Triva Fun for the Day

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Type in the day and month of your birthday but not the year.

See all the exciting things and people who share your birthday.

19 February

Birthdays
1473 - Nicolaus Copernicus, Polish mathematician and astronomer (d. 1543)
1896 - André Breton, French poet (d. 1966)
1911 - Merle Oberon, British actress (d. 1979)
1930 - John Frankenheimer, American film director (d. 2002)
1934 - Carole Eastman, American screenwriter (d. 2004)
1940 - Smokey Robinson, American singer
1952 - Amy Tan, American novelist
1954 - Socrates, Brazilian footballer
1955 - Jeff Daniels, American actor
1957 - Falco, Austrian singer (d. 1998)
1957 - Ray Winstone, British actor
1958 - Helen Fielding, English writer
1960 - Andrew, Duke of York
1963 - Laurell K. Hamilton, American writer
1963 - Seal, English singer
1967 - Benicio del Toro, Puerto Rican actor

Events
197 - Roman Emperor Septimius Severus defeats usurper Clodius Albinus in the Battle of Lugdunum, the bloodiest battle between Roman armies.
1600 - The Peruvian stratovolcano Huaynaputina explodes in the most violent eruption in the recorded history of South America.
1674 - England and the Netherlands sign the Peace of Westminster, ending the Third Anglo-Dutch War. A provision of the agreement transfers the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam to England, and it is renamed New York.
1861 - Serfdom is abolished in Russia.
1878 - The phonograph is patented by Thomas Edison.
1881 - Kansas becomes the first U.S. state to prohibit all alcoholic beverages.
1915 - World War I: The Battle of Gallipoli begins.
1945 - World War II: Battle of Iwo Jima - about 30,000 United States Marines land on Iwo Jima.
1986 - The Soviet Union launches the Mir space station.
2002 - NASA's Mars Odyssey space probe begins to map the surface of Mars using its thermal emission imaging system.

Not a bad day, all in all

i saw you on facebook

When one is on the Tube counting every stop to the West End, rushing to catch your seats at the Lion King because your boyfriend's mother has bought the whole family tickets as a huge birthday excursion up from Kent, the last thing you expect to see is your german exchange student.

Well, actually, my germany-living hungarian exchange student's little brother (who subsequently visited my parents when I was in college) and mom (who still sends my parents christmas cards).

I thought it looked like them, but I'd not seen them in like a decade and figured I was being delirious (the new experience of pseudo-in-laws has done my head in).

until he facebooked me. we are like buddies now. long live the internet.

bring it on, you baby lover.

now, we all know i love a good quiz. trivia, reference, Cosmo or math - I just love ticking boxes to find out about my inner soul/IQ/celebrity look alike/death day.

and the internet has always been a playground of insurmountable joy. from the good old days of the Purity Test (still an annual birthday tradtion), to now my love of flixter in particular, billions of people it seems have the time and inclination to supply me with an endless stream of mindless fun.

however, this new fangled bait-the-hook method of quizzing i am adamantly hating with every fibre of my being.

how dare you tantalize me with 'how many 5 year olds could you kill in a death match?' health profile on my ninja skills and fat:muscle ratio and then insist i register for your fucking no-strings dating site to find my life affirming answer? blow me.

blow this hallmark holiday out your ass

some people used to think i'd never get a man. mostly this was because:

a, i didn't believe in 'getting' one
b, i didn't try hard enough
c, mr. darcy is ficticious and all men were worsened by comparison
d, i am a lesbian

any or all of these may still be true, to a greater or lesser extent.

but i think i can safely say i am in a committed, realistic relationship when my valentine is vitamin pills and tickets to Juno.

nothing says valentine's like teenage pregnancy. god i love him.

mom

she came.

she left.

in between a lot of inconsequential and a few very consequential things happened.

we giggled and cuddled.

she ranted about drugs and brains.

i cried. she cried. we both felt misunderstood and alone.

we danced on the beach. we had photo shoots in silly places. we slept in and took long walks and sighed like there was no tomorrow.

and now, i don't feel so alone. not because of her physical presence, but i think because i finally managed to say things i have thought and felt for years if not decades.

i feel freer. truer. more like myself (because tragically, the one place i am not is with them.)

and she is more human, more real and less blameable somehow in her truth - even if it doesn't match my own.

i think the only down side is now i miss my sister even more.

someday I'll tell you the story about how my mom called me a couple hours before she was supposed to come and save me from myself and had lost her passport and wasn't coming anymore. It's the really good bit when after I cried and cried and fought with Liam about it and then it turns out it was just a mistake and Dad saved the day like in the movies.

