Have I mentioned lately how pleased I am at the amount of variety we've had at the club over the last few weeks?

Photos from the EFF party on thursday are up now. This was a benefit for EFF's Campaign for Audiovisual Free Expression and their Chilling Effects Clearinghouse. If you don't know who the EFF are, they're essentially the legal division of the free software world. They're a donation-funded organization who oppose bad laws and organize legal defenses for hackers and other internet users who find themselves victimized by corporate lawyers.

So, we threw a little party to raise some money for them, and it went great! Lots of people showed up. At around 11:30, a few folks made speeches about why we were there. Wil Wheaton's speech was really good, and you can read it on his web site (he posted it that morning, and just after he started in, someone in the audience shouted, "we've already read it!")

Apparently he was on TechTV talking about this earlier in the day, but I missed it: if any of you happened to tape that, I'd like to see it! (They seem to have a video clip of it on the site, but it's in some Windows-only plugin format that I can't play, since I live in a Microsoft-free world.)

Sherri Steele gave the background on the whole Barney thing. ("Yeah, why Barney?" you might be asking, "isn't that kind of 1996?") In case you don't know, the Barney lawyers started sending nastygrams to everyone who did a parody of their annoying purple property, and they send such a lawsuit threat to the EFF themselves, because for a while, EFF was mirroring a zine that included a parody of the Barney song. EFF's reply to this nonsense was part of the genesis of their Chilling Effects Clearinghouse.

Then the boxing match!

Barney "The Cretaceous Killer" Dinosaur and Wil "The Crusher" Wheaton enter wearing towels around their necks, doing the usual pre-match mugging. Rocky Theme. Barney Theme. The referee calls them out and gives them the rules: no ear-biting, no nose-rubbing, no tail-humping. Much cheering, much booing.

Round One! Barney refuses to fight! He shakes his head, he asks for a hug! Wil pops him one, but feels bad, and tries to make peace. Of course Barney hits him, Wil goes down! Barney kicks him! Bell sounds! "We Will Rock You" plays.

Round Two! Blows traded, Barney goes down like a preacher's daughter! Some lovely lady on the balcony tosses Wil her panties. Wil grabs Barney by the tail and swings him around. The ref breaks them up. The fight continues. Barney's down again! Barney's lawyers started running around handing cease and desist letters to the audience! (I didn't manage to save a copy of one of those, but they said, basically, "stop making fun of our client!") Barney gets up at the seven count. Bell sounds! "Rock and Roll" by Gary Glitter plays.

Round Three! Not long after the round starts, Barney's thugs hand him a light saber! Hot franchise-on-franchise action! Wil tries to defend himself using a big plastic penguin (the Linux mascot.) Then John Gilmore, dressed in a bathrobe (which I gather was supposed to be an Obi-Wan Kenobi costume) appears and provides him with his own light saber.

And Barney is down for the count! Barney is beheaded! Barney's lawyers pick his pockets and run. Bell! "Eye of the Tiger" plays. The crowd goes wild.

Wil's parting words: "Finally Wesley Crusher has come back to San Francisco!"