Bhumibol Adulyadej was born on the 5th of December, 1927, in Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge Massachusetts, the United States of America. Hey, that’s my home-state. After his 20-year-old brother, Ananda Mahidol was…uh…shot in the head on the 9th of June of 1946, Bhumibol Adulyadej became the King of Thailand.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s reign was…erm…well, there was a lot of it. And since he was revered as a living god in Thailand, that just added to a lot of…the lot. And given all of the protests in Thailand now, I am not sure how long that “living god” stuff will last. But there were also a lot of protests during his reign. In any case, he died on the 13th of October, 2016, a year that a lot of other things also happened. With a reign lasting for 70 years and 126 days, his is the second longest reign after Louis the XIV. Of course, Elizabeth II is approaching her 70th year in a couple months, so who knows?

King Bhumibol Adulyadej was 88-years-old when he died. That is about the same number of millions the movie This Is 40 made at the box office. Why do I bring up this movie that I have never seen? The same reason why I bring up this dead Thai monarch whom I have never met: today I turn 40 years old.

Yes, today is my birthday. And to celebrate this 40-year-milestone, I shall be going to the laundromat to do my laundry…because my washing machine broke down last week and the replacement that I purchased will not be arriving until halfway through next month. But, since I was able yesterday morning to drive to a library 30 minutes away to borrow their copy of Leviathan Falls, I will start reading that during my stay. Here’s to adulthood. 

Of course, there were other people born on this day, such as Martin Van Buren, General Custer, Fritz Lang, Walt Disney, Strom Thurmon, Lin Biao, Little Richard, Margaret Cho, Paula Patton, Amy Acker, Frankie Muniz, and Heisenberg: the Dead Living Goddamn Right.