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The dark morris? Hey, how about we also do the stick-and-- oww, OK, I'll shut up already! ^^

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*finds the chip on the wuffy's shoulder and throws it in Bear Lake*

There. I really said nothing about software until you brought it up last night. And you immediately put me in a position where it didn't matter what I said, I would have been wrong.

I really, truly, don't care what software you use. I do think that people who charge money for their software have a much higher obligation to deliver a reliable and well-documented product. Charging a price (sometimes a very high one) and then hiding behind a TOS agreement that says, in essence "We don't guarantee anything and aren't responsible if it doesn't work or does terrible things" is pretty despicable in my opinion. That would apply to Microsoft. It doesn't apply to any of the others you named unless, in fact, you paid for them.

Now as for the "nothing to do" situation, that one puzzles me. I can pretty honestly say I've not found myself in that state for so long that I can hardly remember it. You seem much too bright and creative to have that problem.

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*serves you a dish of strawberry wobbler to keep you quiet* ;p

Seriously, his group have been doing the Dark Morris for several years now. They were one of the first to publicize it in the US at least.

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Actually there's a much better dance in Richard Amory's The Song of the Loon. Performed by gay Native Americans, it involves a spear and a hoop... However, doing that one in public in the US would probably get the dancers arrested.

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MMmmmm, strawberry wobbler... with special secret sauce, too? ^.^

But outside of that, does the dark morris actually exist? The Wikipedia entry sure reads like it mostly refers to Terry's version, mentioning octiron bells and all that.

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*chuckles* Hmm, that sounds... promising. :)

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corelog.livejournal.com

I know you weren't the first person to bring up software last night. :) At the same time, I wasn't looking to get into a huge debate about it, either. I was just pointing out that some of your skepticism may have been more pessimistic than was absolutely necessary, since it had largely been to the tune of, "They're going to break it again on purpose because they don't want you using IRC. Use xchat2 instead."

In essence, all I was looking to do was to prove that the developers aren't breaking things on purpose out of sheer spite. Asking if the software had been updated since the fix was fine. Reassuring me that they wouldn't rest until they break that feature again put me in a sour mood, as it seems to demonstrate the kind of animosity and/or grudge that won't look at facts. Which is why I'm not going to bother to discuss it with you again. I know you hate closed-source, love open-source, hate alpha and beta, love stable builds, and dislike companies that get paid for their work (since none of them put out a product that's stable enough or documented enough for your liking). I'll leave it like that.

As for having nothing to do...honestly, there isn't anything interesting to do. I could drive places, but all that does is use gas. There's nothing to do at the park, aside from walk around in circles. I hear they put in a new disc golf course, but I'm not exactly all that interested in disc golf, and I don't have a Frisbee. Still, like I said, I found something to do, in the form of video games. They are the kind that I play when I have nothing else to do and nobody to talk to, so it's appropriate that I'd be playing them now.

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As far as I am aware, the Dark Morris (also called "Anti-Morris" and "Other Morris") did not exist at all in British tradition. Pratchett made it up. However, once he did that, some Morris sides began to dance it. Ravenswood is Gary's team and they were one of the first, if not THE first, to do so. The link from Ravenswood's site to one on the east coast is misleading, because Jeremy was originally a Chicago resident and took the "other Morris" tradition with him when he moved to Boston. ;p

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Amory's description makes it a bit too graphic for my taste I think. But the dance itself is humorous and clever.

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I know you ... dislike companies that get paid for their work

That's a bit of an exaggeration. There are commercial software companies that I am pretty well satisfied with, such as Userful (which happens to be a Canadian company by the way) and Innovative, both of whose products I use daily. Remember too that I used to work for a commercial software house, so my thoughts on the whole subject contain some inside knowledge as well as the more visible elements.

On the other hand, some non-profit, open source groups are doing a stellar job. Mozilla is one such, and though I have complaints there they so far are nothing like the massive objections I have to Microsoft. Another such is OpenOffice.org. I also find that Debian is doing a darned good job overall. Ubuntu may be improving, I haven't looked again since last winter. I just wasn't at all impressed with them at that time.

