Now that the Music Post-off is done (expect a winner announcement within a day or so), I’m going to unwind with completely inconsequential and stupid blog memes. First is something that was going around on Pharyngula a few days ago, spurred on by Newsweek’s moronic Pokémon match-up between Lincoln and Darwin: What celebrity do you share a birthday with, or what other important thing happened on your birthday? For me, it’s 13 September, which gives me Fiona Apple, Mel Tormé, and Arnold Schoenberg, among musicians; and Milton Hershey and Roald Dahl, among those who made the world a better place in chocolate-related ways.

More importantly, it’s also the day of Second Impact in Neon Genesis Evangelion, the day when some metaphysical gobbledygook with Old Testament names sprinkled in liberally for fun caused a ginormous explosion in the Antarctic, ushering in the post-apocalyptic wasteland required as the background for any worthy animé exploration of teen angst. It’s natural, then, that it’s also the birthday, on the show, of Kaworu Nagisa, Seventeenth Angel, tool of SEELE, herald of destruction, likely deflowerer of Shinji Ikari (to the delight of yaoi fangirls everywhere), lover of Beethoven, and, in Yoshiyuki Sadamoto’s otherwise awesome mangas, strangler of kittens. Really, I’m still pissed at Sadamoto for what he did to Kaworu’s character. Here I wait around for a couple years for the graphic novels to finally get up to Volume 9, which corresponds to the latter part of the animé (around episode 22 of 26), which is when Kaworu finally makes an appearance, and Sadamoto, apparently not satisfied with the character necessarily being an enemy of humanity and forcing Shinji into the position of killing him in battle after being the first person in his life to tell him that he loves him, makes him into a douchebag who kills cute little animals. And I’d even liked what he did with Shinji’s character up till then. What a disappointment.

So who do you share a birthday with? Bonus points to anyone else who can find a bringer of the Apocalypse.

Tags: Birthdays, Evangelion