Posted 11:30 AM by Floyd

What the hell is wrong with the world? Here are two stories I plucked more or less at random from the San Francisco Chronicle:

Pittsburgh first baseman Randall Simon whacked a mascot with his bat during a popular sausage race at Miller Park, and prosecutors are considering whether to file charges.

Sausage races?

The race is a fan favorite at Miller Park. Held between the sixth and seventh innings, people dress as bratwursts, hot dogs, Polish sausages and Italian sausages and run around the field.

Ever notice how sometimes middle America is much weirder than the urban centers? San Francisco is a city of freaks, and proud of it, but I never heard of fans at Pac Bell Park dressing up as drag queens or whatever.

Meanwhile, pedagogy advances in the North Bay:

A political science instructor at Santa Rosa Junior College is being investigated by the Secret Service for telling his students to compose an e- mail to an elected official that included the words "kill the president, kill the president," a school administrator said Wednesday.

Michael Ballou, a part-time lecturer who teaches an "Introduction to U.S. Government" course at the college's Petaluma campus, intended the assignment to be an "experiential exercise that would instill a sense of fear so they would have a better sense of why more people don't participate in the political process," ...

I'm afraid to participate in the political process because I might develop a heretofore unknown form of Tourette's that applies to written communication.

...

Most of the 30 students in the class dismissed the June 25 assignment as a joke, but after it was repeated at a subsequent class, one student did send the e-mail to U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Napa Valley) on July 5.

"You students are going to repeat this assignment until you learn it or I get fired, whichever comes first."