It's just Thursday, MKF! 1/29/04

[Ariel]

It's Thursday, MKF! Today I started my two weeks of emergency on-call which means 24/7 phone on every minute. Also had fun talking with family AND preparing for Gold Rush Days, a show I produce in Sacramento, CA on Labor Day.

[Artemis]

Hey MKF, did you know today is Martin Sheen's birthday? You're probably imagining him in The West Wing, but here he is with a ridiculous head in Babylon 5.

[Artemis]

Hey MKF, you know how everyone loves the smallest cutest member of the group the most? Of course you do. Well, today we celebrate the birthday of the late Kenny Baker, who got stuck inside a dustbin day after day in Tunisia to bring R2-D2 to life (he was also Paploo, the Ewok who 'borrowed' a speeder bike to distract the scouts in Return of the Jedi). Speaking of sci-fi birthdays it's also those of William Morgan Sheppard (the Klingon prison warden in Star Trek VI, and the Soul Hunter in Babylon 5 - same species as Martin Sheen above, among other things), Tony Amendola (Master Bra'tac, the coolest old guy in the galaxy, in Stargate SG-1), Elizabeth Debicki (under all the gold paint in Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2), and Grey DeLisle (the voice of basically everyone in everything - now gets credited as Grey Griffin, and I feel like even if you want to change your name after getting married, hey it's your name do what you want with it, maybe just as your actor credit name it might not be the best idea to switch from 'really cool name' to 'something from the D&D Monster Manual'). It's also the day the printing of the Gutenberg Bible was completed, and coincidentally the birthday of Steve Guttenberg, from the first few (good) Police Academy movies.

[Artemis]

Hey MKF (it's still Thursday where you are, right?) - cats like science, right? And staring at computer screens (and walking on keyboards, I've noticed, but we love you anyway). Cassini's just over twelve hours from Saturn, and here's a cool little self-updating rendered view of it. Enjoy!

[Artemis]

Hey MKF - this particular Thursday, according to that list of food days I keep finding weirdly interesting for who knows what reason, is Family Day: A Day To Eat Dinner With Your Children. In case you were wondering why your mums Willow and Tara put you and your bowl up on the table to have dinner with them today

[Artemis]

Hey MKF - it's World Teachers' Day today! And a fine cause that is, because 'teacher' and 'underappreciated' seem kind of synonymous, and reflecting on my own school years (some ancillary elements of Hero - although not the whole thing, obviously - were a bit autobiographical) brought to mind some of the teachers I had back then, and they were a great bunch.

It's also the day when, in 1962, Dr. No was released, the first James Bond film. You know when your mums go have private Smut Bunnies time in their bedroom, that's where the inspiration for all that came from

[Artemis]

Hey MKF - it's Thursday, and you know what that means? It's Hugh Jackman's birthday. (That only works for this specific Thursday though, not all of them.) He has claws and stuff when he's being Wolverine, so that's almost as good as an actual kitten. Not quite, but almost

[Artemis]

Hey MKF - did you see the Black Panther trailer? Pretty awesome, but naturally, what with cats being awesome and all. It's got me wondering though, who'd win, Black Panther or Pink Panther?

[Artemis]

Hey MKF, it's Thursday, and for some reason wikipedia wants history to remember that on this day (in 2004) GTA San Andreas was released. I suspect history's going to think some GTA fan had too much time on their hands - although (I had to look this up, I forget which game is which) San Andreas was the one that had the 'hot coffee' thing in it, where if you hacked the game to unlock a minigame that was inaccessible normally, you could see your blocky polygon person having sexy with his blocky polygon girlfriend, and that was a big controversy, because oh no, sex...

I prefer to remember this as the day when Supergirl first aired (in 2015). Not sure what code you have to put into the tv to unlock a Kara/Lena romance, but I'm keeping an eye on it (not that Sanvers isn't awesome, just y'know, why not both?)

