This is it. The moment you’ve all been not waiting for. Please enjoy the very last Hobbies Include by the great Brian Alan Ellis.
HOBBIES INCLUDE …
—knowing that the best part of waking up would be to not wake up.
—wishing my cat had the uncanny ability to roundhouse kick me in the face à la Chuck Norris.
—high-fiving the convenience store clerk who low-key judges/insults me whenever I simultaneously purchase cigarettes and vape juice because yes I find difficulty in quitting questionable habits and because yes I am pretty much garbage.
—self-identifying as someone who’d wear a shitty, homemade “Only I’m Allowed to Make Me Hate Myself” t-shirt.
—finding peoples’ bank receipts inside books I’ve checked out from the library and then lightly stalking them online because the book is really good and I kind of want their opinion about it.
—suddenly realizing that the only interest my step dad and I ever shared was a mutual appreciation for the comedic stylings of Jeff Foxworthy.
—getting high off bleach fumes in a dark, warm, poorly ventilated room with my cat while wildly depressed.
—officially starting each day by pulling up that Marilyn Manson “This is the New Shit” SKA mashup on YouTube.
—self-identifying as the member of Marilyn Manson who insists on being called Honey Boo Boo Berkowitz.
—an endless search for that feeling I’d get as a child whenever my NBA Jam player would shatter the backboard.
—savoring that bratty exhilaration in knowing my favorite aspects of something are also the most negatively criticized by others.
—enabling my crippling intimacy issues one fried bologna sandwich at a time.
—standing outside of a library while wearing a tie and holding a clipboard, asking patrons, in a very professional tone, whether they’d rather fuck inside a Dollar Tree, a Dollar General, or a Family Dollar.
—composing elaborate e-mails that are basically apologies to people for my being a shitty dumpster fire of a human being.
—weeping into limited edition ALF hand puppet purchased from Burger King in 1988.
—attending costume parties dressed as Person Visibly Uncomfortable Being Around Others
—launching a Kickstarter campaign to help fund a movie called Boohoobusters, about a ragtag team of pro ass-kissers who comment on whiny Facebook meltdown posts with vapid, pseudo-motivational clichés.
—refusing to be publicly shamed by those monsters who find it odd that I consistently walk around covered in my cat’s hair.
—patiently waiting for my depressive “ALF” phase to gradually morph into an indifferent “Teen Wolf” phase.
—any attempt at being accepted/validated by drug dealers.
—wanting to remove toxic people from my life but then always realizing that I am the most toxic person I know.
—marking myself as “safe” on Facebook after having only gone to the post office.
—immediately telling people I’ve just met that I like both thrash-metal Death and proto-punk Death, and that I’m also into, like, Faces of Death and Death of a Salesman and actual death, and then asking, “We fuckin’ gonna party, or what!?”
—fantasizing about forming a super-group comprised of everyone who has ever fucked you over and we’re really popular and we only book gigs on your birthday.
—having wet dreams where I go around asking people why they hate me.
—browsing the Walmart frozen desserts section with both confusion and gravitas, like it’s a fine art exhibit.
—watching a YouTube video that shows me how to properly pronounce the word “gravitas,” because yes I am garbage.
—crushing for about 24 hours before remembering that love can’t fix whatever is wrong with me and that I’ll probably one day get blackout drunk and then use the inside of said crush’s vehicle as a urinal.
—remembering that the world is in such a state of terror that the only way to cope is to drink and do drugs on a stranger’s back patio while listening to The Lost Boys: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack at 6 am.
—shouting, “Whoops, gotta go, found my tribe!” before jumping into a pile of burning garbage, never to be heard from again.
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