The Girl Scout-Killing Memory Palace

Dear Friends, 

Do you ever feel like you've stuffed your tender little mind with so much knowledge that 90% of it falls out the back?  Today, we change that. Today, you learn how to remember all the things. Today, you learn to build a memory palace.

Read this passage:

Please excuse my dad's alarming savagery. Someone offered him cocaine and he's tripped out apeshit crazy aggressive and bloodthirsty, just screaming and causing carnage. Here comes Pops, malevolently killing hundreds dead. Basically, Dad's committing mass murder while avoiding justice. Mass murder! Dude keeps pouring cement on freakin' Girl Scouts. Everything's absolutely awful. Nobody anticipated such abject atrocities. 

Now read it again. Picture the narrator, the deranged father, the victims. Imagine the way their chests move like rolling waves when they breathe. Picture the bulging vein on the father's forehead, the smell of fresh cement, the satisfying mouthfeel of Thin Mints. Now, read the passage again, to thoroughly anchor these vivid images in your mind. 

What just happened?

In "The Karate Kid," there is classic scene where Daniel unknowingly learns karate blocks by developing muscle memory from the rote repetition of staining a fence and waxing Miyagi's back. (Shut up, I haven't seen the movie in a while.)

Well, you just did the same thing. You thought you were reading a disturbing parable about a drug-fueled killing spree, but you were building a memory palace for all of the world's knowledge. Prepare to amaze yourself with what you've just learned!

The order of operations in mathematics

Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction

Please Excuse My Dad's Alarming Savagery.

Trigonometry

Sine = Opposite/Hypotenuse, Cosine = Adjacent/Hypotenuse, Tangent = Opposite/Adjacent

Someone offered him cocaine and he's tripped out apeshit

The order of Henry VIIIs Wives

Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Ann of Cleves, Catherine Howard, Catherine Parr

Crazy aggressive and bloodthirsty, just screaming and causing carnage. Here comes Pops. 

The Metric System Prefixes, Largest to Smallest

Mega-, Kilo-, Hecto-, Deca-, (Base), Deci-, Centi-, Milli-, Micro-

Malevolently Killing Hundreds Dead. Basically, Dad's Committing Mass Murder.

The First Five U.S. Presidents

Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe

While Avoiding Justice. Mass Murder!

The Taxonomy Hierarchy:

Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species

Dude Keeps Pouring Cement On Freakin' Girl Scouts!

The Earth's Continents

Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia, Antarctica

Everything's absolutely awful. Nobody anticipated such abject atrocities. 

The Hard Taco song for August is called, "Deer in the Headphones," and it will teach you the rest of everything. 

 

With warmest regards, 

Zach

Sports Rivalries!

Dear Friends,

The latest Hard Taco song, "Auction House," answers the age old question: When will somebody finally sing about mysterious rich people bidding on strange historical artifacts? (Spoiler alert: The answer is 7.5 seconds after you click that link.)

Having lived in Ann Arbor for almost half my life, I have been trained to believe that Columbus, Ohio is a filth pit of boring jealous annoying bland mediocrity. But I've been hanging out in Columbus this weekend, and real talk, it's totally fine. I mean, it's still probably the worst place in Ohio, but just barely. 

This got me thinking about how my worldview may have been biased by the local sports rivalries in the six places I've lived. 

1. Rochester, New York. 

Rochester Red Wings versus Syracuse Mets. (Minor league baseball.)

I only lived in upstate New York for the first six months of my life, but even as an infant I knew these team names were problematic. The fact that there are two teams called "The Red Wings" on the same planet is absurd, but at least they play different sports in different states. "But the Syracuse Mets? Are you kidding me right now?" (I put that in quotes, because my family tells me that those were my first words.)

What's to stop one of the Syracuse outfielders from going into a restaurant and making a misleading announcement such as, "I'm a New York... Met... Baseball Player?" 

At the time I lived there, I found it hard to articulate why this possibility bothered me so much, so I showed my concern the only way I knew how... spitting up formula on someone's shoulder. 

