It took a hell of a long time, but I’ve finally finished uploading the photos I took while in Hawaii to a set on my Flickr account—all 748 of them. I still have some tagging and naming to do, but feel free to check them out. A lot of them are overkill, but I think I did manage to get a few really cool shots here and there. Hawaii is an incredibly beautiful place. It’s hard not to go apeshit with a camera.

Today’s my fourth day on Oahu. Currently, I’m sitting in an outdoor bar on the beach. I’ve got a grass umbrella busy keeping me in the shade and the bartender’s a fat, cocky asshole with slicked back gray hair and a flower print shirt. The Piña Coladas are cold, though.

It’s totally fucking beautiful here in Hawaii. The weather is anywhere between the mid-80’s to upper 90’s but there’s a persistent warm wind from the ocean that keeps you from ever getting uncomfortable. Crazy, craggy mountains surround everything and the ocean just keeps going, far past the horizon. It’s some incredibly sweet shit.

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Tomorrow I leave New York City for a much needed vacation in Hawaii. First I’ll be flying to San Francisco and staying there overnight before heading out across the Pacific. I’ll be on one island or another for just about eight days before flying back to San Francisco for a bit and finally, returning to New York.

I intend to spend much of the time passed out on beach, wearing a grass skirt.

I’m packing my laptop and camera with me, so I’ll likely do some beach-blogging and upload a retarded amount of photos fairly regularly while I’m there.

I’ve been in Vermont for the past four days, vacationing. This entails a lot of efforts made at keeping my friend’s backyard from up and floating into space and shit like that. I accomplish this feat by sitting in a lawn chair, high off my gizzard, appreciating the birds and the green shit that sprouts out of the ground. There’s no bass-thumping cars, fire trucks, buses or crazy loud drunk people. Brooklyn is never able to be this quiet.

I’m drinking Pabst out of a can and my friend’s hound is howling at the neighbor’s car. I’m sitting in a white plastic chair with my laptop and the mosquitoes have not yet found me. There’s a couch made out of grass to my right. I’d sit in it, but there’s these funky white spiders that I’d rather not have crawling on me.

Tomorrow morning, I have to fly back to New York City.

Photos that I’ve taken so far can be seen here.

I’ve said it many times before—I hate flying. It fucking terrifies me and not in a distant, abstract way. Currently, I am aloft at 21,711 feet, somewhere over New York, partially through the initial ascent of a fourty-eight minute flight to Burlington, Vermont. Pure, gut-churning terror. No, I don’t want a bag of airline peanuts, thanks.

I find it ironic that in my life, whenever I take a vacation, usually in a state of just past bug-crazy, fully sick of New York City and all the human vermin that turn it’s wheels (myself included), that in order for to get away, to relax and do the things stupid people do when frolicking with the natives, it requires my ass to be hovering many thousands of feet in the air, traveling at 540 miles per hour as a preamble or perhaps as a penance for being such a horrid little man. Say five Hail Marys and then you can go play—something like that..

At heights and speeds such as these, I question the point of it. Five days ass-out, drunk and stoned out of my gizzard, surrounded by plants and barbecued meats for the price of slightly less than one hour of stomach-twisting terror at high altitudes, spiced with the chance of ending my life screaming incoherantly before being enveloped in a giant flaming ball of death. It kind of makes me want to stay home on the couch, safely fused with my PlayStation.

But no. Here I am, trying not to bleat like a baby goat getting castrated as the turbulence kicks the plane about. What the fuck is wrong with me? Why didn’t I take the train? Smart people who live long lives take trains. Personally, I prefer to live a long time and the closest I’d like to get to death by plunging fireball is watching it happen on television, laughing at the misfortunes of others.

I have spent the last week visiting all over Northern California. I went to Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Napa, San Francisco, Monterey and a mess of other places in-between.

I toured such places as The Mystery Spot, just outside of Santa Cruz where supposedly, the laws of gravity are slightly twisted. There was all sorts of nausea-inducing vertigo, complete with yourself and other’s bodies leaning at an angle. You can see some photos I took on my Flickr account. Sorry, but there’s not too many.

I visited Alcatraz, the ex prison-island in the San Francisco bay and browsed empty inmate cells and spent a few moments contemplating extreme isolation while standing in “The Hole”- the tank they throw the misbehaving inmates into when they’re bad. No light, no sounds, nothing but you and darkness. I saw Al Capone’s supposed prison cell and saw the evidence remaining of a major hostage taking, prison escape attempt, resulting in a bunch of people killed. There were scars in the floor from hand-grenades, tossing into the cell-block by F.B.I. agents. It was a pretty fucking cool tour. Here’s some images of it. Here’s a link to some of the history of the island prison.

On Cannery Row, I went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I’d have to say that it’s the single best aquarium that I’ve ever been to. I molested a sea cucumber and ogled scores of penguins, sea otters, sharks, tuna and jellyfish. That place is one seriously major aquarium. I was really impressed. More photos here.

I even spent the night in a supposedly haunted house. A Victorian B&B in San Francisco, according to it’s manager was the residence of a little girl and at least one adult male, both deceased. the girl’s screams and weeping could be heard on the third floors as well as many unusual noises and apparitions. Over the years, testimony from guests, having bizarre experiences in the bedrooms had cemented the house as being haunted by those who worked there. The house isn’t advertised as such, so I’ll refrain from naming it. I spent the night there, alone except for one guest on the floor above me, having the entire second floor to myself. While I didn’t spy the undead, creeping through the the halls, I did hear some questionable noises and was sufficiently scared so that I didn’t sleep a single minute the entire time I was there. It was damn freaky shit and I was glad to leave. I took multiple photos of all twenty-two rooms with the idea that I might catch something odd. No such luck, but you can still see them here. Let me know if you see the face of Satan or anything I might have missed.

This site’s not going anywhere. I think I’m just going to take a vacation for a bit. I’m working slowly on a redesign. Best thing to do is subscribe to the RSS feed (you’ll also find a link at the bottom of the right-hand sidebar on this page), that way you’ll be alerted when things start picking up again. Anyways, like I said… short vacation.

Thanks,
daveb

I leave tonight to mingle amongst the natives in the forest. I’m sucking it up, hopping a plane and flying to Vermont to spend the weekend in a tent, likely in an intoxicated stupor with dirty, fiddle playing, hippy longhairs. Daveb keeps it real.

I’m not too psyched to be flying, but since my free time is short, it’s the difference between 11 hours and 48 minutes. Mind you, these are 48 slow, excruciating minutes of sheer intestinal bunching terror, but it gets me there fast. It would be nice if I could do this without the massive hangover I’ve been nursing all day, but I’ll have to make do and hope I don’t blow chunks all over a stewardess.

I haven’t slept in a tent in years. I assume that Vermont, being how it is this time of year, will require me to wear disturbing amounts of bug spray in order to remain sane. Going mosquito crazy is not pretty. I once watched a bunk mate at the stupid-ass Catholic sumer camp my parents used to dump me at go shit fucking nuts, screaming, crying and clawing at himself one night. It was mosquitoes. Being thirty, I’d really rather not end up like he did amongst my hippy peers.

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.