A few weeks ago, I fell off the wagon and started smoking again. As I sit here at my computer, a pack of American Spirits in my pocket and a fresh dose of nicotine pumping through my bloodstream, I realize that if i have any sense at all (which I often ponder), I’d best quit soon before it starts getting really difficult…again.

Prior to my starting back up again, I’d been having inexplicable cravings to smoke. After quitting for something over a year, I found myself resisting daily thoughts and urges to smoke, which caught me out of the blue. After several weeks of subconscious needling, I broke down and on a random impulse, telling myself it was the stress of the day, I smoked. Naturally, it all went downhill from that point.

Now I’m smoking about a half a pack a day, nervously contemplating my imminent and unavoidable millionth attempt at quitting. Will I cold-turkey it? The patch? Will I go postal, tear out my eyes and stuff the bleeding holes with loose tobacco and set myself aflame? I do not know.

What I do know is that smoking really fucks with my mood. Specifically, it makes me about ten times the asshole I normally am. Whether I’ve just smoked a cigarette or not, my temper becomes a bit trigger-happy, much to the displeasure of everyone who deals with me on a daily basis.

In the interest of peace, not to mention my health, I better quit again. Lying in the mud, looking up at the wagon I’ve fallen off of, I think…soon. Just let me smoke this butt real quick.

I’ve become completely addicted to playing the game Katamari Damacy for the PS2. If you’ve never played it before, go out and get it right now.

You control this miniscule little galactic prince with an oddly shaped head, whose task is to roll a ball around various places on Earth, collecting items via a kind of “stickiness” property of the ball. As the ball gets larger by virtue of the things sticking to it, you are able to attach bigger and bigger items. From sushi and cookies to cattle, police officers and buildings, your goal is to create as big a ball or “katamari” as possible. Finished katamari are lifted to the heavens and made into stars by your enormous, gold chain macking father. It’s a pretty simple premise.

The game has a surreality reminiscent of the Teletubbies and some of the more intense drug-abusing moments of my adolescence. All the weird shapes, styles, colors and constant references to “rolling” have me making a few guesses about the lfestyle of the creator, a guy who claims to dislike video games. Regardless as to whether anyone at Namco did any inhaling when making this game, the fact is that I cannot stop playing it. Katamari Damacy is wildly addictive. There’s a very strong satisfaction you get when your katamari starts getting big. Once you hit the size where you are big enough that people run screaming from you, there’s a certain Godzilla-like thrill that I can’t recall feeling in a video game before. Rolling a massive ball of buildings, cars, people and everything in between down the street, glomming everything you touch is a joy you should experience rather than trust my word for.

The graphics are basic, silly and cartoonish in a likeable and iconic way. The soundtrack is by far the most original I have ever heard—from Japanese hip-hop to a capella beat-boxing and ambient electronica, I don’t think there’s a stranger sounding game out there.

At twenty bucks from most large retailers, there’s really no excuse not to drop everything and pick up a copy. You’ll be a Katamari maniac in no time, dressing up as the prince and making all kinds of katamari-like food and other assorted homecrafts. Just check the photos tagged on Flickr and you’ll get the idea.

Recently, my daily intake of coffee has risen from about 1-2 cups to 5-6, consumed over the course of a simgle day. This is due entirely to the purchase of a kickass new coffee machine at the compound and the fact that the company I work for has recently sprung for an above average beverage setup in my office kitchen. Now, instead of the usual dosage of weak crap from the coffee-truck guys, I’m drinking 2-3 times that amount at much stronger levels.

I’m far too wired for my own good. While able to maintain an acceptable, if not slightly bitchy and shifty demeanor by the day, when evening arrives I am reduced to a twitching mess of a person you’d never want for a neurosurgeon as my nerves wilt and collapse under the strain of non-stop stimulant assault.

Since my trip to California, I’ve become all about Peet’s coffee, which is now starting to show up at some stores here in New York. Peet’s rules.

I can’t stop drinking the shit. Black or with milk and sugar, as soon as I destroy one pot, I have to resist the knee-jerk temptation to brew another. It’s not just quite noon right now and already I’m halfway through my third cup of the black, radioactive, paint-peeling stuff we make here at my office and I know that it won’t be my last.

After playing off and on for over two years, last winter I finally decided to wean myself away from EverQuest 1, also aptly known as EverCrack.

