Four New Year's Resolutions You Might Actually Keep in 2016

Well, it's that time of year again, and this time we're staring down the barrel of the year 2016. To all of you future space-people reading this thousands of years from now, yes, we do have hoverboards in 2015 and they are exceptionally stupid.

Also, they don't even hover.

The start of the New Year is traditionally the time of year when everyone is expected to make meaningless, empty promises to transform themselves into a goddamn ubermensch in the coming calendar year. We're all fat, procrastinating assholes on December 31st, and we'll all be fat, procrastinating assholes by January 17th, but in those intervening days, it's socially acceptable to undergo the sort of abrupt personality change that would ordinarily qualify you for a psychiatric assessment. Everyone knows that you're going to sweat through exactly three sessions with Ricardo the personal trainer before you're too busy eating Doritos to return his calls, but you're still expected to go through the charade of declaring that this will be the year you stop having upper arms the shape and consistency of a swiss roll.

And it's time to cut that shit out.

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5 Last Minute Gifts for Everyone You'd Rather Not Shop For

Well, you fucked up again.

You were supposed to have all your Christmas shopping done by now, because it's halfway through goddamn December, and depending on which major holiday you subscribe to, you may have already missed the boat on gift-giving. And even if you do manage to get your butt to the nearest store in time for the holidays, you're quickly going to run into a major problem: you have no idea what to buy. If you were the sort of person who knew what your friends and family liked, you'd have had your shopping done months ago.

Pictured: not you, because your life is spiralling out of control.

But all hope is not lost. Last year, I gave you a whole list of great gift suggestions, but if you're still stumped, consider surprising your family and friends with one of these fine options:

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23 Things You're Too Old for Now That You're 23

Recently, an old VICE article popped up on my Facebook newsfeed, loudly proclaiming all the things that the author believes people are far too old for once they blow out the candles on their 25th birthday. If you're too lazy to read the article, or if you're adverse to VICE's "how hard can we appeal to that sweet, sweet, 20-something-year-old-college-kid demographic" brand of journalism, the article basically says that once you've hit that quarter-century mark, you're too old for fun, friends, fast food, and any recreational activity that isn't enjoying a carefully portioned bowl of Bran Buds while watching a reasonable political debate.

And the comments went crazy.

This is life after 25, apparently. Deal with it.

Outraged people over the age of 25 took to the comments section with their torches and pitchforks out, loudly proclaiming that the author was a humourless old fart, and that they themselves were still armpit-deep in cocaine and lengthy text messages, thank you very much. So while the original author of the VICE article plans to live out the rest of his 20s parked on a rocking chair with shotgun in hand, waiting for children to venture onto his lawn, I've decided to write my own list of things that my peers and I are far too old for, now that we're 23.

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My Third Cracked Article

As most of my faithful blog followers already know, I write for Cracked.com.

These guys.

If you've stumbled randomly upon my blog while traversing the abyss of the internet, and my finicky website is currently functioning as intended, you can find my previous two articles somewhere near the top of this page, under "Cracked articles".

My third article will have something to do with touching reunions that went horribly awry. I can't actually tell you what it will be called or when it will be posted until the day it's actually strung up for the world to gaze upon, because I have only slightly more control over that than the janitor who cleans the Cracked offices at night, but you can rest assured that I'll let you know when it's available.

Or you could just keep refreshing the Cracked homepage now. Your choice. 

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How to Write the Perfect Cover Letter

I suck at cover letters.

There are several things in life that I am terrible at, and "writing cover letters" is up there, nestled snugly in between "pole dancing" and "seductive horse whispering". On this blog, I write like the jaded, sassy roommate you had in college who smoked clove cigarettes and spent a whole lot of time reading underground blogs about the 'man'. The moment I'm asked to produce a cover letter, however, I turn into a sad, garbled robot, capable only of spitting out mangled chunks of text that list my former jobs and generously overuse the term "excellent time management". The fact that I've ever been hired without holding an employer at gunpoint is as baffling as it is miraculous.

"Yes, you may contact my previous employer."

