For Fox Sake, Listen

Ya know, they changed the Tom Ridge Color of the Day to orange for 9/11+1, and then forgot to tell us if they changed it back or not.

California prisons ban pornography. It creates a hostile work environment for female guards, and heaven forfend prison guards experience a hostile work environment.

The toffs were out in force today in London, marching for the right to kill foxes. For a hilarious write-up, see this.

Here’s a paragraph:

As the cortège of blood sportsmen and women came into view, the pigeons in Trafalgar Square took off in a dense cloud and didn’t come back, which was pretty sensible of them in the circumstances. But this was not just, or even largely about hunting. “Only Stupid Sheep hide under Bushes, Tony” one placard said, in what appeared to be a reference to Iraq, but may be a piece of old country lore. Rather more alarmingly, another placard declared: “British Beef is Safer than Sex.” Someone must explain to this person, and quickly, that British beef has absolutely nothing to do with sex.

Someone was wearing a t-shirt with the slogan in my subject heading. Other slogans: a sign held by an 8-year old: I want to hunt when I grow up, daddy. “Revolting peasant.” “No taxation without Morris dancing.”

The SPD seems to have sort of won the German elections, which I said a month ago could never happen. Oops. To be fair, it looks like Schröder only gets to keep his job thanks to the popularity of the Greens. The Frei Democrats are reduced to 4th place, which isn’t quite the kicking I’ve been wanting them to get for the last 20 years, but it will have to do. Mostly it was the massive incompetence of Bavarian PM Stoiber that did it. He criticized Schröder for not supporting the US’s Iraq war, but hadn’t realized that required him to have an answer to the question, So does that mean you’ll send German troops. By the end, he was actually more anti-war than Schröder, saying he’d refuse to let bases in Germany be used. This is a guy who started the campaign by kicking a football, right into the face of an old lady, several times called Bush “George Bus,” failed to cut short his vacation during those floods, and when he finally showed up, was wearing loafers. One can but hope his racist anti-immigrant talk, which only showed up late in the campaign when he seemed to be losing (is it better or worse that his racism was only opportunistic, I can never tell?), was also unappealing to voters.

The political news from Slovakia is also good, for once.