Kim Matthews (of Collingswood Shakespeare, our admirable Miss Kitty and costumer) held a Saturnalia party recently and that very subject came up, of the difficulty in memorizing lines which are non-sequitors, or at the least meaningless to our cultured (using "cultured" to mean tuned to our culture) ears. Myself, I likened it to the studies regarding masters of various games (go and chess were specifically covered IIRC) and their ability to reconstruct a board after seeing it once and then having it removed. As long as the position presented was one that was possible in-game, the experts had success rates thousands of times better than amateurs, being able to reconstruct almost any position presented. With boards that could not happen within the game, they had the exact same success rate as amateurs. So something in our head definitely requires items to follow a known cognitive model for us to remember them (on a side note, I recently read a review of Michael Tomasello’s Constructing a Language and apparently they're finding that learning a language, particularly for toddlers, works the same way. A child will not learn the word rabbit and understand it unless they've experienced a rabbit. Otherwise, they identify the word with the specific rabbit that their parent was pointing to, or possibly some quality of the creature or environment).

^_^ I'm sorry you're not going to be in Measure for Measure. I'll be playing one of the Lucios (They're doing actual double casting on this one with no role going to the same person in both casts as best I understand). FWIW, I don't think you have as many detractors as you might think. Yes, people were a bit annoyed when they first found your blog, but as much as anything, it's that shock most people have when they realize someone's been writing about them online. It's like finding out someone's been talking behind your back, except you get frustrated by the fact that they weren't really talking behind your back; you just weren't listening at the right time and place to hear it. Now that they know that you blog about your experiences, I suspect they would just read it and treat it the same as if you'd said the words aloud while at practice or at the bar relaxing afterwards. By the by, should the role come up needing someone (we've already had one cast member replaced because something came up), is it a time period when you would be free, or are you already committed? I think Chuck asked you because he seriously felt you'd do well in the role, and if we do wind up with a hole in the cast, I could always mention you as someone who might be able to fill in.

Lastly, I'm totally with you on the Facebook application front. For one, the sheer quantity of crap out there... definitely proves Sturgeon was right. Secondly, people are opening some serious security holes. I've seen two different worms go out via Facebook applications, both of which spread by contacting everyone in your friend group and sending out more invitations. One even managed to figure out mailing list addresses and started spamming French advertisements to the mailing lists the infected account had accessed. Currently, I block all invites I get. If people don't like it, they can lump it.