The Week in Weird

There are those who believe that being Number Two means having to try harder -- and then there's DMX. The arrest-prone rapper didn't take too kindly to being given the hip-hop equivalent of a silver medal by a fan in Berlin last week, slapping Oliver Osterode silly when he approached him after a performance and informed him that he was great -- but not quite as great as Lil Jon. X, who was working on a personal best streak of six full weeks without a jailing -- the last one coming after an early August parole violation -- has yet to be charged by German authorities, but an investigation is ongoing. If we could offer the unlucky Berliner some advice, it'd probably be to parse his words more carefully. Something along the lines of "You're the greatest rapper over five feet tall" might do well . . .

Trying to convince a raging Frenchwoman that she's actually closer to a size ten than a size four is one of the most thankless jobs on the planet -- trust us, we know something about this one. But, according to a poll taken among British store clerks, one thing makes that dead-end job even worse. The proverbial last straw, it seems, is having to listen to the music of Britney Spears while punching the clock. Brit topped the list of most annoying background noises in the survey, which drew on the experiences of more than 1,400 retail workers, easily outdistancing runners-up Usher and Kylie Minogue. Oddly, the squeals of a pack of rats being set upon by feral cats didn't even crack the Top Ten . . .