Sylvester

What's going on? My laptop keyboard is broken. All of a sudden, most of the keys stopped working, while a few started "working" when they weren't supposed to. Every time I bump the laptop a bit, for example, it now thinks I pressed F9. Very annoying. Best case, I think I'll need to get the keyboard replaced ($100 repair when I next visit the US); worst case, it could be a sign of impending total system failure.

Anyway, I'm in the university library now. I thought I'd post an interesting cultural artifact. It's a discarded party invitation distributed to students at my college (and presumably elsewhere). The author is Israeli (as can be seen from subtle grammatical flaws such as "in the past few years"), and so is the intended audience. Yet the letter is all in sophisticated English - a foreign language for nearly everyone attending the party. I find it a striking example of the way American culture has become "cool" among young secular Israelis. If only they'd consider actual Americans, like me, to be equally cool...