COPYRIGHT 2016 TALKING BOOKSITE DESIGN BY THE YONDERDAY FAMILY

Hobbies Include

Below, you’ll find a list Brian Alan Ellis’s Amazing Hobbies:

—realizing that having hobbies/passions has pretty much ruined my life, so…

—fantasizing about someone playing a sick guitar solo on top of my bedazzled, tricked-out coffin while it’s being lowered into the ground.

—reminiscing about the dog collars I stole from PetSmart to wear during my high school punk/Rancid phase.

—coming to grips with the fact that all my over-30 friends are starting to look and act really weird.

—asking my cat whether she wants the light on or off as I’m exiting whichever room she’s in.

—fighting the constant urge to scream “Wuzzzzzzzuuup!?” a la Martin Lawrence in some random person’s face.

—petitioning MTV to bring back that useless ’80s trivia show Remote Control, because only then will my limited potential be fully realized.

—tossing all my bright ideas into a burning pile of previous bright ideas.

—making all my important life decisions while staring dead-eyed into the gas station hot bar.

—wishing I’d just died in the ’90s when I was young and stupid and obsessed with bad music.

—making sure my cat doesn’t scratch up the couch while I listlessly listen to podcasts and eat fried bologna and cheese sandwiches.

—self-identifying as that one Collective Soul music video where the guy may or may not jump from the roof of a really high building.

—logging on to social media over and over again and expecting different results.

–checking my pulse when not enough people have liked my Facebook posts.

—intensely looking through the Starbucks rack of 3 or 4 CDs of jazz standards like someone looking for the collectible first-pressing of some rare LP.

—launching a Kickstarter campaign to help fund a line of nihilistic-themed teddy bears for children I hope to one day manufacture, called UnBEARables™.

—having the unreasonable suspicion that people who aren’t as outwardly defeatist as I am are just fake as fuck.

—perfecting my lifelong performance art piece where I pretend to like and respect the person I’m interacting with at any given moment, especially at work.

—fantasizing about one day making hemp-style necklaces out of cat shedding to maybe wear/sell via a vending tent at Bonnaroo.

—randomly posting pictures of ALF on the Internet while depressed.

—trying real hard to convince myself that LinkedIn is actually an elaborate joke orchestrated by ironic hipsters.

—just wanting to be held… forcibly underwater until my lungs fill and I drown.

—trying to get turnt into a better person but failing, obviously.

—hoping that I’m wrong about everything.

—updating my resume while also wondering how much weight the living room ceiling fan can hold.

—wishing I’d named my cat something like “Punk House” or “Lil Freak” or “The Whole F’n Show.”

—being productive in very short bursts and then rewarding myself by staring blankly into nothingness for a long, long time.

—falling asleep at night by counting all the panic attacks I had throughout the day.

—fantasizing about having strangers cheer me on as they hold my legs like I’m doing a keg stand while browsing the $5 Walmart DVD bins.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brian Alan Ellis edits the literary journal Tables Without Chairs, and is the author of three novellas, two short-story collections, a forthcoming novel, and a book of humorous non-fiction. His writing has appeared at Juked, Monkeybicycle, Hobart, DOGZPLOT, Connotation Press, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Hypertext, Literary Orphans, jmww, The Collapsar, Heavy Feather Review, Electric Literature, People Holding, and Atticus Review, among other places. He lives in South Carolina, and is currently coaxing his psychic terror to grow a beard and then stand triumphantly atop a snowy Russian mountain à la the pivotal training montage from Rocky IV.

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