[Laragh]

I prefer to remember this as the day when Supergirl first aired (in 2015). Not sure what code you have to put into the tv to unlock a Kara/Lena romance, but I'm keeping an eye on it (not that Sanvers isn't awesome, just y'know, why not both?)

Oh Chris. You know not what is to come.

[Artemis]

I haven't seen any of season three yet. But I did just do a quick google for news, and saw Floriana Lima's down to recurring cast, so... because she needs more time because they're going to make a spin-off buddy cop/romance show of her and Alex having Science Police Adventures? Yeah that must be it.

But anyway, while I'm in the MKF thread, hey MKF, it's still Thursday in the US, so even though you're not completely black, you can celebrate along with us here (where it's Friday) for Black Cat Appreciation Day. I had a black cat when I was growing up, Alexander the Great.

[Artemis]

Hey MKF, it's Thursday, and this particular Thursday happens to be Carl Sagan's birthday. He was a pretty cool guy, loved science, I'm sure Willow will tell you all about him, although it's not quite as well known that he also saved the world from an extradimensional monster, as seen here:



(Not sure if actual kittens can read comic books - I mean, being adopted by a pair of witches, who knows? - but internet kittens should check out Atomic Robo for more.)

[Artemis]

Hey MKF - it's Thursday, and the day after the Yes vote on same-sex marriage, our parliamentarians are already hard at work turning the actual legislation into a godawful pretzel of random tangent arguments. But fingers crossed (or paws in your case) it'll get there in the end. It's also the first day for the Justice League movie (got my ticket) or as I'm hoping it'll turn out to more accurately be, 'Wonder Woman and Friends'. Paws crossed on that too.

[gorn]

Happy Thursday, MKF! Every Thursday is worth celebrating, but it's even more special when it's Thanksgiving Thursday. I love Thanksgiving so much! Why can't all holidays be on Thursday?

This was a quiet Thanksgiving at the gorn household, the family is spread out across the country. Just myself, mrs. gorn and our kids ... and not meaning to sound cold-hearted or ungrateful, but sometimes that's kinda nice, too, you know? We could sleep in, watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade at our leisure off the DVR, the kids could make a mess ... but best of all, most best of all, mrs. gorn could experiment on the turkey stress-free. For the first time, she tried injecting it with apple juice - I thought that sounded kinda weird, but the results were amazing. She also tried cooking it upside down for 45 minutes. Now when we have friends or family joining us next time for Thanksgiving, mrs. gorn is free to do it again because she knows it works. Damn good turkey.

I've said this before, but I'm very thankful to have married a woman like mrs. gorn. She didn't grow up with Thanksgiving, never even cooked something in an oven until she met me. When we first came to America, she was determined to tackle the Thanksgiving turkey on her own, and she has mastered it. We have a fantastic traditional spread every year (except for cranberry sauce, neither of us really like that), and each year she literally outdoes herself. People say that a lot at Thanksgiving, but in mrs. gorn's case it's very true.

I'm very lucky, I have a lot to be thankful for. I'm thankful for the friends I made here on the Kittenboard, even though none of us are around like we used to be, myself included. I'm thankful to Artemis for keeping this bestest of all threads going each Thursday! Bravo!

I miss a lot of you out there. Hope you have as much to be thankful for in your lives as I do.

[Artemis]

Thanks! (Sorry for the wait, but I could hardly reply when it wasn't Thursday, what kind of sense would "Hey MKF, it's not Thursday" make?) As a representative of the non-Thanksgiving nations the holiday does seem kind of mysterious, but at the same time the idea is very touching, and maybe it wouldn't be a bad thing if we adopted it one of these days. I'm thankful for the Kittens as well - past and present - and just the continued existence of the board. Even during my absence, I'd load a page up every now and then, and think yep, good times, and I'm sure a lot of others do too. As Richard O'Brien said in Dark City, "We're very lucky when you think about it - to be able to revisit those places that have meant so very much to us." (And, yes, granted he was playing a grade-A nutcase at the time, but still, he had a point.)

