Friday, 29 March 2024

Category » Nonrandom Craziness

New Role-Playing Thread

Request granted! First item item of business: Decide what to play.


Muse Academy Halloween Ball 2012 — Planning Thread

Muse Academy (as everyone knows) loves parties, and the Halloween Ball always provides a much-needed mid-semester break. So, what’s in the lineup for this year?

(To jog your memory, here’s what happened at the 2011 ball and on its planning thread.)


48 comments

International “Talk Like A Pirate” Day, 2012

Jolly Roger

A hearty YARRRR t’ all o’ yiz!


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Happy Birthday, MuseBlog!

It’s that time of year again: the very date on which our beloved blog erupted onto an unsuspecting Internet, to the discombobulation of just about everybody. It seems like only yesterday, and now suddenly we’re seven years old! Seven eventful years, and nary a squib in the bundle.

Expressions of dysphasic ecstasy and delirious incredulity will be most welcome, of course.


Triangular Sentences, Other Assorted Typographical Diversions, and Just Plain Silliness

In case you have no idea what we’re talking about, or need some inspiration, here are the previous entries in this category:

Triangular Sentences and Assorted Typographical Diversions, 2010
Triangular Sentences, v. 2007.2
Triangular Sentences, v. 2007.1
Triangular Sentences and Other Typographical Tricks


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Conjugation Game, v. 2012

Sometimes called “prejudiced triples,” this game takes an an activity or trait and shows how one’s perception of it changes depending on distance from the speaker. For example:

I am firm. You are stubborn. He is pig-headed.

(That’s the classic example, which we’ve seen attributed to Bertrand Russell, George Bernard Shaw, and someone called K. J. Stavronides.)

On MuseBlog, of course, the gender-specific “he” can be replaced with the gender-noncommital “en.” Here are two recent examples from the original “Conjugation Game” thread:

I am writing my french-history paper. You technically aren’t taking a break from said paper*. En is downloading Disney and AVPM songs and planning to go running.

*Because you haven’t started yet.

I am enjoying my vacation. You are being lazy. En is inanimate.

See how it works?


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Robert’s Time Capsule: Improving Rodin

This time capsule was inspired by Choklit Orange’s recent encounter with sculptures by the French artist Auguste Rodin, which she said she would like to pie. As it happens, Robert also had a Rodin experience once upon a time — one that involved a different kind of food. Over to him:

It was when I was in my 20s and sharing a house with some high-school buddies near Washington, D.C. My friend J. J. Martindale, whose name some of the older MBers will recognize, was working in New York and came down for a weekend to sleep on our couch and see some sights. She was feeling mischievous, as usual, and I was delighted when she and my housemate John agreed to try something I’d been pondering for a while.

It involved “The Burghers of Calais,” a bronze sculpture by Rodin, one cast of which stands in the sculpture garden of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. The sculpture, a larger-than-life representation of half a dozen mournful-looking men with ropes around their necks, commemorates something that happened in France during the Hundred Years War. When the city of Calais surrendered after a long and miserable siege, the victorious English army demanded that six prominent citizens come out in their underwear, with nooses, to be executed. The English changed their minds at the last minute and spared them, but it was a close call.

J. J. and John and I went to an upholstery store and bought some large cylinders and thin sheets of foam rubber, which we took home and carved into the shapes of oversized buns, meat patties, and leaves of lettuce. We glued them together to look like hamburgers, stuck some watermelon seeds on top to approximate scaled-up sesame seeds, and spray-painted the foam murky green and black to resemble weathered bronze. Once the hamburgers were dry, we stuffed them into knapsacks and drove to the Hirshhorn.

J. J., who hailed from Surrey, England, by way of Cambridge, distracted the guard by pretending to be a confused tourist. (“Excuse me, could you tell me whether that large building over there is the White House? Oh, it’s not? Are you sure? The Capitol, you say? What do they do there?”) Once we were in the clear, John and I unzipped our own foam mini-sculptures and slotted them into place. Voilà:

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Robert’s Time Capsule: The Avengers et al.

Avengers 4 cover

Robert recalls:

Throughout primary school, I read superhero comic books with an obsession verging on addiction. I was fiercely loyal: Marvel was my brand, first, last, and (I vowed and believed) forever.

I started buying them in second grade, in the PX of the long-since-dismantled Hunter’s Point naval shipyard in San Francisco, where my family spent a year living in a quonset hut while my father’s ship was in drydock. My first comic book was the Avengers; their colorful costumes caught my eye, and the confusion of characters inside posed a puzzle I had to solve.

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Six-Word Stories, Part the Second

A perfect number for staying focused.

See the previous thread for guidance.


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Picturing the Musiverse

Castle’s idea, described starting here


Miscellaneous Images from Musers

A few Kokons and a birthday squid — what more could a self-respecting gallery need?

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A Pie from Groundhog

Her assignment for animation class: show someone walking and then being struck by a projectile. You can guess where that led. (Hint: it’s not an arrow to the knee.)


Robert’s Time Capsule: Multivariable Calculus

Page from Robert's multivariable calculus homework

Robert’s annotation:

As late as freshman year in college, I was still doodling in math class — though less productively than Vi Hart. Apparently I was also having trouble finishing my homework on time. This was my first problem set; I tightened up my operations (mostly) later on.


It’s Pi Day!

And a blog — a place dedicated to pastry, mirth, and world conquest — obviously wouldn’t disregard one of its favorite days.


Quotations, v. 2012

Your wish is our command.

Continued from version 2011.


348 comments

Bunny Apocalypse: The Novel?!

A thread for planning.


The Polling Place, v. 2011.2

We didn’t need a poll to figure out we could use a new Polling Place.

Continued from v. 2011.1.


536 comments

Happy 11:11 11/11/11!

Just because.


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Muse Academy Halloween Ball, 2011 — Rooftop Garden

A cooler, more secluded annex to the ball.


Muse Academy Halloween Ball, 2011

All is in readiness. Enter!
 
MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
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Muse Academy Halloween Ball — Planning Thread

Yikes! Where has the time gone? We’d better start planning this right away!

As always, Muse Academy events and students must adhere to physical laws and contemporary technology. No antigravity, perpetual motion, or magic spells, please! (Wungs, however, are not only permitted but obligatory.)

Here’s last year’s ball for reference.


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RRR: Worst. Story. Ever.

Rainbow*Storm’s idea launched here and described by Ambystoma Maculata as “amazingly, hilariously bad.”


Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

You’d probably do it anyway. But just to make sure, we’ve activated a plug-in that will make you talk like a pirate whether you want to or not.

In case your piratese needs a little brushing up, this handy how-to video will get you talking the lingo in no time. Yar!


5 comments

I Saved Alternate-History Threads

As KaiYves describes it, this started with an idea for a story called “I Saved the Titanic.” Then she thought “I Saved Pompeii,” “I Saved Apollo 1,” and several other things worth saving. Then she thought, “Why not make this a thread?” So we did.


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Musecast 9

The flamablamablous cathassus of the recent Westernmost Maryland Kokonvention has now been immortalized in its own Musecast.