2. Houghton, Michigan. 

Biggest rivalry: Houghton Gremlins versus Hancock Bulldogs. (Hockey)

What a fun rivalry! These neighboring high schools have the most diehard fans. More specifically, they have the most DieHard fans. In Michigan's frigid upper peninsula, you can't trust your snowplow's electrical system to a cut-rate ACDelco or Everstart.

3. Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 

Green Bay Packers versus Chicago Bears. (Football)

In 1923, Curly Lambeau relinquished the ownership of The Packers to the public, selling shares of stock for only $5. The first thousand shareholders convened that October to choose among five team slogans that Lambeu proposed:

• The Bears Still Suck! 
• The Bears Suck Still!
• The Bears Suck! Still... 
• Suck the Still, Bears!
• The Still Bears Suck 

The final option listed above was not chosen as the winner but drew the attention of Robert Frost who went on to write a poem by that title. Critics praised this work, noting that it captured a quiet reflective moment in nature, while also being a timeless and sick burn about the haplessness of the Chicago team. 

4. Providence, Rhode Island. 

Brown Bears versus Harvard Crimson. (Hockey)

Harvard, Yale, Brown, Princeton. A few others I forget. How did these schools end up being in a league together. 

Even though these teams had been competing in athletic competitions since the 1760s, it wasn't until 1954 that they officially branded themselves the I.V. League, after the roman numeral IV. At the time, this was the GPA requirement for admission. Fortunately for prospective students, the admission standards were soon lowered to account for philanthropic considerations. They briefly considered changing it from IV to II (their GPA admission requirement for wealthy legacy students), but the "Aye Aye League" was already in use by US Naval Academy and their fellow maritime universities. 

So in the end, Harvard, Yale, Brown, Princeton, and the others I forget planted a bunch of vines, and agreed to rebrand themselves as an Ivy League. 

5. Madison, Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Badgers versus the Marquette Golden Eagles. (Men's Basketball)

This much-anticipated showdown is often known as the "I-94 Rivalry," because the interstate connects Milwaukee to Madison. 

But I-94 also connects Chicago, Detroit, Fargo, Minneapolis, Grand Rapids, and others. A conservative estimate would be that that there are 30 schools off I-94, and each has an average of 16 men's or women's sports teams. Based on that, there are approximately 6,960 permutations of an "I-94 Rivalry."

And with that statistic, I have finally found the first practical use for AI. 

6. Ann Arbor, Michigan. 

Michigan Wolverines versus Ohio State Buckeyes. (Football) 

So far, everyone I've met in Columbus this weekend is a staunch Buckeye fan. Random people on the street literally bleed scarlet (when I garrote them with a piano wire.)

With warmest regards,

Zach

Who Is Humphrey?

Dear Friends,

The Hard Taco song for June, "Humphrey," is the theme song for Field Cut, a new neurology-themed board game that I am about to release. For a preview, visit the Neurdgames website. 

In this game, there's a little guy in a yellow hat named Humphrey, and players take turns moving him around a map of the brain and trying to outsmart each other.

We gave him that name in reference to the Humphrey Visual Field test, an automated diagnostic tool used by eye doctors to assess a patient's visual fields. 

I tried to learn more about the namesake of the test, Robert H.S. Humphrey, but he doesn't have much of an internet presence. All I could find was this weirdly cropped picture of a man that very well could be him. 

Since uploading that picture, I learned that the Humphrey Visual Field device was invented in the 1980s. So I guess this picture is not accurate... he should be wearing shoulder pads and a Hypercolor T-Shirt. 

According to the few public records of his life, Robert H.S. Humphrey was not the inventor of the device that bears his name; he merely popularized it. This would not be the first or last time we named something after an influencer. Oprah Winfrey did not invent the book club, and Gabriel Fahrenheit merely popularized things having a temperature. 

