Dear employer,

I’m writing to inform you that I will be gravely ill from Tuesday to Friday this week. While I can’t say what my exact medical condition will be is, I can assure you that whatever I think up it is, it will have nothing whatsoever to do with the release of Grand Theft Auto V on Tuesday.

I don’t even know what Grand Theft Auto V is, let alone where to pick up my a preorder for the game. I certainly haven’t seen the endless commercials and billboards tantalizing and torturing me all month with reminders of this giant open world playground full of innocent pedestrians to run over, hookers to bang and then stab to death with a machete, and a patented Weapon Wheel that allows instant swapping between an assault rifle with armor piercing bullets and a rocket launcher that I can use to blow up a police car and myself when the fuzz has me surrounded with no way out.

Hypothetically speaking, of course.

So why am I calling in sick? Well, I’ve played and beat every version of Grand Theft Auto since the very first one. I’ve also played hooky for every release. For Grand Theft Auto IV, I called in sick to my film studio job. For GTA: San Andreas, I played hooky from my newspaper reporter job. For GTA 2, III and Vice City, I skipped all my college classes for a week each time. For the very first game, I’m pretty sure I bought my brother a hooker to keep him occupied so I could get first dibs on the Playstation. C’mon. Do I really need a reason?

Do I have the flu? Probably. Bronchitis? Seems a bit specific, but sure, why not? Do I have The Rickets? Maybe. Let me look it up online first. Yes, my bones are a little fragile this week. It’s best that I stay indoors, hooked up to a gaming machine. What about Crohn’s Disease? Nope, Wikipedia says it’s permanent. I probably just have a touch of the flu. I likely got it from my kids, who do not exist yet.

If I forgot to make my Facebook and Instagram profiles private, then please ignore the endless posts about me playing the game and bragging about how you, my employer, are “a gullible, slow-witted goon” who “will believe anything I tell them.” My social media accounts were all hacked recently by The Chinese. Which Chinese? I don’t know, but I strongly believe it was all of them.

I’m not sure why they’d have any interest in breaking into the online profiles of some random person who works at a t-shirt company, but it’s a damn shame. What’s worse is they did it while I was gravely ill with whatever ailment I decided upon in previous paragraphs! The bastards.

Also, if you happen to order pizza from Kony Pizzeria regularly, and you see me there taking a pizza to go, please note that you’ve been very tired lately and your eyes may be playing tricks on you. Especially if you confronted me this person and I they sprayed you in the eyeballs with mace before running out the door, screaming like a little girl whose parents were trying to take her off the pony they rented for her birthday party.

Also, I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this, but I have a twin brother. An EVIL twin brother. It’s quite convenient inconvenient.

I’m sending you this e-mail from the line outside Gamestop, which has now wrapped around the block my warm bed, where I hope to cling dearly to life for a few more precious hours before passing out from exhaustion. I may need some flex time over the next few months, and perhaps some telecommuting. That’s how dedicated I am to this game job. Please don’t call to see how I’m doing, as I’ll be stoned out of my mind resting peacefully and murdering police officers with grenades healing both physically and spiritually.

If you’re wondering why I sent this e-mail at 7pm instead of waiting until the morning, it speaks to how gravely ill I am. It certainly isn’t because I like to sleep in on my days off, or because I stayed up until 4am getting virtual lap dances from video game strippers whose poorly rendered boobs looked weird and patchy like a quilt.

I hope to never be back in the office ever again, because working for a living sucks soon. If you have an emergency wherein you run out of sarcastic employees who roll their eyes at everyone and act generally anti-social and douchey all day, then please contact my mother assistant and we’ll see about getting me back into work a few hours per day on a “time and a half” compensation program.

Thanks for leaving me alone,
Hugs and kisses,
Paul Ryan