What EXACTY do you mean by
"The Sponge Awareness Foundation"?

[History Pg 1] [History Pg 2] [the Band Name]

Good Question.
We've been trying to answer that question ourselves for the last millenium or so. Here's Ed's feeble attempt at some sort of lame explanation...

The "Sponge" in "The Sponge Awareness Foundation" comes from a group of fictional characters in a comic book that Kevin used to draw for his friends. These Sponges stood about 6 feet tall and resembled common household cleaning sponges. In the center of each sponge was a single eyeball, the size of a basketball. A couple of references to these original sponges can be heard in one of our old songs, "Society of Sponges."

Careful inspection of the SAF logo will reveal a triangular version of these sponges. Incidently, the logo predates the band, as does the name - but we'll let Kevin explain that (if he ever gets around to finish writing our history).

Thus, the name does not refer to sea sponges (a common misconception) as evidenced by this very real email that we received:

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----Original Message Follows----
From: "John J. Chiment" [AddressRemoved]
To: spongeawareness@hotmail.com
Subject: Sponge Donations
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 10:02:29 -0500

Dear Friends of Porifera,

Your web site was given a 98% score when I used the HotBot search engine to look for serious sponge researchers. Clearly your organization is an important source for funding and encouragment in the little-appreciated and little-understoond world of sponge biology.

We at Cornell University would like to assist you in bringing more sponge-related information to the general public. I hope that you will distribute the address of our fossil glass sponge webpage to the many fans of sponges in your area.

Thank you in advance and may you be ever more successful in your spongish work.

John J. Chiment
Instructor in Geological Sciences
Cornell University
[Contact Info Removed]

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Finally, "The Sponge Awareness Foundation" is in no way affiliated with "The Sponge Awareness Society" whose home page was: http://www.vegasnet.net/~sponge
Frankly, we're not sure WHO they are and they scare us just a bit. [This site went down right after we posted this page. - Coincidence? I think not!]

We also use the initials SAF, but that causes all sorts of problems:
www.saf.com = Southern Aluminum Finishing
www.saf.org = Second Amendment Foundation (yikes!)
www.saf.net = A personal webpage... pictures of some family in Europe or something.
www.cmcinc.net/saf/ = Another band that goes by the initials SAF, standing for: Slow Acid Factor.

There is also an organization called the Sensory Awareness Foundation (or "the SAF")! Not sure what that one's about either...

And there you have it. Everything you wanted (or didn't want) to know about the "Sponge" in "The Sponge Awareness Foundation".

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