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Help others navigate the blog by signposting your favorite threads here, when they’ve scrolled off the main page. (Making you re-request these every month helps to weed out the no-longer-fit.)

(Note: Please include the URL (Web address) with your requests. It also helps if you limit your requests to a few at a time, four or five at the most.) Read more »

Known MBer birthdays this month:*

06-04 Donaldo the supercoolio awesome nerd’s birthday (1994)
06-05 Potato Chip’s birthday (1994)
06-09 taekwondogirl’s birthday (1996)
06-09 Eli Romley’s birthday (1996)
06-11 yesterdays_kinked_moose’s birthday (1992)
06-13 muselover’s birthday (1997 – green)
06-14 Grant O. turns 7,000 days old
06-19 Raynpho’s birthday (1994)
06-19 Elwing (formerly Sam)’s birthday (1994)
06-20 Kricket’s birthday (1993 – royal purple, gold, and anything sparkly)
06-27 oxlin turns 7,000 days old
06-29 Bluefyre27’s birthday

You turn 5,000 days old this month if you were born between September 24 and October 23, 1995.
You turn 6,000 days old this month if you were born between December 28, 1992, and January 26, 1993.
You turn 7,000 days old this month if you were born between April 4 and May 3, 1990.

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

POSOC’s idea: “Not another RPG (we have, what, over a dozen now?), just a thread where we can discuss various role-playing games, both those on the blog and off.”

We’re not sure exactly what he has in mind, but he groveled so abjectly that we had no choice but to accede to his demands. Righto, MBers, it’s all yours.

The 82nd Scripps National Spelling Bee is in full swing in Washington, D.C., just a block and a half from Robert’s office. We don’t know whether any Musers are in it, but At least one Muser is competing this year, and there may be more; it’s the kind of place where they hang out (witness emmatheduck and speller73 of yore). So warm wishes to all contestants, and good luck to any orthographoMusers in the pack.

Requested by IBCF. Any other enthusiasts out there?

Many of our threads have continued over numerous parts, which sometimes makes them baffling to newcomers or even intimidating. Without a guidebook, it’s not always easy to know where to begin, and the prospect of reading through hundreds of comments is daunting to say the least. Although a quick reference isn’t a substitute for reading, it can help someone decide if the thread is ens cup of tea.

We’d like to add a summary page to the HG2MB to give MBers a guide to the continuing threads, but we need your help. With all the newcomers around lately, there’s no time like the present, but GAPA schedules are pretty full right now. Therefore, this thread will serve as a place where anyone who wants to help may draft out useful descriptions of the threads they’re involved with. RRRs and RPGs are obvious candidates, but any multi-part thread — Wungs, Hot Topics, the H&H — also has its traditions and expectations.

These should be BRIEF descriptions, not detailed plot summaries. A reasonable paragraph would be ideal, somewhere in the neighborhood of 100-150 words. Think catalogue listing. Course descriptions. How would you answer the question: what’s going on here?

Thanks!

~the GAPAs

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.

These silly threads fill up almost faster than we can create them. You know the drill: pick a pseudonym; guess and be guessed.

Continued from version 2009.2.

NOTE: Check your posts before sending them — remember that now you can use the preview button. The Administrators will not rescue you if you accidentally submit one under your “real” blogname. Many an alter ego has fallen victim to a careless “submit” click.

We’ve reinstalled the chess plug-in, so games on the old chess threads (such as Chess 4) will be visible again.

Don’t get too attached to them, though: we’ve found another program with some very useful features, if we can make it work. Stay tuned…

We’ve added something new to your comment forms: a “preview” button that lets you see in advance approximately what the comment will look like. If you don’t like it, don’t post it — just change it and preview it again.

The button should help you avoid typos, avatar slip-ups on the Alter Ego thread, and other bloggish “oops!” moments. Let us know how you like it and if it causes any problems. Otherwise, enjoy!

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

The challenge is to write a story within the 10 levels of nesting. Sort of a Round-Robin ‘Riting in miniature. The term “story” may be interpreted loosely. Experimental fiction and prose poems are also acceptable.

The rules:

> If two (or more) people reply to the same entry at the same level, the story divides, and each comment may be built upon separately.

> The “tree” may branch where it will, except that the 10th nesting level must always close out that story line.

> You may copy a piece of one story to use as the beginning of a new story.

> More than one story may be in progress.

That should do to start us off. This is an experiment, so don’t be afraid to branch out have some fun with the format.

As graduation nears, pranks proliferate. Here’s a place to discuss them: ones you’ve been involved in, ones you’ve heard about, ones you’ve been involved in but want to pretend you only heard about. Consider it a Kokopellian korrective to the earnestness of the IlluMimiNati.

(Thanks to Kokopelli52 for recommending this topic.)

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

Current prompt: Someone or something finding three identical footprints in the snow.

Next up: “Two go in, one comes out.”

Previous:
an unusual shop
someone or something on the border between wilderness and civilization

The May Random Thread continues to celebrate past predictions for the future by being as random as you please. Read more »

Back during the old days (before April 2009), MBers added their posts to the bottom of the comments page. They had no choice; it was all the blog software offered.

When they revived the blog after the Great Hacking Incident, the Administrators added a feature that allowed nested, threaded comments. Now MBers had the option of replying directly to others’ comments, in a hierarchical, outline-like form. They could also reply the old way, with a new comment, if they chose.

Nested comments have several advantages but one big disadvantage: you can’t read them in chronological order. That’s hard for people who don’t check the blog every hour, or even every day.

Do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages? Should we scrap the nesting? Keep it for some purposes but not for others? Let’s talk about it.

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!

Here are the 10 most active MBers, as reckoned by the number of comments they’ve posted so far.*

# Alice (10,843)
# the man for aeiou (5,314)
# Jadestone (4,487)
# Purple Panda (3,792)
# Cat’s Meow (3,426)
# Prarilius Canix (3,319)
# Kokonilly (3,234)
# E2MB (2,871)
# KaiYves (2,578)
# Red-tailed HAWK (2,353)

*Our statistics count different names as independent entries, so you’re at a disadvantage in the rankings if you’ve changed your name, added points to it, or anything along those lines. Alas, we Administrators don’t have time to add comments from everyone’s aliases to get a true tally. (And we refuse to think about the Alter Ego threads.)

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.”

What is your name? The Kokonspiracy.
What is your quest? World domination.
What is your plan? Mostly Harmless.

Is MuseBlog really a plot to take over the world? What else could it be?

Continued from TK2K8P3.

A round of Muse Academy’s uniquely zany card game is in progress and desperately needs new players. It’s easy to learn but extremely challenging (sometimes dangerously so). Please stop by the Muse Academy Student Lounge and give it a try!

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