As you might have noticed by now, this website is an open and safe place to discuss holes, all kinds of holes, and not always just to make cheap double entendres. So allow me to open up a new hole-centric topic and discuss a sport that has made its entire business out of holes: Golf, of course.

You might’ve read about the terrible drought that this summer (and the oil industry) brought upon Europe. One would assume that in this critical junction, draconian water restrictions should be in place to guarantee drinking water to the population and curb-stomping any and all non-essential water consumption. But of course, rich motherf***ers have a very twisted idea of what essential means and rich motherf***ers have gaslighted themselves into thinking golf is an actual sport and essential to … I don’t know, their networking? I guess you don’t make it to the Global 1% without having some holes in your soul to fill.

That was the case in France, where several golf courses have continued to operate in certain municipalities, being granted exceptions despite the far-reaching water bans in place, probably based on the “wE’re JOb pRoVIdeRs” excuse. Technically, they are only allowed to operate at night and using only 30% of their usual water consumption, but if you haven’t punched your screen already, yeah, this is messed up.

French people, of course, took this news lying down and quietly resigned themselves to losing just a little more of their water rations, because after all, aren’t the members of golf courses the captains of industry, the leaders of the economy, the job providers that deserve to have their hard work rewarded by endless fields of immaculate green, dainty-white clubhouses, and concierges that allow your mistresses to use the backdoor so she won’t be noticed by your fellow club-goers? After all, you can, through hustle, one day become the kind of fat cat that plays 10 hours of golf per week?

Sorry, I made a mistake, I was thinking about Americans and Brits when I wrote the paragraph above. Hell No! Of course, French people are incensed, and being people who, traditionally, have zero chill when it comes to protesting injustice, Toulouse’s chapter of Extinction Rebellion made use of France’s storied tradition of sabotage, and filled the holes of two local courses with cement on August 10th, late at night.

It is our editorial policy here at Pajiba to stan these legends. This is exactly the kind of shit environmental activists should be doing more of, and less stopping public transport or protesting nuclear plants. Sabotage the wasteful property of the kind of rich assholes that say “golf without grass is like hockey without the ice rink,” as claimed by the head of France’s golf association because if French people are assholes when they are good, they are also absolute assholes when they’re evil. This, of course, triggered boomers and assorted bootlickers, but I think we can safely say that they did the morally right thing. Some argued, reasonably, that the whole operation was moot since golf courses move their holes around all the time; on the contrary, I think this chapter of XR invented a new and exhilarating sport: A cat and mouse game of opening and filling holes.

Golf, in particular, is perhaps the second most infuriating pastime of the well-off (after private jets), not because it’s a silly game (it is, if I had that kind of money, I’d be playing paintball), but because you have to be entitled to think there’s any challenge in a sport that is played in immaculate, carefully trimmed expanses of grass with a couple of sand bunkers and ponds here and there. Let’s remember that this sport was created in Scotland, probably by sheep herders traveling over kilometers of steep hills, rocky outcrops, marshes, and fields of thistles. That’s an actual challenge; that actually sounds like fun and that is something that all these bourgeois and wanna-be bourgeois have strategically forgotten all about. Never forget that until the arrival of Tiger Woods, this was a sport dominated by pudgy, middle-aged white men who smoked cigars on the court.

Toulouse, though located in Southern France, is slightly more humid than the usual weather of South Europe. The niceties of the Mediterranean weather draw in wealthy people, which in turn draws in golf course developers, resulting in the paradox of these useless water holes spreading everywhere in a climate that, by its own geography, will always be water-stressed, even in the best scenario. The irony is that a golf course played the typical Mediterranean landscape, with its rolling hills, hawthorns, yellow pastures, and random forests popping up here and there would make for the best golfers and would be something to brag about with the friends whose wives you’re plowing. But I guess it’s more important for insurance execs spending their monthly bonus not to end up covered in reddish dust. They might call this act of vandalism violent, but I don’t know, maybe making California, Central Chile or Italy unliveable through sheer privilege is another type of violence.

Alberto Cox would also like to shame you for your grass lawns if you’re in SoCal. Come on man! We have a responsibility to the world: We are the only regions that can make wine, that’s where water should go first. And cacti are lovely.