To kick things off, a young lady friend of mine recently enquired if I had ever enjoyed a nocturnal breakfast. Would I have to bring my own bottle of milk, or was something else meant?

I can tell that you've been imagining all sorts of salacious double-meanings here. Corn flakes soaked in bodily fluids - albeit the bodily fluids of cattle, specifically, milk - do sometimes figure in even conventional breakfasts. However, there is no salaciousness involved in a nocturnal breakfast. It is simply a snail and frog hunt, conducted with torches in the open air near wet boggy places. And the penalty is that you have to take the sorry captives home in the grey dawn and eat the poor devils, which will make you nearly as unhappy as it makes them.

Javanese Bicycle

Do you remember the Sun JavaStation? It was essentially a Sparc 4 put into a purple wedge. A Javanese Bicycle is when you have two Beowulf clusters of these things (reformatted and running NetBSD, of course), which are positioned to make a wheel-like shape.

I think Blob suggested it in The Banter Page: Playing The Glass Harmonica

This is the practice of attempting something whose outcome can be beautiful but potential for calamity is large. The etymology is obvious: the glass harmonica, it is said, produces some of the purest tones ever heard by the human ear, but at least 80% of those who have tried to play it have met with untimely death.

A friend once asked me if I'd mind buttering her muffin tin. I think this might be illegal in some places. Could you advise?