Anyway - hey MKF, it's Thursday! And on this particular Thursday back in 1934, the most famous steam locomotive ever (and in overall train stakes second only to the Orient Express, but nobody remembers what was up front doing the work of hauling Poirot and his suspects around), the Flying Scotsman, became the first engine to be officially confirmed to reach 100mph. She also set the record for longest journey - 679km - while visiting Australia in 1989. I have to admit I'm more partial to our local 'most famous train' though, 3801, which used to regularly come and go from Central, not far from where I live, when I was younger - she's undergoing restoration at the moment, but is set to be back on the tracks next year. (I never went full model railway fan, but I do quite like steam engines, although at the moment the only ones I've got on display are Lego - the Hogwarts Express, and Lego's own Emerald Night, which is heavily inspired by the Scotsman.)

[Artemis]

It's Thursday (where you are) MKF! And on this particular Thursday, Australia officially stopped being jerks (in this case, at least), with legislation changing our legal definition of marriage from 'a man and a woman' to 'two people' passing through the lower house. And with the Governor-General's royal assent or whatever (yes, that's still part of our government) basically a foregone conclusion so far as I know, that means your mommies can get married in Australia, if they happen to be Australian. I have to confess, wherever my fics are actually set, the mental Willow and Tara I listen to and write down what they do and say do kind of tend to have Australian accents - and I've got at least one story idea in the works where Willow (and a bunch of the other Scoobies) will be Australian by birth (and Tara, so far as I've worked things out, will hail from Bermuda originally). But of course the central Willow and Tara, who all the others are kind of multiversal facets of, are all kinds of magic, so I'm sure they take that sort of thing in their stride.

[Artemis]

It's Thursday, MKF! And on this particular Thursday, well summer's definitely here, it's 43 degrees in Western Sydney - thankfully the coast's being cooled down a bit, Observatory Hill (which is where the weather readings for the CBD happen) is at 30, which isn't so awful. I'm not a heat person really. Speaking of heat though, MKF, you know how your mommies occasionally go dashing around being daring and sexy secret agent Smut Bunnies? Well one of the main set pieces for that little flight of fancy was inaugurated on this day, the Millau Viaduct in France - at 343m, the tallest bridge in the world. (I'm not kidding, one of the first ideas I had was 'there has got to be a James Bond car chase across that!')

[Artemis]

Hey MKF, it's Thursday! And on this day back in 1913 (when it was actually a Sunday, so as they would have said in a helpful letter to the newspaper back then, "I say, Fantastical Miss Kitten, it's Sunday today!") the New York World published the very first crossword puzzle, devised by Arthur Wynne, who named it the 'word-cross puzzle', which means he also simultaneously invented the problem of coming up with something with the right number of letters, but it just won't fit. 'Cross-word' got applied several weeks later, because (seriously) somebody wasn't paying attention when they were typesetting.

[Artemis]

It's Thursday MKF! And on this very day back in 1963, a momentous meeting was taking place, as Doctor Who broadcast 'The Survivors', and the Doctor, Ian, and Susan discovered the titular survivors of the nuclear war that had devastated the planet they'd landed on (and which the Doctor had tricked them into exploring because he was curious; he was kind of a jerk early on) - the Daleks! (Although we only saw its sink-plunger arm on screen, Barbara had found one in the previous episode, because even when her role is just 'being menaced by a monster' she's better at it than everyone else.) And a few episodes later every last Dalek got wiped out, and the writers subsequently had to be creative to justify bringing them back when Dalekmania became a thing - their first excuse wasn't actually bad, given the premise of the show, that the events of 'The Dalek Invasion of Earth' took place a long time before they all got wiped out, but later stories just ignored it entirely, and frankly the Daleks now make such a habit of being wiped out and then turning up again that it kind of feels like they're doing it on purpose just to troll the Doctor (I mean, it's the only kind of victory they can really get). But whatever bizarre convolutions of time they've rolled through, by our standards they're 54 years old today (minus the early-appearing arm), so happy birthday Daleks.

