Duly Noted

I came across an interesting warning on a bottle of antiseptic wash:

At first I thought "Woah!  This sounds like nasty stuff!" but then I realised that "Avoid contact with brain" could apply to virtually anything.  Except maybe cerebrospinal fluid.

Language Inconsitencies

It's not that common to think about the oddities of your native language too much, idiosyncrasies and quirks are so ingrained in you that don't even notice them.  At least that is, you don't until someone who's still learning the language makes a logically correct but syntactically incorrect statement - such as yesterday when Phoebe said "Look!  That lady is cigaretting." 

Neither of us corrected her and I suspect we may adopt it as a household in joke.  But that aside, it does kind of make sense.  "The lady is smoking a cigarette" is contracted to "The lady is smoking" but of course, the lady isn't smoking (unless she's standing too close to a fire) so really perhaps you should contract it to "The lady is cigaretting" - however that just sounds wrong.  But why?

Money Well Spent

"So Phoebe, what was your favourite thing at the Zoo?"

"The bouncy castle."