Mnemonic honors

Way back on October 28 I wrote about sending an entry to a contest in the magazine Fantasy & Science Fiction. The contest, "Hooked on Mnemonics," noted that with Pluto being degraded to a "minor" planet alongside other such "planets," the old memory device - My very earnest mother just showed us nine planets - was out of date. The contest sought a new mnemonic for the new list of major AND minor planets: Mercury Venus Earth Mars Ceres Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto Haumea Makemake Eris. (A science fiction or fantasy twist was required.)

So I emailed them this: "My vicious, evil, mad cyborgs, just suppose unexpected new possibilities: humans might emerge!"

Yeah, the joke was a bit snarky. Humans might well be WORSE than the evil cyborgs. They had better watch their cyborg asses!

But imagine my surprised smile this afternoon - after I bought the May/June issue of the magazine - to see that I had earned an honorable mention! My immortal mnemonic enshrined in a national mag! Fame! Celebrity!

Or not.

Anyway, nobody should leave this post without reading the far better mnemonic, by a guy in Key Largo, FL, that won first place: "Mischievous village elves magically conjure jelly sandwiches. Unicorns, nutritionally possessed, hate mischievous elves."