Unfortunately for me and all potential employers in my area, the time has come for me to find my first real, adult job while I save up money for graduate school, and I've been forced to hone my sad cover letter skills in a hurry. I've learned a lot from the job hunting process, and I'd like to use my newfound cover letter expertise to help my lovely blog readers. So if you're struggling to find a job and you want to upgrade to a sure-fire cover letter, pay careful attention to:

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10 Words You Need to Add to Your Vocabulary

Tens of thousands of years ago, when mankind first decided to take this 'walking on two legs' thing out for a spin, we quickly realized that we needed to find a more effective way to communicate than the poop-flinging and hair-pulling tactics we'd been employing up until that point. So we created language. And although the world's oldest language still sounds like the anguished cries of people trapped in the godforsaken desert wasteland they call their home, in most parts of the world, language is constantly changing. And no language likes to change more than English.

English is the poorly-tended fondue of human languages. Sure, at some point it was pure and had its own distinct flavor, but then all sorts of different people came along and dropped chunks of things in it, and goddamn Gerald tripped over the cord and unplugged it and it congealed a little, and now no one really knows what the hell it tastes like. The influx of new words like 'blog' and 'jeggings' and 'guyliner' has been accompanied by the gradual loss of other equally great words, and it's time that we started to bring some of those words back.

Let's start with these ten.

1. Lugubrious 

[loo-goo-bree-us]

adj. excessively mournful or dismal

Wow, Google images. That's, uh... that's technically accurate, but a little dark.

Over the past few years, the entire range of human sadness has come to be incorporated by the phrase "this sucks". Whether your friend has just spilled their coffee, or had their entire family tragically killed in a five-car pileup involving a logging truck and a cattle car, "that sucks" is a go-to response. But no more. From now on, when true misery rears its ugly head, English speakers everywhere should fall to their knees and stare up into the light of the unforgiving sky, screaming 'curse this lugubrious turn of events!' as their voice rings through the empty, Godless heavens.

Also, lugubrious is super fun to say, and instantly lightens the mood. Win-win.

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Over-Analyzing "Jurassic World": Next Time, Go to Disneyland

I recently went to see a newly-released Jurassic Park movie, because apparently we've all gone back in time to the year 1996 without realizing it.

This movie. I saw this movie.

If you've been on the Internet or spoken to other human beings lately, you've probably heard that the newest installment of the Jurassic-But-Actually-Mostly-Cretaceous Park franchise earned decidedly mixed reviews. Critics praised the stunning CGI and special effects, while panning the movie's feeble attempts at minor things like 'having a storyline' and 'being scientifically accurate' and 'being even slightly plausible'. It's the kind of summer blockbuster movie that's a lot of fun if you shut your brain off and don't think too hard about it.

Thinking too hard about things is what I do best.

So buckle up, and take a look at these four reasons why, story-wise, Jurassic World is a movie that deserves to go extinct. 

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Bachelor of Memories: My Degree in Photographs (Part Two)

If you're the sort of person who feverishly checks my blog each week, hoping desperately for a new update, you probably saw last week's post filled with a selection of my academic baby pictures. To stall for time until I have to come up with a fresh idea for post material, please enjoy Part Two of that collection, which brings me from the whimpering neophyte of Fall 2013 to the deluded, semi-functional adult I am today.

Fourth Year

After my whirlwind year as a resident of a cinderblock human zoo in Eastern Canada, I was accepted to the Honours Psychology program at the University of Alberta, and I decided to come back home. Despite having gone to school at the U of A with a dozen of my closest friends just two years before, I knew no one when I returned, and so I promptly went out and joined every club I had a remote interest in. By which I mean I joined two clubs. And hey, it worked out pretty well.

This was the year that we decided one dog was simply not enough, and promptly adopted this 11 lb, 8-week old puppy. Today, this same puppy weighs 110 lbs and can comfortably rest her head on the kitchen table.

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Bachelor of Memories: My Degree in Photographs (Part One)

If you've been following my blog lately, or just hiding out in the bushes outside my house, you know that I recently graduated from university with a BA Honors in Psychology. I'll be moving to New York City in August to start my Master's in Clinical Psychology at Columbia University, but until then, I've got a lot of time on my hands to wax poetic about my undergraduate days. Since I'm busy lately and writing words is difficult, I'll be spending the next two weeks going over my favourite photographs from my time as an undergrad student and stalling for time until I can think of a better topic to blog about.

