Category: The Universe

Kokonventions

Here’s our policy about meeting other MBers offline:

  • MuseBlog’s administrators do not encourage you to do it.
  • We won’t help you plan to do it.
  • If you insist on holding a real-world meeting, your parents must plan it and supervise it.
  • To assure us that they are involved, your parents should e-mail us at gapa @ musefanpage.com. We will help them exchange e-mail addresses, and they can take it from there.
  • Any details about meetings (exact time and place, what you’ll be wearing, etc.) must stay off the blog. Please don’t try to post them. We won’t let you.
  • After a Kokonvention, we will post photographs of Kokonvening MBers with parental permission.
  • That’s all we will do.

Your friends,
The GAPAs

“We’re paranoid so you don’t have to be.”

NinjasSneaky People Needed

For centuries, people have spoken of them in whispers. They are the covert-action wing of the Kokonspiracy: a shadowy cabal devoted to committing anonymous acts — some simple, some spectacular — in the spirit of the Muse known as Mimi. They are the WD-40 that keeps the gears of civilization turning, or at any rate loosens the lug nuts of civilization when they get stuck. Who reshelved that beautiful astronomy book that some idiot had stuck in the middle of the football section, where neither the librarians nor anybody else would ever have found it? They did that, and much, much more besides. Make no mistake about it: Unlike a similarly named supersecret organization depicted in certain popular books, movies, and video games, these are GOOD guys.

They are

The IlluMimiNati.

And they want you.

No membership fee if you sign up now!

Happy 445th Birthday, William Shakespeare!

Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold.
There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins.
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

In celebration of this fateful birth,
Herein the GAPAs will communicate
In lines ten syllables in length apiece
(Or thereabouts). You’ve heard of it before:
Iambic (yes) pentameter–i.e.,
Five two-beat feet, one stressed, one unstressed. All
MuseBloggers may, of course, write that way too.
It’s easy once you get the hang of it
(Well, not exactly easy, but still fun.)

Our Windows on the World

Axa brought up the idea: “I always thought it’d be cool if we all took a picture of what the sky looked like outside our respective windows/houses (no scenery for the most part) but I think it’s be too much work for the GAPAs. And maybe boring? I dunno, I like stuff like that.”

Later in the conversation she added, “It sounds like windows are the window to the soul then, huh? haha. It’s definitely interesting to see things that are commonplace for someone else, how they perceive things.”

Why don’t we try it with verbal descriptions? You could even describe what you’d like to see. (But tell us about your real-world view first.)

A Very MuseBlog Valentine

Raynpho sent this cheerful reminder that Valentine’s Day is about more than couples and ugly little putti. We all know it’s about HPBs. (And [insert your favorite spelling of cacao-based foodstuffs here].)

Raynpho sent this cheerful reminder that Valentine’s Day is about more than couples and ugly little putti. We all know it’s about HPBs. (And [insert your favorite spelling of cacao-based foodstuffs here].)

February 2008 2009 Incredible Morphing Chameleon Thread

Unlike the random thread, this discussion thread stays on topic until the topic changes or the month ends.

Newcomers should read The Rules and The Guide before plunging in.

Current topic: The weather

Coming up: Cool places we’ve been to or want to go to

“Happy” 200th Birthday, Edgar Allan Poe!

Born January 19, 1809; died October 7, 1849; never very happy for very long.

Born January 19, 1809; died October 7, 1849; never very happy for very long.

No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently–
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free–
Up domes–up spires–up kingly halls–
Up fanes–up Babylon-like walls–
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers–
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathèd friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.

–The City in the Sea