I’m utterly fascinated by the Alexander Litvinenko murder. This former Russian spy was murdered with polonium-210, which is apparently highly radioactive and really hard to come by. On his death bed, Litvinenko blamed Russian President Putin for the poison. Now they’re discovering that the poor guy left traces of radioactivity all over London before he died, and they’ve now detected it on a couple airplanes as well. Does this read like a John Le Carre novel or what?

Geek Socks, including Super Breakout and Apple intarsia patterns. Nice.

I was just reading Kevin Smith’s Celebrity Playlist and I got to his paragraph about James’s “Laid”, and HEY! He got married in the Little White Wedding Chapel too! All the cool kids get hitched there.

The Snook and I are already planning our celebration for Repeal Day. Only one week to go!

My love for ugly shoes knows no bounds. Thanks to a tip from Lissa at work, I discovered that Rebel Sport in the Mid City Centre carries the new Crocs Mary Janes. They even have a few more colours than the official website lists, including moss green and candy pink. I actually wanted the black, but they didn’t have my size. So red it is!

What music videos “rip off” famous movies? I am embarrassed to admit that I, too, immediately thought of Paula Abdul’s “Rush, Rush.”

Fascinating. I just found an analysis of the Japanese “Mac vs. PC” ads and it turns out that they’re actually really different from the “Western” version. The discussion of the body language and different cultural norms is really interesting. The Mac guy is cool because he’s reserved and he doesn’t acknowledge how dorky the PC guy is, even when PC guy oversteps his personal boundaries. Oh, and the Mac guy is hot.

crumpet has finally added her awesome Alice prints to her Etsy shop. Now I’m just trying to choose which one I like the best. (Unless one of you wants to pony up $800 for the whole set for me…)

Me and Bill!
We’re at the launch of Bill Granger’s new cookbook. He’s so nice, and the food is wonderful! More when we get home…

Later: What a lovely evening! We were at the Hickson Road Bistro at the Sydney Theatre for this gleebooks event. Bill gave a great talk about his non-standard culinary career, and we enjoyed three courses from the cookbook. The highlight for me was the entree: a pea, mint, and feta salad. Divine! He also had a question-and-answer session, and most of the (old) people were asking boring things about the slow food movement and why we should all buy organic, blah blah blah. I turned to the Snook: “I’m about to embarrass you.” I put my hand up. “This is a bit frivolous, but it’s a hypothetical we like to discuss at nice restaurants. If SBS ever wanted to do an Australian version of Iron Chef, would you be on it and who would you want to face?” HE LOVED MY QUESTION. Apparently he’s a big fan of the show, and he started talking about how the most recent episode was on “whale tongue.” He said he’d probably be too intimidated to go on, because he doesn’t see himself as being as “cheffy” as some of the other professionals. He’d want to go up against “someone he could beat.” Later he came around to autograph our cookbook and have a chat. The Snook asked him about the “artisanal beer movement” while I requested this photo. I think it’s about time for our long-awaited pilgrimage to bills in Surry Hills…

Speaking of Irish victories… we lost today. Yeah, pretty much everybody saw that coming. (I still found Ron’s map a little depressing though.) Eh, I’m just glad I didn’t bother trekking to North Sydney to watch it live.