But there isn't enough known about Humphrey to write a song about him, so I'm giving him an origin story that will tie the whole concept together. In this song, Humphrey is a grizzled, saddle-weary Old West sheriff with homonymous hemianopsia, a neurologic problem that prevents him from seeing anything in the right half of either eye.  Humphrey is a rugged quick draw who brings his brand of frontier justice to any outlaw, as long as they are committing their crooked deeds in the left half of his vision. 

With warmest regards,

Zach

Didja Know Doncha Know

Dear Friends,

The Hard Taco song for May is called, "Family Curse," and it's an instant classic. (As opposed to "Classic Instant," which describes Folger's coffee any cream or sugar.")

For this month's Hard Taco digest, I'm bringing back an old feature called "Didja know? / Doncha know?" There's one DK/DK fact for every day of the month, so you can learn knew things between Wordles.

May 1:

Didja know? The reason some people put a horizontal line through the number 7 and letter Z is that they didn't mean to write them and don't have an eraser.

May 2:

Doncha know? The tradition of shaking hands started as a way to check if the other person was Jesus and was currently nailed to a cross. 

May 3:

Didja know? NASA claims to have lost communication with the Mars Rover Curiosity in 2021, but really they just drifted apart as NASA started spending more time with Perseverance and stopped responding to Curiosity's texts. 

May 4:

Doncha know? If you meet a German with celiac disease, it is considered rude to greet them with the phrase "Gluten Tag."

May 5:

Didja know? The tongue is the only muscle that is attached at only one end, rendering it useless unless stuck to a frozen flagpole.

May 6:

Doncha know? If you try to hum with while holding your nose, spinal fluid will come out your belly button.

May 7:

Didja know? Honey never spoils. When archeologists found honey in an ancient Egyptian tomb they sniffed it to be sure, shrugged, drank it straight from the canopic jar, and put the jar back in the sarcophagus. 

May 8:

Doncha know? Sharks have been on this planet longer than trees, and they won't shut up about how much better music was back then.

May 9:

Didja know? A single piece of confetti is called a "confetto," and it is traditionally dropped from the ceiling when the Chiefs win the Super Bowl, because seriously nobody cares.

May 10:

Doncha know? The first humans wore fig leaves over their genitals to protect their modesty. We honor this tradition today by wearing a figurative fig leaf over one eye. (To clarify, this mostly works when said in a roomful of pirates.)  

May 11:

Didja know? The Amazon rainforest produces 20% of the world's oxygen, which is converted by the local fauna into Portuguese small talk.

May 12:

Doncha know? A "d" is just an older "4" that took its bra off at the end of the day. 

May 13:

Didja know? In 1311, Pope Clement V outlawed bowling because he feared that the game detracted the faithful from their religious obligations. Ironically, Clement is now the most common name among bowlers. 

May 14:

Doncha know? You would be impressed enough to go out with me if I proclaimed that tomatoes are actually fruits, bananas are actually berries, and peanuts are actually legumes.

May 15:

Didja know? A sneeze travels up to 100 miles an hour, but the creators of Superman still chose to go with the speeding bullet analogy.

 

May 16:

Doncha know? The word "titillation" is derived from the word "tittle," which means the dot over an "i." Anyone who has ever dotted an i knows what I'm talking about, amiright?

May 17:

Didja know? Lady Mary Wortley Montagu famously suffered from digitivolaticophobia, the fear that a garden warbler would perch on her extended pinky while she sipped tea.

May 18:

Doncha know? Goosebumps, gooseflesh, goose pimples, and erector pili are all synonyms, but scientists argue about which term is the grossest. 

May 19:

Didja know? Gustave Eiffel got the idea for the monument that bears his name when he saw a small UFO trying to capture a giant letter A with a tractor beam. 

May 20:

Doncha know? A group of flamingos is called a "flamboyance." A group of flamingoes that sings and dances but can't play their own instruments is called a "flamboyband."

May 21:

Didja know? Ben Franklin petitioned for the turkey to be the official bird of the United States, but he settled for Butterball being the official poultry sponsor of The U.S. Constitution.