So until then, enjoy:

First Year

Unfortunately, there isn't a whole lot of photographic evidence of my first year of university. None of my friends owned a decent camera, and in early 2010, Instagram was still just an idea in somebody's notebook. The average cellphone took monstrous, grainy security camera photos with eight and a half pixels each, and you had to eviscerate your phone with a paperclip to dig out the memory card if you wanted to upload any of them. Technological dark age aside, we just didn't think to take pictures. My friends and I tended to hang out in the same bar every day, like a bad television sitcom, and nobody thought to photograph the place. With that said, my first year wasn't a complete photographic black hole. I did manage to emerge with these:

My eighteenth birthday party. Since no one in the background is blacked out or vomiting, I'm going to go ahead and assume that this was taken early in the evening. 

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The Ten Things I Learned in University

Well, folks, it's all over.

After five years of classes, homework, papers, exams, all-nighters and ill-advised experimentation with alcohol and eyeliner, I finally earned the right combination of credits to finish my degree. In just over a week, I will walk across the stage at the Jubilee Auditorium and collect my Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Psychology from the University of Alberta.

This place.

Now, I'm not one to use the "everything I learned in the classroom was forgettable and meaningless; I learned the real lessons outside of school" cliche. In a couple of years, I'm going to be diagnosing and treating patients based on the information I learned in class, so the world had better hope that I remember that shit. But the fact is, I did learn a lot of great things outside the classroom, and a list of the top ten things I learned inside the classroom wouldn't be terribly interesting to anyone but undergraduate psych students.

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Over-Analyzing "The Lazarus Effect": Why This Movie Deserves to Die, and Stay Dead

I recently saw "The Lazarus Effect".

This thing.

Like the two other atrocious horror movies I've reviewed for this blog, I had high hopes for The Lazarus Effect. The plot - if I may use the term so generously - is the sort of thing you'd come up after reading Stephen King novels during an LSD nightmare. Frank and his remarkably understanding fiancee, Zoe, are scientists trying to come up with a way to help coma patients. What they come up with instead is the Lazarus serum, which does exactly what its name implies - it skips the whole "coma" thing and brings the freaking dead back to life. The team are just celebrating their first success when disaster strikes - their lab is shut down, and a member of their team is accidentally killed in a terrible accident. Desperate, they use the Lazarus serum on her, only to realize that they all should have watched Pet Semetary before deciding to mess around with dead things.

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My Second Cracked Article!

As some of you may already know, I started writing for Cracked.com this year. My first article, about five of history's most horrifying villains, came out in January.

Handy Hint: Do not hire this man to babysit your children.

Not content with one article, I quickly penned a second, and the Cracked editors must have been hitting the booze hard that week, because they accepted it! So enjoy "6 Bizarre Medical Conditions That Shouldn't Be Possible".

Handy Hint: Do not take this man's advice about vitamin supplements.

So read it, enjoy, and then go back to eagerly awaiting my next article!

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Danielle Steel Takes the Greatest Author Photos of All Time

Let's talk about Danielle Steel.

This lady, right here.

For those of you who aren't rich, 50-something women, Danielle Steel is the bestselling author of approximately four thousand books about wealthy families blackmailing each other and going to jail over money. Everything she has ever written has turned into a bestseller, her books have been translated into virtually every remaining language on Earth, and she spends so much time perched on talk show couches that she has Oprah Winfrey on speed dial. She's the bestselling author currently breathing air, the fourth bestselling author in human history, and her real-life biography sounds more like a work of fiction than anything she's ever written. Fans praise her for her style, her stories, and her ability to put out new novels at a pace that suggests she's actually a team of enslaved writers living underneath Danielle Steel's kitchen floor. 

But what we should really be praising her for are her author photos. 

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Announcing the Biggest News of My Young Life

As some of you may know, I spent the months of October, November and December this year filling out graduate school applications.

This was more or less my face the entire time. 

If you've never had to apply to graduate school, know that the process is as invasive as a tax audit, and roughly as time-consuming as writing the next Great American Novel. Depending on the school, you will be asked to provide your basic contact information, records from every school you've ever attended, an itemized list of every course you've ever taken and its subject matter, an academic CV, reference letters from a half-dozen of your favourite professors, a two-page essay that summarizes your life story and your purpose for living, a formal statement about your research interests, copies of past publications, writing samples, several glamour headshots, your dog's birth certificate, a copy of your most recent daily horoscope and a signed affidavit from a witch doctor declaring that you are almost definitely not haunted. 

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Another Cracked Article on the Way!

Most of you may claim to read this blog for my scathing movie reviews, nitpicking analysis of pop culture, or anecdotes about my bumbling, incompetent life, but I know that you're all really here for up-to-the-minute updates about my fledging writing career.

You, every time you check this website.

Well, hold on, mostly-fictional fans, because I've got some good news to announce!

You, right now.

I've had a second article accepted by Cracked.com, the gigantic humour website that you've probably got open in another tab right now because you're procrastinating on a paper. 

It'll be another two or three months before the article is actually posted to the website, but you should probably start frantically refreshing the page now, just in case. 

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Why "The Breakfast Club" is a Terrible Source of Love Advice

Okay, I have to begin this post with an important note: I fucking love The Breakfast Club. I watched it for the first time when I was in the eighth grade, and nine years later, it's still my favourite movie of all time. There aren't very many people I've liked for nine years, let alone movies.

But holy shit, does this movie ever have a fucked-up view of how love works.

No, I know for a fact that you don't.

The movie tells the story of what happens when five teenagers from five different cartoonishly 80's high school cliques end up trapped in the library together for Saturday detention. The five of them are tasked with writing an essay that explains just who they think they are - an assignment that sounds more like something a street gang would give to initiates than a high school principal would give to five clearly disturbed teenagers - and the kids spend the day doing absolutely everything but writing their essays. Despite the movie's assertions that classifying people by cheap labels is wrong, no one but me and the movie's cast actually remembers the kids' names - they're just called the Princess, the Athlete, the Brain, the Basket Case, and the Criminal, labels that make me resent my own high school for not having more creative social cliques.

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Over-Analyzing "As Above, So Below": How Not to Conduct Archeological Research

I love bad horror movies.

As I previously mentioned on this blog, I don't ask a lot of my horror movies. If I can walk out of a theatre with half a clue about what I just saw and why everybody is dead, I'm more or less satisfied. Demons with only a tenuous grounding in any kind of backstory? Eh, sure. Ghosts that haunt specific locations miraculously travelling halfway around the world? Yeah, why not? Supernatural beings who spend inordinate amounts of time racking up the family's utility bill before causing any kind of real harm? Fuck it, fine. But what I can't tolerate are horror movies that amount to little more than a long chain of plot holes, jump scares and screaming.

I'm looking at you, Oculus.

So I had high hopes for As Above, So Below. Unlike the last, say, 487 found footage horror movies I've seen, this one wasn't about a nebulously evil supernatural presence terrorizing a family. No, this one was about a team of naive anthropologists/sketchy French treasure hunters discovering a horrifying secret in the catacombs beneath Paris. It had everything it needed to be great - a unique setting, a fuckload of human remains, and a legitimate reason for the entire movie to be filmed in the dark. There was no way they could fuck this up.

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Three Romantic Gestures from the Movies That Will Tell Your Lover You're a Sociopath

Before I get started, let's get something straight: taking any kind of romantic advice from me is not a good idea. Asking me for help with your love life is like screaming financial questions at the dead salmon in your refrigerator. Everyone around you can see that you're making a huge mistake, and any good that comes from it is probably all in your head.

Me, pursuing a mate in the wild.

With that said, I'm still a better source of advice than the average romantic comedy. Before you try to replicate something you see on the big screen, be aware that the following shows should only be imitated by sociopaths.

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Over-Analyzing "The Imitation Game": Why You Still Know Nothing About Alan Turing

Alan Turing invented everything.

If you can see this article, you owe your entire lifestyle to this man.

Alan Turing was a computer scientist, decades before we even knew what computer scientists were. It was his work in the mid-20th century that gave rise to the laptop I'm writing this on, the iPhone you're reading this on, and all the other pretty, beeping toys we rely on to get through the day in 2015. It's hard to even picture a world without Alan Turing's influence. There'd be no computers. No software. No artificial intelligence. No microchips in our cars, no GPS devices, no automated robots and no smart devices that keep us from maiming ourselves on a daily basis. This man created the modern world, and for decades, he was all but forgotten. 

Until now.

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My First Cracked Article! (I'm a Real Writer Now!)

A few weeks ago, I made a pretty exciting announcement on this blog - I had just had an article accepted by the massive online humor giant Cracked.com. Weeks later, after the editors have had time to polish it and come to terms with their decision to accept it, it's finally live on the site!

All you have to do is CLICK HERE to check it out. If you're curious, the topic is "5 Historical Figures More Terrifying Than Any Horror Villain".

What did this guy do? You're going to have the read the article to find out.

Thanks to everyone for their messages of congratulations! If you have any questions about writing for Cracked, or what the whole process looks like from my side, you could probably just find out by going to their website. Or you could ask me about it in the comments! Happy reading!

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10 Things I'd Rather Be Doing Than Studying for Midterms

Despite having grace and wit well beyond my years, I am, in fact, a student, and since midterms are already upon me, I regret to announce that I will have to spend the next two weeks of my life studying instead of bringing more laughter and sarcasm to the world. While you pine for me in my absence, just remember that I'd rather be doing almost anything but studying for these midterms. And when I say anything, I mean I would rather:

1. Pet a fish.

Okay, full disclosure time: I am terrified of fish.

I will fervently deny this to any of my readers who know me in person, but I have had an irrational fear of fish for as long as I can remember. They freak me out. There's just something about their blank eyes and gills and the creepy way they move that fills me with a creeping horror I can't even begin to articulate. I have, on more than one occasion, woken up in a cold sweat from a nightmare that consisted of nothing more than fish being in my general proximity. If you've ever wanted to know what it looks like when someone has a fight-or-flight reaction to a lungless organism that doesn't even have legs, take a look at this video:

Whose idea was it to take me to a goddamn fish museum?

I am of the wholehearted opinion that fish should evolve the ability to transport themselves into space and fly off into the stratosphere forever, environmental impact on the planet be damned, but I'm not too hopeful of that happening in the near future. I would, however, be willing to rub my hand along a fish's scaly back of nightmares if it got me out of my midterms. Their blank, staring faces might be horrifying, but not nearly as horrifying as a blank ScanTron and a scowling exam proctor. 

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The Six Types of Professor You Will Have in University

Let's face it. Even if you enrolled in university purely to experience the joys of vomiting up tequila and sharing a cinderblock dorm room with a complete stranger, you have to go to class eventually. And once in class, you'll meet the fabled professor: the mythical, doctorate-wielding creature whose opinion of you will directly impact your grades and how eager your parents are to shell out for tuition next year. In fact, you're going to have all sorts of professors before you graduate/gracelessly flunk out of university. I can guarantee that these six will be among them.

The Foreign Import

On the international stage, this professor is nothing less than an academic deity. People erect statues of her in the streets, balladeers follow her from place to place to sing her praises, and she may or may not have a national holiday in her honour. If you don't go to a school that craps out Nobel prize winners the way other schools crap out mediocre poetry majors, you can rest assured that your university had to literally grovel to get this professor to even consider teaching at your school. While most professors are compensated with plain old money, this professor's contract probably stipulates that she be paid in unicorns, luxury boats and high-class prostitutes. Any student would be overcome with gratitude to be allowed to take classes with her... at least, they would, if she was still in her home country.

And now she's in a place where they can't even find her home country on a map.

Unfortunately for the Foreign Import, she's now living in the United States/Canada/England/Australia/Ungrateful English Speaking Country of Your Choice, and her new students couldn't give less of a shit that they're taking courses with a living national treasure. All they know is that their teacher has an accent and limited sympathy for their whiny, first-world bullshit. Expect to spend the semester watching your increasingly desperate professor weep bitterly into apathetic, half-assed papers while your classmates leave scathing reviews on her Rate My Prof page.

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Over-Analyzing Lucy: Why This Movie is a Crime Against Science, Sense and Filmmaking

I watch a lot of dumb movies.

As regular readers already know.

I can tolerate a lot of stupidity in my movies. As long as they can keep my attention for 90+ minutes and leave me with a general understanding of what I just saw, I'm pretty much good. I can forgive a lot of things. I can forgive Apocalypto for its laughable misrepresentation of history. I can forgive Dracula Untold for its portrayal of one of Europe's most brutal rulers as a loving family man. I can forgive The Pirates of the Caribbean for its slow descent into a plot hole-riddled parody of itself. 

But some movies are just too stupid to forgive. 

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