For those of you not in the know, EverQuest is a MMORPG, or an Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game a.k.a. HFNWC or Heroin for Nerds With Computers. There’s no shame here, daveb waves his freak flag high and mighty. Admittedly, it’s not the best conversation opener if you’re looking to get laid later in the evening. “I have a level 36 Mage and last week, my guild killed two dragons” just really doesn’t do much for girls. But hey, what’s a sex life compared compared to slaying a mythical winged beast?

On Friday, I finally bit the bullet and picked up a copy of EverQuest 2 at a store near my office. No big deal, I thought. I’ll head home, install it, futz with it for a couple hours and then walk away having spent an appropriate amount of time playing and go do something wholesome like ramming splinters under my fingernails or writing angry, illucid emails to the Pope.

The next thing I knew, it was Sunday night and I’d once again joined the ranks of EQ crackheads. I was virtually running all over the place, grouping with other people and slaying all manner of minor creatures. I was working on making potions, scribing spells, making tea, earning money, paying rent on an apartment and all sorts of mundane things, only these things weren’t real outside of the confines of a game server. I’d slept a total of no more than six or eight hours the whole weekend and on upon hitting the street this morning to catch the subway to work, I was taken aback by reality. Shit, I’m thirty, human and I live in the ghetto and cannot grow thistle-like spiked armor out of my skin using arcane means…right.

Fucking EverCrack. At least it’s not like I don’t know a shitload of other thirty-somethings who are completely addicted. Still, being a fan of online RPGs sort of entails you having to relinquish any plausible deniability over the fact that you are a hopeless, gibbering nerd. I feel myself just steps away from the pocket-protector and duct-taped glasses. I have EQ running on one computer and Linux on another with a KDE switch so I can bounce back and forth with ease. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, give yourself a hug and understand that you are indeed a fortunate human being. Just understand that in daveb’s Apartment of Doom, the geek meter registers pretty fucking high and that’s…okay.

Since this past Saturday, I have been living in my new digs, sans internet connection. This will be remedied by the coming weekend, but for the remainder of this week, I will have to relearn what life is like without the benefit of a 24 hour, high speed pass to the world wide web. From what I’ve experienced so far, it is a horrible, dark and miserable existence and if it were not for the knowledge that this hell will be over by Saturday morning, I’d be sorely tempted to end my life by hanging myself by the shower-curtain rod.

I have no qualms admitting that I am an obsessive internet junkie. I see nothing wrong with it. I’m the type of person that checks his email at least a hundred times a day and who’s answer to every single one of life’s problems is to Google it first. It’s good. It’s fucking great. I’d squish an ethernet cable into my ear and staple a monitor to my forehead if I thought it would get me anywhere.

Now, with this huge and gaping pit in my free time, I’ve had to resort to pre-internet forms of entertainment to keep myself from drilling holes in my forehead to let the little demons out. Such degrading pastimes as reading real books, watching television (no shit, there’s stuff besides Law & Order on every night. Who knew?) and thinking about things are but some of the indignities I’ve had to endure. It hasn’t been pretty. Pretty soon, I’ll start getting color back into my pallor and acting all well-adjusted and all that hippie crap. Horror. Sheer, nasal-plumbing horror.

Over the past 4 years, daveb as slowly been weaning various bad habits out of his life. Some happened on their own, like quitting weed and drinking to excess. Others, like quitting cigarettes took herculean efforts. For the past three days, daveb has been struggling with his latest project, quitting sugar and starch.

Now before you label daveb as one of those miserable, monastic bastards with no joy in his life, understand that he wants to be able to do everything for a long time to come. However, he has a bit of a nervous and addictive personality, one that attracts habits that will likely put him six feet under sooner than he’d like. His thinking is, kill all of these “habits”, like drinking, sugar, smoking weed, etc. so that once you have them removed from your life, you can reintroduce them in sane and measured amounts. Moderation, people, it’s the new black for daveb. He envisions going back to Vermont for vacations, getting off the plane and immediately cracking a beer, a candy bar, a bag of Fritos and a huge-ass blunt with a cigar for later. Other drugs and snack foods would be highly welcome. After two or three days of wretched, blurry debauchery, daveb would wipe the greasy crumbs from his eyebrows, hop the plane back to NYC and back to the normal lifestyle.
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