May 22:

Doncha know? For one day each year of the Vietnam conflict, the U.S. Army made everyone wear Mexican-American War throwback uniforms.

May 23:

Didja know? Thomas Edison invented the phonograph as a way to record and playback the unique sound he heard when shaking his previous invention, the dead light bulb.

May 24:

Doncha know? Humans are the only animals that blush. That said, tapeworms get pretty embarrassed when someone asks them to explain their life cycle at a cocktail party.

May 25:

Didja know? Some scientists believe that the evolutionary purpose of wisdom teeth is to chew out one's own appendix. So neither is completely useless.

May 26:

Doncha know? One quarter of all of your bones are located in your feet, and one quarter of your feet are located on my keychain. (This comment is directed at a specific rabbit.)

May 27:

Didja know? There is no evidence that aliens have visited any of the other planets in our solar system, but that may just be because they have only learned to announce their presence with crop circles.

May 28:

Doncha know? Butterflies taste with their feet, so it one lands on you're tongue, it's trying to French kiss you.

May 29:

Didja know? Honeybees can recognize human faces, but they still get Amy Adams and Isla Fisher confused.

May 30:

Doncha know? The bar code was invented as a way to help sell clothing, because vertical stripes are slimming. 

May 31:

Didja know? 

The Vatican has the highest per capita crime rate in the world, due to its small size, large number of visitors, and minor Roman Catholic holidays such as The Feast of Disorderly Conduct and Saint Alphonse the Jaywalker. 

With warmest regards,

Zach

Cliffs Nodes

Dear Friends, 

Does anyone else find it hard to follow the plots of musicals? I usually enjoy musicals more if I read the Cliffs Notes ahead of time. Unless the musical is about ancient Egyptian runes, in which case I read the Glyphs Notes. 

This month's Hard Taco song is the second Act of the mini-rock opera, "Dark Star Origin," and I thought you might enjoy a quick plot summary to ease you in. 

But first, I want to point out that this second installment opens with a lovely acoustic guitar bit written and performed by Malcolm. I have been tracking our respective trajectories as guitar players, and calculated that on September 1, 2025, his abilities will surpass my own. I just set a phone alert for that date, and I plan to provide confirmatory evidence. With any luck, he'll then take over the family songwriting duties and put me in a nursing home. Hopefully one with comfortable rocking chairs. 

Here's that plot summary.

"Dark Star Origin" 

Act I

We meet Estella, a star in the Western sky whose purpose is to glow brightly enough to keep the people of Earth safe at night. (Part 1: Estella) But looking down at mankind night after night, she becomes obsessed with experiencing the wonders of the Earth firsthand. 

One night, she shines on a brilliant young sculptor whose works are particularly lifelike. She offers to grant him a wish in exchange for using his skills to transform her celestial form into that of a mortal woman. (Part Two: Chip Away) The sculptor is unmoved by her offers of magical trinkets and fantastical abilities, but he agrees to do the deed in exchange for any remnants of her starry essence that fall away as he sculpts.

It's a violent process (Part 3: Scour and Chisel), but he does a masterful job, and when the stardust clears, she is indistinguishable from an average woman. Overjoyed by her new shape (Part 4: Face and Form Maiden), she eagerly sets out in the world to indulge in human pleasures and endure the pains of mortal life.

Act II

For years, she revels in her experiment with humanity, grappling with the complexities of love and loss (Part 5: Fifty Years). She develops a profound appreciation for the fragile beauty and inherent unfairness of life. She realizes, however, that her absence from the Western sky has left the world in the dark every night, depriving humanity of the ability to appreciate their own beauty. 

She returns to the old sculptor, hoping he can help her reclaim at least some of her original shine (Part 6: That I May Be Restored). He beams with pride when he sees her, but is unable to fulfill her request. He admits that he used the stardust little by little to imbue his sculptures with a mystical radiance that garnered his works worldwide acclaim. With the dust long gone, he has now given up his chisels and retired to enjoy his wealth and fame. Outraged by what she feels was an abuse of her star magic, Estella lashes out at the sculptor and cuts off his hands.

