting along leisurely. It looks down and spots the mess of milk, bread, and egg on the ground. It decides to float down and see what’s up. It kicks the bread, checking to see if it’s still alive.

To link cheese with bacon, we can have a pig running and getting splattered with cheese. The cheese blinds the pig and so it ends up running right into a bunch of slicing and dicing knives. The pig enters, but bacon emerges from the other side. Harsh, but it’s how you make things memorable.

Finally, we can link bacon to broccoli by seeing all that greasy bacon lying around on the ground after it’s been sliced up by the knives. Broccoli is hopping along, looking for fellow broccoli pieces, but all it sees are trees. It thinks the trees are pieces of broccoli, but they’re actually really far away trees. The broccoli keeps hopping, trying to get closer and closer, but never gets there. Finally, it stops at a pile of greasy bacon and decides to jump onto a piece and skateboard.

Okay, I know this isn't a good post, but it's consolation for taking so long to come up with something I want to write about.

In this store, 1 costs 10 cents, 43 cost 20 cents, 123 cost 30 cents. Can you explain this? Can you figure out what I'm buying?