Reykjavik's anarchist mayor takes office
A polar bear display for the zoo. Free towels at public swimming pools. A "drug-free Parliament by 2020." Iceland's Best Party, founded in December by a comedian, Jón Gnarr, to satirize his country's political system, ran a campaign that was one big joke. Last month, the Best Party emerged as the biggest winner in Reykjavik's elections, with 34.7 percent of the vote, and Mr Gnarr is now the fourth mayor in four years of a city that is home to more than a third of the island's 320,000 people. In his acceptance speech he tried to calm the fears of the other 65.3 percent. "No one has to be afraid of the Best Party," he said, "because it is the best party. If it wasn't, it would be called the Worst Party or the Bad Party. We would never work with a party like that." With his party having won 6 of the City Council's 15 seats, Mr Gnarr needed a coalition partner, but ruled out any party whose members had not seen all five seasons of "The Wire." A sandy-haired 43-year-old, Mr Gnarr is best known here for playing a television and film character named Georg Bjarnfredarson, a nasty, bald, middle-aged, Swedish-educated Marxist whose childhood was ruined by a militant feminist mother.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/world/europe/26iceland.html
"Did it hurt?"
New Zealand's prime minister John Key was responding to questions about funding changes to early childhood education centres when he was asked whether he would send his children to one with fewer qualified teachers on its staff. "I think if I sent my teenage children to early childhood at the moment, they would have a meltdown," he quipped. What if his wife had another child, a reporter asked. "I'd be extremely worried," he replied, "because I've had a vasectomy." The acknowledgment caused reporters who were present to fall silent, and Key admitted that it was "probably too much information" for a press conference. "Boy, that's slowed things down," Key said. "Any other questions?" One reporter recovered enough to ask, "Did it hurt?"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/31/vasectomy-new-zealand-pm-conference/print
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