MuseBlog

Known MBer birthdays and “K Days” this month:*

06-02 ZNZ’s birthday (1997)
06-02 Zinc’s 5K Day
06-07 Kirika’s 6K Day
06-09 Beetles’s birthday (1999 – purple)
06-10 Vendaval’s 7K Day
06-13 musedoubleplusgoodthinker’s birthday (1997 – green)
06-19 Raynpho’s birthday (1994)
06-27 Little Basement Kitten’s 5K Day
06-29 Selenium the Quafflebird’s birthday (1996)
06-29 bluefire27’s birthday (1997)
06-30 Glassboro’s 6K Day

You turn 5,000 days old this month if you were born between September 23 and October 22, 1997.
You turn 6,000 days old this month if you were born between December 28, 1994, and January 26, 1995.
You turn 7,000 days old this month if you were born between April 2 and May 1, 1992.

*Note: Listed MBers who have been inactive for several months won’t appear on next year’s birthday calendar unless they show up again.

Piggy’s description:

We could share factoids we’ve read, advice from personal experience, observations about the world, what-have-you. Everyone learns something new every day, and I’d like a place to share.

Continued from the original thread.

Suggested by the peripatetic Choklit Orange.

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MuseBlog has been celebrating Towel Day since 2006. This year, with the threat of the Vogon demolition crew a recent memory, seems particularly auspicious. Have a good one, froods!

Make up games you can play on the blog, then play them. It’s simple and elegant.

Continued from Version 2010 (the original).

Ultracondensed versions of novels, stories, songs, plays, etc.

WARNING: WILL CERTAINLY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Continued from the original “Quick Reads” thread.

Go to it!

Ratings before the game: Piggy 150, Koko’s Apprentice 160. If Piggy wins, the ratings will be 210/100. If KA wins, 110/200. If they draw, 160/150.

The Illumiminati (let’s skip those distracting interior capital letters for now) were founded a hair over two years ago and are still going strong. Well, not exactly strong — sneakily, stealthily, subtly, sibilantly. In any case, we think their efforts are needed more than ever before, so we’re giving them a new thread in the here and now.

As requested.

Pre-game ratings: Bibliophile 100, Mikazuki 0. If Bibliophile wins this game*, the new ratings will be 110-0. If Mikazuki wins, 10-90. If it’s a draw, 60-40.

*Unless the results of other games change the players’ ratings before this one is over.

Thanks for your patience. Let us know if you notice anything unusual. (More unusual than usual around here, we mean.)

BLOG IS GOING OFFLINE FOR MAINTENANCE

Traffic is slow this afternoon (maybe the weather is as nice everywhere else as it is in Robertville), so we’re taking this opportunity to upgrade the blog’s software. Be prepared for disruptions beginning slightly before 2 p.m. blog time.

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Paul Baker started this on the Random Thread:

I think I may have invented a new game. You may name it collectively, but its interim title is The Recent Comments Game. It will probably turn out to be rubbish, but let’s see.

Have a look at the Recent Comments column on the main page. It aggregates the most recent comments from all the topics, so mostly nothing relates to anything else. But occasionally it throws up random juxtapositions which are at least strange. If one copies, pastes, and deletes the references to which topic the comment appeared in, some of them raise a chuckle. This one isn’t spectacularly funny, but I thought it was worth flagging up.

———————-

Lizzie – “I think that if someone is having sex they should be mature enough to use birth control and accept the risk of pregnancy.

Rebecca Lasley (Administrator) – That’s a great idea! Do you have any particular requests for what designs you’d like to see?

———————-

Over to you. Spot the funnies or invent a better name.

These variations were added later:

~~ “I’ve decided it’s legitimate to remove extraneous words from the end of a comment to improve the flow, provided one doesn’t add any. Added full stops (sorry, periods) are OK.”

~~ muselover: Another variation I thought of is just taking random posts from the RC bar rather than consecutive ones, just to open up more possibilities.

Paul Baker (Administrator)
I think you’re right. No point in insisting on consecutive order if there’s a funny to be extracted.

Today (Saturday, May 7), the poet and Muse writer Nancy Kangas* has accompanied Planet Earth on an integral number of revolutions around the sun.

Hap, Nak!

*Ble version: Nak.

A place to describe times when things might not have turned out quite as well as one might have wished.

