About three weeks back now, it’s hard for me to tell actually, I went on vacation.  It had been a long time since I got a good break and I needed the release.  Like most good patriotic Americans, I spent the time staying as drunk as possible in new locations.  It was a perfect vacation.

Or was it?  I couldn’t tell you honestly.  Someone would have to interview the people who witnessed my debauchery and report back to me and tell me if it was good fun.  I had some fun, that much I know, but so many memories blur together in a haze of beer and vodka lemonades I really couldn’t tell you all the details without a time machine.  Judging from a few haunting memories that pop into my consciousness, I might not want to know what all I did.  Well, there is no “might.”  I don’t want to know.  The last clear memories I have of my vacation involved being told that a sheriff was on his way for me, followed by a blur of dangerous rainstorm driving which ended with me in a moldy motel room deep in the hood of North Austin at two AM.  When I woke the following morning, the room smelled of mildew, the air conditioner whined up and down like a dying prop engine and Barney blared on the television.  I had passed out in all my clothes and used a hard shell motorcycle backpack for a protective barrier between my exposed face and whatever bacteria lurked in the green old pillows.  My head pounded and my stomach burned from some forgotten ingestion.  A quick scan of my phone made me ill…

The party began on the highest of notes, with honor and grace.  It ended with me puking in a jade green toilet located in room 140 at the Bangladesh Motor Court off 290 East.  It was over.  Any more vacation would kill me.  Time to get to work again, and the first order of business was to retire to my new rear patio and listen to the rain for two days.

Sometime during the vacation though, again in the haze, I moved the ADZ offices from the swank Three Points Complex in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado to a nondescript home in South Austin, Texas.  Abilene DorkZine has a long history of moving in the night.  The type of journalism we prefer forces us to move frequently, but I think we’ll be in Austin for a good while.  It’s really the best place for us.  Austin has a long history of fantastic weirdos and the list just got a little longer.  It feels immediately like home.  Austin understood my need to lay low for two days while I tried to piece together three weeks of alcoholic destruction.

What’s that tired old line about destruction and creation?  Shit, I can’t remember.  Doesn’t matter.  Abilene DorkZine is starting over in Austin.  So am I.  I just had to put the cap on the old place.

I’ll be posting again soon.  There is a great deal of moving work to do so posts will be sporadic for a while.  Once settled in the new Austin digs, expect good things.  Austin has a way of inspiring.  Personally I feel alive here, which is good, because after my vacation some memories were making me want to die.  But nuff that noise…

Join us in Austin.  We’re keeping it weird.

Fred Roberts, ADZ Editor and Drunken Dumbass