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Hmm... I'll be looking that up then :P

My ex and I often had/have discussion where we disagreed most vehemently, even got into a few fights over stuff. It takes a certain mindset to press an opinion and certain mindset to back down when it's obvious no agreement can be reached. I could ramble on about throwing furniture and wrestling until someone got hurt, but my point is, I- or him, come to think of it- could relate. Heh, human emotions... they can be a bother sometimes.

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I haven't pressed a disagreement that far in years, except perhaps in a work environment where it really seemed to matter. Don't worry, I think Rex and I are still friends. ;D

You may have some difficulty locating The Song of the Loon. It's been out of print for decades (originally published about 1966) and isn't the sort of thing that libraries are likely to have. It's not hard-core porn, but is definitely soft-core stuff and was very blatant for its time. Today it might seem tame, but I have a real fondness for Richard Amory's writing. There's actually a trilogy:

The Song of the Loon
Song of Aaron
Listen, the Loon Sings

These are loosely connected by shared characters and situations. A fourth book, Willow Song, is my real favorite, and it has some overlap with the other three. Amory also wrote a couple of mysteries in academic settings, Frost being the one that comes to mind. I think he was a professor of languages or something, because he often inserts quotations or slogans in Latin, Spanish, French, and even Nahuatl.

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Oh yeah, I'm sure you guys are... libraries may not, but thanks to the good old internet, I've already gotten a gander at the book's cover, and had a good chuckle at it- "Curious?" Heh...

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I should also add that there was a very bad movie made years ago that is loosely based on The Song of the Loon but hardly resembles the book at all. Don't let anyone tell you that seeing the movie is a substitute for the book. It isn't.

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I know of copies in various university libraries. These are places that specifically collect "popular culture" or "gay literature" or something else like that. Michigan State University has Amory's books, and so does the University of Illinois. Unfortunately, they tend to be in "special collections" which is to say, kept with the rare books. The only way to actually read them is to go there in person and read them on site, because they are never lent out.

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I know better than that... but thanks :)

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*smirks* That's just a bit outside my normal walking route :P But if I'm ever in that area, I'll check it out.

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Places you might find these books include any area or regional gay support groups that keep a library. For instance, the Gerber Hart Library in Chicago has several copies and does lend them.

Used book stores and large used book sales often yield surprising fruit (no pun intended, or maybe it is intended...) The Amory novels were all published in mass market paperback editions, so they may be kind of beat up by now, but they still turn up on those tables of "paperbacks for a dime" at rummage and book sales. As it happens, my copies of the first two novels in the trilogy came from a used book store for 25 cents each. They were with the children's books! The covers are a bit deceiving and evidently someone thought they were like Peter Pan or else some sort of western story. They do in fact resemble those Scholastic Press paperback editions that are printed up in large quantities on cheap paper for use in the classroom. However, anyone who reads past the first couple of pages is NOT going to put these in the children's section. I always browse any stack of old paperback westerns though, just in case one turns up there.

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Heh... seems it really made an impression on you :) Tell me, how old were you when you first read it?

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Much older than you probably think. Lessee, it was probably while I was working at the Michigan State University library, so it was 1977 or earlier but no earlier than 1974. Age 24-27 somewhere?

I remember seeing Amory's books on the racks in the bookstore when I was an undergrad, but at that time I would have been much too embarrassed to actually buy them. In fact, I was almost too naive to catch on to what they were, but picking one up and looking inside left little doubt.

What was impressive at the time was the fact that Amory really does write about relationships and really does give you character development. His writing is a bit flowery for some tastes, I suppose, but it's not sloppy like cheap porn or romance novels. It's definitely literary. His 19th century old west/frontier settings have a particular appeal for me too, being the Miniver Cheevy type myself.

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*noddles*

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Ah, thanks. :) *looks* That's cool, actually. ^^ But I suppose the Wikipedia article should probably be nominated for deletion, then, with a suggestion to the author to repost it on the Discworld wiki on L-space (which seems to lack an article on the dark morris so far).

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That I can't say. The politics (for such it seems to me) of Wiki-world is inscrutable. I gave up on the whole thing after numerous quibbles of that sort, including the repeated insistence that I couldn't post my own drawing of my own character because I couldn't "prove" that I had copyright permission...

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