We seem to have a confused sneeze protocol at work now. When it was just the four of us, there was an unspoken understanding that nothing really needed to be said, and that was just fine by me. Now some more people have been taken on, and everything's gone haywire. We've inevitably got some people who like to bless the sneezer, and some other people, when they are the sneezer, like to say 'excuse me' or even 'I'm sorry.' I'm much more afraid to sneeze now than I was before; who knows what kind of brouhaha it might stir up?

The other night I finally saw more than a couple minutes of the Olympics (my previous viewing was on the TV at Keenan's) and some mysteries popped up. Firstly, what countries are PNG and SCG? No point in leaving it a mystery since if you're looking at this you can easily google it: the former is Papua New Guinea, which makes me feel mildly stupid, and the latter is Serbia and Montenegro, which is just strange. No C in there. Looking at the whole list I also found there are separate abbreviations for the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The other mystery is that even in the abbreviations that are on the athletes' uniforms and equipment (as opposed to only the ones superimposed for American TV coverage), the country names being used are always the English names, as opposed to the ones in the native language. This seems like one of the worst instances of acknowledging English's dominance, considering the whole international spirit thing. Of course, there's also the question of languages with other alphabets, and of which is more dominant, English or the Roman alphabet. A friend suggested that they should, for example, just put China in Chinese characters, as that would look plenty distinctive even to our eyes rather than CHN, and is not even much less pronounceable. The larger question seems to be whether the spirit is true internationalism, or just trying to make foreign countries seem less foreign to Americans. Actually I'm really not sure if the latter is a good or a bad thing.

But enough topicality. I've recently returned to work on my rare word dictionary, trying to complete the second pass. I've also decided that after delaying for several months, I should finally implement my plan to incorporate these words into my vocabulary by taking a small random sample each day, and attempting to use them in conversation or blog entries. Of course it will be a challenge in the process not to overween. But to the reader I interpel, lay subjicible to the obscurities of this ridiculous language. [Boy am I glad no one can find me and beat me up on the web for talking like this]