AWESOME! I want hang to with those guys!

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As I get older, my ability to handle alcohol, in respect for hangovers is getting steadily worse. I don’t drink regularly, so naturally my tolerance is lower than it has been—historically speaking. But, in the past, when five or six beers over the course of an evening would have me waking the next morning without much suffering, I find that even a couple pints find me with a hangover before the evening even ends, sometimes only a couple hours after drinking. I invariably have a hangover the next morning, but instead of being banished after a couple painkillers, coffee and really greasy food, the suffering persists for the entire day. Such is my situation this morning as I work hard at holding the couch down, mug of coffee clutched in a death-grip whilst visions of greasy vomit monkies dance through my head. Fun stuff.

Last night, I had a dream that I was back in Vermont, living in the house that I grew up in, standing in my backyard on a sunny day. All of a sudden, I was approached by a huge, cartoonish and fat penguin with a rainbow-like stripe of feathers running down his back. Instantly I understood, here was my penguin buddy.

Like a doting parent or the proud owner of a cute-ass kitten, I proceeded to waddle with the penguin as he zoomed back and forth, snooping, playing and doing all sorts of adorable and delightful things. At one point he turned to me and said in his gruff little penguin voice, “Hungry!” My little buddy needed food.

I took him inside to the kitchen. My flightless friend hoisted himself into a chair at the table and looked at me with hopeful enthusiasm. I rummaged through the cupboards trying to figure out what penguins like to eat for lunch. Tuna fish sandwiches, of course, I thought. I quickly whipped up a pair and sat down with him. He looked at the food, stuck his beak in and chugged back a few bites. “Good”, he said. I was exceedingly pleased with myself.

Later, back in the yard watching the little dude prance and play from the comfort of a lawn chair, I noticed he started furrowing in the ground and gathering twigs. What could he be doing, I thought? It was then that I noticed it was suddenly winter, with snow all over the ground. Aww, I thought, the little guy’s cold, he’s building a nest.

So, I took him inside the house and we took a nice warm nap. I lay there in bed, very content to be snuggling with my big, fat penguin buddy. I squeezed him in a big bear hug and he said, “Squish!” The world was perfect.

At this point, I woke up, exhausted, slightly hung-over and late for work. What could possibly cause me to have such a fucked up bizarre and totally gay dream, I have no idea. I swear to God, I do not normally dream like that. Still, it was an awesome time. I was so happy to be with my penguin buddy. I gotta stop drinking.

Daveb has returned from a vacation in Vermont. He climbed a mountain and is now a man, reinvigorated with all the deadly ass kicking power of a shaved shih-tzu. Sitting, ensconced in his Cubicle of Doom, he bides his time, repairing brain cells destroyed from 4 straight days of non-stop marijuana abuse and plans his eventual and inevitable grab for total world domination or some other really impressive shit, whichever comes first.

In the normal course of life, daveb is at a point where he does not indulge in drugs, nor excessive amounts of alcohol except for when he makes those rare and infrequent trips to Vermont. He finds it enjoyable to lose a week to waking up, taking a bunch of bong hits and trying to figure out why evil alien parasites would bother posing as Regis Philben and Kelly Ripa (WTF? Where’s the motive?). It’s a good morning, you should try it.

On the other hand, it can be a bit disturbing that, upon returning to the city and back to a life of abstainment, the months pass by and daveb feels just as brain damaged. Yup, it’s done. All those years of non-stop hallucinogen-cannabis-alcohol (the Holy Fucking Trinity) abuse have paid off and given birth to a permanently addled space cadet, age 30.

However, daveb is an army of one! Such mental limitations do not keep him down. He straps on the penguins and moonboots and fucks shit up! There’s work to be done in this world. Puppies need kicking. Old people need fondling and licking. Babies need to be ground into taco meat. There’s no time to be brain damaged.

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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Fuck Saint Patrick’s day. If there ever was a holiday to be hauled back behind the shed and shot, this day is a definite contender. Today isn’t about Irish pride, it’s an excuse to get shitfaced, pretend your Irish or talk up the fact that 75 years ago your Norwegian grandmother may have possibly given a blow job to a drunk sailer from Dublin and thereby qualifying you to stand there like an asshole at the bar, drinking your green beer and pontificating on your Irishness. It’s pathetic. Irish pride is not what you think it is. The Irish don’t drink because they’re all alcoholics, they drink because historically, they been fucked in the ass by everyone and their mothers. They’ve been enlsaved, slaughtered, starved, taxed, invaded, raped, you name it. You’d kind of want a drink after all that. Irish pride is a quiet, muttering pride with shades of bitterness. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, we’re still alive and Laird willing, those bastards’ll let us live another year.” It’s that kind of mentality. Piss, vinegar and religious guilt. Add some grey wool clothing, a few potatoes and bad teeth and BAM wlecome to being Irish.

Now you might think, daveb, WTF? Hate the Irish much? Actually boys and girls, daveb was born and raised in an Irish family. A supremely disfunctional one (see: typical Irish family). He actually enjoys it too, just not the family part. He puts his natural ability to ramble on for hours about nothing to the little green man that lives under the rainbow of his hereditary gene pool. He’s a natural asshole and malcontent. Whether that’s what connects him to his Irish roots or is a direct result of them, who knows, it works for daveb.