But it's not funny yet. And it's time to go pick her up at the airport.

I love my mother.

I also love my cosmopolitain, european, anti-establishment, decidedly naive life.

In exactly 22 hours I will begin the ultimate experiement by trying to combine these two things without anyone getting the short end of the stick.

But first I have to do something. Well, two things actually.

I have rented the downstairs neighbours flat for the week so mom can have her own space to call dad and go to bed early, and mostly not feel awkward when she would so obviously be in the house of an unmarried couple living in sin where we have breakfast in our bathrobes and I leave my pill on the bathroom counter every night so I don't forget to take it.

So firstly, I have to go get the keys from said neighbour.

And secondly, we have to surreptitiously test the accoustics.

Last night in the 'here is the thermostat, don't forget to put the towels in the bin' tour I realised their bed is directly below ours. And while it would be embarrasing to realise the neighbours have been able to hear us having sex for the past 6 months, it would be infinately worse not to know my mother can.


But in other news, I am v excited and cannot wait for a day of old movies and headpetting and cookies. No one does that like mom.

No matter how old you are, it can be immensely satisfying to play dress up.

At our local ritz and chandelier theatre, box seats are cheap - mostly because they have a slightly obstructed view of the stage corner below you. But then really, you get a fucking box with velvet curtains, your own usher to hang up your coat and actual chairs you can move as you please for as much leg room as a 19th century theatre can allow. It's fucking brilliant. So, on a Christmas whim, I bought us a box for The Glass Menagerie.

And while opera glassing the plebs below and sniggering at intermission is just one hell of a night out - it's infinitely better when wearing a Jacky O dress and sipping a g&t.

Children of the 80s

I have a ghastly confession.

Our office is broken essentially into three rooms each holding a handful of desks, and thus each nutures its own subculture and unique identity. While the front office is quite girly, very cheerful and often well informed on cultural matters - the box office is a more laid back group usually associated with the wry british humour and a lot of bitching.

And we are the back office. Consisting of the artsy programming ones (like me) combined the tech guys who make our dreamy work exist in a never ending list of spreadsheets and quantifyable realities. It is a world of opposites united by our griping, love of pringles, and an odd array of guilty pleasures.

And our new tradition (inpired by a truly outstanding office secret santa gift to my esteemed colleague) has taken root and will possibly change our lives.

Power Ballad Friday. Every friday from three.

Finish out the working week with Cher, Queen, Genesis including a lifetime of memories and naff hand motions.

And of course, moments of great edification. Below is a sample of our machinacinations

- pub quiz like betting on what year Mad Max 3: Beond Thunder Dome came out (obvbiously at the instigation of a certain Ms. Turner)

- thumbs up/thumbs down on if Amy Winehouse is more talented than Britney Spears (thumbs up) eventhough she's just been committed to an asylum of sorts (thumbs even considering Britney's comperable downward spiral)

- a meatloaf/ jack black-as-dewey finn compare and contrast

- the confession someone got broken up with during a power ballad that shall not be named

-an entire debate on the feasibilty of the plot of Mighty Ducks 3 (and the Junior Olympics face off with the nasty Russians) instigated at the opening lines of "We are the Champions" - which everyone knows is the turning point in the first film that makes their unbelieveable success on and off the ice possible.

I love it.

Sometimes the world scares me

Sentenced to death: Afghan who dared to read about women's rights

I am not a politicised person. Sometimes I think that is because those that are are fucking insane - no matter what platform they stand on. To date, I have found little evidence otherwise