Would you swear on a first date? I say definitely NO. I can get pretty salty around my close friends, but I’d never swear in front of someone I just met. I think it’s rude and low class. (However, if exceptional circumstances warranted a swear word, then I’d definitely let fly. Sometimes “Golly gee-whillickers!” just doesn’t cut it.)

Hmm. I was reading the SMH this morning at home over breakfast, and I came upon this article about two people who drowned in a storm drain yesterday. I remember being a little surprised that the title on the SMH home page was “Artists drown in drain,” especially as the “artists” in question were spray painting graffiti in a drain. I half-expected the paper to call them vandals. Anyway, it’s two hours later now and it looks like they’ve changed it to “Graffitists drown in drain.” (Archived here for posterity.) I wonder if they had some complaints or something.

Oh, good grief. I was just reading this AskMeFi about South Bend when I nearly did a spit-take. You can apparently buy a entire three-bedroom house there and pay less than $700 a month for your mortgage. I mean, I knew it was cheaper back home… but that’s just ridiculous. (I shouldn’t even post this. Mom’s gonna be all over it.)

I’ve started a “Sydney Knitters Challenge” over on the Nike+ site. So far it’s just me and Miss Fee, aiming to reach our 50km goal by April 1. (Pretty easy, I know, but we’re starting light.) Let me know if you want to join us! You’ll need an iPod nano and the Nike+iPod kit.

My friend Nick (aka “Kenya”) and his wife Sal flew home to Kenya on New Year’s Eve for a long visit. A few days later, the country’s election unrest was all over the news. The Snook and I wondered whether Nick and Sal were safe, and whether we’d hear anything from them while they were over there. This morning Nick posted to his blog. You get a real sense of both his sadness and his anger at seeing what’s happening in his home country. I hope they stay safe!

DDPSC Rocks
Check it out! It’s my forthcoming emo band album. We’re called the Donald Danford Plant Science Center and our first EP is “…a kind of death.” We’re very deep. Ten percent of the proceeds from each album sale will go to protect the red-beaked Random Bird and the gentle Random Deer. I expect you’ll be hearing us on Triple J any minute now.

I found this fun meme over at Max’s site. First, you use this Random Wikipedia link to generate your band name. Your album title is the last four words of the last quote on this page. And your album cover is the third photo from this Flickr link. Put ’em all together and there you go.

I has a sad. Awwwww! Cutest lolcat I’ve seen in a long time…

Last night we were watching TV when we caught a commercial for The Bill. “Why the heck do the English call the police department ‘the bill’ anyway?” I wondered. Snookums didn’t know, so he fired up Google. After several minutes, he found this Word Detective column (second entry from the bottom). Turns out it comes from a comic strip that ran during the First World War. It had a character named “Old Bill” who was a grumpy veteran with a big droopy mustache, and the strip was so popular that “Old Bill” became slang for any man with a walrus-like ‘tache. They’re not quite sure how it then came to be applied to policemen, but the speculation is that coppers are/were likely to sport such facial hair. Interesting, huh?

The Magic of Lace Blocking. Very pretty photos over on Claudine’s site…