Pi-em

Everyone who is in the sciences knows the mnemonic for remembering the first dozen digits of the mathematical constant pi:

Oh how I need a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lecutres involving quantum mechanics.

This kind of mnemonic is known as a pi-em, according to wikipedia. They exist in all kinds of languages, as limmerics, rhimes, or just nonsensical sentences.

Anyway, a man called Mike Keith has written one that is 3834 words long! To give an idea of how rediculously many digits this are: anyone who memorizes this poem would, given the radius of the universe, be able to calculate its circumference with the accuracy of the size of an atom.

The poem is called Cadaeic Cadanza, and not only is it a pi-em, it also contains the parts of the narratives of various famous English works of literature, such as the Rubayat of Omar Khayyam, the Raven, Hamlet and the Yabberwocky. Mike gets extra style points for implementing the Feynman sequence (the 762th to 767th decimals of pi, which all happen to be 9) as:

"'Something's wrong', I murmured. "Despite Ravenesque timbres, so mesmerizing (the echo

'nevermore
nevermore
nevermore
nevermore
nevermore
nevermore
...'

survives, for example), my intellect detects wrongful alteration. This imitation, simulated Raven!...'"

Some might ask: why would any sane person spend months of his working life writing a poem to memorize pi to unworkable accuracies? The answer is, obviously: "because he could". Please, Mike Keith, keep the geekery coming!