What is this tag business you speak of?

So evidently in this blogging world, there's this thing you can do called tagging. Not like in the grafitti way, it's kind of like the blog version of a chain letter (yes, in the sense that it's annoying). Someone comes up with a 'clever' survey, puts answers to the survey in a post, then at the end of the post, 'tags' a bunch of other people who are now obliged to drop everything and answer the survey on their own blogs. Whatever.

Now, having gotten the humbuggery out of the way, I was tagged by my sister, and while in general I do find these things kind of annoying, hers was actually quite amusing, so I'm compelled to respond in turn.

The idea with this one is this: You Wikipedia your date of birth (no year), and it gives you a list of all the cool stuff that happened on that date in history. Then you list list 3 events, 2 important birthdays, 1 death and 1 holiday that occurred on that day. According to Torreh, mine are supposed to all be food-related, but we'll see what we can do there. Here we go...

Events:
1960 - The Sudanese Republic is renamed Mali after the withdrawal of Senegal from the Mali Federation. Okay, this is not exactly food-related, but is a good segue to a book plug. You, yes you, should read What is the What, by Dave Eggers. An amazing personal account of the life of Valentino Achak Deng -- one of the "Lost Boys" of Sudan. Really. Read it.

1965 - The Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 between India and Pakistan over Kashmir ends after the UN calls for a cease-fire. If I had not been so lazy about writing up Al Noor, the Pakistani deliciousness I experienced in Lawndale a few weeks back, there would be a post to it here. In time. For now though, here's what Yelp has to say about it.

Births:
1943 - Toni Basil, American singer. Without her, not only would we not have 'Oh Mickey you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind hey Mickey!' but we also would not have "Oh Ricky you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind hey Ricky!" And of course, the food-relatedness is obvious.

1958 - Joan Jett, American musician. Lead singer, of course, of the Blackhearts. While I was in the bay area this weekend, my friend Dan showed me video of the cobra dinner he and his boys ate in Vietnam. The heart wasn't exactly black, but they ate it.

1927 - Tommy Lasorda, baseball manager. That man is definitely food-related.

Deaths:
1989 - Irving Berlin, American songwriter (b. 1888). I can't really relate him to food. He's pretty rad though.

Holidays:
1977 - Yom Kippur. This is not from Wikipedia, but rather from my own pitiable past. So, I was born on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. As if this were not guilt enough to be born into, my mother actually fasted on the day she gave birth to me! How can I possibly live up to that kind of saintliness?

So here's the taggy part. I tag the following two people, but I'm mostly over it. You are not obligated to do this business.
1: Virginia
2: Annie (maybe the guilt will get you to post)