Well, here it is… my 40th birthday. I’m congested and holed up in Saugerties at Zig’s place. Just got back from Jam Cruise and am gearing up to head to DC for Obama’s inaugural festivities.

As mentioned a couple days ago, I’ve been reading a few posts, including this one from Michael Ruppert that do not exactly give the cheeriest projection of what’s in store for the world in 2009… Complete Global Economic Arrest?!? For real?!? A simultaneous lateral collapse of all governments? It seems a bit extreme. Very Chicken Little.

The thing is, Ruppert’s never struck me as Chicken Little. Rather, he’s struck me as a brutally honest pragmatist who has seen things that would turn lesser individuals ghostly pale. One of those rare “Speaking Truth To Power” folks who has tasted both Truth AND Power and seems to prefer the former to the latter.

So Chicken Little scenarios aside, I’m in an interesting place in my personal life. I’ve been floating for a few years. Almost two rotations around the sun without a residence. And I’m starting to ponder settling down. I don’t want to settle anywhere this side of the Rockies (I’m in NY right now) and would really rather not settle anywhere West of, say, Oakland…

I am also retooling this website, blotterati.com, and trying to get it to flow seamlessly with shakedowngallery.com and popeshady.com… It should take a bit of effort.

Oh, and I think I’m going to make a concerted effort to start typing with Capital Letters at the beginning of sentences again… mostly just to get in the habit of capitalizing after periods. The lovely miss rembert got me writing in lower-case letters more than fifteen years ago and I haven’t gotten out of that habit. It’s fun, but at some point I slip into it when I realize I maybe ought to be writing a bit more formally. Or I’ll switch back and forth arbitrarily from Capitalizing to not capitalizing… and that just gets distracting, for myself as much as anyone else…

So… 40 fuckin’ rotations around the sun and what next? I don’t know. I joked about having a 40th birthday party called MR 40, along the lines of the AT 40 event in Vegas a few years back… And, instead, I’ll post a blog called MR 40 and call it a day.

In the words of Jim Morrison, “Proud to be part of this number!”