Saturday, December 17, 2005

Random observations

A couple of completely unrelated things that I've noticed lately:

--I was browsing through a recent issue of The Economist, and there was a short article about a lawsuit involving rapper 50 Cent. Nothing interesting, really, except that throughout the article they referred to him as "Mr Cent", which sounds sort of absurd. I'm just imagining the internal debates about whether and how their Style Guide applies to rappers (would Eminem by "Mr Eminem", or just plain "Eminem", or maybe "Mr Mathers"?).

--I've seen a tram with an advertisement for a local language school specialising in "British and Amercan English". Which, come to think of it, is pretty much how George Bush pronounces "American", so maybe that's not so strange.

--My mom arrived at the Zurich Airport today with a fever and a nasty cough (as far as we know she doesn't have much contact with waterfowl in San Diego, so we're pretty sure it's not bird flu). We seem to have a bad history with December visitors and illness.

--We got our Christmas tree today, and in my unbiased view it's the bestest tree in all the land. Of course, it's twice the price for a tree half the size and of what we would get back home, but all that matters now is that our house has that nice pine tree smell.