[Artemis]

It's the first Thursday of 2018, MKF! And this particular day is also World Braille Day, being the birthday (in 1809) of Louis Braille, who (as you might suspect) invented braille - while he was still a student, no less, although he continued to improve the system throughout his life. We just a few months ago had braille streetsigns added here in Sydney (at hand level on the poles, obviously), which is pretty cool.

[Artemis]

Hey MKF, it's Thursday! And back in 1787, it was also Thursday, and the day when William Herschel was having a peep at that most unfortunately-named of planets, Uranus - which he himself had discovered several years earlier, although (following the running theme from the Random thread of astronomers being arse-kissers) he tried to name it after King George, and it was the French who eventually came up with Uranus, partly to avoid having to talk about Britain, and one suspects partly to deliberately make everyone speaking English sound silly when they said it - and discovered two moons circling it, which were later named Oberon and Titania by his son, just to see what would happen if you didn't go to ancient mythology for everything.

He probably also thought there was a civilisation living there, since he thought that about practically every celestial body in range (including the interior of the sun), but at the time that was actually a fairly widespread assumption among the astronomical community.

[Artemis]

It's Thursday MKF! And on this particular Thursday back in 1788, HMS Supply sailed into Botany Bay, the first of the First Fleet to arrive in Australia and start dumping Britain's excess ne'er-do-wells a long way away regardless of the locals' opinion on the matter (but further away this time, after the previous 'dump them in North America' plan had gone somewhat sideways for the Empire a few years earlier). And the reason Australia Day is next week is, well, Botany Bay is a bit rubbish, and after a few days disconsolately pottering about, getting rained on and breaking axes trying to cut down trees, Commodore Phillip decided Captain Cook could take his glowing recommendation of the place and shove it, declared the first try of founding a nation to be a mulligan, and sailed up to the next likely inlet (Sydney Harbour) for a do-over. And now here we are.

(Fun fact, putting together the First Fleet cost £9.6 million, adjusted for inflation; nowadays you'd be lucky to get anywhere even vaguely near Sydney Harbour for that much. And developers are still trying to convince people that, hey, Botany Bay's actually really nice...)

[Artemis]

Hey MKF!

Some hae meat an canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thankit.

This Thursday is Burns Night, when Scots traditionally get together to have a meal and reflect on what a great poet Robert Burns was (it's also his birthday), kicking off with bagpipes to welcome guests, then the above toast for any who haven't been scared off by the bagpipes (that's how they weed out the sightseers just pretending to be Scottish), and then there's haggis, and a traditional ode to haggis, and let's not dwell on haggis please (if you add up all the ancestors I'm somewhere between a quarter and an eighth Scot, but that portion definitely doesn't include mealtimes).

Closer to my heart, it's also the day, in 1947, when Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. filed a patent for his Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device, or in other words, the world's first video game. And for a while everything was fine, but eventually he saw his creation give rise to the shadow of Electronic Arts, and he wiped away a tear and muttered "Now I am become death, the destroyer of World 1 Stage 1." I may have made some of that up.

[Artemis]

Hey MKF, it's Thursday! And the start of February, which in the UK is LGBT History Month, a history that your mommies (and yourself, of course) are a cherished part of. Speaking of your mommies, it's also the day (back in 1964) on which the Beatles had their first US number one hit, with "I Want To Hold Your Hand," which I'm sure they do plenty (especially given the recent appearance of Lego Willows and Taras, since the Lego Movie taught us (rightly so) that holding hands = love. Holding paws as well, but not everyone's lucky enough to be a kitty, so we just do the best we can do with the appendages available to us.

[Artemis]

It's Thursday, MKF! In this case, an adorable tradition in India and Nepal is that this particular Thursday - the second day in the Valentine week (7th-14th) - is Propose Day, so if your mommies are looking especially besotted with each other today... well let's be honest, that could be for all sorts of reasons, but you never know.

