MuseBlog

By special request of Capricious. It’s not even September yet, but it’s never too early to start planning.

Robert writes:

I once read that men tend to like smooth ice cream, while women prefer ice cream with lumps and such in it (marshmallows, chocolate chunks, veins of caramel, etc.). That’s definitely true of me: except for mint chocolate chip (with very small chips), I like my ice cream smooth. How about you? The blog must know!

Feel free to broaden the discussion to peanut butter, if you like.

A discussion based on Huston Smith’s book The World’s Religions (known in earlier editions as The Religions of Man) and/or the vastly inferior Complete Idiot’s Guide to World Religions.

Continued from Part 2: Hinduism.

Any excuse for a party, we say. Five thousand days is about 13 years, 8 months, and 8 days (varying slightly depending on the month and year). Many of you have already reached the big five-oh-oh-oh. For the rest, you can easily use a spreadsheet to figure out when the big day falls.

You turn 5,000 later this month if you were born between December 14 and December 22, 1992. It happens in September if you were born between December 23, 1992, and January 21, 1993. We’ll try to keep you posted about future quintimillennial dates, if we remember.

It’s that time of year again, alas.

This is an experiment: a thread with required reading, Huston Smith’s book The World’s Religions (known in earlier editions as The Religions of Man). If you really can’t find Smith’s book, we’ll accept The Complete Idiot’s Guide to World Religions as a substitute. It’s not very good, though.

For the background to this thread, see https://musefanpage.com/blog/?p=349.

Now discussing: Hinduism.

Samantha Sordyl’s friend Pat Dahl has agreed to come on board the blog and talk about your ideas for a Muse movie. He works in Hollywood (in TV, but knows a lot about movies) and has read Attack of the Smart Pies.

(For those who came in late, planning and lobbying for a Muse movie is Cedar’s big project. You can read more about it at Muse Movie? and Muse Movie? Part 2.)

The original Muse How-Tos thread described itself thus:

“… the best way to make chocolate chip cookies, a good method of doing homework, the secret to jump-roping, etc.”

We can’t improve on that description (or on the cookie recipe). Herewith, a place to post your favorite helpful hints, tips, recipes, trade secrets, shortcuts, and workarounds.

A place to post all celebratory greetings. This month’s known Muser birthdays:

08-01 MuseBlog’s birthday (2005) = GAPA Appreciation Day
08-04 Capricious the great and terrible’s birthday (colors: green and blue; rainbow)
08-13 Sora’s birthday (1992 – all shades of blue)
08-14 bulletproofmarshmallow’s birthday (1993)
08-15 Morbid’s birthday (1991)
08-16 The Bev’s birthday (1992 – green or blue)
08-26 Gwendolyn of the Eastern Seas’ birthday (1994 – purple pizzazz)
08-27 Elentari’s birthday
08-28 Dragonsrock828’s birthday (1993)
08-31 Mer’s (=WoojaKitty’s =Quintessentia’s) birthday (1992 – golden)

(Some of these folks haven’t been around for a while, but maybe they’ll stop by to receive their birthday pies.)

Version 2006.3 is ancient, and FantasyFan says she feels the need to rant. Rant away, one and all–carefully, of course.

Only four this month so far:

07-07 lilbro777’s birthday
07-09 Lizzie’s birthday (1991)
07-13 Emogrl’s birthday (1989 – black)
07-22 Phoenix’s birthday (1992 – octarine)

That’s excluding Harry Potter’s birthday on the 31st, of course. Lilbro, if you’re around: what’s your year and color?

Tired of the standard catch phrases? Help is at hand. For centuries, English speakers (mostly young ones) have invented new ways to express useful concepts (mostly “good” and “bad”). Here’s a place to try to squeeze new life out of those bygone idioms, or to invent new ones.

(Gwendolyn of the Eastern Seas deserves credit for this totally funky-fresh thread.)

It’s been three months since v. 2006.2. So here’s yet another chance to find out what other Musers think about anything you feel like asking about.

Closed to comments; continued on v. 2006.4.

This is the opposite of a random thread. Once a topic is chosen, posts must stay on the topic until someone decides to change it, and a GAPA agrees. GAPAs will zap as necessary to keep things on track.

NEW TOPIC:
Architecture again
Birds
Soccer
Architecture
Plants
Origami and Paper Folding
Musicals
Camp
The May/June 2006 issue
Sheer Joy
It starts at Comment 1.

He’s 64 today. Do we still need him? Should we still feed him?

(Thanks to Skipper Nancy for pointing out this momentous occasion.)

Ruffled Grouse’s idea, more or less.

*Not Veggie Tales, though. We’ve already had a thread about them.

Irish poet, 1865-1939.

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

More about Yeats at http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/

Skipper Nancy’s idea for a thread. Is it a Good Idea? Time will tell.

Coming up this month:

06-06 Ninja for Christ’s birthday (19?? – color=?)
06-11 yesterdays_kinked_moose’s birthday (1992)
06-13 King george the stroodle’s birthday (1992)
06-20 Kricket’s birthday (1993)
06-29 Brave Sir Robin’s birthday (1993)

As you see, some basic raw data and colors are still missing.

A special season, for sure. When does yours start? What are you going to do?

Reports from Towel Day celebrants throughout the galaxy — at Ebeth’s request.

While people finish the required reading for the World Religions thread, here’s a place where MuseBloggers can warm up by talking about their own religions or other religions they’ve experienced.

What’s happening in the land of Wynken, Blynken and Nod? A thread for your dreams, per Otzi’s request.

There’s an admission fee for this thread: to post, you must have read at least one chapter of Huston Smith’s book The World’s Religions (known in earlier editions as The Religions of Man), and preferably the whole thing. Here’s why:

• It’s a good book–fair, readable, and full of fascinating information. In a word, Muselike.
• It’s a topic that most people care about but don’t know much about.
• It’s something they don’t teach in school.

Suggestion: read the introduction, then skip to the chapter about your own religion, if any. See if Smith gets it right. Then read the rest. You’ll want to.

*** NOTE (22 May): Some MBers say they’re having trouble finding Smith’s book. For them (and others who find Smith’s book hard to follow), we’ll accept The Complete Idiot’s Guide to World Religions as a substitute.

It may take a while for discussion to get started on this thread, but that’s fine. What are summers for?

Other possibly useful sources of information: The Cartoon History of the Universe; and Wikipedia, for example,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinduism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucianism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taoism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinto
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Church
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Orthodox_Church
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestantism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_Society_of_Friends (Quakers)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormonism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam