4 New Year's Resolutions You Can't Possibly Screw Up This Year

2016 has been a fetid, soggy diaper bag of a year. A few neat things have happened, but on the whole, the past twelve months have been a non-stop avalanche of political turmoil, neo-Nazis, fake news and the tragic, sudden death of every celebrity you loved.

Goddammit, 2016.

But for those of us who weren't unjustly stolen from the world on trans-Atlantic flights, 2017 is here, and holy shit, do we need it to be a good year. Even though a racist Jack o' Lantern will be taking office in twenty days, everyone on my various social media pages is determined to grab 2017 by the balls and turn this shit around, goddammit. And there's no better way to do that than with some solid New Year's resolutions.

The Marvellous Mr. Marble

Those of you who obsessively follow my fledgling writing career (which should really be all of you) will probably remember that I got a short story accepted for publication a few weeks ago. Good news, everyone - you can finally stop checking your calendars and wringing your weary hands, because my story is officially published and available for your reading pleasure. 

How you're feeling right now.

The story is called "The Marvellous Mr. Marble", and I originally wrote it for a creative writing class assignment in my fourth year of university. At the time, I had just read an article about the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa - for those of you with an irrational fear of hyperlinks, a random workman spotted the painting at the Louvre, thought to himself 'hmmm, that looks like a nice painting' - or whatever the equivalent phrase is in French - slipped it into into his cloak and walked out with it, at which point he managed to successfully evade police for two full years. I wanted to fit this into a story somehow, so I ended up writing a 4,000 word comedy story about a middle-aged man who lies about stealing the Mona Lisa to impress his old classmates at a high school reunion.

How to Get Through Election Day 2016

Well, folks, after four solid years of campaigning, the day of the 2016 American Presidential Election has finally arrived.

Depicted here.

As we all wait to find out whether we'll be celebrating the election of America's first female president, or desperately stocking up on weapons and blast doors for the commencement of the first annual Purge, tensions are running a little high. If you're an eligible US voter, you should be out at the polls right now, collecting your "I voted" sticker and maybe not taking a selfie with your ballot. But if you're not a US voter, or if you've already cast your ballot, here a few suggestions to take your mind off the impending end of American democracy as we know it:

Two New Cracked Articles!

Earlier this week, I was scrolling through my Facebook feed like a good little mindless millennial, when I stumbled across an article that was a list of unsolved murders. Being the sort of person who likes reading about unsolved murders, I clicked on it, and immediately congratulated myself on already knowing all about the first murder on the list. In fact, the further I read, the more familiar the article seemed.

Then I scrolled to the top and realize I'd written the damn thing.

The haunting images of dead-eyed statues, however, were chosen by somebody else.

As it turns out, I submitted an article about creepy unsolved murders back in May, and it got combined with two other excellent articles on creepy unsolved murders, and turned into a two-part creepy murder extravaganza for your Halloween viewing pleasure. Only a handful of the entries are actually mine, but all of them should have you sleeping with the lights on and railing at the unfeeling God that could allow these atrocities to go unpunished. 

You can read Part One right here, and you can read Part Two right here. Or you could go up to the top of the page and find them under the "Cracked Articles" tab. I can't tell you how to live your life. 

Getting My First Short Story Published!

If you've kept a close eye on my website navigation bar, you might have noticed there's a new category called "Short Stories". 

Nothing gets past you, champ.

After two solid years of psyching myself up to let people read my fiction writing, and not just my endless snarky critiques of horror movies, I started submitting some old stories from a creative writing class to literary journals. Lo and behold, one of them just got accepted!

Over-Analyzing "The Purge": 4 Reasons Why the Purge is Even More Terrible Than You Think

At this point, we can all pretty much agree that 2016 has been one shit-laden clusterfuck of a year. And in honour of that shit-laden clusterfuck, I recently watched the only movie that really sums up the feel of current events: The Purge: Election Year. 

Like it or not, this is pretty much the most quintessentially American thing I've ever seen.

As I write this article, America is staring down the barrel of the first presidential candidate in history who thinks the Purge is a documentary and still can't quite wrap his head around the fact that other people have feelings. Americans everywhere are living in fear that they'll be called on to hunt the Most Dangerous Game come next March, and hey, they may have a point. But before you enroll your children in sniper training and start shopping around for the best deal on blast doors, let's take a moment to think about what the Purge would actually look like. For starters:

5 Things Men Do When They Are (Way, Way Too) Into You

There are two things I enjoy most in this world: key lime pie, and making fun of horrible advice I find on the internet. And since I'm currently rocking the physique of a butternut squash, the only joy I have left in this world is ripping apart lists of terrible life advice for insecure millennials.

"Someday, my great-great-great grandchildren will be proud to see that my whole squad was on fleek."

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a website called "Millennial Lifestyle", which, despite its name, knows nothing about healthy lifestyles or the seething resentment that all twenty-somethings feel at being called "millennials". Their list-based advice ranges from a toddler's understanding of weight loss ("have you tried eating vegetables?") to your bigoted grandfather's understanding of relationships ("have you tried not threatening his fragile masculinity with your academic and career successes?"). Another Edmonton-based writer masterfully took them down in the Huffington Post, and yet they're still churning out relationship advice that belongs in the back pages of a Farmer's Almanac from 1913. Recently, they tried to let us know what kinds of creepy, creepy things men do when they're into a woman - if you don't want to click through five pages of their clickbait nonsense, the main points will be quoted below.