February 2008

I am not ashamed to admit that I have been of very downhearted humour recently, after receiving the news of the latest piece of oppressive Linden Laboratory legislation. Whilst attempting to restore my spirits - and those of decent folk merely wishing to maintain God-given rights over their own property, and offer a service to the Land Purchaser - after this Tyranny, I did after a while think of you and your “journal”.

I trust that you, despite your appalling and childish opinions, will have the simple decency to publish the following piece of verse that I have composed, to perhaps enlighten those foolish enough to read your nonsense.

How can it be, this once-brave land bereft,
Of freedom, justice, honour? What is left?
The tyrant’s word,
From vision blurred!
Our boldest citizens have suffered theft!

Their words, their speech, their freedom, strike the rocks.
Their rights, their simple right to place a box,
Of spinning sort -
Not to “extort”!
Now cruelly taken, and now Linden mocks!

Alas! That new and inexperienced eyes,
May never henceforth see beneath the skies,
Of mainland turf,
Or coastal surf,
A field of beauteous ad-prims now arise!

O fickle Linden! O, thou Socialist!
What shall be next denied right to exist?
O slipp’ry slope!
One cannot hope,
That other basic rights shall still persist!

Freedom Of Speech, a principle most sound,
Has now been driven cruelly to the ground!
One word denied,
And Justice cried!
O Linden, thou dost liberty confound!

The baying mob has won this day, perhaps,
But let us who love Freedom not collapse!
There will be ways,
In coming days,
To force our lawful business through the gaps!

Your loving Brother,

Cardinal

1. No matter how hard a set X of scripters tries to think of ways in which function Y is used, set Z of scripters (not intersecting with set X) will be using it in an un-thought-of way, regardless of its apparent triviality and/or broken nature.

1a. Members of set Z will claim that this is a completely obvious use, mandated by the limitations of LSL, and any decent scripter should have heard of it.

2. This use will be claimed to have significant and longstanding commercial history, and the removal of function Y will allegedly break one or more entire product lines, risking mortgages, relationships, lives, the health of kittens etc.

3. Linden Laboratory will be blamed for everything that occurs or does not occur, at length, on forums and blogs and in-world and in letters penned in green ink to the Times.