However, as a reclusive buffoon who has given up smoking as well as hiding behind his mailbox to scare the bejesus out of his neighbors, I can speak authoritatively on eschewing habits which were once very dear to you.

My love affair with coffee, I say with a jittery tear in my eye, is as rich and aromatic as ever.

It’s not just the coffee itself. I can make that at home, though the coffee at my favorite coffee shop is much better than what my Mr. Coffee produces. No, I like being known by name to all the employees. I like being secretly in love with the tattooed girls who work there. I even like seeing hipsters arrive in packs of 80′s mopeds. Yes, I like coffee shop atmosphere.

My favorite coffee shop has three locations. Two are situated on either ends of my neighborhood, on North Highland Ave. My apartment is nestled nearly exactly between them, like a weird scrolly tattoo between the breasts of the most earnest hipster chick.

Extra points for misspellings, girls. Your beautiful, sweatheart!

I even like reading actual printed books and local newspapers. Sure, printed newspapers might be going the way of the cassette tape, but at least they don’t print nearly every article in numbered list format.

Which brings me to the bean of this roast: oh, how I hate the numbered list. I’m not sure why it bothers me so much to see content presented in that style, but it does. It might be because I’ve tried to write articles that way for pay before and failed miserably, but it also sort of jabs me in a place deep inside where the fires of Fahrenheit 451 still burn bright.

Or at least, they would… if I could read. I hire a massage therapist to read classic works of American Literature to me while working the knots out of my love handles, and, as you know, this blog is merely typed willy-nilly with my elbows and dictated in a sing-song voice.

One day I left my dictation software on while I took a call from my accountant, and inadvertently wrote this poem:

Oh god
wait, they are taking how much
no i reported that
horse balls
jesus

I think that says it all, really. Have a great weekend and I’ll jabber atcha on Monday!