THINGS NOT TO DO IF YOU DON'T HAVE A JOB OR YOUR OWN PLACE
or "Learn From My Brother's (Many) Fails

* DON'T take up smoking.  Or any other money-sucking habit, for that matter.  You don't want to be that douche always bumming cigarettes off people.  Or that poor junkie who's always running into "Sorry, this is my last one, dude."

*DON'T buy a dog.  The stupidity of paying some breeder/puppy mill money for a dog (especially when you can just walk to the post office and have a 75% chance of something following you home) aside, a pet will just eat up whatever you get from selling the metal out of junk you find around town (my brother's current "occupation"), and the rest will have to come from your family, who never wanted the stupid thing in the first place.

* DON'T propose to some girl.  Wait until you move out of your parents den or at least have a steady job first.

* DON'T endlessly borrow the car so that you can visit friends at work.  One, you're draining the tank at your family's expense.  Two, you're inflicting unnecessary wear-and-tear on the family car which is expensive to fix.  Three, you're interfering with your friends' finances by risking them getting fired.  Douche bag.

* DON'T throw candy over the dividing curtain at people who are using the computer.  Remember that you have a finite supply of Tootsie Pops, Halls lozenges and peppermints to throw, whereas the person you're stupidly trolling has The Internet, from which they can access EVERY ANNOYING SONG IN THE WORLD.  They might start out slow with Jigglypuff's Lullaby, but by the time they get to Nyancat, you'll be screaming like Chekov when Khan put the sand-worm larvae in his head.  And they're just getting warmed up. (insert maniacal laughter here)

* DON'T splurge on snacks and junk food when you make a big haul.  Put something back for leaner times, or save up to buy a house so you can move the fuck out.

* DON'T muscle in on another family member's turf to get extra money for yourself.  If you're not finding enough junk metal to support your dog, your cigarette habit, your girlfriend and your snack food habit, don't jump on the shared computer to compete with your brother's online money-making attempts, don't start competing with your nephew's aluminum can recycling venture (or worse, start stealing cans from him), and don't even fucking THINK about bumming money from your mother when she gets her tiny little mineral-rights check from the tiny little plot of land she inherited from an aunt of hers in another town.

* DON'T "conveniently forget" to do your chores.  Especially if you've only got one chore, it only happens once a week, and it isn't something you can make up the next day if you forget.  Like trash day.  (It's not even like we have a long driveway, or he has to take out more than six bags.  Hell, we even have a dolly he can use if his back's hurting or a bunch of heavy stuff is going out.)  It's even worse if the reason you didn't do it was because you came screeching in after a long night of driving around town with your fiancee and had just enough energy left to faceplant in the hide-a-bed just before the garbage man shows up.

If you do one or more of these things, do not be surprised at any act of retribution your family (or friends) decide to enact against you, including but not limited to hiding the car keys, circulating your picture to recycling centers under the caption DO NOT BUY ALUMINUM CANS FROM THIS THIEVING NECKBEARD SACK OF SHIT, suddenly charging you for having to do your chores for you, not bringing you along if the family wins tickets to Six Flags or demanding that you replace the things that you've borrowed, said was broken and then tore apart for the copper.

Is there something else I've forgotten that should be here?  Tell me in the comments!