Basio's an aristocrat!

Today is the Veneralia, a festival to honor Venus/Aphrodite. For this day, women removed the jewelry from Venus' cult statue, bathed the statue, adorned it with flowers, and then bathed themselves in the public baths with wreaths of myrtle on their heads. They would then ask for divine help in their relations with men.

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Guess what?

I got a call from Bisobrina today. Bisobrina's really into genealogy, which may or may not be associated with the fact that she's adopted and thus has been thinking about family a lot lately. Anyway, thanks to the wonders of the internet, she's been looking into our family's history, and apparently on my mother's side she's traced it back to the 1100's, which impresses the heck out of me.

What impresses me more is that she's discovered that I am related to the one, the only, the infamous... Anne Boleyn.

Actually, I'm related to Mary Boleyn, Anne's sister. Anne, for the less informed among my readers, was the second wife of King Henry VIII of England and the mother of Elizabeth I. She was among the reasons why Henry decided to create the Church of England (well, kinda. He would've done it for any other fertile woman, but she was the one he picked). I am a descendant of her sister Mary, who also put out for the king but who has the advantage of not having been beheaded before she was able to produce more than one kid, who, I might add, remained unmarried.

Anyway, yes. My grandmother to the umpteenth power put out for a king who banged and beheaded her sister. Shrewd and I were wondering if that makes us genetically loose women. It's possible. I find this theory to be AWESOME.

Winston Churchill is also related to Mary Boleyn, but the chances of the lines of descent being at all similar are pretty low. Technically he'd be at least a distant cousin, but then, technically everyone is my distant cousin, especially outside of Africa with the whole Mitochondrial Eve thing (or we're all descended from Adam and Eve for you Christians). I can technically say I'm related to Jesus. Oh my god, I'm related to Jesus! But so is everyone, so it's not nearly as cool.

I want to know how closely related to Jesus I am. That would be a great thing to discuss at parties. "You're a Jehovah's Witness? Well, speaking of Jehovah, you know his son? I'm totally the descendant of his third cousin." Okay, so maybe it would be lame. This is why I don't do so hot at parties.

Shrewd wants to discover that we are Jesus's great^5,000 neices, because that would make us the last Zions like in that movie Dogma, but I had to inform her that that's pretty unlikely and anyway, we have cousins who are younger than us so it seems very improbable that we will get to team up with Kevin Smith, Jason Mewes, Chris Rock and Salma Hayek and have adventures fighting demons in a race to stop Matt Damon and Ben Affleck from unraveling space and time.

No matter how awesome that would be.

Anyway, I may not be related to Jesus, but I am related to the slutty sister of a slutty beheaded woman. My genes ain't divine, but they sure have a lot of royal promiscuity in them.

Okay, I'm gone now. Just one more thing:

HAPPY APRIL FOOL'S DAY!