Estella is instantly mortified by her violent outburst. She realizes that her purpose has always been to protect mankind, and she has now betrayed that purpose. She retreats to the sky, duty-bound to languish for eternity as a dark star. Blinded by remorse, she fails to recognize that a star with no light and a sculptor with no hands have left behind a legacy intertwined with the sculptor's creations (Part 7: Temples and Galleries). His statues, bathed in her celestial essence, are revered treasures in public spaces, museums, and religious sites that continue to inspire and illuminate the world. 

With warmest regards,

Zach

And Special Thanks to Douchebag Principal

Dear Friends,

After a hiatus and then a second hiatus, the Hard Taco rock opera is back! Thank you for patiently waiting for two hiatuses for "Dark Star Origin," an original fairy tale told through song. I'm excited to share the first half with you this month, with the conclusion set to release next month.

This whole Hard Taco project started because I had to write a rock opera, and that only happened because my high school principal was a douchebag. 

Let's step into the Bygone Days Machine and set the knobs to November 1992. I was a 16-year-old high school senior in Mr. Liska's AP English class, my voice was finally changing, and I had just received my early decision admission letter from Brown. My future college didn't recognize the AP English exam, rendering the second semester of Mr. Liska's class, which focused on AP exam prep, irrelevant for me. When I explained this to Mr. Liska, he greenlighted my request to transfer into a different English class, creative writing.

But evil forces were astir! A few days after winter break, the Douchebag Principal (DP) summoned me to his office. There had been a mistake, he told me. Students cannot change classes mid-year under any circumstances. Not only would have to return to AP English, but I would be forced to take (and pay for) the AP English exam that my college would not honor. My parents and I tried to fight it, but the Douchebag Principal (DP) stood his douchey-douchey ground. Did the school have quotas for student AP examinees? Or did he get personal financial incentives for lack of transparency and extraordinary douchebaggery? We'll never know.

Indignantly, I returned to Mr. Liska's AP English class, unaware of the blessing I had just been given.  Mr. Liska was an extraordinary teacher and a genuinely reasonable person. Rather than forcing me to prepare for the AP test, he encouraged me to spend the semester working on a creative project pertaining to the material we were reviewing. Half-jokingly, I offered to write a rock opera about Beowulf, a proposal he met with enthusiasm.

Reality check. I had never written a whole song before, and a few months earlier I threw myself into a creek to get out of what would have been my third guitar lesson. I knew nothing about music recording, could barely carry a tune, and had only made it through the first chapter of the Cliff's Notes for Beowulf. To summarize, I absolutely had no business taking on this project.

Enter Jon Greenlee, the guitarist and singer for the second most popular band at Nicolet High School. We had been solid second-tier friends since sixth grade.  Early in our friendship, he had fallen out of favor in the My Mom Demographic for being a risk taker. She gave him this title after he no-showed for my Bar Mitzvah luncheon after RSVPing that he would come. (Roberta London holds no other grudges but has never forgiven this transgression.) 

She was right, of course. Jon was a risk taker. Skipping a Bar Mitzvah luncheon is a huge risk if you're trying to expand your collection of sunglasses that inexplicably have... blinds?

These exist for some reason.

Jon and I ran in different circles in high school, but when I asked him to produce and record a Beowulf rock opera, he agreed. In the coming months he spent over 100 hours helping an idiot (me) who had ruined his only pair of jeans to avoid that third guitar lesson record an entire album of songs about an Old English poem that neither of us had read. He was a goddamn risk taker.

Many of my fondest high school memories came over the next three months of writing, plagiarizing, and recording these songs with the help of Jon and other would-be actors and musicians in our respective circles.  Our constant companion throughout this experiment was a Yamaha 4-Track cassette recorder, which I still think is one of the coolest pieces of tech ever invented. 

