Today is...Buddha's Birthday

Picture Buddha and i imagine you see a pot bellied, bald guy sitting in contemplation but that's not him, that's a 10th Century monk called Bodai who somehow became confused with the real guy who was a 6th Century Prince named Siddhartha Gautama who who meditated for 49 days under a Bodhi tree and gained the answer to the meaning of existence.
That he did all that and is mis-remembered as a chubby hairless guy must grate, especially if he was a seriously buff health freak with bulging biceps and a pair of firm, toned buttocks that would crack walnuts.
Buddhists follow the the core beliefs in the Four Noble Truths of Suffering, the Cause of Suffering, the End of Suffering and the Path that Leads to the End of Suffering and it all ends with people forgetting the Buddha's teachings and generally being awful to each other.
Then Maitreya (the Buddha of the future) comes along to re-teach humanity about the 10 non-virtuous deeds and the 10 virtuous deeds before six more suns show up and boil off all the rivers, lakes and oceans before the Earth explodes into a massive fireball. 
One story i did read on the Buddha was how he said that he could live for an eon (a billion years) or until the end of the eon, if he was asked to do so he would but nobody did so instead of dying in a billion years, he died at the ripe old age of 80 and i'd like to think that he used his last breath to remind the people gathered around him that they only needed to ask...please...somebody ask!!!