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The Good Old Days

All the old farts in the SCA
They use the same words, don't you see
If they talk too quick (ay-oh-ay)
You wonder what can the meaning be

All the ageing knights at the bar,
They talk about lights and rhino-hide
There I was, no shit (ay-oh-ay)
Their belts are off-white and rather wide

Foreign wars in the days of yore, sing
Ess-see-ay oh, ay-oh-kay oh
Talk like a SCAdian

Old Pelicans love their pits
The privy's put up, you're set to go
These modern loos (ay-oh-ay)
Are smelly and prone to overflow.

All the founders so loved their books
Le Guin and Tolkien, T.H. White
When they're naming things (ay-oh-ay)
The wonder is when they get it right.

Jack and Jill in their cotton drill say
Ess-see-ay oh, ay-oh-kay oh
Talk like a SCAdian

Wear your 'Bethan garb to the feast
Pay the troll, greet the autocrat
Bow to the thrones (ay-oh-ay)
Get out your feast gear, lay it flat.

If you want to find all the peers
They're hanging out with the pointy hats
Their Lordships too (gee-oh-ay)
The landless white trash and feastocrats

Baron Master Sir Whatsisname
Will call you "My Lord" if you're mundane
And the heralds say (ay-oh-ay)
That's what you do if you're SCAdian

Will you pass in your history class? Say:
Nay-no-way-oh, ess-see-ay-oh,
Talk like a SCAdian

Another day, another chilling effect.

A discussion on the Shambles (SCA Lochac mailing list), that was ranging widely over the topic of Festival sites, got effectively shut down again, just like about this time last year, and by much the same people.  Apparently the discussion was negative and cynical -- or so they claimed.  I was reading it as extremely positive, respectful almost to the point of gushing sycophancy, and no more repetitive than one expects with the typical lead time and lag of a mailing list.  But a couple of people appear to equate discussion with criticism, and criticism with unfair criticism, and so batted their eyelids and begged that the whole thing be silenced.  Now.  Or you're all nasty people.

It's not censorship in the usual sense.  When the List Boss, say, announces that the topic will be ceased for reasons that are spurious, that's censorship - but we haven't had a List Boss that foolish in a very long time, if ever. But when a sweet lass says things like "I've listened to you all complain here... I've listened to people ... off-list become upset at your words", she doesn't need to say which comments she considers complaints, or which people were upset.  People take her at her word, even if she rarely posts anything but that sort of insinuation.  We're a polite Society; that's how we work.

It annoys me to see the usual suspects at it again, especially when they have so little to say the rest of the time.

Here's the principle I work by: if you are intimately involved in Topic X, and you find a collection of people discussing that topic, informally and even ill-informedly, here is a list of things you may do:

1. ignore it;
2. join in; or
   
3. wish quietly that they'd stop.

Here is a list of things you may not do and still consider yourself a mature adult:

1. tell them they're not allowed to talk about it.

The above includes using emotional bullying tactics to effect the same result.  It's not just rude, it's destructive and mean-spirited.

But as I've said before, some people like being offended.  They can't get enough of it.  For these people, I have one thing to say: you're ugly, and your mother dresses you funny.

Posted on The Shambles and passed on to me by my Beloved, who lurks there. Blod wrote her critique of the Crossroads Medieval “Village”, a barren dustbowl with an ecologically incompetent dam and a single “guild hall” of the type the Amish can raise in a weekend with time off to go to church:

… A Guildhall - that got a roof on it because “the SCA” drove over from Melbourne and put the roof on. And a year later - it still only had a roof. Then the walls - half done by people who didn’t know what they were doing, with straw left exposed overnight so the walls would rot internally (and I hope that work was knocked out and re-done). A communal fire pit built half way up a hill on the windy side. Hundreds of trees planted every year - but it took three years before anyone organised organic matter to go into the soil and provided effective roo cages.

Sing it, sister! The fire pit said it all for me, back when I saw it: it showed such a total lack of clue that I was speechless. The whole Crossroads experiment has probably been the most expensive failure in Lochac’s history, eating not only money but also people’s time and energy, attracting all our best and fairest (and a fair few chronic sad-sacks) to waste resources that could have gone into something valuable — something like, I don’t know, farting competitions or perpetual motion machines or something. Something better.

Crossposted from fLog.

The Onion has the truth, as always.

Here's an important note for people on mailing lists, especially The Shambles, who wade into an argument seeking to play Devil's Advocate.

You think you're adding to the discussion? You're not.

You think your deliberately contrary position has value? It doesn't.

You think a discussion is made more "rounded" or "balanced" or (gods forbid) "fair" by having one person saying what everyone else didn't bother to say? It isn't.

Ask yourself why nobody else, or at least nobody who doesn't show signs of brain damage from too many head blows, bothered to make the point you're making. It's because it's a stupid point, and in making it, you've become a stupid person.

Please note: this rant is not aimed at any one person in particular. (Any three people, maybe, but not any one.) But do you feel it could apply to you except that you're the exception? You're not.