A Happy Birthday Post

It's Mister Christopher Jackson's birthday today, and I happen to know he's a big Stephen King fan. So I gave Mr. King a call and asked if he would like to send a gift to the birthday boy. I thought he might send a signed book or something, but instead he sent this evil haunted birthday cake (pictured below), which he claims to have been made my history's most villainous bakers and forged in the fires of Hell's Kitchen. Essentially it's the Buick 8 of birthday cakes...

'Stephen King's Birthday Cake'

A threatening cake?! That's the last thing you want to see/hear on your special day! Why would he send such a wicked enchanted sponge? Apparently the candles are made entirely from the earwax of Genghis Khan and the plate it sits on was owned by John Wilkes Booth. You get the gist. It's evil. He also sent me the recipe for it:

I don't know where you'd get most of those ingredients. They did have bear blood in Lidl though. In the end I threw the wicked cake in the bin and got a lovely caterpillar one from Marks & Sparks. Much better. Now, I should probably get around to cancelling that Pennywise the Clown he said he'd ordered...

I also just realised the date: 09/09/09 - I love it when all the numbers match up like that. There's a name for it but I can't remember what it is. It was always a good day at school when you came to put the date on a piece of work and realised it was 03/03/03 or 04/04/04, and then you'd hear everyone in the class give a collective murmur of 'oh yeah!'. It was also entertaining when the date was in numerical order like 02/03/04, or palindromic like 10/11/01. Another good, but nerdy, one is when the constituent numbers in a person's birthdate add up and match the person's actual age, like being 9 on 02/05/02. Of course, it only works once in your life, and somehow I doubt I'll get to see mine: I'd have to be 108.

Anyway, while we're on the subject of dates, let's see who else shares a birthday with Mr. Jackson: actors Adam Sandler and Hugh Grant, Cameroonian basketball player Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, the Batman Michael Keaton, ace Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, Cameroonian footballer Alexandre Song, and the hilarioulsy named Dutch admiral Cornelis Tromp. Why did I include two Cameroonians in there? I just love the word 'Cameroonian'.

And what else has happened on this day in history? Anything to do with a Cameroonian? No, sadly. But the first computer bug was discovered at Harvard University in 1947- it was a moth lodged in a relay of the Harvard Mk 2. Also, in 1839 the first glass-plate photo was taken, in 1991 Tajikistan gained independence, in 1997 Burgess Meredith (best known for playing The Penguin in the 60s Batman show - Batman again! There's a trend here!) died, and in 1863 the Union Army invaded the fabulously named Chattanooga, Tennessee - home of the eponymous choo-choo. (There's another good word: 'Chattanooga'). September the 9th has been very busy indeed over the past few decades.

Well that about wraps things up here. Unfortunately I couldn't find the clip from Frasier where Eddie wears a birthday hat and voicebox to wish Frasier 'Rrrappy Birthday!', but I do have the next best thing to play us out of this particular post. So from the Too Close For Comfort blog...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DUDE!

Take it away, fiddle-playing cat!