A bit of history too - you don't normally associate rioting with cricket (at least, not the five-day test match form of the game), but on this day the Sydney Riot of 1879 erupted, owing to a Victorian umpire (we have a rivalry thing with them) declaring one of the Australian batsmen out during a test against the English, whereupon the crowd invaded the pitch, had a bit of a ruckus (although all in all they didn't manage to do much harm to anyone) and eventually play was called off when it became obvious that nobody was going to calm down. So it wasn't really much of a riot, but it was very embarrassing for the Australian cricket community, until they decided to give Anglo-Australian test matches another shot next year, and everyone settled down to just detesting each other without getting out of their seats, like gentlemen.

[Artemis]

It's Thursday MKF! And Jeri Ryan's birthday, in this case - her relevance to kittens being that one of your mommies spent all of Space Quest wearing her silver outfit (although the fanfic costume department made sure Tara's version wasn't as difficult to breathe in as the real thing); you remember that one, it's the one where you were a humanoid cat alien and spent the whole time making out with Tricia Helfer (a witchy cat's life is never dull).

Today also marks the anniversary of Moose Murders, which is fun to read about (and shows that reviewers getting more value out of creatively insulting a flop than analysing a success isn't just a youtube thing).

[Artemis]

Hey MKF, it's Thursday! As it happens I was looking through an old list of movies on my phone today, from a game I played a few years ago of watching movies based on shared actors, but with the rule that a) I had to actually watch the movie, and b) I had to already have it on dvd, and wasn't allowed to go get a movie specifically to make the next link. Managed to keep that going for about a year and a half, and 258 movies, before I couldn't find a way out of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and learned various interesting things, like Sharon Stone is in Police Academy 4, and it's really jarring to go from The Scorpion King 3 to Batman Begins and then Tomb Raider Cradle of Life.

I admit I did sort of cheat a few times, including going from The Simpsons Movie to Shoot Em Up because Green Day is on the soundtracks to both, and counting Cameron Diaz almost being in Mortal Kombat as good enough. The best one was going from Beastmaster to Deathstalker III with the link "helmet with bat wings stuck to it".

[thespian_phryne]

HAhaha! Deathstalker and the Warriors of Hell. Did you know that the dude who played Deathstalker in this movie was also in Baywatch?

[Artemis]

It's International Women's Day, MKF! Turns out the UN also picks a specific theme for each IWD, this year it's 'Time is Now: Rural and urban activists transforming women’s lives'. Taking the 'the' out of 'the time is now' makes it sound like they're trying for a hashtag, and I have to admit I have trouble imagining the UN devising hashtags (probably because my mental image owes a lot to Batman: The Movie). Related bit of history, on this day in 1910 Raymonde de Laroche became the first woman to receive a pilot's license.

HAhaha! Deathstalker and the Warriors of Hell. Did you know that the dude who played Deathstalker in this movie was also in Baywatch?

Didn't know that - I had to get out of it via stuntman Alejandro Avendano, who also did stunts in Resident Evil: Extinction (the third one, where the T-virus has changed the climate and everything's a desert, except they forgot about that by the end of the movie, and it seems like the 'desert overtaking everything' motif just applied to the area around Las Vegas, which kind of is a desert. Didn't occur to me until now, but I think that whole virus/climate link comes from Milla's opening narration - maybe she's just never visited Nevada before?) Looking back over the list, there's no denying my movie shelves trend towards cheesy more than quality.

[Artemis]

Hey MKF, it's Thursday! And I just got back from seeing the new Tomb Raider film, which, well, don't worry, your mommies still did it best in The Artefact - I mean, obviously they did, because they're Willow and Tara, but even on its own merits... eh, 6 out of 10, mediocre script but some good stunts and Alicia Vikander brought her A-game even if the rest of the movie didn't seem much interested in joining her. Which kind of still earns it 'best video game movie ever' status, so far as I can see.

And a bit of Australian history, because kittens love nap time and Australian history's usually good for that - on this day back in 1877 the very first test match in cricket was played, between us and the English at the MCG. It took five days, as cricket does, then another match a couple of weeks later, and the series wound up being a draw. Yup, that's cricket - nap on