Continued from the original FAIL Thread.

Do you think it’s time 2011 had its own Polling Place thread, yes or no?

Continued from v. 2010.

An adjunct to the May Ball, the rooftop garden features a Victorian gazebo in which small bands play light music. To start with, an ensemble is playing overtures from Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. Faintly in the background, near the Academy’s music wing, a student chamber-music quartet can be heard tuning up and practicing difficult passages from its own intended program.

The weather is perfect: bright and cool and crisp under a pale, cirrus-clouded sky.

The foremost event of the Muse Academy academic year is underway.

As discussed on the planning thread, the theme in the ballroom is “Victorian ruins” — aptly enough, as wealthy Victorians were fond of ancient ruins, had plenty of them on their own island, loved to travel to see others in Greece and Rome, and often built fake ruins (known as “follies”) to enjoy. The ballroom is festooned with simulacra of ivy-twined crumbling Corinthian columns, collapsed Norman chapels, and, in the center, a bubbling fountain flanked by two Grecian urns.

Dress is formal. (If you don’t know what that means, look it up.) This being Muse Academy, all the clothes fit perfectly and look wonderful. Hats resembling those recently seen at the Royal Wedding are much in evidence.

Music, at least to begin with, consists of ballroom and/or classical works composed before or during the reign of Queen Victoria, with emphasis on lush romanticism.

For fresh air and a break from the dancing and mingling, there is, as always, a rooftop garden.

The rest is up to you.

(We’ll skip the roll call for this issue, as most copies have probably arrived by now.)

WARNING! Will definitely contain spoilers!

To spare MBers reading the “Recent Comments” columns, please paste the following message in at the beginning of your posts:

SPOILER MUSE SPOILER MUSE SPOILER MUSE SPOILER MUSE SPOILER MUSE SPOILER MUSE SPOILER.

Known MBers’ birthdays and “K Days” this month.

05-01 Pentatonikk’s birthday (1992 – puce)
05-04 Cat’s Eye’s birthday (1995)
05-05 Rainbow*Storm and Kiga’s 5K Day
05-07 Nancy Kangas’s birthday
05-09 Axa’s birthday (1992 – natural blues)
05-13 Choklit Orange’s 5K Day
05-14 Pax the Hamster’s 6K Day
05-15 Thanks For All The Fish42’s birthday (1996 – red)
05-18 Midnight Fiddler’s birthday (1992 – blue/purple/green/brown)
05-28 MissSwann’s birthday (1996)
05-31 Tesseract’s birthday (1994 – turquoise)

You turn 5,000 days old this month if you were born between August 23 and September 22, 1997.
You turn 6,000 days old this month if you were born between November 27 and December 27, 1994.
You turn 7,000 days old this month if you were born between March 2 and April 1, 1991.

*Note: Listed MBers who have been inactive for several months won’t appear on next year’s birthday calendar unless they show up again.

Coping with difficult situations, disappointment, depression, boredom, whatever unpleasantness life deals out. What tricks have you learned? What works for you?

Suggested by recent exchanges on the Rants and Plaints thread.

We’re saved! Until 222 B.C., apparently, the Roman consular year began on May 1. Then the Romans changed it to start on the Ides of March, and in 154 B.C. they switched to January 1.

Still, the early May date is good enough for us. The picture shows a much later Roman gold piece (ca. 43 B.C.) embossed with the image of a consul between two bodyguards (lictors).

Thanks to The Man For Aeiou and ZMZ for ferreting out this theme-saving information.

(Users’ Manual: Obey The Rules. Consult The Guide. Have fun!
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If you’re new on the blog, please stop by this thread and say pie — er, hi.

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The experiments scheduled to be launched on tomorrow’s space shuttle mission include one by students at the University of Florida called

.

See www . universetoday . com/85175/several-student-led-experiments-to-fly-on-endeavour/ .

The great work begins!

The idea is to start with an image and each person writes about it as en sees it, in the writer’s choice of style. See the original thread for clarification and inspiration.

(You may continue to write about a prompt that is no longer current.)

Current prompt: a broken piece of ceramic half-buried in dirt

Next up:

Previous:
      a crumpled piece of paper, the ink run so much that you can only read one word
      a mirror
      a starless sky
      a pile of mail on the countertop
      a city whose streets are built on ancient ruins