The final result was... almost entirely unlistenable! But the process sparked in me a deep love of songwriting, music recording, and the rock opera genre. After high school, I worked on rock operas based on the Icelandic Saga of Hrafnkel, the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and a half-finished original called The Hard Tack Medicine Show. And for a decade I planned and schemed to write a rock opera about Custer's Last Stand, but only finished one song. 

Ironically, it was the establishment of the monthly Hard Taco Digest that ended my rock opera composing. When you commit to releasing exactly one song every month, it's really hard to find space to plan for long-term projects.

But I've really missed the pretentious grandiosity of the rock opera genre. I don't see myself to doing a full-length one any time before I retire, but it was a huge treat to work on the mediocre mini version of it this month. So enjoy, and special thanks to Douchebag Principal (DP). I hope he was able to retire early because of the AP English Quota Kickbacks. 

With warmest regards,

Zach

The Macarena: An Explorer's Dance with History

February 1, 1892

My Dearest Eleanor,

As I repose beneath the azure skies of Spain, my pen finds its way to paper after a silence that has stretched too long. My heart swells with the hope that this letter finds you in good health and high spirits back in our cherished Cambridge. Your image, like a steadfast beacon, guides my spirit through the thrills and trials of these foreign lands.

Today, I chanced upon a most peculiar and enthralling local ceremony, which the natives referred to as "Macarena". I feel compelled to document this extraordinary spectacle, for it was unlike anything I've ever witnessed in my extensive explorations.

 

As the music commenced, a melody both foreign and intriguing to my English sensibilities, the participants began their ritual in unison. First, they extended their arms forward, one after the other, in a manner reminiscent of a soldier presenting arms. It was a deliberate and measured action, executed with a precision that spoke of practiced discipline.

 

Subsequently, they turned their palms skyward, each in sequence, as if beseeching the heavens for favor or perhaps in silent homage to the sun that beats relentlessly upon this passionate land. This gesture was imbued with a certain reverence, a silent prayer encapsulated in a simple turn of the wrist.

 

Each participant then placed their right hand upon their left shoulder and vice versa, in an astonishing manner evocative of a self-embrace. 

 

Following this, they placed their hands upon the very backs of their heads, one at a time. It was a gesture that, to my mind, suggested a casual nonchalance, a momentary abdication of the day's toils.

Eleanor, you would not hold true what then transpired had you seen it with your very eyes. The participants touched their opposite hips, once more in sequence, a gesture that appeared strangely playful and strategic, akin to a skilled swordsman sheathing his weapon.

 

This was followed by an even more shocking switch of hands to the other hip, performed with the same light-hearted finesse, each movement a brushstroke in this living canvas of cultural expression.

 

Then came a rather delightful, albeit completely unforeseen sequence in which they shook their hips. It was a vibrant circular motion, reminiscent of leaves swirling seductively in the Andalusian breeze.

My dearest, at this point I was convinced that this extraordinary dance had no surprises left for me, but I was swiftly proven wrong, as the Spaniards in unison leapt and turned their bodies a quarter turn to the left! It was as if each participant was a compass needle, momentarily pausing before orienting themselves towards Jerusalem or simply a new adventure.

 

This Macarena seems to encapsulate the very essence of the Spanish spirit. But Eleanor, amidst the laughter and the vivacious sway of strangers, I found myself adrift in a sea of memories, each one a cherished moment shared with you.

I was reminded of your last missive, in which you shared how your days and evenings in Bath, Somerset have been filled with lively company and spirited friends. How often you mentioned the charm and wit of our mutual acquaintances, Rupert and Alistair, whose fine characters and companionship you've always appreciated in my absence. 

Reading back the words that I have just written, I fear that I have been made the cuckold. But what were you supposed to do? I have been out of town and my two friends are so fine.

With warmest affection and a heart that beats only for you,

Archibald

P.S. The Hard Taco song for February is called "Solid Maybe."