MuseBlog

Requested by IBCF. Any other enthusiasts out there?

Whether your medium is traditional, digital, or in a realm of its own, if it’s visual (or you hope it will be one of these days), here’s a place to talk about it, dream about it, or share ideas, no matter if you’re an artist or not.

Continued from Visual Arts, 2008.2.

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

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

And they want you.

No membership fee if you sign up now!

Continued from Books and Reading, 2009, Part 1.

Even now, your Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson seem realer than many people we see every day.

Requested by kokopelli52, who adds: “And the different precautions countries are putting into place.”

Need help? Comfort? A place to vent? Find relief here.

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.)

For topics that need to be handled with extra care. NO FLAMING.

Continued from version 2009.1.

According to the U.S. Naval Observatory, the Vernal Equinox occurs today (Friday, March 20) at 6:44 a.m. blog time. We’re ready for spring. How about you?

(Of course, our friends in the Southern Hemisphere are having an entirely different experience.)

From there to here, from here to there,
Funny things are everywhere.

Indeed they are — and nowhere more so than on MuseBlog. We’re pretty sure the good doctor would have approved of Muse, the Muses, and us.

A.k.a. counterfactual history: by overwhelming popular request, a thread for discussing things that didn’t happen and how the world might have been different if they had.

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.)

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].)

Words & names you ♥ or just want to talk about.

Continued from v. 2008.

You changed the world.

Continued from Quotations, 2007.1. (Wow, we skipped a whole year!)

Remember to post spoiler warnings (ending in periods), please!

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

An ever-popular and flourishing thread:

Chokoholics, video-game addicts, manga fiends — tell us how you know when you’ve crossed the line.

Continued from version 2008.1.

For topics that need to be handled with extra care. NO FLAMING.

Continued from version 2008.

Continued from version 2008.3.

Reminder: This is a place for careful, clear, respectful discussions. We expect MBers to be able to express their opinions without attacking others personally AND to be able to listen to people who disagree with them without feeling personally attacked.

At least one MBer will be in Washington, D.C., for it, and we’re looking forward to his reports. But even those who are far from the capital are welcome to post their thoughts. What are they saying about it in Europe and New Zealand?

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.